Me vs Evan Phillips (NephilimFree) - Does the Evidence Support the Biblical Flood Account? 2015

( video | 1:05m )

Source.

Don't worry, this blog won't just be my debates. To make up for it, I'm going to post my friend's score of the debate. He used to score academic and competition debates so it'll be good.

Briefly, a few days ago I debated a known YouTube Creationist named NephilimFree. He's known for being long-winded, self-absorbed, and having a pleasant voice. This isn't the first time I've interacted with him and those interactions have always gotten heated but he never holds a grudge. The other thing that I should say about Neph is that he does stick to empirical evidence. He doesn't like just saying a miracle occurred. He also likes geology, like myself. The issue is that instead of just saying God did it, he gets a lot of science wrong or ignores/fails to look into other science.

I've been jonsing for a formal debate and finally got it. The issue is that I bombed this debate. You can read that in my friend Cliff's assessment below. I think I only came off stronger near the last half, especially my concluding statement. The problem is that it was just more obvious that I left some things Neph brought up unanswered and again, I blew my cross examination section. I messed that up so much, a friend of mine refuses to listen to the rest of it.

Cliff's Score

 

Opening - NephilimFree : 10 mins

-cites the hermit formation (hermit shale) as an example of falsification uniformitarianism, argues that the silicates necessary require a flood
-distinct boundary layers in strata can not be explained by slow continuous deposition

-makes ad hominem remarks that uniformitarianism beliefs are irrational

-cites bed with diverging gradients are impossible by wind, have to be a flood

-there are numerous visual aids which are referenced but not visible in the YT presentation

-cites anticlines as evidence that the layers had to be fluidic to explain bends in strata

Joe - Cross : 3 mins

-cites the pryamid and tower of babel and gets agreement from Nephilim that they require large amounts of people (1000+)

-gets agreement that non-pre Cambrian events are flood caused

-asks for an explanation of the varves in the Green River shale (alternate very fine layers which are growing season/dark and dry season/light )

Nephilim - 8 mins

-asserts that the Green River shale can not be explained under  uniformitarianism, cites polystrata fossils in varves

-makes another ad hominem (asserts that uniformitarianism arguments are figments of the imagination)

-brings up numerous arguments Joe didn't raise and then attempts to disprove them

Opening - Joe : 10 muns

-argues the flood is not a good scientific model (simple, fits with what we know, explanatory power, makes novel predictions)

-the layers show examples of situations such as  desiccation, fossil charcoal in the layer caused by the flood, yet these cause large time scales

-the only way to explain these are to provide a complex - ad hoc ideas

-Egypt and other civilizations are pre-flood and as well population models are contradicted by the flood (where did all the people come from to build the tower of babel)

-explanatory power is poor, cites the specialization of elephants in very short timescales and rapid divergence (position wise) of the population

-novel predictions seems to be lacking, fossils are not mixed up, where did all the diseases come from, all where host in Noah's family?

Cross - Nephilim : 3 mins

-how can millions of tons of silicates be transported without evidence of transport (erosion)

-how can anticlines form

-explain gradients

-complete fossils in chalk

-could parasites be in the animals

-human footprint on trilobites

Joe - Response : 8 mins

-actualists don't argue transport is wind only

-anticlines form under high pressure / high heat

-claims that the footprint is debunked

-recaps that Nephilim has not addresses his points made in the opening however the formats doesn't allow it

-does not address all of the questions raised

Nephilim : 5 mins

-claims trilobytes are not refuted

-charcoal is caused by volcanoes

-burrowing (bioturbbation), claims it is missing, argues Joe is presenting false information

-elephants problem is based on secular timeline

-against asserts anticlines falsify uniformitarianism (rocks can not bend)

Joe : 5 mins 

-notes again anticlines can form under high pressure / heat and uplift

-cites multiple examples of bioturbation 

-notes no response to desiccation, volcanoes can't explain charcoal due to the presence of other bioforms, ignored the other arguments (population growth)

-the elephant timeline comes from answers in genesis, not secular timelines

-notes again a lack of prediction of the flood model

Summary :

Both participants have examples of poor form. Joe criticizes Nephilim initially for failing to address his arguments in Nephilim's first 3 min response but that was a question time, not a rebuttal. Nephilim accuses Joe of being dishonest with no references, makes implications character references which are not rational argument and at best logical fallacies of emotional pleas or appeals to incredulity. This is neutral.

Both openings lay out a foundation, Joe's is slightly more organized but Nephilim's is also clear that there are multiple claims of geological events which seem to require a global flood. Neutral here.

