Dr. Betech accepts R. Slifkin's offer to debate

Received from Dr. Betech:

R. Slifkin states on his blog that I refused to debate him and speculates on reasons for the refusal:

So why did he refuse? I think that his refusal is for several reasons. One reason is that, especially when dealing with complicated topics, it is always much easier to throw out a list of objections to one's opponent's view than to subject one's own view to objections. Another reason is that he probably really hasn't thought very much about his own model in the first place, and how it addresses the available evidence.

This is not true. I openly accept R. Slifkin's challenge to debate what he calls my model provided that R. Slifkin accepts my prior challenge to debate his evolution model using rational arguments. Since my challenge was issued first -- in response to R. Slifkin's model presented in his books -- I insist that we start with his model in an intellectually respectful, moderated, neutral, public forum.

Rabbi Slifkin on global warming & suppression of scientific dissent

Rabbi Slifkin wrote (emphasis added):

This week, the Israeli Education Ministry's chief scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital, was fired, for challenging evolution and global warming. I was amused to see that some people saw this as the "suppression of dissent from the scientific orthodoxy." In other words, "here's a scientist who presented a scientific case against evolution, but he was suppressed for political reasons! 

.... More to the point, people such as Avital who deny evolution clearly do so because of their own religious beliefs. They are fully entitled to those beliefs, but they are entirely unsuitable to have a position as chief scientist in the Education Ministry".

Suppression of scientific dissent is not as amusing as R. Slifkin might think. Science is a wonderful thing, but one has to be very naive to think that scientists, working in a competitive research environment are, somehow, above all the human foibles of the rest of the human race. Scientists are prone to jealousy, the desire for money, their prestige, their research grants, etc.

It is therefore not so amazing that even scientists suppress dissent and critical questioning of their work. Global warming is a good case in point. Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia from 1980-2007, and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute wrote in the Wall Street Journal as follows (July 12, 2010):

The Climategate Whitewash Continues:

Global warming alarmists claim vindication after last year's data manipulation scandal. Don't believe the independent' reviews.

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world's leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and climatic data to paint what scientist Keith Briffa called "a nice, tidy story" of climate history. The scandal became known as Climategate.

Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, "nothing to see here." Last week "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review," commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.

Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that "Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find."

No links? One of the panel's four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia's School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)—the source of the Climategate emails—was established in Mr. Boulton's school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia "adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity."

This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two others—one by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State "determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."

Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

It's impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren't looking. In a famous email of May 29, 2008, Phil Jones, director of East Anglia's CRU, wrote to Mr. Mann, under the subject line "IPCC & FOI," "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report]? Keith will do likewise . . . can you also email Gene [Wahl, an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce] to do the same . . . We will be getting Caspar [Amman, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research] to do likewise."

Mr. Jones emailed later that he had "deleted loads of emails" so that anyone who might bring a Freedom of Information Act request would get very little. According to New Scientist writer Fred Pearce, "Russell and his team never asked Jones or his colleagues whether they had actually done this."

The Russell report states that "On the allegation of withholding temperature data, we find that the CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data." Really? Here's what CRU director Jones wrote to Australian scientist Warrick Hughes in February 2005: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it[?]"

Then there's the problem of interference with peer review in the scientific literature. Here too Mr. Russell could find no wrong: "On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process, we find no evidence to substantiate this."

Really? Mr. Mann claims that temperatures roughly 800 years ago, in what has been referred to as the Medieval Warm Period, were not as warm as those measured recently. This is important because if modern temperatures are not unusual, it casts doubt on the fear that global warming is a serious threat. In 2003, Willie Soon of the Smithsonian Institution and Sallie Baliunas of Harvard published a paper in the journal Climate Research that took exception to Mr. Mann's work, work which also was at variance with a large number of independent studies of paleoclimate. So it would seem the Soon-Baliunas paper was just part of the normal to-and-fro of science.

But Mr. Jones wrote Mr. Mann on March 11, 2003, that "I'll be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor," Chris de Freitas of the University of Auckland. Mr. Mann responded to Mr. Jones on the same day: "I think we should stop considering 'Climate Research' as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues . . . to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

Mr. Mann ultimately wrote to Mr. Jones on July 11, 2003, that "I think the community should . . . terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels . . . and leave it to wither away into oblivion and disrepute."

