Carrier v Licona Resurrection BEST TOP TEN

This debate ( audio | video | 2h30m25s ) took place in 2004 between Apologist Mike Licona and Carrier at UCLA (go Bruins!) and was on the Resurrection.

DB: 5m09s

4.5 stars. BEST

PhilVaz 5/5
APF review: 4/5

This is definitely my favorite resurrection debate. Both Carrier and Licona do a great job and it is long, cordial and probably the most informative debate I have heard in general.

Both Licona and Carrier did something interesting that I have only heard of in one other debate: they decided to exchange their opening speeches with each other beforehand in order to make for a more srs rebuttal period. This was an awesome idea and it enabled both speakers to give some really impressive presentations.

This is the first debate I have heard of Licona's and I think it is one of his bests. His later debates focus on arguments not based on the gospels and sometimes include a discussion of contemporary miracles. Because Licona and Habermas have collaborated on a lot of stuff they both use a rather weak argument that I think people like WL Craig are wise in not bothering with. Basically, they both discuss modern day miracles and near-death experiences and of course I think the evidence for these things are very unconvincing, but I think that most religious people who do accept the resurrection feel the same way. So I think that Habermas and Licona should probably stop discussing it but since this is an earlier debate Licona barely (if at all) mentions it and sticks to a very historical defense.

Carrier does a great job here, he also sticks to fairly technical and specific arguments. At one point to demonstrate the fact that ancient Jews might not have thought there was an empty tomb, Carrier mentions writings that discussed a weird trial. This trial required the testimony* of Jesus or Jesus to be involved in some way through some weird ritual that used magic. Carrier argues that in order to carry out the ritual, the court needed the skull of Jesus which would mean that there is evidence that at least some number of ancient Jews didn't think that Jesus' tomb was empty nor did they have an issue with his resurrection.

I have never heard this before and I don't think I hear it ever again in any other debate. For all I know Richard Carrier just used a fake/false/wrong argument but it certainly is unique and Licona's response was unimpressive at most.

I dunno why I latched on to this example so much. I think it's a good example of how detailed this debate got, at least. But regardless, both Carrier and Licona do a great job and Licona is definitely one of my favorite defenders of the resurrection.

This one is a must listen, the Q&A and back and forth at the end is great and Prof Bartchy (who I never took as a professor but have heard in a debate and enjoyed) was a great moderator.

CHECK IT OUT!

Technical: Kind of low volume in terms of AQ, dunno about the VQ but it was a Veritas event and they're usually pretty good.

*I'm gonna relisten to this debate in the near future so I will hopefully update this review with more specific references to the arguments.

Barker & Carrier v Rajabali & Corey on "Does God Not Exist?"

This debate ( audio | video playlist | 3h15m58s ) took place in 2004 in Dearborn, MI between Dan Barker and Richard Carrier v Hassanain Rajabali and Michael Corey. The debate had a weird topic: "Does God Not Exist?" and this is probably the most flustering debate I have ever heard on the topic of atheism/the existence of god.

3 stars

APF review: 4/5 stars
Carrier's assessment which I suggest ya'll check out.

Like Damion on APF I suggest you fast forward to ~22 minutes in if you wanna skip all the prayer and intro (only ~18 minutes if you wanna here the intros because both the theists are not that well known). This debate has so much going on that I just don't know how to rate it. I am mostly just gonna comment on it in this review.

Short review: the theists were contradictory, illogical and did not address any of the arguments and instead rested on trying to make the crowd cheer (which isn't too special considering over 90% of the crowd were believers). Barker and Carrier gave good arguments and organized well and over gave pretty good performances which were even better considering the debate structure and how aggressive and unscrupulous their opponents were. Ultimately this is a tough listen and though both Barker and Carrier give good performances I can't say that about the other side.

Also, concerning the structure, it was really poorly formatted and along with the dumb debate topic, heavily favored the theists:

Openings: Theists then Non-Theists

Rebuttals: Non-Theists (what?) then Theists

Cross: Theists Ask Questions then vice versa

Q&A: One side gets a question to respond to and the other side can counter (I like this format, at least)

Closing: Non-Theists (what? again?) then Theists

In what debate we we have one side get the first and last word? Kind of weak.

The theists probably showed thee most unprofessional, revolting behavior that I have ever seen in a formal debate. Both Rajabali and Corey (if he were alive) should be ashamed of their performances as evident in the following observations I made:

They were rude because they constantly laughed at and interrupted Barker and Carrier throughout the debate.

