Since 2006, the Ohio State University has hosted an annual discussion of religion, science and evolution entitled The Intersection of Science and Faith. It's funded by the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) and this year's discussion will be happening tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7pm at COSI in Columbus. Attendance is free, but registration is required to attend.
Beyond Belief: Is Religion in Our Genes?
October 13, 2010 - October 13, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 (7pm-9pm)
Supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation
Join COSI and moderator Neal Conan, senior host of the National Public Radio talk show, Talk of the Nation, for a lively panel discussion with Andrew Newberg, MD, Director of Clinical Nuclear Medicine, Director of NeuroPET Research, University of Pennsylvania, and author of "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief," and Nicolas Wade, New York Times science writer and author of "Before the Dawn," and "The Faith Instinct." This program takes place inside the WOSU@COSI Studios on COSI's Level 1.
Register: RSVP by calling 614.228.2674, registration is required.
Cost: This event is free
Admission: Free; registration is required - please call 614.228.2674 to RSVP.
Sounds interesting, right? But what might we expect from the discussion? What's the John Templeton Foundation? Who are the speakers? To answer these questions, lets take a closer look at the speakers and the funding source.
Here's a thought provoking talk on Why Darwin Still Matters, given by WarrenAllmon, director of the Paleontological Research Institute & Museum of the Earth and professor at Cornell University.
An appreciation for nature and science is all about knowing what's out there in the world, and the ways of discovering how it all works. To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day a valuable gift you can share with others (especially children) is the simple ability to observe.
In fact, if I had only one bit of advice on encouraging an interest in the natural world, it would be this: foster keen observation and encourage curiosity.
If you're thinking "... but, how?" well, you're in luck: getting started is easier than you think!
First, get outside and into close contact with the natural world. This should involve dirt, maybe a little mud, plants, insects, rocks, untreated water, and a distinct lack of paved surfaces. Fortunately for most of us, this is as easy as heading into the back yard or to a nearby park or natural area.
Second, bring along tools that enhance the senses: magnifying lenses, binoculars, headlamps, telescopes, mirrors -- whatever you've got. Anything that broadens what one can observe with their own senses is going to enhance the experience. Additional items to bring include things like nets and containers for temporarily collecting various critters. These are great items to bring along, but must be used responsibly and in accord with any local laws that might apply.
Third, don't just passively observe, but be active about it! Encourage interaction (safely, of course) and the active documentation of the experience. Passive forms of documentation (e.g. photographs) are easy, but do little to make one think about the experience or to get one to pay attention to details. By "active documentation" I mean bring a notebook and measure things, count things, weigh things, describe things, identify things, and write it all down.
One of the very best ways I know to develop keen observational skills is to sketch, draw or otherwise describe subjects in a journal or field notebook. You'd be amazed at the details you need to notice when trying to draw part of an insect under a magnifying lens, or a bird at your local park. Later, encourage the use of field guides, books and online references to answer questions inspired by these experiences and notes from the excursion.
Whether you're a parent, teacher, part-time sitter, or just a friendly neighbor -- try and set aside some time today to teach someone something about our planet.
What makes science work as well as it does, and why should we trust scientific theories?
These aren't the kinds of questions most scientists worry about, but they are reasonable questions for the non-science layperson to ask. Any science educator should have answers for these questions. For one of those answers, hop on over to David Hone's blog and check out his post The Science Network. It's a good description of why science works, and why it's relatively safe to trust established scientific theories. It also describes (though, not explicitly) why breaking science news should be taken with a grain of salt: it's the process of checking and re-checking that refines scientific knowledge and weeds out bogus ideas.
Here's my condensed (ok, ok ... cherry-picked) version if you'd like a taste before clicking that link up above:
A good scientist knows what she knows and knows what he does not know. [They have] a good idea of [their] strengths and weaknesses and [their] areas of expertise and ignorance.
... crucially, I also know people who are good at the things I’m not good at and are not good at the things I am good at... Together we have breadth and depth.
...[Importantly], it allows us to cross check and revise our collective work and have confidence in what we are doing across the whole of science, even, or perhaps particularly, when we have little or no understanding of that field individually...
In this sense then, scientists are not so much a group of individuals as a cohesive whole. There are, obviously, errors made (occasionally profound ones) but this colossal network of research ideas and analysis does produce a singular, and generally very reliable, whole. I may not understand astrophysics, but I recognise and trust the methods used to generate the data, the analyses and the people behind it. So can you.
