Thursday, June 21, 2007

A "Rational" Responder Meets a Decent Christian Apologist

For those of you have never heard of the young evangelistic Atheist group called the Rational Response Squad let me fill you in. Basically these guys are a bunch of college students who think that they have some pretty air tight reasons not to believe in God. They are rude, condescending, cocky, young, arrogant and everything else America considers good entertainment. They are very bold to repeat the illogical mantra "There is no evidence for God's existence!" (that's an omniscient statement) although when asked to give a reason for their Atheism they always engage in hand waving saying the burden of proof is not on them. At anyrate over a month ago two of them, Brian Sapient and "Kelly" had a public debate with Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort on national television. Honestly the RRS guys won the debate. They won not because their arguments were good and they were right but because Kirk and Ray simply didn't know how to answer them nor challenge them in their position. Simply put they put Kirk and Ray on the defensive most of the debate and the RRS were never on the defense. Kirk and Ray simply didn't know what kinds of questions to ask them to show their inconsistencies.

(A SIDE NOTE: in that debate I think one of the gross assumptions which needed to be addressed was how the RRS continued to appeal to some sort of moral code and how Atheism doesn't destroy morality, this needed to be probed by Ray and Kirk to show that these were just hollow words and philosophically the Atheist is standing on air when it comes to ethics. Ray and Kirk failed to point out these irrational assumptions the Atheist constantly makes.) I felt similarly about their debate with Ergun Caner, Caner did ok but he was on the defense the WHOLE time, never challenging their position.

Enter Matt Slick, the president of the CARM Internet apologetics page. The debate was between Slick and "Kelly" and simply put she was out of her league. Slick didn't give any heavy duty point by point argument, however he didn't let "Kelly" off the hook with all the outlandish claims she made nor when she started waving her hands saying "The burden of proof isn't on me!" What I liked that Slick did is that he was really just doing the ground work for a meaningful debate in that he was trying to get "Kelly" to explain what evidence would even look like by her standards. Of course such a standard for evidence for God's existence isn't on "Kelly's" radar screen because she doesn't want there to be any evidence. So she never could explain what would be the evidence that would necessitate the belief that the Christian God exists.

Along the evidence line, it was also telling when Brian Sapient chimed in to bail Kelly out of one of her unsupported claims pointing to some study he just googled. It was funny that Kelly would apply such high scrutiny to the NT Gospel accounts and say they are unreliable. Yet when Brian Google searches some off the cuff study that seemingly supports their position she immediately starts to point to it as supportive having never read it nor know what it entails.

Simply put Slick put this girl in her place. They probably got too cocky after the Comfort/Cameron debate and thought that they could take on real apologists. I am thinking they will stick to the small potatoes again and avoid the Reformed apologists.

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE DEBATE

5 comments:

Frank Walton said...

I agree with you 100%

TheChristianAlert.org said...

Hi Bob,

Man - this is another good find. I didn't even realize CARM had its own podcast. I need to get out more often :-).

Do you know where to find the Full Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort Debate? I tried googling it but it is broken into pieces. Anyway, I'll keep searching for it or I'll get it bit by bit.

I'm about to listen to CARM's MP3.

R.S. Ladwig said...

Thanks Frank, keep up the good work at your blog, I really enjoy it.

Hey Edgar, the Slick debate with "Kelly" is decent although it wasn't a formal debate he was able to show that philosophically she really wasn't as agnostic as she tried to bill herself as at the beginning.

As for the Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort/ RRS debate...The best I can find is on youtube in peices but it is video so...

Anonymous said...

good broadcast Bobby!

R.S. Ladwig said...

Hey Michael, yeah I thought so too. It actually was the first time I listened to the CARM radio show...I was an avid ARM web page reader years ago when it was fairly new on the apologetics internet scene...Slick's ministry certainly has grown since I first knew of it.