They were incoherent, both Corey and Rajabali made bizarre and contradictory claims about free will and ad hom attacks.

They were angry, especially Rajabali. He sounds hysterical at some points and calls both Barker and Carrier liars in the debate.

They were mean-spirited. Several times the theists literally laughed at the statements made by the non-theists or disparaged them overtly. Now sometimes arguments should be disparaged and I am not above doing that, but you should still address/counter them and/or show why they are flawed with respect to the debate or topic - which both theists and especially Corey did not do. When Richard brought up an article for his argument Corey just dismissed it by saying Richard didn't understand it. This tactic certainly worked because the crowd loved it.

Finally, they exploited their crowd and their religion. One of Barker's arguments was from religious confusion and he mentioned the fact that Rajabali and Corey hold to two different beliefs about Jesus. Rajabali flipped out about this and said that Corey never claimed to be a Christian and that Barker lied to fool the audience. Furthermore, Corey doesn't address this and even refers to god as Allah in the debate (which also got a loud cheer). Corey apparently (and it was obvious from the arguments he made) was a Christian but he was just so flexible to let slide the fact that Muslims don't think that Jesus rose from the dead, something kind of important to the Christian faith...This is the height of dishonesty, imo.

A note on Rajabali: I need to hear is other debate with Barker but I have to say I was not impressed with Muslim apologetics. Many of his arguments and misunderstandings were - for a lack of not sounding like I am a philosophy expert - philosophically naive and ones that even amateur Xian apologists shy away from. IIRC, I heard someone discuss the young nature of Muslim apologetics and how it has a ways to go and I agree. Rajabali was obviously not used to having his theistic (not necessarily Muslim) beliefs questioned by the way he acted and floundered in the debate. I would say that I am more interested in hearing Muslims v Non-Theists debates but they aren't too wide spread. Also, considering the strictness of the debate about insulting Islam coupled with Rajabali's performance it seems like those debates won't be too interesting because they're not as (as weird as it is to say it) open to having their religion criticized, which is such a shame.

Kent Hovind vs The Infidel Guy Show - Creation Science vs Evolution 2004 BEST TOP TEN

This ( audio | video | 2:05.37s ) is one of my favorite debates, ever. It was about all things evolution.

5 stars. BEST CHECK TOP TEN

I think in 2004, Kent Hovind took on all the IG callers for two hours! It was pretty epic. Three callers in particular stand out, one was named River and he has called into Hovind's other show as well which I will post later because he's the only one I think ever reallllly got under Kent's skin and it is hilarious.

Three best callers:

One guy calls in about ERV which Kent just does not know about at all, Kent responds by saying that we don't know anything about DNA and that it is like a child looking under the hood of a car (this will get a laugh in the church or the prison church, now) but the caller (Ondo?) simply responds "but this is what we do know..."

Another (River) calls in and calls Kent out on quote mining articles about carbon dating and gets really specific and detailed, this is the longest call of the debate, too.

And another great call is an Irish geneticist, who points out the fact that research using evolution is successful enough to provide money and fund research on evolution and that if Creation science was producing research that could do the same thing then creationists wouldn't have to complain about not getting tax dollars or the fact that evolution does get tax dollars. Kent gets pretty annoyed by this guy, too. The guy says he studies the genetics of salmon and Kent tries to belittle this by saying something like, "in your professional field of salmon..." Pretty weak Kent.

Almost all the calls are great. Check this one out!

William Lane Craig vs Hactor Avalos - Resurrection: Fact or Fiction? 2004 BEST TOP TEN CHECK GTP

This debate ( audio | video (audio only) | 1:59.57 | Debate Starts: 5m47s in ) took place in 2004 between Craig and Biblical Scholar Hector Avalos on the Resurrection of JesuCristo. It took place at Iowa State U and was in front of 3,000 students according to Craig.

4.75 stars: Avalos and Craig both bring a lot to the table and make for an interesting debate on the resurrection filled with more impressive arguments.


Other Reviews
PhilVaz 2/5
CSA review: bad

This is an intense debate and one that I go back to a lot because of how detailed it was and the uniqueness of some of the arguments made. It's also one of Craig's best debate performances on this subject, IMO. That is, at least in terms of forcefulness and maybe not so much rhetoric.

Craig starts out attacking Avalos being “unprofessional” in a previous debate debate he had with Rubel Shelly. Craig spends a good deal of time doing this, too. I'll ramble about my problems with this later, though.