Climate Research and several other journals have stopped accepting anything that substantially challenges the received wisdom on global warming perpetuated by the CRU. I have had four perfectly good manuscripts rejected out of hand since the CRU shenanigans, and I'm hardly the only one. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, has noted that it's becoming nearly impossible to publish anything on global warming that's nonalarmist in peer-reviewed journals.

Of course, Mr. Russell didn't look to see if the ugly pressure tactics discussed in the Climategate emails had any consequences. That's because they only interviewed CRU people, not the people whom they had trashed.

===

It is always interesting to start with questions before proceeding to answers. I don't know if the hysteria about global warming coming from so-called "consensus science" is warranted or not. But here are the questions that we need to ask:

1. Are humans causing global warming?
2. Is global warming happening at a significant rate?
3. Is it happening so badly, that it will lead to catastrophe?

See the Prager/Pliner interview on global warming and the comments section of the previous blog to see why these are important question and why the truth may not lie with R. Slifkin's favourite -- "consensus science".

===

What was Dr Avital's crime? Here is what he said:

"If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct."

So all Dr. Avital wanted to do was expose students to some of the weaknesses inherent in Darwin's theories. There are in fact many good scientists who dissent from the majority and who are skeptical of Darwin's blind watchmaker thesis:

We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged. [See http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/]

The Suppression of Scientific Dissent

This past Monday Dr. Gavriel Avital, Israel’s Chief scientist for the Ministry of Education, was dismissed by his boss Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar. Rabbi Slifkin has the following to say about this incident.

This week, the Israeli Education Ministry's chief scientist, Dr. Gavriel Avital, was fired, for challenging evolution and global warming. I was amused to see that some people saw this as the "suppression of dissent from the scientific orthodoxy." In other words, "here's a scientist who presented a scientific case against evolution, but he was suppressed for political reasons!"

Of course, the facts are entirely different. Dr. Avital is an aeronautical engineer, not a biologist. And he did not present any evidence against evolution. Rather, he revealed himself to be a religiously motivated person who is unfamiliar with the situation (or distorts it). Dr. Avital is quoted as saying the following:

"If textbooks state explicitly that human beings' origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don't believe the evolutionary account is correct."

Rabbi Slifkin claims "the facts are entirely different" but are they? Here are the real facts. Dr. Avital was appointed to the position of top scientist in December 2009 but prior to this appointment Avital had already publicized his doubts re Evolution in a video interview with Machon Meir. Furthermore, in Novemebr 2009, Avital had already made his position on Global Warming clear in the journal B’sheva. Yesterday, Avital claimed that Sa’ar was well aware of his views on Climate Change before hiring him (Ynet).

In February 2010, Dr. Avital once again voiced his opinion regarding the tenuousness of these two theories thereby sparking a furor amongst environmental activists and scholars. Basically they went nuts and demanded his dismissal. In March Avital promised to toe the Ministry line regarding Evolution and GW and the Ministry considered the whole thing over and done with. The furor should have died down. Unfortunately due to intense pressure from the academic left and the environmentalist lobby Avital was finally dismissed eight months after his public statements! Avital’s dismissal is clearly the result of the leftist establishment wielding its political power to suppress dissent from scientific orthodoxy and is unrelated to how he discharged his duties at the Ministry of Education

Irrelevancies - The Proposed Betech-Slifkin Debate

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

Another reason why I refused to debate evolution with Dr. Betech was that such a debate is a charade, since it is a religious issue for him, not a scientific one. In science, one draws conclusions from the evidence, regardless of one's religious beliefs. In response, Dr. Betech was forced to say that he would agree to draw the requisite conclusions. But as I pointed out, of course he has to say that, but the question is whether he is trying to fool other people or himself. Perhaps he is like those people who, for religious reasons, refuse to accept that man landed on the moon, and find a way to wriggle out of any evidence for it.

