Apologetics Live Post Debate Review

All right, we are live, Apologetics Live. This is going to be a little bit of a different setup, if you can't figure it out. I'm not in my usual location. I hope the audio and all is going to go well.

But to let everybody know, a little bit different here. We are, if this is working well, and I'll check later, we should be on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all at once. So hopefully that is going to be working well.

So let us know if you're watching on any of those, so that we know where you're watching. And if you can hear us okay, we're going to be, I'm in New York City, trying to get out of this coast. I'll be headed out to California for the Truth Matters Conference.

And okay, we got thumbs up from Twitter, cool. So we know someone's there. This is going to be the first time we could do multiple streams. And so I don't know how well it's going to be working. We're going to test it all out.

Let me bring Eli in. And hey, Eli, how are you? I'm doing well. Good. Well, we're going to be having a little bit of fun tonight, I hope. Tonight, we're going to be reviewing a debate that you did on the Gospel Truth show or network or whatever they are.

They do a bunch of debates. And so that hopefully is going to turn out well, or that debate's already over. So that did turn out well, but we hope that for folks here that enjoy the post-debate discussion.

So Eli, real quick, why don't you just introduce your ministry that you work for real quick for folks who may not know?

Revealed Apologetics and the Presuppositional Method

Yeah, well, my name is Eli. I have an apologetic ministry called Revealed Apologetics, which tries to emphasize the presuppositional method. I think it's the biblical method taught in scripture as to how we are to defend the faith.

I work for the Historical Bible Society as well, and I blog for them and do Facebook videos and things like that. So if people follow me on Facebook, they'll see me put up little five-minute videos addressing some theological or apologetical issue.

And that's it. I work a little bit with—well, I used to, I guess. I used to answer emails for Matt Slick, but I'm unable to continue that at the moment. But yeah, so I got my hands on a couple of things.

I am a middle school, high school teacher at a Christian private school, and I teach the Bible classes there. And I teach apologetics for the seniors. And my interests are obviously systematic theology.

I like philosophy, and I like issues of methodology. So this debate that I just recently did was my first moderated debate. And I just had a recent debate with a man by the name of Negation of P. He goes by that name.

And that can be found on my podcast, Revealed Apologetics. And it can be found on YouTube on my Revealed Apologetics page there. I was invited by Modern Day Debates to have that one, and I think it went extraordinarily well.

And so people can really benefit from the presuppositional method in practice by giving that one a listen.

Okay, so—and folks, just let me know, those in the chat, if you can hear me okay, if you could hear Eli okay, because I don't have my regular setup to be able to check the levels. So I want to also make sure we could play—I'm going to let me know that I want to play a little bit of the video and see that we will—because we're going to start with your opening, the full thing.

Then we're going to play a clip of his opening. And when you tell me to stop, we'll stop that. And then we have a short clip of the cross-examination that we're going to interact with. So I want to first—I'm going to start with your opening.

And folks, if anyone wants to join, you just go to apologeticslive .com. You'll be able to join us there. And if you want to get in on the discussion, let us know what you think of the debate. I hope you all watched it.

I put it out early and mentioned that you may want to watch it there. So if anybody can't hear the audio when we hit the video, you'll have to let me know, because I won't be able to know otherwise, because I don't have my regular setup.

So I don't know how this is going to work. I actually got here, Eli, to New York City about 30 minutes before we had to start. Were you at a hotel or something? No, I'm at an undisclosed location in New York City.

I'm at my in-law's house, my sister-in-law's house, and they live close to the airport. So we'll head out to the airport and head out to California. Saturday, I'll be out preaching with Ray Comfort on the boardwalk or on the pier there, at Huntington Beach at about 11 .15, 11 .30.

Sunday, we'll be at church with John MacArthur. Like, yeah, just a regular Sunday. So we'll get to go to Grace Community Church on Sunday. Monday, I will be doing some filming there at Living Waters. They got a new project they're working on, and I'll be there for about six hours doing filming.

They're going to pepper me. They got about 60 questions for me to rattle through. And so I have from 8 .30 in the morning till like 2 or 3 in the afternoon to get through them all. And then Tuesday, we'll get a tour of Grace to You.

And after that, Wednesday starts the conference. So we will then be at the conference. Then I fly up to Redwood City, California. That's up in the San Francisco area. I'll be preaching there at Grace Baptist Church in Redwood City on Sunday.

And then I come home to relax. What's the conference about? Truth Matters. It's about truth that matters. Okay. Some are calling it street.

Hey, if you answer the 60 questions like that, then you'll get through them very quickly.

So yeah, I'll have to see. Oh, by the way, Donald Jacks here was saying, I'll put this comment up that he had, that I was blaming you for being late, but he knows better. Is that true? Was I ready? Was I ready at eight o 'clock and you were not in here?