While I'm at it, this perspective on how science works also highlights the near impossibilityof conspiracy among scientists, especially given that nearly all researchers love to call out others on major mistakes. It's perhaps that impossibility that makes cartoons like this so amusing?
The Royal Society is allowing free online access to some of their infectious disease articles through the end of the week. It's a bit of advertising on their part, but still an opportunity to skim the selection and maybe read an article or three.
All Royal Society infectious disease content is currently free to access.
The Royal Society's journals regularly publish content covering scientific research into infectious diseases and you can access all articles FREE until the end of February at:
We are particularly interested in receiving Theme proposals in this area of science. Find out more about how you can become one of our Guest Editors by contacting claire.rawlinson@royalsociety.org or visiting her at booth 14at the International Congress on Infectious Diseases in Miami on 9-12 March.
Over at The Times online, there's a nice article on skepticism and science by John Krebs. You might want to jump right over and check it out, or if you prefer a sample before committing to that mouse click, here's how the piece begins...
My non-scientist friends are beginning to ask me “What’s gone wrong with science?” Revelations about melting glaciers and potentially dodgy emails about global warming, the resurfacing of Andrew Wakefield and the MMR scare, and the sacking of the Government’s drugs adviser, have created the impression for some people that science is in a mess.
Of course science isn’t in a mess, nor has anything changed. But the stories underline two important features of scientists and science. First, scientists, just like every other trade — bus drivers, lawyers and bricklayers — are a mix. Most are pretty average, a few are geniuses, some are a bit thick, and some dishonest.
Second, science itself is often misunderstood. Scientists tend to be portrayed as voices of authority who are able to reveal truths about arcane problems, be it the nature of quarks or the molecular basis of ageing. In fact, science is almost the opposite of this. In The Trouble With Physics, physicist Lee Smolin considers how to describe science and concludes that Nobel Prize winner Richard Feyman’s phrase says it best: “Science is the organised scepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.” ...
In addition to the coloration details, this paper also gets into other aspects of feather structure confirming that these structures are indeed feathers:
Our results demonstrate conclusively that the integumentary filaments of non-avian theropod dinosaurs are epidermal structures. In birds, melanin is synthesized endogenously in specialized pigment producing cells, melanocytes, that occur primarily in the dermis; the melanocytes migrate into the dermal pulp of the developing feather germ, where the melanin is packaged into melanosomes and then those melanosomes are transferred to keratinocytes for deposition into developing feathers. In various avian species melanin granules also form, and are apparently retained, in dermal melanocytes; melanin granules can form a discrete layer in the dermis, but below, and not as part of, the collagen layer. The occurrence of melanosomes embedded inside the filaments of Jehol non-avian dinosaurs thus confirms that these structures are unequivocally epidermal structures, not the degraded remains of dermal collagen fibres, as has been argued recently. Our work confirms that these filaments are probably the evolutionary precursors of true feathers, and it will be interesting to determine whether any fossil filaments might relate to other kinds of epidermal outgrowths in modern birds.
There's a post over at Jerry Coyne's blog (WEIT) pointing to another video of an octopus using tools for defense. In this case, the individual (a veined octopus) used 3 shells, then once alarmed carried them off holding them underneath it's body. While not all that unexpected for this species given their use of shells and such for shelter, the observation follows the recent story of such tool use as a first among invertebrates as published in the journal Current Biology [1] (more on that story on the blogs WEIT and Not Exactly Rocket Science or go here for the journal article and here for comments).
But are we missing something in these videos?? Here's the latest video, as featured on the Current Biology website:
Here's the first video (a supplement to the paper mentioned above) of an individual using coconuts:
The use of shells or coconuts as protective tools is noteworthy, but there might be more to the story than that. I once observed a small octopus inside 2 clam shells in the north eastern part of the Sea of Cortez, and while I didn't observe any of the carrying behavior documented in these videos, there was one additional detail I have yet to see mentioned in these discussions: the shells were lined with octopus eggs.
While I had wondered about my own observation upon first seeing the coconut video, I saw no eggs or behavior to suggest there were eggs present. This time, however, could be different. Here's a still from the video above showing what could be eggs in one of the shells:
If you haven't seen octopus eggs before, here's a closer image pulled from the web
So am I seeing things, or are these eggs? If so, is this not worth mentioning or has it simply gone unnoticed until now?
While perhaps a small detail, if these are indeed eggs in the shells it is important to recognize this fact. Tool use alone may be a noteworthy observation, but such observations are most valuable when matched with our best description of the context in which the behavior takes place.
