Cliff Knechtle vs Jeremy Beahan - Is Christianity Rational? October 2010 BEST

This debate ( audio | video | 1:33.25s ) took place in 2010 at Michigan State U between Reasonable Doubt's Jeremy Beahan and Give Me An Answer Ministries Pastor Cliff Knechtle and centered on the topic: "Is Christianity Rational?"

4.5 stars: Beahan lets Knechtle get away with little and less in this quick and snappy debate that should be listened to by all interested in the topic. BEST

Reviews
APF review: 4.5/5

This is probably the best debate I've heard in terms of concise counterarguments. Beahan comes off as a little too mild-mannered and it didn’t help that Cliff is very forceful and charismatic, but if I need to think of quick ways to discuss any of the topics brought up in the debate (free will,* objective morality, textual reliability, and the resurrection) then this debate is a great reference.

Here are the topics that came up:
Free Will, Hell, Contradicting attributes of God, Morality, The Resurrection, Teleological Argument, FTA, Design Argument, Atheism is practice, Christianity in practice, etc, etc.

Beahan is very laid-back sounding and clear. He also offers more interesting objections than what I've heard from many other atheist debaters. He could have been more detailed in his objective moral argument, but then again the format of this debate required pretty short presentations.

Cliff comes off as a non-douchey Todd Friel. That is, he’s more preacher, than apologist and would probably do very well as a radio host. Unfortunately, Knechtle doesn’t bring anything new or interesting to the table in terms of arguments for why Christianity is rational. He also continuously gets his presentations cut off which makes it seem like he didn't really prepare his material for the debate format.

He does seem like a nice guy and could be an interesting preacher. His presentation gives the impression that he is interested in updating and forming his talking points to a more liberal crowd. Like I said, he's a non-scumbag Todd Friel. I mean, I liked when he tried to demonstrate how Jesus appearing to women first went against the horribly sexist culture of the day...of course it's more likely to be a reference to the whole "the least shall be first" motif running through the gossips.

This is a great debate and a pretty unequivocal win for the atheist. I don’t usually say that but I think that theists would agree with me if they don’t put too much into the fact that Cliffe was the more extroverted sounding guy.

Technical
Great AQ dunno if there is a video, the one I link to is a YouTube vid with audio only.
*In the debate,
RE: 8-3-2013; I lowered the score and formatted some. The reason for the lower score is that I don't think Knechtle is too great of an opponent.
8-9-2015; I revised the wording a bit and added a slight caveat about Free Will.