All this is irrelevant as are most of the following comments by Rabbi Slifkin in his post. Dr. Betech invited Rabbi Slifkin to a protocolized debate, not a personal conversation. In a public debate, neither one of the protagonists is attempting to persuade their opponent. They are attempting to persuade the audience! Rabbi Slifkin refuses to debate Dr. Betech regarding evolutionary theory for one simple reason; he knows he will lose. It’s as simple as that. All this other stuff he writes about "requisite conclusions", "religious reasons" and "moon landings" is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It’s patent misdirection. It’s superfluous wording, meaningless jargon and fancy lingo specifically designed to avert your attention from the simple fact that Rabbi Slifkin cannot support Evolution.

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

So is Dr. Betech like a moon-landing denier, or not? Is he truly willing to draw honest conclusions from the evidence, even if the evidence is in favor of evolution, or will he just wriggle out of it? One way to clarify this is to ask him what those conclusions would actually be.

I just had a brainstorm. In order to clarify whether Dr. Betech is willing to draw honest conclusions from the evidence, why doesn’t Rabbi Slifkin actually debate him and see for himself?

Rabbi Slifkin writes:

...the question is not whether there are unanswered objections to evolution, but rather whether evolution or recent creation better addresses the available evidence. But this would mean developing a theory of recent creation and subjecting it to critical scrutiny (just as a detailed theory of evolution was developed and subjected to critical scrutiny). That's why Dr. Betech is terrified to do it.

This is a silly assertion. I, like Dr Betech, am also a creationist. I believe in a literal interpretation of maaseh bereishis. But I have never felt compelled to develop a "theory of recent creation" and subject it to critical scrutiny any more than I feel the need of developing a theory of, say, the origin of metallurgy and subjecting it to critical analysis. In both cases the Torah tells us precisely what happened (Creation was sudden and rapid via meta-natural processes and metallurgy was developed by one of Kayin’s great grandsons) and in both cases I have no reason to doubt the Torah’s account. Rabbi Slifkin doesn’t possess a theory of the origin of metallurgy or a theory of the origins of the collapsible tent or a theory of the origins of musical instruments. There’s no reason to. The Torah discusses these things openly and there is no reason to doubt them. If Rabbi Slifkin happens to doubt the Torah’s account of maaseh bereishis, he needs to develop the theory, not Dr. Betech.

Rabbi Slifkin's Astonishing Admissions

Pursuant to the Blog Entry entitled "Excuses are not Reasons" (October 3, 2010), I made several comments delineating what I thought was my position on the matter of the Betech-Slifkin debate issue. After reading Rabbi Slifkin’s current Blog entry (Monday, October 4, 2010 – Exposing "Scientific" Anti-Evolutionists), I have come to realize that my previous understanding was entirely incomplete.

Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

Dr. Betech wanted to debate the scientific merits of evolution with me. I refused, for several reasons. One reason was that it really doesn't make a difference to my book if evolution is true or not. While I personally am convinced that the evidence for common ancestry is overwhelming, I don't understand how evolutionary mechanisms work and I have many questions on it. But what difference does it make? I haven't studied it all that much and I'm not a biologist. More fundamentally, the fact is that it does NOT contradict Torah, and many people will believe in it regardless or what either I or Dr. Betech say. So it doesn't make a difference what I believe about evolution; what matters is whether it contradicts Torah - and there is no reason to believe that it does.

I am literally stunned! I don’t even know where to begin. Let's disect this paragraph piece by piece.

First of all, Rabbi Slifkin claims that it makes no difference to his book whether evolution is true or not. This statement is quite literally astounding. Anyone reading Rabbi Slifkin’s books on this topic can easily see the falsehood of this assertion. In his book The Challenge of Creation, Rabbi Slifkin introduces us to the raison d’être of his book. He writes as follows: (my emphases)

This book was written for those who are committed to the tenets of Judaism, but also respect the modern scientific enterprise and are aware of its findings, and who are therefore disturbed by the challenges that are raised for their understanding of Torah.

That pretty much says it all. His book was written expressly for the informed individual. It was written for those who are aware of the scientific findings and therefore find their understanding of the Torah problematic. In classic revisionist style Rabbi Slifkin now wants us to believe that the truth or falsehood of Evolution makes no difference to his book.

