The picture sums up the whole night.
Last night I attended a debate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The topic of the evening was “Does The Christian God Exist?” The UNCG Atheists, Agnostics, and Skeptics Club hosted the debate and invited two ministers, Dustin Segers of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Greensboro and Sye Tenbruggencate, a self-proclaimed apologist and evangelist.
I went with the same expectations that I always have when I go to something of this type. I expect that the Christians will either come without any proper philosophical or apologetic training to effectively argue their position, or they will come with nothing more than a plan of salvation and the promise of an eternal Hell for the opposing position. Both expectations were fulfilled last night.
The room was packed with students, professors, and guests. The moderator told us that the room had been slotted to hold 49 attendants, but there were well over 100 people crammed into the room, the hallway, and even down the stairwell.
The debate began with opening statements from the Christian side. They began by reading Romans 1 and said that their opponents and those who supported them were blinded by sin and headed to Hell. Bad opening. Fail. They spoke heavily on the consistency of the Christian worldview, the absurdity of atheism, and the inconsistencies in Secular Naturalism. This opening statement worried me a little, since none of these topics seemed to address the theme of the debate, “Does the Christian God Exist?” I assumed that there had been some preliminary discussion between the atheist side and the Christian side and these topics were supposed to be addressed. I was wrong.
Tenbruggencate began by pointing out the flaws in Naturalism. I waited for a defense of the existence of the Christian God. He moved on to show how Naturalists are irrational in their assumptions. I waited for a defense of the existence of the Christian God. He moved on to butcher C.S. Lewis’s moral law argument. I waited for a defense of the existence of the Christian God. I began to wonder if I was in the right room.
When the moderator called time, Tenbruggencate argued with the moderator and said, “I have a few more paragraphs.” He was not arguing from knowledge, he was simply reading verbatim from a book (or notes) and had not finished the page. Fail Christians.
The atheist side began its argument. The debaters on this side were Phillip Drum and Joseph, whose last name I did not catch. They used egregiously poor arguments, most of which were blatantly false. Some of the arguments were the Bible teaches the earth is flat, Genesis 1 and 2 are in stark contradiction with each other, miracles are absurd, and that there is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth (apparently assuming that the Gospels are automatically discredited as reliable historical evidence, and ignoring the stacks of early Roman writers mentioning Jesus). Phillip made a tremendous intellectual fail when he said, “Logic is simply an invention of man that we use to describe the world around us. It could change tomorrow if scientists found a better logic.” Despite the tremendous problems from the Christian side, this and the one that followed were the most ridiculous and uneducated statements of the entire night. The following statement was, “I can disprove the Law of Non-Contradiction.” The Law of Non-Contradiction says that a being, “A” cannot be both “A” and “Non-A” at the same time and in the same way. This law is an unchangeable, immutable, universal law. It’s more rooted in reality than the Law of Gravity. We can at least imagine a universe with no gravity, we cannot even begin to imagine a universe where “A” can exist and not exist at the same time. So when he said he could disprove this immutable law, I was listening intently. “This building is not moving, it’s rooted in the earth. Yet, the earth is moving around the Sun, so the building is moving. The Law of Non-Contradiction is false here.” I was gobsmacked. Not only did this show a complete misunderstanding of logic, but also a complete misunderstanding of science. The building is moving. It seems like it’s not moving from our perception of movement, but it is in fact moving around the Sun. This isn’t a contradiction. Fail Atheists.
However, I’m not really concerned about the atheist fails. I want to focus on the Christian fails. There were plenty. I’ll address some of the most frustrating:
- The atheists presented the classic “Problem of Evil” argument against the existence of God. They made no effort to explain the apparent discrepancy between the existence of pain and the existence of God, but that’s not my concern. The Christians made no, none, nada, nil attempt to address this problem.
- The atheists said that no evidence was available to support the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christians made no, none, nada, nil attempt to address this problem. (I was beginning to think they were secret undercover atheists.)
- The atheists said that the Bible was scientifically false because it mentioned “four legged insects.” A basic biology course tells us that all insects have six legs. The Christian answer? “This is not a debate of facts, it’s a debate of interpretation of facts. Maybe insects back then did have four legs.” Are you effing kidding me? A real (simple) answer- The definition of an insect as a bug with six legs is a modern definition. This text in Scripture is thousands of years old, from thousands of miles away. The ancient Hebrews had basically five categories of animals: Wild beasts, Cattle (domesticated beats), Birds, Fish, Insects. So to an ancient Hebrew who had never taken a modern biology class, an insects could have four, six, eight, one hundred legs. It’s a matter of definition, history, and culture.
