He said, "Yet, we still have to debate them if we want to spread the message, haven’t we?"

I agree that this presumption is incorrect. But for different reasons.

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I highly recommend the film Denial with Rachel Weisz. She plays RL scholar Deborah Lipstadt, who famously refused to debate the Holocaust with deniers.

Among many reasons, it lends legitimacy to the opposition and creates a false equivalence.

( Yes friends, the scholarship available is buried when its not suppressed by acts of government, but it IS available online. Those who encounter it can see what is overwhelmingly born out by studies. To debate a bigot is to suggest that their evidence is remotely comparable to that which informed you. )

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The debate is not a format which is hospitable to the presentation of facts requiring comprehension greater than a sound bite.

This argument comes up from those evolutionary biologists who refuse to debate creationists. The creationists have quips, not facts. And their approach is a barrage of scattershot disjointed anecdotes designed to exhaust rather than inform.

The other side has a truth that has been time tested against every opposing argument, and which is independently supported from completely different sciences; chemistry, geology, genetics, natal development, paleontology. Explaining the interlocking web that makes the "theory" into something rock-solid cannot be accomplished in a debate.

AND, all this presumes a literate audience who cares to engage with, say, an explanation of how radio-carbon dating works.

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The debate is purportedly about whoever can best convince a specific audience.

But we well know that winning-over an audience is more difficult than confirming their prejudices. And we also don't buy argumentum ad populum.

The greatest ethical no-brainer of all time is the wrongness of slavery. And yet the arguments against fell on deaf ears among the majorities throughout world history.

Our truth is no less compelling.

So, yes, put it out there.

But don't seek out a hostile crowd and count on winning them over.

And don't assume that those who control the "presses" won't suppress, confiscate and destroy that which they can't reason against.

But do it for those who might listen, rather than to appeal to those who are immune to evidence.

Dante