Douglas Jacoby vs Richard Carrier - Jesus: Son of God or Apocalyptic Prophet? 2012 BEST

This debate ( audio | video-audio only | 2:51.52s ) features Richard Carrier and Apologist Douglas Jacoby with the debate topic being: "Jesus—Son of God or Apocalyptic Prophet?" It took place in 2012.

First image hit, though this is Pilate washing his hands. SOURCE.

 

4.5 stars. Not even a pandering apologist and hostile Christian crowd can phase the Carrier Biblical Machine in this lively but potentially polarizing debate. BEST

Very long WOE review
Christian review
AIGBusted review

This is one of the best debates I have heard. Usually people on both sides cite Carrier's debate with Licona in 2004 as being a great and lively debate and I would say that that one falls below this one*. This debate is also really long and I enjoyed the format. Be careful with the Q&A section, though...I'll explain that in a bit.

This is Carrier's best performance. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy his debates and think he actually comes out on top in most of them but he came off as smooth and polished and presented himself well, here.

Though I still think he suffered from a few issues that plague his debate performance in general, but not as much in this one. For example, Carrier's too smart for his own good. The one thing I can give Jacoby (though just barely and I'll explain later) is that he knew how to read the audience and cater his talking points to them. Richard Carrier said some things that believing Christians could easily misconstrue and find insulting and many of them in the Q&A confirmed this.

In particular, a lot of people were hung up on Carrier referring to the early Christians as schizotypal, word that just has to be either dropped for a term or description with less baggage, or mentioned with the constant caveats that this isn't just schizophrenia. I wouldn't be surprised if even a more neutral-minded audience also got a bit irked by the term.

Jacoby seems like a nice guy but he employed several sleazy tactics in this debate that I think he should be embarrassed and ashamed about because he seemed perfectly fine fanning the anger of the crowd to throw Carrier under the misconception bus in order to come out on top.

Jacoby should be embarrassed for: not being prepared. Carrier had to correct him on several mistakes and misconceptions he made when he mentioned things from Carrier's book. He also rambled in his opening and then it seemed like at the last second he took out a Sparks Notes book on Bill Craigs' arguments for the resurrection and spouted that out, whether it was even relevant or not

Jacoby should be ashamed for his tactics in the debate. He definitely fell apart after his opening speech and resorted to playing on the audience's misconceptions. Several times Carrier explained what he meant by some of the terms he used only to have a bunch of other questions come up making them same mistakes. This isn't the fault of the audience because they were not a more academic crowd and even I am not familiar with the term schizotypal. And yeah, as I mentioned, Carrier is just too smart for his own good sometimes and doesn't always drive points home in a succinct manner because he'll take them for granted.  

But Jacoby exploited this. Jacoby exploited the good nature of his audience and of Carrier in order to score points in this debate.

One of the bummers that kept coming up was that Jacoby disputed Carrier's claims that Jesus said that those within his generation would see the second coming by stating that those parts of the bible are apocalyptic writing and can be considered metaphorical and not literal. Wouldn't noting that the most cited document used to describe the life of Jesus is filled with apocalyptic writing that should not be taken literal kind of help support the claim that he is an apocalyptic prophet? I need to look more into this "apocalyptic literature" retreat because it just seems so weak.

Great debate otherwise!

*Note that I think that Licona did a much better job and was more professional and prepared in his debate against Carrier.

RE: 7-5-2013: Added some reviews on the debate.
RE: 8-6-2013: I lowered the score, I have too many 5 star debates.  
8-15-2015 More clarity attempts like the many others attempted on this day. I also added a link and toned down my annoyance of Jacoby's behavior.

Mark Roberts vs Loose Change Creators Avery & Bermas - 911 Conspiracy Theories BEST

This debate ( audio | video 1 & 2 | 55:33s ) took place in 2006 between the creators of Loose Change Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas and Tour Guide Mark Gravy Roberts. They discussed topics concerning 911 Conspiracy Theories, specifically those related to Avery and Bermas' documentary.

Ronald Wieck was the moderator but he's quite critical of 911 conspiracy theories. However Wieck's also known for being pretty fair and equal time was had by all.

Debate begins around 1:05s...

4 stars: Mark Roberts is unabating in the ways he uncovers the myriad sketchy claims of the 911 Truth Movement. BEST

This debate is about an hour long and is one of the best in terms of straightforward "smackdowns" of a skeptic over a crank. But all debaters were nice and discussed the topics well though I wish more of the non-technical aspects of this conspiracy theory were discussed. And though Avery was pretty quiet throughout, Bermas was very outgoing.