- Instead of graciousness and respect, the Christians seemed to be offended that their atheist opponents disagreed with them. At more than one point in the evening, Pastor Segers simply refused to answer a question because, “You don’t think my answers make any sense since you don’t like logic. So I’m not going to answer that.” I wondered if he was still in fourth grade.
- These two men were middle-aged, holding advanced degrees in Bible Exposition and related fields. The men they were arguing with were in their early twenties, one of them has not even completed his undergraduate degree, which is not in philosophy or religion. The other one holds only a B.A., and it is also not in a field related to philosophy or religion. The Christian men have devoted their lives to “proving” Christianity. Not only did they utterly fail to do this, but at no time during the night did they manage to get a leg up on their young, less educated opponents.
Overall, the evening was exactly what I expected, another embarrassment for Christianity. Pastor Segers and Mr. Tenbruggencate, please quit and find something else to do. (Make sure you don’t become a train engineer.)
Please don’t only take my word for it, visit the websites of these men and evaluate them yourself.
I was also disappointed in the Christians. I just can not understand why they didn’t address the topic of the debate. It seemed like they were more concerned about the wrongness of atheistic thinking than they were about the existence of God.
Exactly right. Even though I was also thoroughly disappointed with the atheists, (believe it or not I was really looking forward to hearing a solid challenge to Christianity) I was just saddened by the Christians. It was pathetic.
I must agree unfortunately. The debate, in my opinion, showed the shortcomings of presuppositional apologetics. The Christians did a decent job of showing the transcendence of logic, and I emphasize “decent.” But they made no logical connection in their jump from “logic exists and can’t be changed” to “therefore, the Christian God exists.” There is so much great evidence out there that it’s a shame the uninformed in the audience probably walked away thinking “That’s all the Christians have?”. By the same token, the uninformed Christians probably walked away thinking the same thing about the atheists. I admire them all for getting up there, and God can use many means to draw people to Himself. I left, however, feeling rather embarrassed. In all fairness, the topic was perhaps a bit too specific for such a debate format. Proving theism in that amount of time would be much easier than proving Christian theism. Regardless, I think your assessment is correct. Let’s clear the tracks and get the train moving again…
That was exactly how I felt too. It was just downright embarrassing. Why didn’t they just address the points? And stop trying to be funny, they just looked like fools.
Sounds like a mess, but I’ve never been a fan of the debate format anyway. Without wading too deeply into the arguments, I’m curious about the third Christian fail. Leaving aside the fact that the Levitical law was given by God, who ought to have a perfect knowledge of taxonomy, are there any four-legged candidate species for what the Hebrews might have misclassified as insects? Leviticus 11:22 is clearly talking about true insects of the order Orthoptera, so why should we assume that verse 23 is talking about anything else, especially considering the fact that no “winged creatures that have four legs” exist?
One explanation is that Lev 11:22 specifically mentions insects that “walk on all fours.” Not necessarily insects that have only four legs. This may have been (as it is today) an idiom for crawling. A baby crawling may be said to be “crawling on all fours.” We don’ t say that a baby has four legs, but that he is simply crawling. An insect like a cockroach has wings but isn’t typically associated as a flying insect. They are mostly known as crawlers. Many insects only use their back legs for jumping, not walking. They use only four legs for walking. (locusts for example)
The important thing to remember is that we are dealing with several thousand year old writings, much of which uses ancient idioms. It can be hard to nail down specifically what they meant since an insect to a Hebrew could mean anything from a fly to a salamander.
That explanation only holds up for verses 20-22, which refer to insects that walk on four legs. Verse 23, however, refers specifically to insects that have four legs and wings. Most of the translations I checked also link verse 23 to 22 by saying something like “all other winged insects that have four legs”, which would seem to imply that verse 22 is also talking about insects with four legs, not just insects that use four legs for walking. Coincidentally, locusts and grasshoppers use six legs for walking, not four. But even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t make these verses any more useful as a dietary guide in the real world, where millions of people over several centuries and multiple ecosystems would potentially encounter millions of insect species. There’s a simpler explanation: Leviticus is wrong. Even the best naturalists of the ancient world made rather rudimentary mistakes of morphology and classification that could have been corrected by simply going out and observing nature. And the author(s) of Leviticus was not the best naturalist in the ancient world.
