Here's the debate, for online free viewing:
"Can a God become a human? (Christian/atheist debate)"
http://tinyurl.com/qalj27h
I will separate some of my comments into different categories.
Presentation Style:
One thing I've been contemplating is my presentation style. In previous debates I thought I was too casual, and let too many things be unsaid. And some people said I don't show much emotion (as if I cared, I would show emotion). So then in other debates I tried to show more emotion, and I think some thought I went overboard. In my last debate with Prof. Gerry Breshears, I was going to play it pretty much natural. It felt right to me, but watching the debate later, I could tell that I needed to calm it down a little.
It is funny how so many people try to analyze debaters by their body language, not knowing at all about how much of it is acting. The best presenters are in full control of their demeanor and put out the persona that they want to project. So here I am thinking of my body language, tone, etc. because I know too many people will simply read so much into it.
Watching the video later, I think my opponent, Gerry, did a really good job on demeanor. Being a seminary professor, he's had lots of practice in front of students.
Content:
I'll admit I could have been better prepared. However, I think a lot of arm-chair critics have no idea how much debaters, such as myself, do prepare. I spend hours thinking and preparing for each event. I hope some of that shows in my power-point presentation. Usually there's more material I'd like to give than I have time for, so I'm usually shocked when my opponent doesn't use up all their time. So I was surprised in our "confrontation segment" that Gerry didn't seem to need every second of it.
If I had more time to prepare, I would have removed some of my slides to better focus on some of the fewer points I was trying to make. I had more slides than time (some of them I skipped). When Gerry started his presentation and was interacting with the audience, I had two main thoughts:
1. "Wow, he's really burning-up his time." He put up a Bible verse and was asking the audience what they thought the important verb was. To me, it almost seemed like stalling... doesn't he have a ton of information to download as I did? Why is he burning-up his presentation time in this way?
2. "All he's doing is talking about the Bible stories, as if they are real." He was no different than a Mormon waxing elegant on the Book of Mormon or a Muslim lifting-up the Koran.
My plan was to look for specific things in his presentation that I could confront him on. But since he was just getting deep into the mythology, I started to instead prepare my questions for him based on my presentation. So I started looking through my notes. It probably looked to the audience I was bored and not paying attention, but there wasn't much of anything interesting coming at me, from what I could tell. I did write one or two things down to later discuss.
Here's two things he said that I later confronted him on, as they didn't seem to make any sense:
1. That Gerry's love for his wife is like God's love for us. I told him that comparison makes no sense, because in his case he's talking about two humans that we all know exist. We don't know God exists; can't see him, hear him, smell him, etc. It seemed like he admitted in the debate that the analogy failed.
2. He said Jesus coming to Earth was like an episode of the TV show Undercover Boss... coming down to see what us mortals are up to. I said that didn't make any sense because Jesus is supposed to be fully God in Heaven before he came down, and knows everything (omniscient). So it seemed like that analogy also failed.
So much more to say, but I think this is long enough.
My next debate at Portland State University is in 2 weeks (Tue. 1-13-14); details here: http://tinyurl.com/lr9nqvt . My opponent is a Christian that doesn't accept biological evolution as true science: Dr. Bart Rask, author of "Evolution By Affirming the Consequent: Scientific Challenges to Darwin's Theory of Evolution," found at Amazon.com here: http://tinyurl.com/c5eh4md .
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If you would like to know why I left evangelical Christian after 25 years of living and preaching it, see my booklet "Modern Science and Philosophy Destroy Christian Theology," which is listed at Amazon.com at this link: http://tinyurl.com/lmlqy56 . (It is free for "Kindle Unlimited" customers.)
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