The first round of questioning is strongly in Nephilim's favor. Joe seemed to be setting up Nephilim for future discussion vs challenging him on points raised in the opening. 

In the rebuttal both participants ignore arguments raised by the other. Joe for example ignores Nephilim's parasite argument to explain the source of all disease in people. Nephilim ignores desiccation events. This is neutral, no advantage to either.

Closing, this strongly favors Joe. He does a well executed summary and notes all points left unaddressed from the opening, clarifies a mistake Nephilim made in thinking the Elephant speciation was from secular timelines and again notes rebuttal arguments which were ignored (anticline explanation).

In short, I see this as close, but a very slight margin to Joe. It was however very close and if Nephilim had not made the mistake about the Elephant timeline and provided a concise description of all arguments uncontested he would have closed that gap.

 

My review

In general it just isn't a good debate. Neph and I talked past each other, Neph also insisted on a messed up debate structure based on his inaccurate understanding of the format of a Policy Debate, and it seemed too rushed.

A policy debate has this format:
Neph 10m, Me 3m questions, Me 10m, Neph 3m questions, Neph 8m, Me 8m, Neph 5m, Me 5m.

But Neph made it:
Neph 10m, Me 3m questions, Neph 8m, Me 10m, Neph 3m, Me 8m, Neph 5m, Me 5m.

This was weird and made the rebuttals worthless. Also the first 21 minutes are a slog.

Self-criticisms

I should have prepared more. I sounded nervous and was a bit all over the place and let Neph get away with a lot of crap. I also agree with Cliff that it was poor form to say Neph didn't address my points, though I don't agree with him so strongly. I did it because I was William Lane Craig'ing Neph, AND because I was trying to establish that my points were so critical that Neph SHOULD have addressed them in his opening.

Speaking of William Lane Craig'ing, that's probably what saved me. Listening to so many of his debates made me have the stronger case if not the strongest specific response. Like Craig, I framed the debate by saying Neph needed to meet a criteria in order to make his case. Also like Craig, I kept arguing with respect to that framework. AGAIN like Craig, my opponent didn't object to my framework, nor did he speak about his evidence with reference to it so, like Craig, I brutalized Neph for not doing that. I felt so slick calling out the arguments Neph failed to respond to, the claims he dropped, all that good stuff. That's what saved me, but BARELY.

I also gave too many arguments. I should have stuck to fewer and fleshed them out more.

Neph criticisms

People were telling me that he would be difficult in a formal debate because he could shotgun arguments but I knew the guy would fall apart if he debated someone who knew how to play the debating game right. I don't yet, but I can ape those guys who do, like Craig. Anyways, Neph shotgunned me but failed to answer many of my arguments.

Neph also was mean-spirited and caustic. He said I was being dishonest and that uniformatarians are delusional. He also sounded belligerent.

Another thing I had a feeling would happen but was surprised it was so damaging, is that Neph doesn't pay attention. In a formal debate you have to pay attention so you are giving a relevant response. But Neph didn't grasp that I was using the Creationist Young Earth timeline in my argument at all. This crushed him because he felt he didn't have to respond to my arguments about ancient civilizations and population growth because he thought I was arguing from the secular timeline, which is wrong. The reason why he said it was wrong was because the fossil record and dating are circular reasoning. That's technically wrong, but I never called him on it, but it doesn't matter because I was using his timeline and if he was paying attention he would have realized that he shouldn't wasted him time on an irrelevant topic.

Even in the after debate discussion this didn't seem to hit Neph. Not until an hour into that discussion did he realize I was saying he had to defend the Answers in Genesis timeline did he freak out and say I was being dishonest and putting words in his mouth and kick me. That debate was a crazy one and I would post it but Neph hosted it and deleted it. I knew he would delete it because he realizes now that he contradicts himself in it so I downloaded it but I'll only make it public if he's okay with it or continues to call me dishonest.

Anyways, for my first debate I think people will let it slide that I dropped the ball, but I won't. I get on atheists for not preparing for their debates and I was just as bad. No excuse. Next time I gotta rock the debate. If I don't, then maybe I do just suck at this. I was told I'm a bit better in an informal setting, maybe I should stick to that, instead.

One things for sure. You want to win a formal debate then follow William Lane Craig's lead. Seriously. Here's some good advice on the issue:

https://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/advice-for-debating-william-lane-craig/

Duane Gish vs Ian Plimer - Creation vs Evolution 1988

This debate ( video | 2:42m ) took place in Australia between the infamous Dr Guane Gish and pre-Climate Change Skeptic Ian Plimer. It was on the topic Creationism vs Evolution and was quite heated and filled with low-blows.