It’s a mistake to quickly dismiss Leviticus as simply “wrong” as there has been thousands of years of scholarship in this book. If it were so easy to discredit it, it would have been done a long time ago. I think I’m being ambiguous in my explanation of this verse.
Leviticus 11:21 distinguishes between the four legs used for walking and the hind legs used for hopping. I know that this is not how we distinguish the legs today, but this was the primitive Hebrew understanding of entomology. We as 21st century American look at the locust, as an example, and we say it has six legs. The Hebrews looked at at and said it had 4 legs and 2 hind legs. This doesn’t mean Leviticus is wrong, it’s just an early understanding of entomology. It would have been nonsensical to describe zoology to ancient Hebrews in modern Western terms.
This is far from an error in Leviticus. It’s simply a cultural and chronological separation between us and them. It’s just a matter of definition, not an error.
I was one of the debaters for the UNCG Atheists, and I’d just like to offer a few points of clarification.
1) Regarding the historicity of Jesus, we didn’t just dismiss him as a myth. We pointed out historical inconsistencies (e.g. When he was born: during Herod’s reign [Matthew] or at least ten years after Herod’s death when Quirinius was governor of Syria [Luke]). This, and other examples, highlight not so much that Jesus was not an historical person, but that the Christian scriptures are not a reliable guide.
2) While we did argue that the Bible presents a pre-scientific view of nature/universe, we did NOT use the example of 4-legged insects. That specific issue was raised during the Q&A time from the audience.
3) We actually did not argue that miracles were absurd… The point, which we repeatedly stated, was that we found it strange that the Christian god would choose to perform his magic (tangibly demonstrate his power) in a pre-scientific age, to a largely illiterate tribal people, who were already very superstitious. This observation, for me, makes such extravagant claims of the miraculous seem very convenient and suspect (for reasons discussed in the ‘debate’).
4) This was our (the UNCG Atheists) first debate… so it was definitely a learning experience for us. We sincerely appreciate the interest that all of you expressed in this topic. And I regret that we disappointed some of you with the strength/clarity of our challenge. Perhaps we’ll do better next time. I would suggest, however, that if you’re writing a dismissive evaluation of the debate, that you at least get your facts straight as to what happened at the event.
A quick reply to your 4 points:
1. I didn’t go into specific details regarding every point of your argument about the historicity of Christ because, as I made clear, I am not particularly concerned on this site about your side of the debate, and there’s simply no practical reason to go into that much detail on a blog. I pointed out one of the many problems in your idea that Jesus was mythological, the one I thought was the most absurd. Your point that no early history records the life of Jesus is either ignorance at an embarrassing level, or a shameful lie. As for the other parts of this position, (e.g. the timing of Christ’s birth) these arguments are so outdated as to be pathetic. These supposed contradictions in the Scripture are so easily answered that they’re hardly worth taking time to answer. And yes, you’re right, I’m not going to. Spend five minutes reading a book chronicling the inerrancy of the original manuscripts. Most of the issues you pointed out are clearly explained away with a simple issue of poor English translation of an accurate Greek text. I agree with you that there are problems in English translations. More importantly, the errancy of the Bible does nothing to prove the Christian God doesn’t exist, just that our records of him are inaccurate. See William Lane Craig or a number of atheists for an examination of that undeniable fact.
2. Despite the timing of the question, your table defended the idea. I know that it would be difficult to remember that specific moment in the debate since it was poorly moderated and at points in the debate there was just unrestrained, muddled bickering between both tables. Your table defended that point. Whether it was you or Philip, it was said. Thanks for missing the point of that particular example in my article. Again, the scientific errors, if they exist, do nothing to prove that the Christian God doesn’t exist.