The National Science Foundation has launched a new website called the Evolution of Evolution: 150 Years of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. A cursory look at the site revealed a nice (though a bit overpackaged) presentation at how the theory of Evolution has pulled together a broad array of scientific disciplines, and expounds upon a few cool, important or otherwise noteworthy examples of the recent scientific accomplishments as well as significant historical work. Also a bit of history surrounding Darwin and his legacy - no doubt in celebration of his 200th birthday this year, and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species this Tuesday, the 24th of November.
If you get a chance to work through any of the site in detail, feel free to leave your impression in the comments below.
The American Physiological Society has a new FAQ up on using animals in scientific research (big emphasis on medical research). If you've ever wondered...
Why do researchers study animals?
Why can’t they use computers instead?
What types of animals are needed?
Who makes sure that research animals are treated well?
Why do some people say that animal research is wrong?
Why do companies test cosmetics and other products on animals?
Why do some new drugs that are tested in animals still have serious side effects?
Science has a built in mechanism by which it can root out false or baseless assertions put forth by - well by anyone - but especially by members of the scientific community.
At it's core, science demands that ideas be challenged with empirical evidence and logical reasoning. For practitioners (whether career scientists or otherwise) there is then an assumed responsibility to ensure those core demands are properly put into practice. This results in a kind of social norm among scientists that they are critical of one another, and that they hold themselves and their peers to the highest standards of scientific inquiry. The result? If it doesn't pass muster, it won't get past too many people before someonecriesfoul.
A friend of mine just alerted me to this "must read" compilation of Nature papers on the evidence for (and utility of) evolutionary theory. It's been out for a while, but I thought it worth sharing.
So why have the authors and Nature put together these articles (and provided them for free to the public)? They explain in the introduction:
Most biologists take for granted the idea that all life evolved by natural selection over billions of years. They get on with researching and teaching in disciplines that rest squarely on that foundation, secure in the knowledge that natural selection is a fact, in the same way that the Earth orbits the Sun is a fact.
...We offer here 15 examples published by Nature over the past decade or so to illustrate the breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking. We are happy to offer this resource freely and encourage its free dissemination.
Below I've provided links to the main papers referenced in the article above (all free to download as PDFs). I highly recommend reading the summaries in the article before diving into the papers themselves, and of course sharing these 15 gems with others.
One could learn a whole lot of ecology just by reading the many studies and publications that followed from some of his work - particularly the classic 1960 paper by Hairston, Smith and Slobodkin (a.k.a. the H.S.S. paper or the paper that gave us the "green world hypothesis").
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) awarded him their highest honor in 2005, the Eminent Ecologist Award. They said of him...
Larry Slobodkin is one of the premier ecologists of our time. He has made lasting contributions to the theoretical and empirical development of ecology. Beyond this, however, many of us have been greatly influenced by the wonderfully original and insightful perspectives that flow from his unfettered mind.
Here's a nice video from by DonExodus going over the importance of independent evidence in science. Well worth 10 minutes of your time if you're unfamiliar with how the fossil record, embryology, comparative anatomy, and genetics all independently support the scientific theory of evolution.
Here's an article from newscientist.com taking a look at some of the data on cost and effectiveness of health care services both internationally and within the U.S.
I just saw this post by Greg Mayer (this Greg, not this one) over on Jerry Coyne's blog, Why Evolution is True, which knocks TED for spreading what Greg considers pseudoscience: the aquatic ape hypothesis. It does seem like a valid criticism, and not just a reaction to her calling evolutionary biologists "evolutionists" in the first few seconds of the talk.
I spent today at the Creation"Museum" in Kentucky (along side 250+ other critics, mostly from the Secular Students' Alliance), and I've got hundreds of photos worth of anti-science/pro-Creationism displays to mull over for future posts to this blog.
In the meantime, I thought I'd start things off with a quick summary on my thoughts of the "Museum", and hopefully a little insight into the messages that I would assume a lot of folks probably take away from the place.
First, the "Museum" (or the Creation ministry, as I might refer to it below) is run by Answers in Genesis, a non-profit (ahem...) Christian apologetics ministry that believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible (at least some of it, Genesis in particular).
Their stated goal is NOT to run a real museum based upon honest, empirical facts and good science. Instead, their mission (as given on their website) is ...