2.75 stars: Both sides engage in some pretty underhanded tactics here, making for an entertaining but unilluminating spectacle.

Heads up: the introduction is so freaking long that the link I provide above skips it. Also, I usually mention this at the end of the review, but the audio quality is pretty bad. The dated feel isn't helped by the fact that both speakers sound like they time-traveled from other time periods - Gish being an Antebellum gentleman and Plimer being a 30s/40s newsreel narrator.

Because Gish is what the Gish Gallop is named after I never bothered to listen to his debates because I would rather listen to more skilled Creationist debaters. Now I know that that's rather silly and so I finally decided to check him out. In Plimer seemed to handle himself well when he went up against George Monbiot and Tony Jones, in terms of rhetoric so I wonder how'd he do if he also had the facts on his side.

Well Gish brought up the usual stuff and didn't really support Creationism except by default. Plimer on the other hand came up and almost pointedly decided to attack Creationism itself. He listed several of the absurd implications to the story of Noah's Ark, accused Gish of lying in his own publications and cited specifics, cleared up some common Creationist misconceptions and ended with a pretty good anecdote about Creationism taught in public schools in the US.

The issue with Plimer's pointing out the weird parts of the Ark is that he does get some basic things about the ark story wrong, making it unsure whether or not he has attempted to go through the arguments. However, Gish's rebuttal seems to have just been an appeal to outrage at the underhanded tactics and he spent most of his time trying to clean up Creationism's image rather than pointing out the facts. The only specific correction he made is that God brought the animals to Noah, Noah didn't need to go all over the world to get them. Of course when Plimer comes up for his rebuttal, he rightly points out that that makes Creationism not scientific. The problem is that most people see the dogmatic prohibition of God in the science lab as unappealing or narrow-minded, which is a shame.

Again, a lot of heat was generated in this one. It was nice to see a Creationist having to deal with an underhanded opponent for once, though. Usually it's a befuddled scientist unaware of the weird Creationist arguments trying to talk about how awesome science is, instead.

Craig v Harris on Morality 2011

This debate ( audio | video | 2hrs ) occurred in 2011 between one of the four horsemen Sam Harris and Apologist Debate Missile WL Craig. It got a lot of blog attention and thus you'll see a lot of reviews below.

2.75 stars LAP

CSA review 1, 2 & 3 
APF review: 4.5/5
Hallq's review and more discussion
TGS review
WK review: Xians always win

I just think that Sam Harris is an alright speaker. He seems bland to me, but he is one of the folks that Luke M. expressed a wish to see debate WL Craig AND after pestering Chris Hallquist about his favorite debates and learning that Craig's debate against Harris was one of them I decided to give Harris a chance.

Le sigh. The debate a bummer. Both Craig and Harris don't fair too well. The difference is that Harris came off as being off-topic, so it looked like he was just rehashing all the normal New Atheist topics while Craig - even on an off debate - still knows that calling out his opponent for not responding to his arguments and claiming that he is talking about irrelevant things, makes you look slick and puts you in the lead.

In Hallq's review you'll see that some have argued Harris wasn't off-topic, and I can see that, but he certainly didn't do a great job of explaining why his points were relevant. Honestly, it just sounded like he wanted to criticize religion which isn't a bad thing, but morality is a big issue, and Harris wrote a book called The Moral Landscape! Craig also apparently made a lot of rules about the debate that biased the topic in his favor, which if true, is pretty lame (though not surprising, I mean, Craig won't talk about whether the bible is free of errors because he thinks bringing it up is a "debate tactic") so Harris purposely decided not to play by Craig's rules. This would have been nice if he actually mentioned that he was doing this and why in the debate.

The questions were kind of bleh but the mod did a good job of stopping people from hogging the mic.

If you want to see a debate where someone doesn't play by Craig's rules but still throws down then I would suggest you check out Craig's debate with Stephen Law.

Technical: Good AQ and VQ.

A list of mini-reviews of Craig's debates can be found here! 


RE: 7-23-2013; There were a lot of mistakes I needed to fix....at one point I said the word "people" instead of "bible"...augh.

Poor Jason Gastrich

In the early 2000s, Dr. Jason Gastrich took on a bunch of atheists for some reason. I guess he had a radio show and did some informal debates. The following debates sound like they came from such a radio show and/or were just recordings of phone conversations he had with different people.

Dr. Gastrich is a baddddd debater and just does not seem to grasp basic forms of critical thinking and logic. I've never felt so douchey as I do when I say that about someone, but I don't think anyone would disagree with my assessment after hearing these debates, honestly.