3. If you will go back over your notes for your opening arguments, you will find that your table did make a statement that went something like this, “If you are to believe the Bible you will be forced to believe the (silly, absurd, ridiculous?) ideas such as floating axes, talking donkeys, a man whose long hair gave him super strength…” To which the audience gave a resounding laugh at how silly those Christians are and you looked rather proud of yourselves. Yet again, if the miracles recorded in the Bible are false, it is still logically possible for the Christian God to exist. I know you’re not sure what logic actually is based on your completely ridiculous evaluation of it, but Dr. King, Dr. Rosenkrantz, or Dr. Hoffman of the UNCG Philosophy department would be happy to assist you there.
4. It’s not my problem that this is your first debate. When you put yourself in the public eye, get ready for public criticism. I do hope that next time it goes better. I hope you learn more, I hope you find a better Christian to debate. Hell, I’ll do it.
Can I just direct you to my blog where I list a summary of what Sye was doing ?
On this side of the pond there were alot of us who were very frustrated that an experienced debater like Sye was able to get away with so much because it appeared that you had walked into the debate with your eyes wide shut.
The foundations to Syes argument are
1) showing that the opponent must hold a worldview
2) showing that that worldview must provide certainty
3) showing that that worldview does not provide certainty
4) showing that because that worldview does not provide certainty it is absurd
5) showing that because Sye has had a revelation from God that provides him with certainty his worldview cannot be attacked.
6) showing that because his opponents worldview is absurd and Syes worldview is not his opponent must accept Syes worldview or be in logical denial.
These have a number of holes which we have tried on numerous occasions to address with Sye
1) the opponent must hold a worldview
This precludes the advancement of any other philosophical positions for the sake of the argument. It unreasonably narrows down the focus of the discussion and, as Fergus has commented based on a pdf that Despeville originally linked to, is very close to the methodology used by cults, particularly Scientology. Sye denies that his methodology is the same but has declined to provide any details.
2) showing that that worldview must provide certainty
This is the main line of argument that Sye advances – “how do you know ?” and “without presupposing the existance of the Christain God you cannot be certain of anything”.
The main lines of questioning are based on
the laws of logic are absolute – this ignores how wide the field of logic is and the history of logic and instead bases it’s foundation on the premise that the three laws of logic cited have alway been and will always be in existance.
truth is absolute – I have real issues with the whole absoluteness thing and I struggle to see how truth can be absolute as it is viewed so subjectively, but that is by the by. My expertise in that area is small which is why I’m putting my position forward to Peter Byrom as a line of philosophical enquiry rather than as a determined position.
morality is absolute – On this issue I’m on firmer ground. I do not accept that morality is absolute. This is not an area that Sye and I have explored that much although there was an exchange of emails early on.
The key issue here is – why does my worldview need to provide certainty in truth and morality ?
3) showing that that worldview does not provide certainty
Well, based on two of the three issues my own diffuse worldviews do not provide certainty.
4) showing that because that worldview does not provide certainty it is absurd
Now here Sye has a problem. He can only show that my worldview might be absurd based on the non-acceptance of the absolute laws of logic. However, this begs the question as to whether or not the laws need to be absolute in order to be applicable within my lifetime and the answer to that is ‘no’, they only need to be valid within my lifetime to be applicable within my lifetime.
Therefore logic, truth and morality do not need to be absolute. That all said, what if they were in any case ? This is the other path in Syes line of argument – where do they come from ? This begs the questions “do they need to come from anywhere” and “did they come from anywhere”. The line of rebuttal that was put forward at the UNCG debate was that logic was invented by Man. This begs the question of whether or not logic existed before Man invented it. That begs the question of whether logic exists if it is not perceived – the old does a tree falling in a forest make a noise if noone hears it thing.
5) showing that because Sye has had a revelation from God that provides him with certainty his worldview cannot be attacked.
Now this is a really sticky issue for Sye.
Early on in any debate that Sye has with anyone he will ask the rather innocent question
“Is it possible for God to reveal to me such things as I know them for certain”
(apologies to Sye if I haven’t gotten that word perfect)
This begs several questions
i) How does Sye know for certain that the ‘revelation’ that he has had is from the Christian God and not from some other entity that is capable of providing such a revelation eg Zeus, the FSM, Satan etc
ii) How does Sye know that the ‘revelation’ he has had is indeed a revelation and not an hallucination or some other mental aberration ?
Sye protests that he knows for certain but provides no grounds for that certainty. Instead he insists on circular reasoning and even defends his use of it as acceptable because it is not “viciously” circular reasoning.