Goal: To support the church in fulfilling its commission
Vision: Answers WorldWide is the Missionary Arm of Answers in Genesis. Our purpose is to provide the “global Christian” with answers for his faith (1 Peter 3:14) and to expose the world to the Creator God of the Bible.
Mission:
We take the absolute truth and authority of the Bible to the world.
We teach the relevance of a literal Genesis to the mission fields of the world.
We obey God’s call for global evangelism for all ethnic groups in the world.
Not surprisingly, the big "take home messages" from today's visit seem to be the following:
Science is wrong about things like geology, biology, astronomy, etc. and
the Bible is indisputably correct, and in some cases can even be proven correct.
Interestingly, a lot of the "evidence" provided to justify the second of these claims often amounted to little more than repeating the first assertions above without justification followed by some form of "but the Bible got it right" - but, I'll get to more of that in future posts.
So what are some examples? Here are a couple from the displays in the lobby - before you even get into the "museum" proper!
When I heard there was going to be someone speaking about "Creation Astronomy" during my upcoming trip (in a couple of hours, actually!) to the famed Creation "Museum", I snooped around for a preview of what I was in for. Here's a taste...
Before I get into some of what he says in this talk (see the rough transcripts I've included below), lets take a moment and have a look at Jason Lisle.
While some might roll their eyes at the notion of "Creation Astronomy," Jason Lisle is no hobby-astronomer-turned-evangelist... According to his biography at Answers in Genesis he seems to know his stuff way better than the average Joe when it comes to Astronomy:
Dr. Lisle graduated summa cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University where he double-majored in physics and astronomy, and minored in mathematics. He did graduate work at the University of Colorado where he earned a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. While there, Dr. Lisle used the SOHO spacecraft to investigate motions on the surface of the sun as well as solar magnetism and subsurface weather. His thesis was entitled “Probing the Dynamics of Solar Supergranulation and its Interaction with Magnetism.” He has also authored a number of papers in both secular and creation literature.
For another look into Jason Lisle's take on "Creation Astronomy" check out this critique (or this one) of his "What Does the Bible Say About Astronomy?" which contains many of the points made in the video above (and much of what I expect to hear this Friday during his talk.)
IMHO, he seems like a pretty darn smart guy who's just stuck bending the facts so that they fit his world view. Anyway, on to the video above...
According to Lisle (in the talk above, starting around 12:00) "the Bible is not an astronomy text book, but when it touches upon astronomy, it's right." What follows are some vague quotes from the Bible that in a sense (in most cases, a very loose sense) are consistent with what we know about planets, stars, and the like. This is a classic case of handpicking where the Bible gets a few things "not wrong" and jumping to the conclusion made above: "when it touches upon astronomy, it's right."
For example, the Bible allegedly gets it right that the earth is a sphere. In the video he presents that there are...
some statements the Bible makes that are sort of astrophysical in nature, they're not intended to be, you know, for, necessarily for Ph.D. scientists, they're just statements that God has made that are true, and we would all agree are true today, even though the science of the times didn't necessarily agree with these statements.
For example, the Bible talks about the earth being round in Isaiah 40:22 [760-698 B.C.], it says ... it talks about the circle of the earth [God sits `upon the circle of the earth...']. And there's some other passages in scripture as well, like in Job 26 ["Job 26:10 (-2000 B.C.)"] where it talks about the line between light and darkness being described by a circle ['He drew a circular horizon on the face of the waters, At the boundary of light and darkness.'].
Slam dunk, right? Earth clearly indicated as a sphere, yeah? Er, no.
First, these quotes are super vague. They just as well assert that the Earth is a circle as it is a sphere... it could be a circle in a plane or a disk-like cylinder as far I as can tell. Heck, it could even just as well refer to God sitting on the moon (I could see a poetic association between the moon and "the circle of the earth", can't you?) - it's all a matter of interpretation.
When the Biblical quotes get really iffy, he's careful with his wording. He doesn't call such statements vague or difficult, he calls them...
some beautiful poetic statements like God 'hangs the earth upon nothing.' [Job 26:7 (200-1800 BC)] which seems like a description of the earth floating there in space. And I grant you it's kind of a poetic statement, and it's made by Job not God, so we have to be a little bit careful, but it does sound like these ancient peoples new something about astronomy.
This little fact was left out of Jason's talk: the well known and very obvious fact that the Bible consistently talks about "the Heavens" in accordance with a geocentric view of astronomy.
So at this point, I'm starting to get the feeling that one could make at least as strong an argument that when creationists mention astronomy, they mostlyget itwrong.
