Rational Response Squad debate with Way of the Master

On May 5, 2007, Rational Response Squad (RRS) co-founder Brian Sapient and member Kelly O'Connor participated in a live debate aired on Nightline with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron of Way of the Master. The topic for debate was the existence of God. Ray and Kirk claimed that they could prove the existence of their god scientifically without using the Bible or faith; however, Comfort then proceeded to refer to the Bible several times in his discussions. The debate on both sides covered several areas, such as religion, Pascal's wager, the cosmological argument, science, history, and questions regarding morality.

Questions
After each side, the RRS and WOTM, gave their speeches and provided the audience with their arguments, it was time for them to answer questions.

Closing remarks
All four debaters were given the opportunity to present closing remarks.

Conclusion of the Debate
A Christan pastor neatly sums the debate up: "In a debate during which one has committed not to use faith or the Bible to scientifically prove the existence of God, and then two of your three debate points (creation, conscience and personal conversion) depend solely on faith and the Bible, then you automatically lose. In fact, during his first response Sapient pointed out that Cameron and Comfort had already lost and everyone should just go home, and he was actually right."

TV and film critic Troy Patterson quoted on the debate (emphasis added):

When Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron challenged Rational Response Squad members Brian Sapient and Kelly O'Connor, they promised to scientifically prove the existence of God without evoking the Bible or faith. Of course, that did not happen. The main reason is that religious beliefs are based on faith in lieu of proof and regardless of evidence. Throughout this debate, Comfort and Cameron had no evidence. All they presented were fallacious absurdities of science, the Big Bang, abiogenesis, and evolution, as if criticizing one side would make creationism win by default.

When their claims did not hold up to scrutiny (much of the alleged evidence they declared to be “irrefutable” had already been refuted thousands of times) they resorted to their usual staple of mined quotations appealing to authority with irrelevant comments made by folks who often meant the very opposite of what these two implied. When this failed, they appealed to the audience's emotions with sermons and pleas to their fears and ignorance. Without providing any evidence for Comfort's god in particular, he implicitly admitted that his god could only be indicated if one was already determined to believe in it regardless of evidence, and the only claim to it they had depended on religious references which they had earlier promised they would neither need nor use. If they knew this going in, then their whole premise was phony, because they also knew they didn’t have any evidence—much less proof—and would have to rely entirely on assertions of faith and their reverence of scripture.

Comfort insulted fellow believers by assuming that, if there is a god, then his religion and absurdly narrow interpretation of it was the only acceptable option, a notion his cohort unwittingly described as idolatry. Cameron insulted the rest of the audience by pretending to have once thought as rationalists do, a lie he himself also accidentally exposed when he then accused rationalism of being a belief based on faith.

Addressing the topic of evolution, Kirk and Ray clearly displayed their lack of understanding. They attacked the fossil record, while providing a few hoaxes and claiming that intermediate fossils are lacking, and said that thus the entire theory should be discarded. Kirk Cameron claims to have done his research into the subject, but clearly he has not done the research for ERVs, atavisms, transitional forms, physiological, anatomical, and molecular vestiges, ontogeny and developmental biology, protein functional redundancy, convergent phenotypes, mobile genes, observed speciation, or the myriad methods of dating geologic stratigraphy, nor any twin-nested hierarchy of phylogenetic clades. Each of these has been repeatedly peer reviewed and tested by many scientists in many disciplines around the world. The evidence of evolution, and even the event of evolution itself—the proof of it—are both directly observable, testable, and demonstrably factual.

As for the missing transitional fossils, they are not missing and have not been for a long time; Kirk Cameron flat out lied to the audience. We have found so many fossils, much more than Darwin ever hoped for. While we do have thousands, possibly more, the reason we do not see "billions" as Kirk says is because fossilization is rare and we are lucky to have the fossils we have, since most animals decompose completely, or are eaten with their parts separated, and erosion destroys many fossils. Kirk then tried to confuse the audience with absurd pictures of bizarre animals like the Crocoduck, claiming this is what scientists have been looking for for many years. In fact, no scientists are looking for these creatures, since their existence would be impossible. Kirk is simply straw-manning evolution to make his position more credible. What they ignore (either deliberately or not) is that Darwin already explained why we should not expect to find anything like this in the fossil record. We are not looking for the transition of two modern species, but a very slow change over many generations. This, of course, cannot be observed in a single lifetime but is observable in the fossil record and in DNA studies.

Kirk then repeatedly states that no one has ever observed evolution happening, another lie. Speciation (Macroevolution) has been observed and documented hundreds of times both in the lab and in nature. But what we have never seen is special creation, a fully formed creature springing into existence out of nothing, which is precisely what Ray and Kirk are defending. Kirk and Ray go on to say that it is not speciation they are looking for, but a change in "kinds". But no one has ever been able to say exactly what a "kind" is, or what a change of "kinds" would entail. When questioned in other speeches or debates, young-earth creationists like Ray and Kirk have been known to change their definition of "kind" based on what best fits their argument at the time. So, it can be assumed that "kind" has no scientific meaning at all, and is merely a rhetorical diversion meant to confuse the audience about the topic at hand.

Brian Sapient and Kelly O'Connor were the only ones remaining scientific and rational in the entire debate. When making the case against Jesus, Ray Comfort quickly jumped to absurd baseless accusations that Brian and Kelly had 'blind faith' in history books to throw off the audience. What Ray does not want the audience to hear is that Brian and Kelly's points were valid and only further supported the claim that Ray and Kirk's entire position is not based on evidence, which flies in the face of Ray Comfort's opening position of being able to provide evidence without invoking faith.

Brian Sapient made a response video to the debate. In it, he brought forth many valid points.
 * In an email sent to Brian Sapient, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron said that they would be able to prove the existence of God absolutely, scientifically, without using the Bible or faith. And yet, in their opening speech during the debate, Ray and Kirk said only they would not use faith, but did not mention the Bible.
 * The moderator, Martin Bashir, probably knew full well that Brian and Kelly won the debate. Martin knew the debate was to see if Ray and Kirk could prove the existence of God scientifically without using faith or the Bible. But from the moment Ray used the Bible in his opening speech and arguments, the moderator let it slide throughout the entire debate. At the end of the debate, Martin says that it is hard to determine who won the debate, but the victor of this debate is obvious: The Rational Response Squad. Martin was completely aware of the purpose of the debate and was included in the phone call exchange between RRS and WOTM, and knows full well that Brian and Kelly won the debate. Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron clearly failed to stick to the terms of the debate; they even failed to stick to their own stated position. Ray and Kirk lost not because they are poor debaters, but because they never made an attempt to follow the rules of this debate.


 * Brian points out the WOTM uploaded material that was copyrighted by ABC and cut out bits that were damaging to WOTM. WOTM promised to send Brian and the RRS the master footage of the debate, since it brought in a six-man crew with high-tech gear to record the debate.  WOTM never sent it to RRS but instead uploaded it to YouTube with bits cut off.