Addendum to my two posts below, here’s Michael Behe’s side. He notes:
…and John emailed back that he himself requested the video to be pulled because people thought he was too easy on me, which was supposedly contrary to that old Bloggingheads spirit. I find that quite implausible (other shows on the site feature discussions between people who agree on many things). Rather, I suspect the folks at the website weren’t expecting the vitriolic reaction, began to worry about their good names and future employment prospects, pictured themselves banished to a virtual leper colony, panicked, and folded.
Behe is correct. The producers do prefer some disagreement (participants refer to this injunction), but it often doesn’t crop up. I would say that the majority of diavlogs don’t exhibit much of an adversarial spirit. The problem was the lack of adversarial spirit and the content, that is, the crankery. When historian of science Ronald Numbers had a discussion with Paul Nelson, a Young Earth Creationist, it was in an anthropological spirit. In contrast McWhorter verged on advocacy.
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