Conservapedia talk:Debating Ken

Should User Conservative Challenge Lenski to a written Debate on the Conservapedia evolution article?
In the files of the Conservapedia:The Zeuglodon Blues, we find (320/8148420d347bca21.html) Ken asking the question above. Of course, Ken was all about challenging, not about actually debating Lenski. The current debate about a debate resembles very much Ken's musings from Dec 2008 (unfortunately, none of his fellow sysops answered his question...).

And there are a lot of gems in Ken's short article, even a hint to what he thinks is a good strategy. Enjoy!

22:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting. He's obviously terrified of doing anything face-to-face.--BobSpring is sprung! 22:35, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I said it before and I'll say it again: pursuing something like this with a mentally challenged adult (which Ken obviously is) is an exercise in futility. The fucktard wants payment of $20,000 up front, not in an escrow, which is what intelligent people do. How stupid does he think we are? DickTurpis (talk) 22:41, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Heh, another big man on the internet. Talks a good game about how atheists won't debate and hide in their intellectual bunny holes, but the minute you offer to organise a debate suddenly the evil atheists are out to get them. -- 23:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, we certainly can't have a written debate for $20,000. The idea of paying any amount to anyone for more of Ken's "Gentlemen!..." drivel is anathema. Clearly the guy doesn't know what a debate is, so without someone physically there to keep him on topic we'd just get the same old shit from him we see for free every day. Is the guy actually this delusional? I really wonder what is wrong with him. Aspergers? DickTurpis (talk) 23:13, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Asperger's Syndrome doesn't account for the paranoia, delusional thinking, or manic episodes. wp:Thought_disorder? wp:Schizotypal_personality_disorder? wp:Schizoaffective_disorder? Who knows. I regret the armchair psych but this is terribly relevant stuff. This man is obviously suffering awfully and I really hope he gets some help or someone capable intervenes. 00:18, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure he is. Certainly he's self-deluding. For 20K, people are going to want entertainment. I'm willing to organise an entertaining debate, though the entertainment will mostly come from the utter incompetence of Kendoll. -- 23:15, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

For the record...oh yeah, ken has lost
For the record, I also accepted Ken's challenge. See WIGOCP:Talk. Ken has lost - I met his conditions and gave him more than 12 hours to respond (a time when I knew he was active) and he failed to do so. Hence, Ken is a liar and has no machismo. Ace McAwesome 23:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * When he responded to you on his talk page he began with something like "Against my better judgement I decided to open the message from Ace" or words to that effect. The implication being, although he has asked people to mail him, he was considering nor reading the responses anyway.--BobSpring is sprung! 09:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

