No, not really. As I mentioned, the evening’s atmosphere wasn’t really conducive to that kind of discussion.

That’s a pity.

Answer that one, and they find another obscure thingy in a completely different field.

I can’t make head or tail of the AnswersInGenesis webpage. What exactly are they trying to say? I sincerely doubt that there is any support for creationism in the cosmic background variation. Is this to do with the clumpiness of said variation?

we can speculate whether the example of artificial selection of Heike crabs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani) is realistic or not.

Hmmm…I checked Google Scholar for articles on Heikea. Nothing on artificial selection. This of course doesn’t mean there aren’t any articles in this topic…I will have to ask some crustacean experts.

Would have been useful to have an expert on hand. E.g. “why do galaxies form on a plane?”

I think your explanation is correct. Talk.origins has a discussion on this point.

One creationism question was raised: AnswersInGenesis was mentioned, that recent findings about the cosmic background radiation supposedly supports creationism. (Probably http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i1/microwave.asp). Which is exactly the problem one has when battling that kind of thing: some obscure piece of data, or some obscure interpretation of said piece of data, is waved about with a “but what about this then?” question… a question you can only really answer if you are an expert in the field. Answer that one, and they find another obscure thingy in a completely different field.

Yes, science is always improving, i.e. there are always errors to correct, and interesting things to learn from interesting data. Go look for some obscure detail, and you will always find it. (Wait till we start doing that with creationism and flood geology/mechanics…) And there’s not much discussion that can be had about that kind of detail.

The material itself was presented in a matter-of-fact manner. What can one do there? One can disagree very now and then. Or one can argue about what things we can disagree with and what not, but that’s not so useful. We can laugh at some of the Sci-Fi (speculation/imagination) that was included, and we can speculate whether the example of artificial selection of Heike crabs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heikegani) is realistic or not. It was considered “unlikely” by an audience member. I thought it was an interesting example. But on that Wikipedia page it mentions that some experts have questioned the impact of artificial selection — depends on how many were really eaten and how many thrown back.

Some questions that came up were technical ones. Would have been useful to have an expert on hand. E.g. “why do galaxies form on a plane?” (I can only say “uh, I think it’s because they spin”, then try to explain what happens when you spin stuff with some hand-waving and fumbling words…)

But anyway…

Did the series generate any interesting discussion in the group that watched it?