My rebuttal to Sye is
“I am certain that you cannot be certain because there are alternatives to the explanation for your certainty, which makes your explanation uncertain. Therefore it is impossible for you to claim with certainty that you have had a revelation from God that is exclusively true for you and which would grant you the certainty you claim.”
6) showing that because his opponents worldview is absurd and Syes worldview is not his opponent must accept Syes worldview or be in logical denial.
This is actually the weakest part of Syes whole line of argument as Stephen Law showed.
Disproving P does not prove Q.
ie disproving my worldview, or even going to the extent of disproving all of other worldviews by showing their absurdity, only disproves those worldviews. It does not prove that one must presuppose the existance of the Christian God in order to have a worldview which provides certainty.
————————————-
If you don’t do the research, particularly with regards to someone like Sye and you just expect an out of the box Christian to turn up, then you can end up sounding as ill-prepared as I did during my debate with Sye.
In defense of Joshua and Phil’s lack of an “advanced Bible Exposition” degree, I ‘ll say this: If credibility is what you’re concerned with, I’ll consider the person who ultimately dismissed faith for logical reasons more credible than the individuals who suspend reason to uphold faith. Judging by your strong critique of the affirmative side, I think you’ll agree it only takes a literate and critical thinking mind, regardless of education or lack thereof, to come to the conclusion that the Christian God almost certainly does not exist.
I’m not particularly concerned about the credibility of the debaters as much as I am concerned with the truth of their arguments. If you’ll refer back to my post, you’ll see that the only time I mentioned the Bible degree was to mention that two men who are immersed in the field of Biblical apologetics and have degrees in the field were embarrassingly unable to get a leg up on two young men who had studied unrelated fields. This isn’t because of a lack of valid answers, but because of a lack of preparedness on the affirmative side.
I hope you didn’t come away from the debate or my post thinking that the atheist side triumphed through a use of logical reasoning. It was quite the opposite. They criticized logic, calling it unreliable, changeable, and subjective. The Christians, though they failed to apply it, were the ones trying to uphold logic.
Of course I disagree with you that the Christian God doesn’t exist. I also object to your ad populum argument that smart people (i.e. “literate and critical”) wouldn’t believe in the Christian God. I recommend you read a history of philosophy and look at the many major thinkers who believed in the Christian God. Think about Augustine, Aquinas, Kierkegaard. It’s simply a poor examination of history to think that only illiterate non-critical thinkers followed Christianity.
While I do agree with you on some points, Mr. Sullivan, I can tell by your poor criticisms of the Christian side that you do not have a great understanding of presuppositional apologetics. In fact, at some points in your criticisms I can only scratch my head and wonder if you actually heard the Christian side and if we listened to the same debate. But before I go there I would like to say that I do agree with Joshua Deaton when he points out some flawed, one-sided and taken out of context criticisms in your article. You have here a good and witty response to the debate, but some points are exaggerated and need clarification.
First, let me tel you a little bit about myself. Though I was not in attendance, I have listened to the unedited version of this debate online and I can say that, though the debate was indeed imperfect and slightly unprofessional, unlike what you say, however, the thesis of the debate was thoroughly examined and explored by both sides of the argument. Yet If I were to compare the Christian side to the atheist side, I would say that without a doubt say the Christian side did much better. I will explain why.
In comparison, I can honestly say that the atheist side did not deliver at any juncture of the debate; in all honesty, their arguments were of the type that I could have answered when I was a young 18 year old bible student— though I would not have had the guts to do such in public, of course. They were at times fluent and persuasive, but only for those who don’t know much about history and theology. It did seem like all the atheist side had to offer were some taken out of context bible verses, faulty logic, and one sided scholarship of the likes of Bart Ehrman and others. In this I was disappointed. However, I have listened to several debates on the topic of the existence of God and New Testament text and criticism, and I can honestly tell you that this routine is not at all new to me. Most atheist (dare I say all) debaters that I have listened to do the same thing; they take bible verses out of context, use faulty logic and double standards, and bring one sided scholarship to the fore in support of their arguments. Christopher Hitchens and Dan Barker are prime examples of this classic routine. If this be the case, I cannot really say anything too negative or out of the ordinary about the UNCG atheists.