Second, Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

While I personally am convinced that the evidence for common ancestry is overwhelming, I don't understand how evolutionary mechanisms work and I have many questions on it. But what difference does it make? I haven't studied it all that much and I'm not a biologist.

This paragraph is even more astounding than the first! I feel like Rod Serling just catapulted me into one of his classic episodes of the Twilight Zone. If I read Rabbi Slifkin correctly, he just finished admitting that

a) he doesn’t understand how evolutionary mechanisms work

b) he actually questions their validity

c) he hasn’t studied evolutionary mechanisms much.

I apologize for repeating myself so much but this is astonishing! Rabbi Slifkin hasn’t even studied Evolutionary mechanisms yet he feels justified in writing a long and complex book supposedly addressing the "challenges" of those who are "aware of [the scientific] findings". Is it me or does this strike anyone as weird?

For the uninitiated, here’s a 30 second history class in Evolution. Although Evolution really has its roots in ancient Grecian naturalism, the current permutation of the theory was first brought to the attention of the scientific world in the nineteenth century by the French biologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck in his book Zoological Philosophy (1809). Lamarck believed that living things possessed an internal energy, a "vital force" that drove them to evolve toward greater complexity. Unfortunately this didn’t take too well with the scientific community. Then Darwin came along. In 1859 he published his book On the Origin of Species which provided a scientifically viable mechanism for the evolution of the species. His book was an instant bestseller and the rest is history.

Darwinism is all about mechanisms! If you don’t have a mechanism, you don’t have Evolution! Sure, morphological similarities and the clear presence of a nested hierarchal system of biological classification might suggest (to the materialist) the idea of a common ancestor, a "Tree" that branched out into the diversity of life we see today. But without a viable scientific mechanism for the supposed phenomenon of biological speciation, there isn’t even a single self-respecting evolutionist in the whole entire world who would claim that Evolution satisfies the technical parameters of a scientific theory, much less a fact. How can Rabbi Slifkin presume to reconcile the supposed loggerhead of Evolution and Torah when he, admittedly, knows little about evolutionary mechanisms? Indeed, he even questions the validity of known evolutionary mechanisms.

Third of all, Rabbi Slifkin writes as follows:

More fundamentally, the fact is that it does NOT contradict Torah,

Sure it does. The Torah says that biological species arose suddenly, all at once, via meta-natural fiat. I’m sure I read that somewhere in the Bible. Rabbi Slifkin may feel that his approach of redefining the verses of maaseh bereishis is intellectually satisfying but even he would admit that if we don’t reinterpret the verses to refer to a spiritual infrastructure (or some such other fairy tale), the Torah would indeed contradict Evolution.

Fourth of all, Rabbi Slifkin writes:

and many people will believe in it regardless or what either I or Dr. Betech say.

This amounts to special pleading. In his books Rabbi Slifkin ostensibly sets out to reconcile a very real issue between science and Torah but now, in order to maintain the relevance of his writings in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, Rabbi Slifkin appeals to the ignorance of the masses as his ultimate reason for publishing his book. I don’t buy it. (Actually I did buy his book(s). And actually I freely admit that that Rabbi Slifkin is a talented and engaging writer who happens to possess a substantial amount of zoological knowledge. He certainly knows more than I do about animals…) 　

I only managed to treat the opening paragraph of Rabbi Slifkin’s most recent post. Tomorrow morning I intend, Please G-d, on finishing my treatment of Rabbi Slifkin's post in a follow up post entitled "Irrelevencies".

Excuses are not Reasons

Rabbi Slifkin has given a variety of reasons for not debating Dr. Betech. None appear to hold up in the light of reason. Rabbi Sifkin wrote (see his blog comments):

I have given several valid reasons why I refuse to debate evolution with him (Dr. Betech). To recap: 1) His professed desire for a scientific debate is a ruse, since it is a fundamental religious issue for him.

