Louis CK vs Bill Donohue radio spat about Lucky Louie and Donohue's Dishonesty 2007 BEST FUN

This debate ( audio | video | 10 minutes ) occurred in 2007 on the Opie and Anthony Radio Show between Louis CK and Bill Donohue from the Catholic League. It's a short one and there is a video that is the whole segment with Louis CK here, if you're interested.


3.5 Stars: It's always great when comedians get a chance to talk to scumbags like Donohue because they'll make fun of them without worrying about the rules of argumentation BS. BEST FUN

Louis CK is my favorite comedian along with Bill Hicks and Mike Birbiglia. I've enjoyed his stuff since his Live in Houston stand-up album. Bill Donohue is the dishonest, despicable scumbag in charge of the obnoxious Catholic League. He's known for having no scruples at all and getting offended by anything.

Louis CK was in the short lived Lucky Louie show on HBO. In 2006, Donohue made a press release labeling the show "barbaric" and listed several reasons why. Louis CK brings was sitting in on the Opie and Anthony Show for an interview with Donohue about the controversial Dakota Fanning rape scene. At the end of the interview Louis CK asked Donohue about his criticisms of his own show.

Louis CK brings up Donohue's press release, supposedly penned by Donohue himself, that lists a bunch of "offensive" things about the show, for example, "Louie does not want to get his wife pregnant until they figure out a way for her to have consistent orgasms." Louis CK asks why Donohue has a problem with a married couple deciding to make their sex life healthier before attempting to have another child.

Donohue completely goes into cornered animal mode. First he denies writing the thing, then he tries to ignore the quote Louis CK mentions, and then evades everything thrown at him. You can tell he is drenched with sweat by the effort. When he says he didn't actually write the press release and someone else did it in his name, CK calls him dishonest and flat out calls him a press hound looking for anything in the news to complain about and latch on to.

These kinds of moments are nice because Louis CK is a comedian. He's not some academic, religious critic, or scholar or head of a watchdog organization or something. He's able to just make fun of Donohue and call him names without endangering his or an organization/community's reputation.

He also happens to be absolutely right about Donohue.

There are several funny parts in this little clip. There is also a confusing part for those who aren't familiar with the show Lucky Louie. One episode features the 16 year old daughter (played by Emma Stone!) of Louis CK's friend on the show offering to blow Louis for being so nice to her.

This is mentioned in the press release, but when it is brought up it sounds like both Louis and Donohue are talking about two different things. Louis mentions that the part is taken out of context - that the girl offering to blow CK comes from a poor home environment, which has warped her mind into thinking that's how you'd reward a guy for being nice but Louis CK's in-show wife - a solid, strong female character - explains how that's wrong, especially when older married guys are considered.

However it seems like Donohue is talking about the Dakota Fanning movie scene while Louis is talking about the scene just mentioned, so they're talking past each other. Like Donohue admits earlier, he didn't see the show.

Anyways, this is too fun to pass up! Check it out!

Technical
Good AQ, it's radio. The video is audio only.

Revised 8-23-2015 Cleared up the content and added a picture. Also lowered the rating. In general I've been trying to keep the 5 star reviews more exclusive but this type of review deserves more than a 3.5 stars. I need to make a Fun-five Star rating.

Craig v Ehrman Resurrection BEST

This debate ( audio | video | transcript | 1h54m56s ) between Craig and Historian Bart Ehrman took place in 2006 and concerned the topic of Jesus' Resurrection.


5 stars. BEST

PhilVaz 5/5
APF review: 4/5
CSA reviews: bad*
Ed the MSP review: Ehrman won
Big White Ogre review/assessment 1 & 2
AXP kinda review

This is one of the best debates on the topic. It is also one where Craig clearly lost, imo. There is a lot to this debate so this will be a long post. It will also jump around a little, if you want a nice short review then I suggest you look at my Craig mini-reviews post here and my Where to Start page under this topic.

Craig's Opening:

Craig gives his usual arguments for the resurrection (Jesus' burial, empty tomb, post-mortem appearances and the disciples coming to believe in Jesus which could only be due to the pm appearances) but condenses it to make more relevant comments on Ehrman. It definitely sounds like Craig saw his mission in this debate was to discredit Ehrman because of how popular his books like Misquoting Jesus have been with the general public. Craig was more subtle about doing this when compared to James White when the latter debated Ehrman a few years ago. I talk about that debate here and about how down-right whiny James White sounded when he kept complaining about how much popularity Ehrman's books were getting.