Now, let us begin by a criticism your view of the debate. You begin by criticizing the opening statements given by the Christian side, but fail to tell your readers that each speaker could only have a 10 minute opening statement (and hence the speakers were wise enough to write down their opening statements and read them verbatim because of insufficient time; if this is so, how can you use this as an argument against Tenbruggencate?). What were you expecting in 10 minutes? 10 irrefutable proofs for God’s existence?
On the Christian side, Tenbruggencate’s opening statement was at first, I admit, a little provocative when he spoke of sin, judgement, and hell, but this was not at all inappropriate given the nature of the debate. However, as his statement picked up, he gave 5 solid presuppositional arguments for the existence of the Christian God, of which are 1) knowledge 2) truth 3) logic 4) science and 5) morality. He attempted to demonstrate that without the Christian God none of these 5 can be employed consistently in a given worldview—in this case, atheism—and hence the real reason why the Christian side argued against atheism throughout the debate (not as you think) and why, as you say, “they spoke heavily on the consistency of the Christian worldview, the absurdity of atheism, and the inconsistencies in Secular Naturalism.” To qualify, Tenbruggencate’s form of argument is called “the impossibility of the contrary.” In other words, Tenbruggencate argued that it is impossible that the Christian God does not exist in light of the 5 points; hence, he does exist. So when you claim that the Christian side gave no “defense of the existence of the Christian God” you either don’t understand presuppositional apologetics and hence missed the argument, or are being dishonest. If you did miss it, I wouldn’t blame you, for the debate was deep at a philosophical level.
However, you demonstrate again and again that you don’t truly understand presuppositional apologetics. For example, you claim that in response to an apparent scientific error in the bible about insects having 4 legs, the Christians responded, “This is not a debate of facts, it’s a debate of interpretation of facts. Maybe insects back then did have four legs.” And you add, “Are you effing kidding me?” But this is not at all a fair analysis of the debate because it misses the point of Tenbruggencate’s answer to the question, and it ignores Pastor Dustin’s clear refutation of the apparent contradiction seconds later. To put context on your analysis, it was in response to the atheist assertion that the laws of logic change that Tenbruggencate said “maybe insects back then did have four legs,” not as you make it sound. He added “why not? The atheists say logic can change, so insects having four legs cannot be a problem in their worldview.” Hence, the victory of presuppositionalist logic over atheism in this case. The Christians were more logical than the atheists in the entire debate.
To get to the point, I can now tell you what made the Christian side victorious over the atheist side. The fact is that the Christian side constantly answered the “so what?” question at every juncture, and this is primarily what made them more compelling, more logically sound, and victorious for the glory of God. So, I ask myself, did we listen to the same debate? Apparently not. It seems as if you only remembered what you chose to remember of the debate. Many other criticisms could be made of your article, but I trust that this will suffice and perhaps teach you to try to look at things more clearly in the future, and to focus more on the positives than on the negatives of given issues. I mean, the atheist side wasn’t that bad even from my perspective; and the Christian side could have done better, of course. But when you claim that at “no time during the night did [the Christians] manage to get a leg up on their young, less educated opponents,” all I can say is “Come on, really?”
As I also had to mention to Mr. Deaton, it would be pointless to list every single thing about the debate. I could spend all day talking about the “good things.” The temperature was nice, the people beside me were friendly, the lighting was good… The entire point, since you missed it, of this post was to evaluate the debate. The debate, overall, was a train wreck. A huge part of that was the horrible moderation, and lack of preset debate rules. Another, and more significant contribution to the train wreck was the lack of preparation on both sides. You are, by the way, the only person I’ve spoken to who believed that the Christian side was “victorious.” They simply argued your presupposed belief and you agreed with it.
As for presuppositional apologetics, I do understand it. I understand it quite well. I understand that it has tremendous problems. I side on classical apologetics. Since you seem to appreciate logic, you should understand the difference between logically defending a position, and denying that your position can be sufficiently argued with a non-believer.
Also Pastor Segers didn’t “refute” the claim that insects have four legs, since this is a Biblical claim. What he did was show that the Bible doesn’t say that all insects have four legs. To this I replied, “Who cares?” He didn’t answer the challenge.
I’m sure that this “routine” isn’t new to you, as you say, since you’ve listened to several debates. It’s not new to me either. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, this embarrassing debate format is all too common.