Supporting Darwin's theory of evolution (common descent via chance/natural mechanisms) seems to be a fundamental "religious" issue for Rabbi Slifkin. In fact, Rabbi Slifkin has made a name for himself in support of Darwin's theory. For Rabbi Slifkin to admit that he was in error would be to repudiate his own books and the reputation he has created for himself as a "rationalist". Given Rabbi Slifkin's own biases, and using Rabbi Slifkin's own uncharitable interpretation of Dr. Betech's motives, we might as well claim that Rabbi Slifkin's professed desire to avoid a scientific debate is also a ruse---due to the fact that he would not want to be shown to be in error.

As was stated in an earlier post, somehow, in Rabbi Slifkin's mind, Dr. Betech is too biased to debate --- whereas, somehow, Rabbi Slifkin does not have these disqualifying biases. This is despite the fact that Rabbi Slifkin acknowledged the contribution of Dr. Betech's biological expertise in one of his books. Of course, a rational approach would be too admit that we all have our biases and then attempt to debate the issues on its own merits.

Rabbi Slifkin further writes:

2) I am not a biologist and it is not up to me to defend evolution. He has to convince the scientific community; as far as I know, he has yet to convince anyone. 3) Even if I believed evolution to be false (and frankly, I really don't understand how the mechanisms of evolution work), it would not make a difference; I would still consider it important to publish my book in the same way and show how evolution is not a contradiction to Judaism. Dr. Betech has formally declined to debate the halachic/hashkafic legitimacy of my approach, claiming that he is not qualified to do so. 

In answer to (2), Dr. Betech has offered to debate a biologist of Rabbi Slifkin's choice. In his latest book (page 317) Rabbi Slifkin writes that there are “compelling reasons” to believe that even Rabbi Yisrael Salanter has evolved from monkeys. Given that Rabbi Slifkin has provided scientific evidence in his books that supposedly show that that the Darwinian theory is true, Rabbi Slifkin's claim that he is not a biologist seems disingenuous at best. Surely if his reasons are genuinely compelling they can withstand critical scrutiny.

In answer to (3), if evolution is false, why would we want to show that evolution is consistent with Torah? Logically, it would seem that the first step is to examine the truth of Darwin's theory in the light of the best scientific evidence.

 (But apparently he does consider himself qualified as a paediatrician to challenge the global scientific community of biologists, palaeontologists, physicists, anthropologists, archaeologists, etc., without even having published a single paper on the topic.) 

In point (2) and here, Rabbi Slifkin demonstrates that he is a big believer in the infallibility of the global consensus of scientific experts. True, our first inclination should be to consult the scientific experts. We certainly hope that we can trust them to provide us with the experiments and data needed to evaluate their theories. But, on critical issues, they have also been wrong, and badly so. An informed layman certainly has the right to ask relevant questions. What are the critical experiments that demonstrate the truths that are being espoused? What untested assumptions have been made? etc. Biology is not rocket science. An informed layman (especially a paediatrician) may surely ask what experiments show that the astonishing machinery of a single cell comes from dead chemicals via chance/natural processes, absent of intelligence? Where are the experiments or empirical data that demonstrate that an amoeba can develop into a fish, and a fish into a philosopher via purely mindless physical processes? When these questions remained unanswered by the most qualified experts then the informed layman is within his rights to be skeptical of the proposed theories.

Michael Crichton, in an invited lecture delivered at the California Institute of Technology in 2003, had this to say about the notion of consensus:

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

Biology is hardly rocket science. If the experts have critical experiments or solid empirical data for Darwin's theory, Rabbi Slifkin should have no problem making his case. 


Scientific discovery does not rest on authentic revelation. By contrast, halacha starts with the revelation of the Torah at the mountain of Sinai, and is governed by the terms of the transmission mechanism set in to place at that time. To a very large extent, halacha relies on prior precedent, the majority view and consensus of qualified halachic decisors (poskim) in the chain of that transmission. Perhaps Rabbi Slifkin considers himself a posek; but Dr. Betech is quite within his rights to refrain from making halachic determinations and decisions. Rabbi Slifkin's last comment is:

Dr. Betech has not formally declined my proposal to debate his own "scientific" approach, but since I've asked him plenty of times over the last week and he has not yet responded, it certainly looks like he is declining. (Perhaps he is avoiding formally declining so as not to be challenged to give his reasons for declining.) Which is odd, because he claims to be interested in truth, and claims that scientific debate between us leads to that. Apparently, that was all a ruse. 