Anyway, it just keeps on going... again, quoting the video above:
The universe is expanding. God 'stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.' [Isaiah 40:22 (760-698 BC)] the Bible says many many times that the universe is being expanded. And it's interesting because it wasn't until the 1920s that the secular science, um, kind of caught up with that and realized that indeed the universe is being stretched out.... Really amazing. You know, this is a little more abstract, but I do believe the Bible teaches the conservation principle. That is the Conservation of Mass: the amount of stuff that is in the universe is constant. Because, we know that God - all things were made by God - furthermore God stopped making things at the end of the creation week. According to Genesis 2:2, God finished his work of creation. [All things were made by Him... John 1:3, and 'And on the seventh day God ended his work...' Genesis 2:2]. So we would not expect anything new to come into existence, you see. And, furthermore we would not expect anything to cease to exist, because God upholds all things, and by him all things consist. [God 'is upholding all things...' Hebrews 1:3, and '... by him all things consist.' Colossians 1:17]. We now call that the conservation of mass, or the conservation of energy. Einstein tells us that mass and energy are the same, really. So it wasn't really until the 1800s that was codified in terms of science, but the Bible got it right.
It seriously pains me to listen to these shaky rationalizations! Are we really to believe that from statements like "on the seventh day God ended his work", "[God] is upholding all things", and "by him all things consist" we get the conservation of mass? Seriously?
It just keeps coming...
This one again is a bit abstract: Entropy is a complicated term, sort of a measure of messed-up-ness, if you will, and, um, the Bible talks about the Universe, heaven and earth shall wax old like a garment. They're aging, they're running down - wearing out. I would say that's a consequence of the second law of thermo dynamics, unrestrained (and I'll qualify that in a minute). [The universe (heaven and earth) 'shall wax old like a garment' -No reference given.]
But, it's interesting because you could say "well it's pretty obvious that things wear out, that's not very profound." And I would say that it's obvious ON EARTH, that things wear out and run down, but is it obvious that the universe is running down? If you go out and look at the night sky tonight, or tomorrow night or whatever, it's going to look about the same. I don't think it's obvious that the universe ages. And, of course, the universe was indeed thought to be eternal and unchanging until about the time of Tycho [Tycho Brahe, astronomer 1546-1601]. So - But the Bible got it right from the beginning.
See, we now understand from the laws of physics that even if we can't see the slow decay of the universe it must be decaying. The amount of usable energy in the universe is running out. Now, I do want to make a comment on the second law of thermodynamics because there's been some misunderstanding here. It is not a consequence of the fall of man. No, the second law of thermodynamics must have existed from the beginning of creation, because we're designed around that principle.
Ok, life requires the second law of thermodynamics to function. When you digest food, that's the second law of thermodynamics, helping you out. But apparently, originally, this tendency to decay must have been balanced by God's organizing power so that ther was no net decay before sin. And we've seen examples of that in scripture where God's presence is a sustaining presence. Like in the Israelites in the wilderness, their clothes ... didn't even wear out. So apparently at the time of the fall, God removed some of that sustaining power allowing the universe to decay beyond it's original design. And now all creation suffers under that bondage of corruption and one day the universe will be restored. There will still be a second law of thermodynamics, presumably, just that God's presence is a restoring presence.
Now it's interesting because, of course, today, all scientists would agree that the Earth is spherical, and it floats in space, and that there's a conservation of mass and energy and the like, but that hasn't always been believed by secular science. But the Bible got it right you see.
Just out of plain 'ol curiousity, I searched an online Bible for words like stars, moon, heavens and other astronomical terms, just to see what else was in there that Lisle didn't mention. Fortunately for "creationist astronomers", most all of these references appear to be "poetic" enough that they're hardly capable of being disproven, and nothing so blatantly wrong that it can't just be ignored:
According to Job 22:12 there are a finite number of stars. (Whew! I always wondered.)
According to Nehemiah 9:23 there were at one point as many male Israelites as stars. Furthermore, there should be no fewer humans with Abram as an ancestor than stars: "He took [Abram] outside and said, 'Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.' Then he said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.'" - Genesis 15:5. (Er, maybe they meant "visible" stars... yeah, they must have! Otherwise it wouldn't make sense! Right?)
According to Isiah 34 and Jesus himself in Mathew 24, come judgment day "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken... At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn..." This asserts that the earth will survive having all of the stars crash into it, unless when they "dissolve" (Isaiah 13) they are reduced enough in mass for this to occur and leave survivors? Either way, it should no doubt be quite a sight for any astronomers still around to see it.