Hello Mr. Sullivan,
Thank you for your constructive criticism. I generally agree with your observations of the debate for both sides and thank you for your critical commentary. I too agree that we (the Christian theists) could have presented a better overall positive argument for Christian theism rather than a merely deconstructive one. I have benefited from rethinking the approach that we chose to take both by evaluating my own thoughts as well as the critical thoughts of others. This was my first formally moderated public debate and Lord willing, I am humble enough to learn from my mistakes. Your comments will be taken into consideration in the future and again, thanks for the “iron sharpening” (Pro. 27:17); for it is much appreciated.
Love in the Lamb,
Dustin S. Segers
No problem. Bless you. Keep pushing forward.
Mr. Sullivan, every apologetic has weaknesses. My point in analyzing your response was to show you that you need to be careful of one-sided reviews and give more context to your readers. In comparison of apologetic methods, do you think the likes of William Lane Craig would have done any better in this debate? His “apologetic” can only logically be applied to generic theism. If you listened to Pastor Dustin’s opening statement he made the same point and logically explained why he used a presuppositional approach; this is something that you fail to see—logic was clearly on the side of the Christians that evening, and I believe that the philosophy professors who listened to that debate would agree. After all, you did point out more logical errors on the atheist side as well. That’s all I mean when I say the “Christian side was victorious.” I’m not merely agreeing with their presuppositions.
As for presuppositionalism, it is not limited to a mere theism. In my humble opinion, the debate was not at all a train wreck overall; I honestly don’t see how you could fairly come to that conclusion. You make too much of minor mistakes on the part of the speakers and the moderator that happened around 5 times in the debate and paint the entire debate in that light, and this is not a fair analysis at all. Yes there were mistakes made, granted, but no mistakes were too drastic given the nature of the debate. You may say that there was a lack of preparation, but I disagree with you. Pastor Dustin’s and Sye’s opening statements were scholarly and thoughtful; and one of the atheists opening statements were also the same, albeit a few logical errors. Only one of the atheists sounded more unprepared than the other, and that is probably because he mistakenly chose not to write his opening statement on paper. So your criticism that the debaters were ill-prepared only works for the first atheist presenter. Maybe he’ll learn from his mistakes next time.
I advise you to read my first response to your article again. Yeah, Dustin did answer the challenge about the insects, and Sye showed that the atheists are being inconsistent in applying their own logical rules to the question—this is the entire aim of presuppositional apologetics, to show the absurdity of the opposing non-Christian worldview. And this is exactly what Sye and Dustin succeeded in doing.
@Dejan
Quick point. WLC does not just argue for generic theism. Listen to any of his debates for the existence of God and this is obvious (he always uses the same five arguments). While it is true that his cosmological, teleological, and axiological arguments could apply to any version of traditional theism, his historical case for the resurrection of Christ and his appeal to reformed epistemology are clearly arguments for a distinctively Christian position.
Exactly right. Thanks for reading.
So I listened to the whole debate on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46n5mrMFRzc&feature=related
Here’s my two cents (typing as I listened):
1. Christian (white shirt) provides a decent transcendental argument. Atheists respond badly in their subsequent replies.
2. Christian (Canadian) ignores the moderator’s time call. Bad.
3. Atheists deny the immutability of logic. Bad
4. Atheists (blue shirt) confuse the epistemological and metaphysical issues regarding logic.
5. Atheists argue against the reliability of the Bible. Christian (Canadian) later points out phenomenological language in the Bible as an explanation for this.
6. Atheist (black shirt) argues the problem of evil. No response from Christians throughout the debate.
7. Cross examination: Atheist (blue shirt) gets a little too excited during cross examination…keeps interrupting his interlocutors…not a good debating tactic.
8. Christian (white shirt) seems to be moderately well-versed in transcendental reasoning. Argues that logic and morality are anchored in God (I suppose he means in the nature of God).
9. Christian (Blue shirt): points out the fallacy of Hume’s argument against miracles (although I don’t think that the atheists appeal to this argument).
10. Atheist (Black shirt): points out that this is a debate about the Christian God, and that the Christians haven’t really defended that point.
11. Atheist (Blue shirt): argues that logic is constructed for pragmatic reasons and appeals to “science of the gaps”. Gives an absolutely ridiculous “refutation” of the principle of non-contradiction. Once again, egregiously confuses the epistemological and metaphysical issues regarding the laws of logic.