I do not see where Dr. Betech has declined to debate his own "scientific approach". However, does the Torah point of view qualify as a scientific theory? If anything, the Torah is God's blueprint for creation, a blueprint that makes science possible in the first place. Surely the relevant question is whether current scientific evidence best supports Darwin's blind watchmaker theory or the Torah's account of meta-natural creation via a transcendent Intelligence (as explained by our baalei mesorah).

So far as I know, Dr. Betech is willing to debate Rabbi Slifkin (or his representative) in an intellectually respectful, protocolized, neutral, public forum on any of the issues presented in Rabbi Slifkin's books in the light of the best scientific evidence.

1. Cosmic Evolution (Big Bang Cosmology). 
2. Chemical Evolution (increasingly complex elements, molecules and compounds developed from the simpler chemical elements that were created in the Big Bang). 
3. The age of the universe. 
4. Biological evolution (of the species). 
5. The accuracy of science-related statements made by Chaza"l. 

Biological evolution should be the first subject to be debated, because that was the initial challenge to Rabbi Slifkin presented by Dr. Betech. Darwinism is both a specific theory of biology as well as a way of thinking about things in general (methodological naturalism). So a debate about evolution will strike at the heart of the matter.

Rabbi Slifkin challenged to debate evolution

Dr. Isaac Betech has challenged Rabbi Slifkin to a debate (see entry at Rabbi Slifkin's "rationalist" blog). Dr. Betech wrote:

B”H
Dear Natan.
I am Isaac Betech, as you know, I am a physician ...


In your post you wrote:
“…a PhD in mathematics (not one of the natural sciences) and a physician - have declared that my science (referring to my belief in the antiquity of the universe and evolution) is wrong! The mathematician and physician are not disputing me; they are disputing the entire scientific establishment. And they have zero credibility in doing so.”


Since I have many times publicly stated that I do not know scientific evidences that prove the evolution of the species, and I do not want “to dispute the entire scientific establishment”, I invite you to a public, intellectual, respectful, protocolized debate; then our rationalist audience will not have to rely on my “zero credibility”, but they will be able to arrive at their own fact-based conclusions.
Please let me know when and where this scientific encounter will take place so I will B”N make all my personal arrangements.
Regards.
Isaac Betech
P. S. By the way, your statement that I am disputing “the entire scientific establishment” is not accurate…

Rabbi Slifkin refused the offer to debate Dr. Betech. Somehow, in Rabbi Slifkin's mind, Dr. Betech is too biased to debate --- whereas, somehow, Rabbi Slifkin does not have these disqualifying biases. This is despite the fact that Rabbi Slifkin acknowledged Dr. Betech's biological expertise in one of his books. Of course, a rational approach would be too admit that we all have our biases and then attempt to debate the issues on its own merits.


However, Rabbi Slifkin did offer the following:

Meanwhile, I am not accepting his proposal of a scientific debate about evolution. I am instead offering a counter-proposal, and I am also accepting another proposal of his.


The counter-proposal is to publicly debate the scientific theory of his creation model. After all, he claims that his beliefs about the development of the world are not only based on Torah, but also on science. And he claims that such debates are important for reaching truth, and that pursuing truth is one of his main mottos.


I propose a format for such a debate as follows: Dr. Betech would first describe his model in detail, explaining when and how each major group of animals (Paleozoic fauna such as ammonites, Mesozoic fauna such as Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs, mammals, birds etc.) appeared and disappeared. Then I would pose ten question to him about his model. Then he would respond. Then I would pose further questions about his responses, to which he could again respond. Then I would make a brief closing statement, and then he would do the same. I would be generous and allow him to have the final word.

Something different can be proposed that is fair to both parties. Why not compare on scientific merits 

1.  the billions of years of blind, purposeless, evolution advocated by R. Slifkin; 
2. the Torah account of sudden creation via a transcendent intelligence proposed by Dr. Betech. 

The precise protocols of the debate would have to be discussed, but the first step is to obtain a clear description of (1) and (2).