Ecclesiastes 12:2 says "... [B]efore the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark..." and, like Jeremiah 31:35, is the norm in getting light emission from the sun and stars wrong: "This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night...".
In Joshua 10:13 "On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: 'O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.' So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day." Hold on, hold on - so IF they stopped as requested, since these two locales are only about 10 miles apart, shouldn't there have been an eclipse? Furthermore, if the earth suddenly stopped, wouldn't there be horrible earthquakes and crazy weather? Wouldn't it get unusually hot?
In the end, Lisle does ask a good question (although I don't think he was aiming for the answer I'd give):
"So have we learned the lessons of history? Have we learned that when the science of the day disagrees with the Bible, it's not the Bible that needs to be modified. Have we learned that lesson?
Indeed we have - perhaps it's not the Bible that needs to be modified, just how we decide to interpret it?
I'm a big fan of Thunderf00t's work, but I'm going to bet that (like myself) he wasn't on the debate team when he was a kid. When I heard he was going to debate Ray Comfort, I had high hopes that he'd smash some of Comfort's claims regarding science and - for lack of a better term - reality. Instead, I must admit I was a bit disappointed, though it's not like there any resources available for taking religious fundamentalist to task (well, except here, here, here, here, here and probably a few other places).
While some of this is pretty painful to watch, the end has some good moments - Thunderf00t makes Ray Comfort squirm a little over evolution in parts 6 and 7, and I was a bit surprised to hear Ray says some pretty wacky things in part 8, but overall it was pretty non-productive. Anyway, on to the advice section...
So, how shouldn't you argue with creationists??
Rely heavily on the assumptions that (1) a deplorable understanding of science = they can't possibly score points during debate; and (2) debating them will go a long way towards educating the public about science, logic, and critical thinking.
Don't bring notes, or paper on which to take notes.
Let them ask all the questions and choose all the topics, or at least most of them.
If they confuse fact-based knowledge with unfounded belief, just let it go.
Don't mentioning any baseless beliefs or flawed logic that might arise, and instead explain a more general logical error in great, technical detail. This works way better than asking probing questions to point out their dubious arguments.
If you're an atheist/agnostic/whatever, and they ask you why you don't believe in God, by no means turn the question around and ask them to justify why they do.
Don't ask them to define terms and phrases like "moral being", "create", "soul", etc. Such details won't cause any problems later on in the debate.
If they repeatedly refer to the Bible for all their knowledge, don't question it at all, and don't bring up any internal conflicts or conflicts with solid empirical evidence. Wait until the very end of the debate. This is when the audience is of course most alert, and most capable of understanding those conflicts, and how they apply to the many arguments made by your opponents over the past hour.
There's no need to study up on their style of debate and favorite assertions. They'll never repeat the same dumb arguments over, and over, and over, and over again. For example, they'd never use the old watch-maker argument, false dichotomy, etc., so just don't bother.
If they say "DNA is a language" agree with them (it's basically Quechua, with a hint of Dutch) since it in no way represents a large molecule that encodes information that guides the production of RNA inside the cell.
When they make remarks like "So you're just electricity?" answer "Pretty much, yeah." This totally wins over their supporters in the audience, politely ignores the fact that he or she is missing your point, and it doesn't at all make you look you're not running the show.
Practice by reading the Bible (preferably the version they believe in), and not resources on ways to debate creationists, or debate in general. After all, t's a pretty easy book to read, and will give you deep, deep insights into exactly how Christian fundamentalists think.
Don't compare techniques used by Scientologists "to propagate their religion" to similar evangelical Christian practices... unless you do so by first offering a distracting discussion about anthropomorphizing animals, and then making up some parody of God named Todd to illustrate your point.
When they ask if adultery is wrong, pause for a while before answering - it's great way to win over their supporters. By no means ignore them and continue on making your point. If that's what they wanted you to do, they would stop interrupting you.
In general, let them draw you away from making a good point by asking a handful of irrelevant questions based on tricky concepts like "morality". This will ensure you don't make your point, which always puts you ahead in the debate.
When you ask them to describe a basic scientific concept, like, say speciation, and they change the subject without doing so, don't bother asking them again.
When they deny that man makes camcorders, let it go... After all, we can't even make sand.
Don't correct them when they confuse salamanders and frogs... repeatedly. It's tricky for some people.
