The original question was:
I recently attended the creation debate between John Mackay and Dr Dan Ryder. John Mackay was criticised as a “Gish Galloper”. What on earth is that? “
Answer by John Mackay
“Gish Galloper” is a term Evolutionists created to mean a person who throws so many different arguments or facts up to defend their case that their opponent only ever has time to deal with a fraction of these points. It is named after Dr Duane Gish whose debating style and fame at the start of the Creationist movement in the USA made him both feared and a target for ridicule from evolutionists. Since then it has become a derogatory term thrown willy-nilly at any creationist debater to dismiss arguments that evolutionists can’t handle.
The term “Gish gallop” was coined by Eugenie Scott in 1994 in an article entitled Debates and the Globetrotters where she complains: “in a debate, the evolutionist has to shut up while the creationist gallops along, spewing out nonsense with every paragraph.” Further on she writes: “Instead of the ‘Gish Gallop’ format of most debates where the creationist is allowed to run on for 45 minutes or an hour, spewing forth torrents of error that the evolutionist hasn’t a prayer of refuting in the format of a debate, the debaters have limited topics and limited time.”
In 2004 Scott confirmed that she was the creator of this term in an article about how to debate creationists published by the National Center for Science Education in the USA. The article included this advice: “To be avoided are unstructured formats allowing presentation of misconception after misconception — what I have dubbed ‘the Gish Gallop’ in honor of its most avid practitioner.” Eugenie C Scott, Confronting Creationism: When and How Reports of the National Center for Science Education Vol. 24, Issue 6, November–December 2004, p23
By the way did you get the importance of the fact that Gish Galloper is a created term? Think about it.
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