But I shouldn't be to smug, because Roberts knows his stuff and that Bermas and Avery are as Avery says "a bunch of kids" so it isn't a surprise that this was such a slaughter. And now I think I sound like I'm being a dick to Avery and Bermas but I'm honestly not. I do actually think they are sincere in their beliefs but just horribly wrong. I do also think that Avery's admission that his flick has a lot of dubious claims and his advocacy of other docs is commendable.

It's just that the debunkers' side has a problem in the 911 Debate. Mark Roberts got snubbed by David Ray Griffin, the respectable face of the Truth Movement while Richard Gage ONLY agreed to 'debate' Mark Roberts in thee most uncharitable format possible. So Roberts has to address just kids like Avery and Bermas. Roberts has to sit through three episodes with Jim Fetzer trying to make this theory sound sane.

I would note that this debate is dated (2006) but the views presented by Truthers mentioned in this debate are still being thrown around by your average Truther and though the movement has retreated to wanting to only talk about the WTC dust particles, their big named defenders still believe all this stuff but just refuse to talk about them because they know they sound ridic.

Mark Roberts takes on some other, bigger Truthers, namely Richard Gage which I will link to later.

Check it out!

Dinesh D'Souza vs John Loftus - Does the Christian God Exist? 2010

This debate ( audio | video ) took place in 2010 between Dinesh and ex-Xian John Loftus and concerned the question: "Does the Christian God Exist?"

3 Stars.

SOURCE...besides Dumb and Dumber.

PhilVaz 4/5
TFT review

This debate was a bummer. I recently became more interested in these debates from reading all the blog posts on a bunch of different sites talking about who can take on Bill Craig. Loftus was cited or mentioned several times and it was just a bummer to hear such a weak debate.

Both debaters seemed off their game a little - Loftus had a cold and Dinesh was in traffic or something. Dinesh still used his same old phrases and Loftus made a Dumb and Dumber reference that I enjoyed but I don't think was appreciated by the audience.

Dinesh had some disparaging things to say about Victor Stenger at one point. Stenger isn't the most charismatic debater but he was known for giving Craig a lot of trouble in his debate he had with him so I bet he could devastate Dinesh.

Forgettable but not terrible. Even Dinesh wasn't his more wonderfully slimy self.

Technical
Solid AQ

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.

Steve Fuller vs Jack Cohen Podcast on Intelligent Design CHECK

This debate ( audio | 1:02 roughly ) took place in 2006 between Sociologist Steve Fuller and Biologist Jack Cohen. They discussed Intelligent Design and evolution.

3.5 Stars. CHECK

This debate is a bit scattershot. Because of Fuller's background and how he contributed to the Dover Trial, it focused more on how the scientific community interacts with the theory of Intelligent Design.

Cohen is a good speaker and certainly comes out on top but he tends to go off topic a bit. Fuller becomes more and more hysterical as the debate goes on. He has some speech mannerism where he'll start off a statement at a normal volume but seem to get more aggressive and intense as he gets to his point. It doesn't help that he seems to get frustrated that he's not making his points clear enough for the host to follow at one point. It also doesn't help that the host is a very soft-spoken and unassuming British guy seeming to be taken aback by the caustic shouts spewed at him, too.

However, Fuller does make more nuanced arguments for Intelligent Design though his tact makes him a bit off-putting. If you can, check out this dialog. Fuller does better in it than he does in other debates I've heard him in, especially the one he had with Stenger on Unbelievable a few years back:
( review )



Technical 
Low AQ.

Eddie Tabash vs William Lane Craig - Secular Humanism vs Christianity 1999 BEST

This debate ( audio | video | 1:42.10s ) took place in 1999 and was between Eddie Tabash and William Lane Craig. It was held at Pepperdine University in Southern California and the topic was "Secular Humanism vs Christianity" and Tabash made Craig flip a coin over who'd go first on this one.

Debate begins about 3.25s in...

4 Stars. Eddie certainly rattles William Lane Craig in this content packed debate but he doesn't bring too much of the secular humanism game into the mix. BEST

PhilVaz 2/5
APF review: 4.5/5
CSA review: good
Richard Carrier review: Craig won on rhetoric

This one is often cited as one of the few debates Craig doesn't win. Since I think he has lost more debates than what others have argued I agree with this point, but maybe not as much or in the same manner as those other reviewers.

Tabash is a great lawyer and a Bruin (go Bruins!) and has an amazing ability to deliver 500 arguments in a short 15-20 minute opening. Some have tried to call him on doing this but only to disastrous results. Anyways, Tabash comes out swinging and Craig for once has a harder time playing catch up.