12. Atheist (Blue shirt): Argues that if the supernatural (magic) exists the science wouldn’t work. True…but I don’t think this really scores a point against the Christians. Science, by definition, only works with that which can be empirically verified. Blue shirt also appeals to the “basics of logic”…bad considering his previous statements.
13. Questions are screened…probably better if they took questions from the floor. However, leftover questions will be posted on the respective parties’ website.
14. Christian (Blue shirt): Refers to Van Till. This is telling, since he appears to rely exclusively on Van Til’s presup position. Quotes Spurgeon and makes a gospel appeal…not bad necessarily, but this is a debate, not an evangelistic crusade. Does quote C.S. Lewis’ transcendental “sun” statement…kudos for that. He keeps reminding the audience that they “know that God exists”…not a good debate tactic.
15. Christian (White shirt): More transcendental argumentation. Sad that this is the only ammunition that the Christian side has.
16. Atheist (Black): Rather gracious at the beginning of his summation remarks…good. Continues his argument against the Bible (which the Christians never responded to). Argues that if the law of non-contradiction comes from God then the Bible should have no contradictions (I don’t think that the argument follows necessarily, but Christians never responded to his Bible contradiction examples). Returns to the POE, which the Christians have yet to respond to. Points out that Christians have failed to argue for the existence of the Christian God.
17. Atheist (Blue): Terrible. Who is this guy? Really, he should sit down and let his partner take his time.
Conclusion:
• Atheist (Blue Shirt): Really Bad performance
• Atheist (Black Shirt): Decent Performance
• Christian (Blue Shirt): Somewhat Bad Performance
• Christian (White Shirt): Decent Performance
I think it was a draw. Perhaps the Christians came out a little better given some of the absurd responses the atheists gave with regards to logic (particularly blue shirt). A.P. Sullivan refers to this debate as a train wreck. If by that he meant that both sides failed to either address or successfully respond to their opponents’ main points, I am forced to agree. However, as a first time debate conducted by amateurs, I must admit that it was somewhat entertaining and thought-provoking. I only wish that the debaters had not failed to actually address the arguments of their interlocutors.
Two corrections:
I typed as I listened, but as everyone can see, I edited afterward so that there are some comments that refer to a future point in the debate.
The Christians did respond to the phenomenological issue regarding Biblical reliability. But that’s about it.
Also, I did not listen to the Q&A time. I, unfortunately, didn’t have time.
Thanks for that. It’s always good to have a second (objective) ear in these evaluations. For whatever I missed, I apologize. At the time I wrote this, the vids weren’t available for reference. I do however, still adhere to my original evaluation regarding the points addressed. Train wreck. Both sides made huge errors and never really got anywhere. I hope it goes better next time.
I concur. It was pretty much a train wreck. Neither side really addressed the points of their opponents.
JJ said:
“2. Christian (Canadian) ignores the moderator’s time call. Bad.”
Among A.P.’s points, he also raises this same issue. Problem is, neither of you were involved in the discussion just prior to the debate. There were no microphones in the room so our words had to be spoken louder and slower to be understandable. I approached the atheists and said that since we both tried to get our statements to fit within the 8 minute time slots, that I would mention to the moderator to allow both sides to finish our statements so we would not have to be rushed. I did this. You can hear right after my statement that I said to the moderator: “I thought you weren’t going to do that,” referring to the conversation we had just had minutes before.
Just one other glaring error that I wish to address. A.J. said twice that I had ” advanced degrees in Bible Exposition and related fields.” This is blatantly false. I am just a dude with a website who spent most of my adult life in the skilled trades field. I left that field to pursue this full-time only recently because of the woeful representation of Christianity that I have encountered.
As far as the other errors in your commentary, I am pleased to defer to Dejan’s fine rebuttal.
Cheers,
Sye
QED
Second Debate on Presuppositional Apologetics – Paul Baird v Sye Tenbruggencate – ready for download
The show has now been posted and is available for download. The last show reached 14,000 downloads and got into Premier Christian Radios top 10 mainly thanks to Dr James White over at Alpha and Omega Ministries so I’ll be interested to see how this one does.
Shownotes and audiofeed available too.
Having listened to it all the way through I’m extremely pleased with it. I was able to correct a number of issues from the first debate and also to press Sye on a number of issues and particularly revelational epistemology and to show the problems with that.