Craig's First Rebuttal:

Anyways, like I mentioned, Craig also addresses some stuff concerning Ehrman specifically. Craig does what some might see as being kind of underhanded and attributes concessions about his arguments to Ehrman that Ehrman later states are incorrect and/or out of context. Craig later goes on to talk about Bayes Theorem and probability and discusses a book called Hume's Abject Failure. Playing with this book's title he says that Ehrman is committing something called "Ehrman's Egregious Error" and then he further talks about another issue he takes with Ehrman's position which he labels "Bart's Blunder."

Now I've read a few people talking about how they saw this as poisoning the well and as being cheap, but I didn't. I thought it was Craig being fun and I think it was more good-natured ribbing than mean-spiritedness on Craig's part. You can find this part in the transcript.

Ehrman's Opening and First Rebuttal:

Bart gave a really good opening speech and did his usual schtick. He talked about how his arguments are not the same arguments against miracles used by Hume (which is what Craig claims) but are instead, arguments specific to doing history and the usage of probability. He also gives a plausible narrative that does not invoke the supernatural to account for the four arguments that Craig gave. For his first rebuttal, Bart comes out like a hurricane, calling out all the contradictions in the gospels, calling Craig out on only relying on Christian scholars when talking about what the consensus of scholars think about the resurrection, asks three questions of Craig and gives another scenario that could account for the four arguments Craig gave in his opening speech. And Ehrman brings up whether or not Craig thinks the stuff in the book of Matthew is historical, something brought up by Avalos in his debate with Craig. He does more but he ends with the following three questions: 1) Are the gospels free from errors; 2) What does Craig think about other contemporary miracle workers and messiahs wrt a historical perspective; and 3) roughly: "How is it that the faith that he adopted as a teenager happens to be the only one that is historically credible?" These questions have more to them so I suggest you read them in full in the transcript.

The Second Rebuttals:

Craig addresses some of the points made by Ehrman but not the questions he asks and he also doesn't comment on the scenario Ehrman offered. This allowed Ehrman to note these things in his second rebuttal and to assert another plausible scenario that could account for the four arguments raised by Craig. Ehrman was also able to drive home the fact that the narratives he presented are still more realistic than a miracle. He also discussed how Craig couldn't just invoke god when talking about history though Craig asserts that the debate wasn't about what historians can and cannot do (I guess he forgot about his debate with Cavin in 1995 where he chided Cavin for relying on arguments that can't be used by historians but...you know...).

The Closings:

Craig ends by asserting that Ehrman didn't address his arguments and then preached about finding Jesus. This is where Ehrman really nails Craig down (bad pun?). Ehrman was able to summarize how he did address Craig's arguments and how Craig did not address both of his plausible narratives that would explain the 4 facts Craig presented AND he didn't answer the questions Ehrman asked. This is the most explicit time in all of Craig's debates where it was obvious that he avoided addressing some of the things brought up by his opponent and Ehrman was on the ball and called him on it. I mean, heck, Craig even said he didn't answer Ehrman's questions as his closing remark. Furthermore, Ehrman called out Craig for what his real motives are in this subject and that's to push his theological agenda. Price does this at length in his 1999 debate with Craig, but does it in his opening speech and spends too much time on it. Ehrman did it at the end and did so right when it was fresh in everyone's mind that Craig decided to tell his personal experiences with Jesus instead of addressing another narrative and three questions brought up by Ehrman. It was beautiful.

During the Q&A we get some good questions, Mike Licona asks the first one of Ehrman! Also, someone asked Craig about the three questions Ehrman asked to which Craig gave the weakest and cheapest response to: this is just Ehrman using a "debater's trick" that he won't deign to respond to. This is weak for several reasons:
a) It isn't, Craig's using the gospels to buttress his claims that a supernatural event occurred, Ehrman is allowed to call into question their accuracy.
b) Craig does address one of Ehrman's scenarios by talking about the clothes left in the empty tomb, but that is something mentioned in another gospel (Matt) that is later than the Markan gospel, which means that Craig is actually using both earlier and later sources, something he mentioned he didn't mess around with and...
c) A "debater's trick"?! Craig, that's your thing, that's totally weak to fall back on. You might have a better chance of getting away with saying your arguments for God's existence aren't dependent on biblical inerrancy, but this is a debate about the resurrection of Jesus, you need to address the fact that the bible reeks of man-made concepts and assertions.