In fact a usual issue that debaters against Craig have is that their speeches tend to seem sparse in content. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, (I think Ahmed's debate, for example, featured more quality rather than quantity in terms of denser content) but the fact that Craig can organize and fit in all these arguments into an 8 minute segment, especially on the fly, sounds - and is, to an extent - pretty impressive. However, Tabash, though unfortunately resulting in his spending less time on defending secular humanism, is able to throw out as much as Craig can.

Some good parts were when Tabash referenced Craig dancing at the airport for Hare Krishna as being a major paradigm shift in Christian thought akin to Jews converting at the time of Jesus if it were to happen but that such an event would still make the claims of Hare Krishna just as unlikely.

I should mention that this is an earlier Craig, 1999. Maybe Craig was still fine-tuning his debate skills, though he’s been doing this since the 80s so I don’t know if this is a good excuse. It is worth mentioning mostly all of the debates Craig has supposedly lost were in that miserable decade the 90s sans the Kagan debate.

Both give a lot of information and the reasons keeping this debate from being a 5 starer is the audio quality is terrible and the fact that Tabash doesn’t flesh out his worldview all that much, he’s mostly on the offensive.

Technical
Poor AQ and VQ.

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

RE: 6-30-2013; I added a link to Phil Vaz's review (though it is just a breakdown of the segments with assigned check marks on the debaters' performances) and to Richard Carrier's review. I highly recommend ya'll check out Carrier's review. It is well written, thorough and further features a response from Eddie!

Shelley Kagan vs William Lane Craig - Ethicis without God 2009 BEST TOP TEN

This debate ( audio | video ) was between philosopher Shelley Kagan and super-apologist William Lane Craig in 2009. The debate topic was about the possibility of ethics without God.

5 stars. Kagan lets Craig get away with very little in this debate about morality without God. BEST TOP TEN
 

Whenever the Apologeticbot-316000 William Lane Craig is brought up by (more thoughtful) atheists, it's usually conceded that Craig definitely lost this debate on morality with philosopher Shelley Kagan. I'm updating all my reviews (2015) and this still seems to be the ONE debate more agree on.

Kagan details his argument so clearly and in such an accessible manner. He starts off by making sure the audience knows that people have been talking about morality without mentioning god for a very long time. Such a thing isn't even atheistic, too, it's just that people have been trying to knock about moral frameworks forever and a lot times they forget to think about how maybe some celestial super-being might play a role.

He also presented just ONE such moral framework that can account for what Christian apologists (not all) usually insist atheistic moral frameworks lack, which is moral objectivity. This framework is Rawl's Theory of Justice, which basically purports that the feature of universal or objective morality is achieved by asking how we would treat one another/interacted morally/ethically with the external world had we been asked such questions before we were marred with our dividing biases.

Craig does his shtick but it doesn’t seem to be as intense as in other debates because the debate topic is so specific. Here is where we get a more focused speech from Craig on only morality. Craig is good at giving out a lot if nice, snack-sized arguments, together forming one larger case for his position. But when he has to flesh out a more specific topic, he ends up coming off less intense (if you need another example, check out his debate with Ray Bradley on Hell).

This issue really weakens Craig's position later: Craig keeps harping on ultimate significance as being really super important to objective morality and this is how he is able to dismiss the non-theistic arguments for being morally upright because 5 billion years from now the earth with turn to ash AND they don't matter if there is no god or heavenly reward.

Craig does say this in many of his other debates but it is dished out with several other arguments that his opponent has to respond to. However, Kagan doesn't need to worry about that here and we also hear Craig repeat this issue over and over again making it easier for Kagan to respond to it. And he does. Really well.

Craig also gets beaten up pretty badly in the cross-examination, Kagan doesn’t let him get away with the slides he can pull through his almost complete mastery of the art of formal debate. Kagan beautifully lays out contractualism and Craig attempts (not necessarily in a nefarious manner) to crap on the framework by asking “what if [I forget] doesn’t wanna sign the contract?” and this gets a laugh out of the audience but it also gave Kagan the chance to reiterate the key parts of contractualism to the audience and Kagan does so and does it perfectly.

One of the best debates out there.

Technical
Good but kind of choppy AQ and good VQ.

Other Reviews
APF review: 4.5/5
CSA review: good?
WK review: Xians always win


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

Post Revision Notes
6-30-2013 I fleshed out the first paragraph introducing the debate a little more.

8-19-2013 I significantly changed the first paragraph. I originally talked about how Kagan didn't need to address Craig's argument from the resurrection, which is true, but it's true because Craig never actually brings it up in this debate. I've listened to a lot of Craig's debates and they all blurred for me. I also edited the technical  section.
8-15-2015 Updated the links and made myself sound less like an idiot...And I described the debate a bit more.