Well, you were ready. I was ready. I was having some technical difficulties on my end.

Yeah, that's what I said, that I was waiting for you. And he's, of course, blaming me. All right. So I want to play the opening of this. If you guys can't hear it, then let me know right away because dead air won't be fun.

Actually, were you able to hear the intro music? Are you talking to me? Yeah, or anybody in the chat? You did not. Okay, so that could become a problem. So I wonder what I might be able to do to fix that while I'm here real quick.

Guess what I could do is change my speaker. This may not sound as good as we would like, but I'm going to play it off the... We might get some echo, but I'm going to do this. And Eli, can you still hear me?

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Okay, just checking to make sure. We might get some feedback, some echo, but I'm going to try to play it. Well, let me first play it. Some people... Donald Jack says he didn't hear the intro, I guess.

So let me play this, and at least it'll play through. My microphone will pick it up. It'll just... We'll have echo. So I'll play the intro here to the first... I think it's 10 minute. Was it a 10 minute introduction?

So here is... Let me share screen. Where is... It's great when you know your setup, and then you move to a different location, right? All right, here we go. I wonder if because we're sharing screen, if this is going to work,.

That the sound will work fine. But let's hit play. Of course, now I hear nothing. Let me back it up.

Tell me if you... Are you hearing that, Eli? I can't hear the video. Okay. All right. Let me pull this out all together. Now we'll hear...

No 60 minute discussion. Is that sound okay? You guys will get three opportunities each to go ahead and ask questions for 10 minutes. ...statement first.

So here is Eli's opening statement. And...

I'd like to define the terms of this debate as I see it. Does God exist? And for me as a Christian theist, I deny the existence of any other God other than the Christian one. And so I'm going to be defending typically Christian theism today, where I do not believe that any non-Christian can be coherent and not without detrimental philosophical problems once the details of these competing deities and or worldviews are fleshed out.

And I do not find the non-Christian worldview systems to be rationally defensible as I find them unable to provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience. And by way of kind of a quick summation, I do not find non-Christian worldview systems to be defensible in that they either have internal inconsistency problems or if we grant their hypothetical truth, such systems can be shown to undermine human reason and experience.

Now to the nature of the debate as I understand it, we need to be very careful since when we're engaging in debates over the question of God's existence, there is all too often the naive assumption that we can proceed in a tit-for-tat back and forth discussion over individual pieces of data, facts, or evidence.

When in reality, this debate is not an issue of facts absent of a worldview context. The debate between the Christian and the skeptic or the Christian in any other form of the non-Christian position is really a debate over worldview systems.

And so if my opponent desires to discuss any particular point, I will politely remind him that any particular point of contention will only and can only have meaning and coherency within a broader worldview context.

I do not believe that we can discuss any particular fact in some sort of neutral worldview independent fashion. And since my worldview foundation is in diametric opposition to any non-Christian foundation, I'm going to take issue with the interpretation of any particular point of contention taken on its own.

For since we both will be operating from different worldview perspectives, different paradigms, if you will, it becomes foundational to this debate as to which position has a worldview context out of which the intelligibility and coherency of any fact is possible.

So in quick summary, this debate is not over evidence per se, although I believe that my position has both evidence and a worldview context in which something like evidence even makes sense. But rather, our debate is one over competing worldviews.

We're debating competing systems of thought and I having a Christian worldview and Chris having a non-Christian worldview. Now, there may be a temptation from the skeptical perspective to suggest that since they're taking the negative position, that there is therefore no requirement to put forth a defense, but rather the task is merely to evaluate the validity of the Christian's position.

I'd like to point out that while I am happy to admit that I am taking the positive position, I'm making the positive assertion that the Christian God exists. I would also point out that every non-Christian perspective has explicit or implicit positive assertions of the falsehood of the Christian worldview.

For instance, if the skeptic's position is to suggest that they do not know if the Christian God exists, this itself is implying the Christian worldview is false. Since an important assertion of the Christian worldview is that in a very profound sense, all men know that God exists.

Now, the skeptic is free to reject this idea of all men knowing God in some sense, which I would imagine Chris would, but by rejecting this Christian proposition, he is saying in essence that the Christian worldview is false.

And if this is his position, then we will need to engage in some intellectual sparring over worldviews. Or again, if the skeptic wants to take the tact of discussing particular facts that are neutral, or he wants to take the tact that it is even possible or even appropriate to come to these issues in a neutral fashion, he again would be implying the falsehood of the Christian worldview, which teaches that there is in fact no neutrality.