Concerning the math:

I think Craig messed up in deciding to spend so much time on this argument in the debate. Craig spends too much time trying to discuss the probability calculus involved in Bayesian probabilities. He sets up the classic probability problem:

P(A|B)=[P(B|A)P(A)]/P(B)
(look this stuff up on wikipedibutt)

Now I love math but suck at it (what a cruel world?) so I can't explain to you how this is wrong but others have and I suggest you look into what they say. What I'll talk about is how it is used in the debate. Basically, Craig wasted too much time talking about it. I don't think the audience appreciated it, and yeah, it might seem slick to bust out math in a history debate, but besides Craig taking too long to make it relevant, Ehrman also simply dismissed it (though I agree that he mischaracterized the point Craig was trying to make when he did so) and moved on without having to worry about Craig calling him out on it like he usually does when someone doesn't address all of his arguments.

Later on in the Q&A someone asked Craig to explain what the result would be if the stuff from the resurrection were plugged into the equation to which Craig responded that we would end up with an "estimate of 0.97 for the resurrection of Jesus..." Holy crap! That beats a 0.05 confidence interval, that is an estimate of there being a 97% chance that Jesus rose from the dead! Even Craig chuckles with the audience when he says this and declares that he doesn't use it. This lead to Ehrman getting pretty heated, however and I think he shoulda kept more calm at this point.

Technical: Very queit AQ, unfortunately. This is especially so for the Q&A portion too. The video is watchable.

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


*Luke Muehlhauser. is pretty critical, I think the only time he ever officially says someone beat Craig is in his debate with Keith Parsons. The way I see it is that on Luke's scale good means great and bad means good...or they could just mean what the words actually mean. I also think he was one of the people impressed by Craig using math and thought it was a huge blunder on Ehrman's part to dismiss Craig's comments on Hume. It is weird because Luke praised Price for spending almost all of his opening speech attacking the dishonest agenda behind Craig's methodology yet completely glossed over the more timely and forceful way Ehrman does it in this debate.

Licona v Puckett 2012 Res CHECK

This debate ( audio | video | 1h45m ) occurred in 2012 and covered the topic of the resurrection. It was between NT Scholar Mike Licona and Communications Theorist(?) Shane Puckett.

2 stars.

The reason I checked this debate out is because of the comments left on Brian Auten's post hosting the debate on Apologetics315. When Puckett was introduced, the mod mostly focused on Puckett's debate background. Puckett was active in college debate and debate competitions and is currently active in some debating organi - he's not a historian/doesn't have credentials related to the topic other than he knows how to debate.

Normally I would find this odd but it was most likely the case that the church couldn't find a proper opponent for Licona at the time of the debate. At least, that's what I'd like to think happen though Licona seems to love this stuff and probably coulda suggested loads of potential debate opponents and it seems like the church that put the thing together had ample funds to figure something out.

But I digress. I felt it could be interesting to see if apologetic arguments could be taken apart by the precise use of debating skills or tactics. Unfortunately, this debate just seemed like it should have demonstrated how important it is to know the subject and to especially know the arguments that your opponent uses.

Licona did a solid job. I agree that he did seem as polished as he normally does but he still got his message across and didn't muddle anything. Licona does something that I wish Dinesh D'Souza would take note of: he changes his cheesy jokes up, which makes him come off as more friendly and genuine whereas Dinesh just comes off as seeming like he would say his mosquito in a nudist colony joke to the most epic rebuttal to his arguments of all time only because it's so important to his schtick. Watch a few Licona debates, Dinesh...I know you read this blog.