Why this post? Well there are a bunch of his debates online which feature other debaters that I enjoy. He also sounds like your average YEC biblical literalist and some of these informal debates feature a well-versed atheist taking the time to dismantle basic apologetic and/or Creationist lines guys like Gastrich support. One final reason is that I am trying to find debates by the people who Luke M. wishes were able to debate WL Craig and see if they can hold up. Doug Kruegers' on the list and he has two interviews (only one is linked below, however) with Gastrich. Dan Barker is another person mentioned by Luke and he too is interviewed by Gastrich.

So here are mini-reviews to a couple of debates featuring Dr. Gastrich:


Dan Barker v Gastrich 2002 ( audio | video )
3.5 stars
They talk about biblical prophecies and stuff. Dr. Gastrich gets beaten up pretty bad - at one point he states that he would castrate himself if god told him to.

You hear a bit about Barker's background in this one, too. It's so interesting how sincere Barker is when he says that he really did love his life as a Christian. I could go on but in short it's this background that certainly makes Barker a bit more understanding in his debate with Gastrich in this one.
Technical: Low sound AQ

Douglas Kreuger v Gastrich 2003 ( audio 1, 2 and 3 )
4 stars CHECK
Again, Dr. Gastrich gets beaten up pretty badly. Doug is a little more concise in his tearing apart of Gastrich's position and he was really good at tearing down the accuracy of the Bible and Creationism.
Technical: Kreuger's audio is really low and some sort of weird machine's fan kept whizzing throughout the interview. 

Reggie Finely (The Infidel Guy) v Gastrich ( audio )
2.75 stars
Nothing too much of interest.  Dr. Gastrich is particularly snarky in this one.
Technical: Low AQ, again.

Eddie Tabash v Gastrich ( audio )
3 stars
Gastrich just doesn't seem to follow arguments. Like, he'll laugh at things that he thinks are absurd but really aren't and assumes that his incredulity is enough to counter an argument. It seems like he just gathers up a bunch of canned responses from other apologists/creationists and goes with them. He also isn't very organized. Poor Eddie, he seems to only get debates with lameos like Gastrich, Friel or Slick. He apparently debated Frank Turek who isn't the best apologist but knows how to work a crowd and parrot WL Craig, at least.
Technical: Little better audio.

James Randi v Gastrich ( audio TBP )
2.75 stars
To be fair I barely remember this one. But the AQ is bad, it is shorter than the others mentioned so far and hey, if I can't remember it, it must not have been all that interesting. Randi is pretty flippant in this one and that's usually how he rolls when in a debate-like interview.
Technical: Poor AQ

"So why this post, seriously?" You all ask. Well, I haven't posted in a bit and some debates don't deserve their own separate posts, imo. I might do this with other debates, as well. Who knows?

Also, when I first heard the IG and Randi debates I thought that Gastrich was like 18. He's not. He wasn't, either. From what I can tell, he graduated high school in 1992. Assuming he was 18 in 1992, that would make him at least 28 in the earliest debates I have listed here. To be fair, I am 28 and sound like a 15 year old so I hope this last comment doesn't just seem to be completely mean-spirited.

(Revised 6-11-2015)

McDowell v Corbett Morality 2010 CHECK

This debate ( audio ) took place in 2010 between "the next William Lane Craig" Sean McDowell and old-man magee James Corbett. It was supposed to be about morality but Corbett tried his darnedest to change that.


2.75 stars. CHECK, LAP, GTP

APF review: 3/5
WK: Xians always win
CSA review
McDowell interview on Pale Blue Dot

This debate is pretty bad.

McDowell, for his part, doesn't present anything new or special, but a) he's super charming and good natured b) he was polished and prepared and c) Corbett was absolutely awful.

McDowell presented the classic case for "divine command theory" - it is apparently impossible for Xians* to fathom a system of morality not reliant on some sky-brah - and like I said, did nothing special. He used a few different classic examples and tweaked them a bit but nothing fancy. He does however preempt a lot of the misconceptions atheists use to debate this subject and guess what, this works out.

Corbett goes up and muddles and rants. I bet the Freethinkers Club that put this debate on were so bummed by this guy. He doesn't address the topic, just bitches about Xian atrocities (which falls flat because McDowell had already addressed this issue) and is disinterested and condescending. He also kept complaining that he already answered certain objections. He kept sounding angry and asdfasdfa auuugh. Definitely a lame atheist performance.

I rated this debate poorly because of the lack of substance but I still recommend you kids check it out because Sean McDowell definitely threw down and he has a long career ahead of him.

Technical: The audio has a buzzing for the first few minutes but it goes away. Otherwise, it is nice and loud AQ

*not all Xians, of course :)

RE: 9-5-2013; I added a few more links.