Not sure why, but I read your comment in WLC’s voice!

Not sure what you’re on about Tes. Take off your reason-shielding glasses and carefully examine the debate. As far as I witnessed, Craig was unable to ‘refute’ a single one of Dr. Carrier’s claims. On the other hand, Dr. Carrier forced Craig to retreat on several points (e.g., his references to the role of women in the empty tomb story). Statistically speaking, if one arguer walks in and out with all of his arguments in tact, and the other walks in with a thousand arguments, but even so few as one or two are refuted, then that arguer has lost the debate. The only reason Dr. Craig seemed to win this one can be understood when one reads up on ‘shotgun argumentation’. As Dr. Carrier noted within the debate itself, Craig made far too many claims for him to address in any great depth given the time constraints imposed in a debate format. Honestly… …

He was talking to that charlatan Deepak Chopra on that occasion my good man. Deepak was trying to preach that non-locality was a feature of the workings of the brain and sinoatrial node. Given that I am studying psychology and anatomy / biochemistry, I can safely say that he has absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Thankfully, Sam Harris put him in his rightful place; the ground.

Note that The Christian Delusion is an anthology of a dozen authors. I only have two chapters in it. So I don’t quite understand the observation you are sharing.

I have personally found that when a debate is highly formatted, with sections of time for each person to speak and very little interaction, WLC seems to dominate. However when a debate has a more conversational style, free-wheeling style, WLC does not come across quite so good…. Contrast that with the discussion between N.T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan 10 years ago or so who debated/dialogued in a more conversational style and both came across amazingly well… Just my opinion.

In regard to WLC, I think that his goals are to spread the gospel, to appeal to the masses, and to let Christians know that it is possible to still have faith in this age, by looking at him as an example. He is not trying to come to the truth here. He can do that in a less confronting style, and may be in a school setting. IDK.

We can see that he is trying to spread the gospel as in every conclusion he would invite people to go to Jesus.

Now that we know his goal, I can see him rationalize that it is okay for him to do what he’s doing that people here criticized. After all, if the goal of the debate is to win and to persuade the audience to Jesus, even if it means no progress to truth and using “dirty tactics”, it’s okay! After all, One cannot condemn him for using his debating skills to their maximal effectiveness from his training to win under an agreed upon format.

What about his exceptions toward debating non-experts such as Christopher Hitchens? Remember his goal is to spread the gospel? Of course, he wants to debate these ppl; he must in fact because this is pertinent to his goals. (That is, if I was right about his goals. I might be completely wrong) Sure, he attacks using many points so that his opponents can’t respond on time, but at least his mighty goal is achieved. If we agreed at first to the debate conditions and formats, then we can only blame it to ourselves, for he did not violate any rules. We can be angry about it, but the only thing we can do is if he has future debates, that we warn his opponents of everything that has happened so that the debate can become “fair”. Idk. This is just my thought.

It was often difficult for him to read your book for even one page without interruption because he, as a liberal new testament pauline scholar, is seen as irritated by the style of your writing, which is too “absolute” to his taste. I felt that he was influenced by his pre-conceived biases as well. The same words may sound good over the debate but would sound differently in the book. I told him that perhaps the book is written for the lay people. He said that the tones make theists sound like they are so dumb that it would fail to convince the other groups from calmly considering your point of views. I think he’d appreciate a more “coming-together” attitude. Otherwise, the book would just reaffirm atheists and fail to reach more theists than it could have been.

I don’t know. I personally enjoyed the way you speak. This is just my experience. I thought that you may appreciate a feed back from your fan and reader.

You are confusing knowledge of a subject, with skill in a timed debate. None of the people you mention are “the best there are” at the latter; not even close. And yet, all that should actually matter to you is who is best at the former, not who is best at the latter. Until you understand the difference, you won’t ever be on a path toward the truth.

What Loftus has that those others don’t is extensive first-hand training by Craig himself in all his bag of tricks at winning debates. It’s not a question of who knows more about Jesus. It’s a question of who can best expose the tricks Craig uses when trying to con an audience.

But understanding that requires realizing that the truth can never be revealed by a debate. The truth is not constrained by time or rhetoric. Yet a debate is constrained by time and rhetoric.

I already address it in extenso in The Empty Tomb, pp. 114-55.