Creationists, in my experience, would be happy to be corrected on actual, observable, testable science

In my experience, creationists believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. Try correcting them about what the fossil record actually shows, you won't get anywhere.

an atheist believes there is no God, so any option that leads to a God conclusion must be false

Not true at all. I've never met an atheist with an active belief in the absence of gods. Not even Richard Dawkins goes so far. What atheists do is withhold belief until there is evidence, and no evidence exists for the existence of any god or gods.

Speciation. Where is the speciation?

It's in the fossil record.

We lose dozens of species every year, and we have yet to see a new one arise.

Which is exactly what you'd predict from the theory of evolution. Natural selection is an iterative process that takes many generations to dramatically shift allele frequency. There's no reason to believe that we could observe it on human time scales.

How do you like that for contradictory evidence?

It's entirely consistent with evolution by natural selection. Not only consistent, but supportive. If speciation occured in just a few generations, which would be observable by human scientists, natural selection could not be the cause.

First off, there is a lot of confusion about what "creationists" actually believe.

If you tried believing only in what there is evidence to support there would be a lot less confusion.

From a Christian standpoint, we've got two parts - primary doctrine, and secondary doctrine.

See, you've got this entirely backwards here. If creation is fact, you should be able to infer the Christian doctrine from observations made in the real world. Forget about what's in the book, and just look at the world. Do your observations lead you to the same conclusion the book does?

Everything else, regarding God's implementation, and the methods He used to actually perform the act of creation...that's secondary doctrine, and in any room of ten creationists, you'll have a dozen answers.

That's because they're all making it up. If you ask a room of biologists about the actual method by which speciation occured, you'll get one answer. Evolution by natural selection. That's because that's where the evidence actually leads.

Any good critical thinker will change his mind when presented with contradictory evidence. But no such evidence exists. It's been 155 years since the Origin of Species was published, and not one observation has been made that contradicts evolution by means of natural selection. Every single observation made, including the discovery of DNA, has reinforced this basic idea.

And how is that worse than never exposing these people to any contradictory information at all?

Anyone with a web browser can see the falsity (indeed the sheer inanity) of Ham's claims

They can, but probably won't. How many of Ham's congregation do you think have read talk origins? Why would they, when Ham has all the answers?

So how do you get them to even listen to opposing arguments? This debate is a good way. Even if these people are coming just to see Ham speak, they have to listen to Nye in order to evaluate Ham's performance. In the process, some of them might realize that evolution isn't as crazy as they've been told.

Yes, it gives Ham a platform. You know what, he already had a platform. There is no downside to this debate. Nobody who isn't already a true believer is going to be swayed by Ham.

It will be a complete waste of time. Mr. Ham isn't there to change his opinion of anything.

It's not about convincing Ham. It's about exposing Ham's congregation to actual arguments. If fundie parents sit down and watch this with their kids, the kids might come away with a few new ideas. That's a good thing.

Hardware performance has never been an issue in relation to quality gameplay. No, you couldn't do GTAV on an Apple II. But you could do Roadwar 2000, and that's actually a better game.

The ICE runs at a speed of 198 mph in some locations and back in 1988 it even set a new world record with 253 mph. Only problem: It's a train.

You misspelled coprolite.

Funny, "worse is better" describes the phenomenon in your signature as well.

Well, at least they can recreate the readership of /.

It should also be noted that these and other "designer" drugs are not very enjoyable. The reality is that all the "good" drugs (relatively harmless, few unpleasant side effects) are either illegal or heavily taxed and subject to production and distribution monopolies.

We've only scratched the surface of what's possible. You're right, many of the current "research chemicals" are worse than their natural counterparts. JWH is absolutely less fun and more harmful than THC. Whatever they're passing around on blotter these days is no match for real LSD.

But for that matter, LSD was an unknown research chemical once. And it's at least as good as any natural psychedelic. I have it on good authority that MXE, discussed in the article, is more enjoyable than Ketamine. At this point we don't know what the side effects are, but it's possible that it's safe.

There are receptors in our brain that we don't even know what they bind. The receptors that we do know the ligands of, have allosteric sites that could bind novel chemicals. The drugs we know of could be improved upon, we don't know until we try.

So yes, don't take "spice" or bath salts. But don't be surprised if something new and amazing comes out of these basement labs either.

Advocating anything is protected by the First Amendment. Advocacy is speech.

I've got an even easier solution. The US government should obey the First Amendment. Education is speech, and the US government is prohibited from restricting it.