This is brilliant
The title says it all. Brilliant. "Conservative" is a coward. Plain and simple. –SuspectedReplicant retire me 00:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like to know whether he honestly believes he's great and that we're at fault, or if he knows he's shit and is just trying to save face. To be honest though, I'm getting kind of uncomfortable with all this. It reminds me of this... "special" kid at my primary school who told everyone that he was a superhero thanks to a talking mouse that gave him his powers (seriously). We'd all goad him on into actually exhibiting some of these powers, but all he'd demonstrate was "flight", which was him running around with his arms out going "fwoooosh!" and telling everyone that his feet weren't on the floor, and make up excuses for the rest of his "powers" (like he could only shoot lasers from his eyes when the mouse was there and pets aren't allowed in school so obviously he can't do it now). At the time it was funny, but as I've grown up I've increasingly regretted being part of the crowd laughing at him and now I just hope he got the help he needed. That's what this recent surge in Ken activity has reminded me of. We *know* he won't debate. We *know* that he sucks at writing articles, we know that he almost certainly was never paid for writing anything. The only people we're "proving" this to when we call his various bluffs is us, and we already know. We're basically laughing at someone who needs some kind of help. At this stage, there's literally nothing else to our interactions with him other than us getting some amusement from the idiot, and as I said, I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable with it.
 * That said, I do like that he has to send the same email multiple times, making tiny changes to them. That did make me chuckle. X Stickman (talk) 01:00, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree completely. We are picking on a misguided soul in order to make ourselves feel better.  There is no other point to it that I can see.  I think this borders on bad taste.  --DamoHi 01:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not to make ourselves feel better (Did we have something to feel bad about in the first place?) Hell, it might be good for him. If he's confronted with his own ridiculousness maybe he might change. Certainly being totally unchallenged at CP isn't helping him any. The best thing for him would be if Andypants would step in and have a word, but clearly he won't. That would mean backing off from his "0 in mental problems" party line. -- 01:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * He made a challenge and got a response. Like all believers in supernatural and woo he's in the difficult position of trying to reconcile his beliefs with reality.  At the very least they all suffer from Cognitive dissonance. But are we going to give them all a free ride because of this?--BobSpring is sprung! 09:22, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, or that everyone who talks/communicates with him is evil and bad. If I was saying that, I'd have been a lot more angry and harsh in my message. I enjoy the results from these things as much as anyone else, it's just that I'm starting to feel less and less comfortable with it. If he was in a position of some kind of authority, like... I dunno, Ray Comfort or something. If he was someone people actually looked to, then there'd be some reason to call his bluffs and show him up and such. But he's not. Outside of the two or three youtube folk he conspires with, we're literally his only audience. CP doesn't give a damn about him. The conservative movement as a whole doesn't give a damn about him. I go back to the point I made above; the only people the results of these things matter to is us, and depending on how many mental defences Ken has erected, possibly Ken himself. X Stickman (talk) 10:17, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I get some pangs of guilt at times, because, you're right, there is obviously something wrong with Ken and we're basically making fun of a mentally challenged adult. But then he acts like a complete prick, and when people are assholes I generally don't give preferential treatment, because an asshole is an asshole. Okay Ken, so you're stupid, you have mental problems, that's fine, but you don't have to be a dick about it. Or maybe he does; maybe he can't help it. I don't know. He's still a shitbag. DickTurpis (talk) 20:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Did anyone notice...
RatioanalWikians? Freudian slip or accident? You decide. Ace McAwesome 07:09, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It could be more of the vicious, biting satire he's known for. Webbtje (talk) 08:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Salutation
Did the emails to Conservative really have "Dear kendoll" as the salutation, or was this a bit of artistic licence?
 * All emails are literally how I sent them. Kendoll seems as good a name for him as any, considering his status as man of many names. -- 14:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Your call Jeeves, but I would have used "Conservative" (possibly within quotes), to show that I don't stoop to name-calling, unlike his use of "Horrible Horace". CS Miller (talk) 15:23, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Just out of morbid curiosity, could you stick a timestamp on as well as the dates? Wonder how long it took him to draft those things. Webbtje (talk) 15:39, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Written debates are better
"I agree with JP Holding that written debates are superior debates." And yet the duplicitous toe-rag demands that Richard Dawkins debates with Rabbit Buckteeth? 15:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Translating from Crazy to English, that means "I can't leave my basement or the atheists might martyr me." -- 15:32, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Asking Andy
If you want to ask Andy, I can give you the info to a CP account I have that still works. Mr. Swift (talk) 20:14, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not much point in asking Andy anything. He won't respond to anything from anyone from RW, he also won't acknowledge Ken's drivel, and, besides, what's he going to do anyway? Ken demands we give $20,000 to someone we don't know, and clearly that isn't going to happen. No one here is that stupid. And since apparently a live debate is out of the question no matter what, we have no reason to pursue this anymore. A written debate with Ken is nothing more than a random collection of his "essays" with no relation to what his opponent says, and we get that for free every day. If Ken would rather remain anonymous (as if we don't know his name is Ken DeMyer already) than have a charity receive $20,000 then we know he's not much of a Christian anyway. DickTurpis (talk) 20:36, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My strategy was to try and resolve issues one at a time. Getting him to agree to a live (i.e. real) debate would have been step two after getting him to agree to debate at all. But apparently Kendoll's complete unfamiliarity with how real world financial transactions are handled (I'm still laughing at the idea that you can just go and ask random pastors to take money from you and give it to a charity without them immediately dismissing it as an attempt to scam them in some fashion) or, more likely, his failure to come up with a sensible reason to get out debating at all without looking like an idiot proved a fatal stumbling block. Between reasonable people this would have been quite a simple negotiation that landed me with a lot of hard work to do. -- 21:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Somewhat revealing, I guess
"Since finding debate opponents on the internet is rather easy to do, I do find it difficult to believe that an atheist from your website, namely you, would donate $20,000 to a bona-fide and reputable Christian relief organization as a pre-condition to debate, but stranger things have happened." So he just straight up admits in an email that he specifically set up a condition that he expected no one to meet. I'm glad to learn that this is a valid method of achieving victory. I'll give it a go myself; I hereby state that if Ken can get me a solid week of no holds barred sex sessions with (insert female celebrity here), I will admit that atheism is a flawed and weak ideology, convert to Christianity and dedicate the rest of my life to the upkeep of Conservapedia. Also I get to define what "sex", "week", "female" and "celebrity" mean, definitions subject to change without notice. If my simple demands aren't met within a week, I will declare atheism the victor. X Stickman (talk) 00:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a big risk you're taking there. I commend your bravery, sir. Concernedresident  omg!!! ponies!!! 00:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You have given him too much wriggle room to get out, he still gets to define "no holds barred" and "sessions". -  π    00:46, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Um...
I know the original page has long since been burned, and I'm too lazy to check screen caps, but wasn't the original $17k based on a payment to Hitchins and not Dawkins? -- Ψ Gremlin  08:47, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

60 days
I can't see any mention of his final "I'm too busy for the next 60 (90?) days to do anything" cop-out. Anybody have that captured, so it can be commented on? -- Ψ Gremlin  12:46, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This one? 13:10, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's the one! Thanks! -- Ψ Gremlin  13:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm so proud...
...to have dragged Mattel, via Liz Phair, into this! 05:08, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Did he really deprive $20,000 to a charity because he was afraid to lose some face?
 * Look at this guys history, the answer would be a hell yes. -EmeraldCityWanderer (talk) 21:40, 19 June 2015 (UTC)