Avalos has a great opening and doesn’t let Craig’s attack phase him. This is Avalos’s best presentation in the debate but he kind of gets less and less persuasive for the rest of the debate until the Q&A. I agree with others that Avalos can come off as mean-spirited in his approach. His presentation made it seem like he was attacking Craig, for example, saying things like “yes, there are two Dr. Craigs”. I can see how the audience would think he’s just trying to discredit Craig rather than focusing on the historical "facts" Craig mentioned.

Craig also does the slickest (positive connotation) rebuttal I have heard him use so far. In his first rebuttal, Craig notes that Avalos has used biblical sources for his own published work on ancient healthcare. Craig argues that if Avalos wants to say the bible is an unreliable source, then it would undermine his own research which relies on such dubious sources. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised that Avalos used the bible to talk about a non-supernatural phenomena known as healthcare, not to prove the resurrection of a human being. The standards of evidence to talk about healthcare in ancient times are not the equivalent to the standards of evidence required to prove someone rising from the dead. I would also suggest that Avalos is a biblical scholar and professor at a university. The latter means that he is required to publish regularly to maintain his job while the former entails that most of what he publishes will somewhere have the bible mentioned.

But the important thing, debate-wise, is that Avalos doesn't address this and thus Craig definitely gets this point in his favor at least in a fridge-logic sort of way.

In fact, one of the criticisms I have of Avalos is that he seems to just talk past his debate opponents. This is evident in other debates of his and it’s a really easy thing for his opponent to point out which is what Craig does when Avalos doesn't respond to the criticism I mentioned just prior to this paragraph.

Another criticism I have of Avalos is I think he needs to be more explicit in demonstrating how the points he made are relevant to the debate. In this debate he brought up a linguistic issue which Craig was able to address only cursorily because he never used it in that specific debate so he deemed it irrelevant. It also didn't help that the topic was just simply lost on the audience because it required a knowledge of translating between ancient languages. In an email correspondence with Avalos he mentioned that in hindsight he agrees with this sentiment. Also, in his most recent debate, it seems like he's aware of this issue because when he does bring up some Hebrew translations it's done with a lot of hedging.

In sum, the good parts of this debate were: Besides Craig’s opening he had really good rebuttals and seemed very on point and forceful. Avalos did a good job of showing how Craig is picking and choosing which passages in the Bible to take as history and did a great job in the Q&A. I was reminded of how Price did in his Q&A segment against Craig where it seemed that Price (and here Avalos) where kind of forced to be more focused in their responses to some of Craig's criticisms due to the questions asked by the audience. I also felt like Avalos did a better job of summarizing his point and ended with a thoughtful appeal in his closing.


So there is a lot to take out of this debate and because of this, I'm making it a TOP TEN debate because of how strong Craig did in it again, despite his lame opening and the strength of Avalos' performance.

Technical
Okay AQ, a little low and it seems like a bit of Avalos' 2d rebuttal is cut off.

About Craig’s attack on Avalos

First off, that Craig can spend the first 5 minutes of his presentation attacking his opponent and still present his normal schtick is a testament to Craig's skill as a debater. But it was still a pretty cheap move to pull and it didn't go unnoticed if you go by the audience's impressions in the Q&A. In fact, when someone brought it up, Craig said he felt "uncomfortable" doing that, as if he wanted some sympathy for doing it anyways.

Elsewhere someone made a good point about this, too: Craig should have contacted Avalos about it before the debate if he was so worried about it. Or if Avalos did do that in this debate Craig should have simply pointed out that Avalos was being too critical about the quality of the ancient texts and sucked it up, but to be fair that's not an answer a perfect apologetic missile like Craig would consider. Ultimately maybe he shoulda offered another unique or interesting point to his arguments. Whatever.

Concerning the "printers errors" mentioned by Craig, there is more of a discussion about it here and here, if you're interested. 

LASTLY, through my university's ILL, I was actually able to get a copy of the debate audio between Avalos and Shelly. And I can say that Craig at least mischaracterizes the tone in which Avalos said the things he quoted in this 2004 debate and at most quote mines Avalos. I will claim that Craig misrepresents the context of the issue. I have been nursing over a critique of this attack on Avalos for awhile, now. I'll have a review of the Shelly debate (it wasn't too great) and the aforementioned critique hopefully soon. Oh, and I'll have links to the debate audio because both Avalos and Shelly said I could host it because they are both absolute mensches.

A list of mini-reviews of Craig's debates can be found here!
Revisions
7-7-2013: I fleshed out some comments and added some more links at the end.
8-4-2015: I polished up the entire review to make it clearer and updated a view of my opinions on some matters.