Me in a debate

Tomorrow I am going to do two 30 minute shows on Urban Theologian Radio with Vocab Malone, Vermon Pierre, and Bob Korljan. Vocab is the one I will be debating the resurrection about and I will also have more of a discussion with in the first show.

In their most recent episode about Mormonism they mention that there is another episode they are having with their Mormon guest that will air next week. So I think my episodes will not air for at least two weeks...if they're any good.

Stomach Butterflies

I am nervous as hell for this. I feel I know my stuff but after the past few weeks of talking with Christians and Muslims over Skype and teasing out the reasons why I am an atheist, I do not feel like I am very articulate or persuasive.

I wrote down all the stuff I want to say based on the email exchange I've had with Vocab and listening to some of his debates and reading a few things he's written. From what I can tell he is very sincere and charming but I think he holds some pretty dubious views about some topics. I don't think I'll change his views, but that's not really the point of going on the show.

Technical Things I'm Worried About

After listening to the debates from their past radio show, Back Pack Radio, it also seems like I'm going to have to deal with having less air time to state what I have to say and will have to worry about commercial breaks. But this will be worse for me because those shows were 45 minutes long and each show I'm on will only be 29 minutes long.

For example, in Nick Covington's debate with Vocab on the resurrection, NC made a case with multiple reasons to support it. But just before the break, Vocab came in and said that NC, as an atheist needed to account for the problem of induction and the fact that his worldview is skewing the way he goes about the resurrection debate. Then a break came and all of Covington's case was left forgotten or he had to repeat himself. And again, the problem of induction took up a lot of the dialogue.

I've prepared for defusing this but I don't know if it was a good idea to prep for it because it might not even come up for me.

Content Issues

I also think Covington made his opening too long. He mentioned a lot of good stuff, but you gotta make sure you're working with the clock, you know when the commercials might come. I'm going to listen to some more episodes and figure out the commercial pattern and even ask before we start the show what the schedule is and have a timer next to me. Let's see if that works.

Like Covington, some of the things I need to flesh out seems like they're going to be most forceful if I can say them all at once. I would like to mention eyewitness testimony but think it's important that I give the ramifications associated with it. But because this is an informal thing, I might have to stop and elaborate and/or respond for each point.

When I talk normally off a script, it takes me a bit to say what I want to say. I don't like it and it involves a lot of pauses. I also ummmm a lot more and say "like" and "I mean" a lot, too. Normally I'm used to talking to people and getting stuck on supplying a reason but just say "You know what I'm talking about, right?" I can't rely on that for these shows and even things that seem quite basic to me have turned out to be completely alien to the people I have talked to and it seems like I need to also be prepared to elaborate on things that seem more self-evident and have something written out in case that happens.

Presentation Issues

I have a pretty lame voice, which sucks. There's no combating that, besides building on the things I can control. But I think I come off as unlikable, too. Or rather, I come off as not too bright and don't make it clear enough that I'm joking. This could be elaborated upon but the point is that I need more time to become lovable, which sucks if I'm going to have less than a half an hour to do so.

Quick Updates

Blog Apologetic Tract

I know it's lame but since I have been trying to make this a more actively running blog and trying to make my older posts not read like a 14 year old idiot actually writes these reviews AND since my awareness of the topics and the debates and debaters has grown significantly, I have decided to re-release older reviews as remastered ones on this blog.

I hate that WinteryKnight does this with his stupid "edgy summaries of debates" posts and because of that I've been holding off on doing this, but dang it, my mind has changed a lot on some of these debates too!

So the remastered posts are only going to be done if I significantly added a lot to the original review. And I know that the bulk of this blog is only from 2013, but that's the only set of reviews I'll consider remastering.

Ultimately I justified this decision by realizing it will mean that this blog well definitely have at least ONE debate review per week. So I've scheduled most of the posts I've remastered for weeks in advanced when I think I might not be able to push out a legit new review.

Speaking of new reviews...

Oh boy the new debates that will show up!

I have debates for Loftus, more for Ahmed, Carroll, Novella, Beahan, Price, and Barker! And...

Concerning my debate challenge
I've been having a lot of troubz getting someone to debate me. So I'm thinking of just releasing three videos which each have a 20 minute presentation on a various debate topic and see if people want to respond to that. The problem with that is that I want to do an audio/video debate and if I'm LUCKY my videos will only illicit written mentions on some blog.

So there are some updates. More reviews! For now, laugh at how funny it is that Hamza Tzortzis turns out to have been one of the leaked Ashley Madison accounts. I need to do a review of one of his debates. I wish the Arif Ahmed debate he did was actually available.
 

Back from the dead!

Source.

I swear I haven't forgotten about you blog! Super busy with grad school. But now that I've graduated and realize that my degree will leave me unemployed (seemingly forever) I have more free time.

So I want to get this blog is back from the dead!

Here are some future updates I hope to have:

*The world premier of a fabled, controversial debate between Hector Avalos and Rubel Shelly!

*The semi-world premier of the second William Lane Craig vs. Keith Parsons debate!

*Reviews for debates featuring my favorites: Richard Carrier, Arif Ahmed, Jeremy Beahan, Hector Avalos, PZ Myers, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Price, James White, WLC, Mike Licona, Kenneth Miller, and Douglas Krueger!

*Reviews of a few new favorites: Sean Carroll, Justin Scheiber, and Trent Horn.

*Reviews of popular recent debates: Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham and some Dillahunty debates.

*Reviews of debates I know are going to make me cringe: the Kraus vs. Craig debates.

*Reviews of classic debates: Craig vs. Bradley, Miller vs. Morris.

*Updates on all the debate links!

*General website maintenance!

*More frequent posting schedule!

*Revisions of past debate reviews and scores!


WOW! Are you not all as excited as I am?

Blog Updates!

I am constantly changing and fine-tuning this blog. I have almost 20 debate reviews in draft form and at least one page ready to be published.

The Updates
 
I have decided to include a few things in my posts:

Debate Length - now you'll see: ( audio | video | length ) with all the posts I make.

I have also decided to note when the first speaker begins, some of these debates have 10 minutes + of introduction and it just gets too annoying.

Links to debates that might interest you if you enjoyed the debate review. This one I am still trying to figure out how to do properly, without cluttering up all my posts.

Links to the debaters' websites so you can read more about the debaters.

I have also decided to be more harsh about my scores, I have even gone back and lowered (slightly) my score for a few of the debates I have already discussed.

Changes of note

New Page: Good Places to Start

I fixed the dead links for the debates that I host.

I added a few more mini-reviews to my Craig Reviews post.

I link to a handout used by Arif Ahmed in this debate.

I will also try to add links to follow-up discussions relevant to the debates. In an email dialogue with Dr. Hector Avalos, he suggested I do this and gave me a bunch of links he wanted to see included to the reviews I have posted on his debates with Weikart. I have done this every now and then but I think I will try to do it more consistently in the future.

Finally, I think I might switch to Wordpress or something. Blogger is too annoying, the formatting is clunky and on big posts (like my Craig reviews post) it gets glitchy and will say that an error has occurred in publishing or saving a post - it's so annoying. I also don't like how I cannot easily change the link-opening options...I dunno, school has a-started and I might not post so regularly so it might not be worth it to try and figure out a whole 'nuther blogging site like Wordpress. Whatever.