Puckett on the other hand probably woulda done fine in a competitive debate with a topic on public policy or something but he also broke a pretty important debating rule: he didn't study his opponents' arguments. Puckett certainly studied previous debates on the issue but if he studied any of the more recent debates Licona was involved in he would have noticed that Licona does not use the gospels in his main argument and instead focuses on other pieces of evidence like Paul and stuff. Puckett focused on the gospels and broad claims against invoking the supernatural. The latter part he did an okay job on but I found myself cringing throughout his discussion about the reliability of the gospels.

He definitely was familiar with the arguments against the resurrection in his final speech he even gave the exact alternative scenario to the resurrection that Bart Ehrman gave in his debate with Craig in 2006. The funny thing is that Licona was at that debate and asked the first question when it was time for audience Q&A!

This argument is a good one, but it was wasted on the debate format which was kind of weak despite at first sounding interesting: each person got a 20 minute opening then there were a bunch of cross-exam segments then only like 4 people from the audience got to ask questions and they had 10 minute closings. Puckett brought up his alternative scenario in his closing, and it is reasonable that he did so because of the stupid debate format but Licona wasn't able to respond. I would have liked to have heard Licona respond because Craig gave such a weak response to Ehrman when he brought it up!

So ultimately nothing new happened in this debate. To give Puckett the benefit of the doubt I would like to think that he was asked, kind of at the last minute, to debate this topic and did his best, but I probably shouldn't cause he probably would have done a lot better if he watched Carrier's debate with Licona from 2010 where Licona uses the same arguments roughly.

I was also a little annoyed with the set up. Like I mentioned, the format was kind of lame and near the end for 5 minutes the church kept asking for money to continue to fund this kind of thing. I wouldn't mind that so much except that this is the first time I've heard this for such an extended period of time and a lot of these debates are recorded at churches and/or by theistic organizations and I haven't heard anything like this in those debate recordings. Also the last 10 minutes was more of an announcement for the church, I listened to a minute of it and gave up.

Technical: Good AQ, not sure on the VQ, I'm sure it's fine, though it looks like it suffers from white balance issues.

Pigliucci v Hovind on Evolution and Creation BEST TOP TEN

This debate ( audio | 2h10m26s ) occurred in 2003 on the Infidel Guy Show. It was between Biologist/Philosopher Massimo Piggliucci and Dr. Kent Hovind. It was on a lot of topics.

DB: 1m40s

5 stars. BEST TOP TEN

This one is pretty great. A lot of different topics are covered including evolution, Creation, geologic time, science education, Hovind's salary.

The debate is pretty one-sided, Piggliucci almost never lets Hovind get away with anything and calls him out on a lot of things. Hovind certainly is a smart man but he refuses to correct himself and though he is polite and doesn't interrupt or talk over his opponents he is a total sleazeball. You can tell he ultimately wants to just keep people from leaving the insane views of YEC.

One particularly annoying part is Hovind's relentless stance that time is the god of evolution. Apparently saying that evolution occurs over a long period of time is the same as saying that anything can occur given enough time. This is the argument Hovind uses to argue that evolution is a religion, too. The worst thing is that I have heard others use this argument - more specifically: Rabbi Schmuley Boteach uttered it in his 2008 debate with Hitch. So a pastor and a rabbi are so ignorant of what is required to label something a religion that they'll label the concept of time as a religion, as a god even.

Oy.

Anyways, like I said, a lot is covered, Hovind has a response (not necessarily an answer one would take seriously) to everything that can be brought up on this topic so he certainly keeps at the debate all the way through. The calls are all pretty great too, again this is one of the best!

Technical: Decent AQ, no video cause it's an internet radio show.

Ahmed v Peoples on Morality 2010

This Unbelievable episode ( audio | 1h20m31s ) occurred in 2010. It pitted my philosophy crush Arif Ahmed against New Zealand philosopher Glenn Peoples.

4.5 stars. BEST CHECK

APF review: 4.5/5
WK review: Xians always win.

This is a great episode of Unbelievable. Both Ahmed and Peoples know the arguments and had probably the most heated, intense and aggressive nice dialogue I have ever heard. They talked about morality and whether or not one needs DCT to justify morality.

Ahmed holds  a different, less popular view that there are no moral facts and gives other arguments as to why we still need to be moral. I think that Damion talks about this debate a little better so I highly suggest you read his review I linked to above.

The most adorable thing occurs in this debate that I think was also a good thing. The two opponents were talking about stuff that apparently was just flying over the host's head. It was quite funny too, because usually after one person says something, the host will summarize it or comment on it and bring in the other person to counter the point. I can see why this is done on the radio but I don't like it. It's as if one guy didn't say his point properly and the host has to clarify it, which isn't the case a lot of the times and it might also be the case that the host condenses or even incorrectly reiterates the points made by the person and their opponent thus has two potential options: address what the person says or address what the host says which can potentially get them out of addressing explicit points their opponent made but still look like they addressed the argument.

I know Justin is the host and this is his show so ultimately he can do whatever he wants, but it seems like so much more content can be addressed if most of the show were just an interaction between the two debaters.

And so, because it seemed like Justin was out of league with Peoples and Ahmed, the format I always hope these shows would take occurred. Several times, for example, Ahmed would say something and we would hear Justin do this: "...Glenn?" and then Glenn Peoples would respond. It was quite amusing.

Glenn Peoples did a solid job too, he was pretty good at keeping up with Arif Ahmed though I think he got out of a few issues with his views on DCT at times.

This is a must listen, dear reader!

Technical: Great AQ.

Loose Change v Popular Mechanics 911 CHECK

This debate ( audio | video playlist | 27m58s ) took place between Jason Bermas and Dylan Avery versus two editors from PM.

4 stars. CHECK

This debate took place in that wonderful year of 2006, the year when I think the 911 Truth Movement peaked in terms of activism. I also believe that this debate focused on Loose Change 2, which is the craziest, apparently.

This one is pretty short and more serious Truthers don't hold to a lot of the claims that are discussed like the impossibility of the phone calls and missiles. However, last time I did happen to talk to irl Truthers they still were spewing these arguments.

Also, Avery and Bermas were never really too great at debating this stuff anyways. Bermas loves to talk and certainly does most of the talking in this debate and in the one he had with Mark Roberts, but he's definitely a kid in this debate in the way he and Avery snicker and act.

A short but fun one!

Technical: Decent AQ, there are several videos on YouTube but the only playlists I found also has a bunch of Truther movies on it that I didn't feel like linking to.

RE: 8-6-2013: I lowered the score, I have too many 4.25 star debates.
RE: 9-26-2013; I added a link to a video. I knew of the videos beforehand but didn't want to link to a channel that has such CT garbage on it, but I know that people prefer videos over the audio so here we are.

Harris and Shermer v Chopra and Houston Does God have a Future?

This debate ( audio | video | 1h36m11s ) took place in 2010 between Michael Shermer and Sam Harris v Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston.

2 stars.

APF review: 3.5/5

This one is pretty bad. The reason why it is scored higher is cause I want to like Sam Harris so I am giving it points because I think this is one of his better performances...though Chopra and Houston were not the most formidable opponents.

Chopra is a quack and Houston just wanted to talk about herself. Shermer is too nice of a guy and concedes wayyyyy too much. It also seems like he never does anymore than a cursory research on the background of his opponents and thinks that just general skepticism is enough to succeed in a public debate.

By the Bill Maher-like crowd responses laced throughout the debate, you can tell that, sadly, general skepticism doesn't when over the wishy-washy insane rhetoric of Deepak Chopra...I mean, it seemed like the crowd would even applaud for Jean Houston and I think it was just because of the vague-uplifty-ness of her babbling.

Only Sam Harris came off well, and hence the fact that I decided to give this debate a 2. Another debate that Harris came off well in (and is much better than this one) is the one he did in Mexico with Hitch and Dennett.

I posted about this one because of Harris and two other things:
1) What's up with the most terrible debate examples happening to be on network television? Are there more that I don't know of? The only other one that comes to mind is the one between the Rational Response Squad and Kirk Comfort in 2007. That debate was awful, sans one interaction where I think Kelly gave the greatest explanation for one common misconception of speciation I have ever heard...which was lost on the popular audience.
2) Debate topics. This is another terrible debate topic, I mean, of course god has a future, humans will probably never stop believing in the supernatural. Atheists need to be better about the topics they pick and in the near future I am gonna make a mega-post of debates with solid debate topics and a list of views on this subject and so on.

Technical: Great AQ and VQ...it was on TV!