From the Christian worldview, every fact has its meaning in the ultimate definer of fact, which is God himself. So every fact is what it is because God has created these facts to be what they are. And hence, if someone defines a fact that is contrary to how God has sovereignly defined that fact, then I would argue that the person redefining that fact, contrary to God's definition, is wrong and does not understand that fact truly.

So in essence, my point here is that no fact is the nature of this debate is not over piecemeal issues, but rather over worldview systems, which themselves give particular facts their meaning. But the question then becomes whose worldview can provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience.

For this, I now turn to the nature of my particular argumentation. So as I have elucidated thus far, the nature of this debate is that of worldview against worldview, principle against principle, system against system.

Having competing systems or worldview perspectives, are we relegated to a standstill, unable to push the debate any further since whatever fact the skeptic brings, I'm going to interpret in light of my worldview.

And every fact that I bring, he's going to interpret in light of his. Well, I don't think that this is the situation that we're just at an immovable standstill. I think we can break this apparent standstill by demonstrating the truth of one's perspective transcendentally.

So the nature of my argument for God's existence is transcendental in nature. For those who may be listening, what do I mean when I speak of transcendental arguments? Well, when we speak of transcendental arguments, we are in essence asking, what are the pre conditions?

That is to say, what must be the case in order for something else to be the case? An easier way to understand this would be something to the effect like I'm standing on the floor in my house, you know, for instance, for my being able to stand up in my living room.

Well, among other things, the beams upon which my house is built need to be under the floor, holding everything up. If the beams aren't there, then I wouldn't be standing, but here I am standing up. So the beams need to be there.

So that's just a simple example to kind of get the idea of transcendental argumentation asks what must be the case in order for something else to be the case. If we use the examples of the laws of logic, you need to understand that transcendentals are proven by the impossibility of the contrary.

So suppose someone rejected the laws of logic, the transcendental necessity of the laws of logic are clearly seen in that even in denying them, one needs to presuppose them in order to deny them. In other words, a transcendental necessity of the laws of logic are demonstrated by the impossibility of the contrary, deny them, and you demonstrate their existence in your very denial, since your denial necessarily presupposes them.

And like bash in my argument, proof of the existence of the God of Christianity is that it exists. One could not prove anything at all. If one denies the Christian theistic worldview, I would argue that such a denial would reduce the non-Christians perspective to absurdity.

Now, again, the temptation will be to suggest that my argument is merely an assertion, but to think such fails to recognize the nature of my argument and the nature of transcendental arguments in general.

Remember, the transcendental argument for God's existence is an argument, and it is my job in this debate to make good on my argument, and I'm going to try my best to do so. So what is required of my opponent today?

If my argument is that the proof for the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, one could not prove anything at all, what my opponent must do is to lay out his own worldview and demonstrate that given the truth of his own worldview outlook, he can save knowledge, science, logic, meaningful history, rationality, induction, and in essence, intelligibility.

Hence, given the very nature of my argumentation, Chris is not relegated to merely stating his lack of belief, if that's his position. Again, I will let him speak for himself, and only responding to why he thinks my view is insufficient.

The very nature of my argument requires the responder to show his hand and lay out his own perspective, his worldview, and engage system versus system. In essence, what ground is Chris standing on? What is his worldview foundation?

And is that foundation coherent and consistent? And does it provide the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience? What is his worldview? What does he believe about the nature of reality? What does he believe about how knowledge is gained?

What does he believe about our lives? And is about these things consistent with each other? What becomes especially interesting is what is his epistemology? How will he address these issues? He could go the rationalist route.

Everything that's true must be coherent. But how does he avoid the traditional problems with rationalism? He can go the empirical route. Knowledge comes through sense, perception, and experience. But how does he answer the issues that are inherent within empiricism?

Or he can combine the two and go the way of Kant. But then that perspective, I would argue, has its own problems. Again, I don't want to speak for Chris. So we're going to wait and see what he has to say.

And from there, engage in worldview interaction. But for now, I think this is sufficient to lay out the issues at hand. And so for now, I concede my time. All right. Thank you. All right.

So that was your opening. Let's go through your opening, because you put a lot into that. And of course, there's someone in chat who is saying that you shifted the burden of proof. I don't know. I don't know if that's someone who is a professing atheist.

And therefore, they're upset if you shifted the burden of proof, which is what they like to do. But yeah, so let's work through your opening bit by bit for folks. And if anyone wants to join in and engage with the debate, post-debate discussion, give your thoughts.

We'd be happy to engage with that. So you can go to apologiaxlive .com. There's a link to join there. So although we may have found, Eli was finding he upgraded his iPad. And the upgrade may not be, the new iOS version may not be the best for joining.

I don't know. But yeah, so let's walk through it. Walk through why you laid out your opening argument the way you did.

Mm-hmm. Well, I really wanted to avoid the skeptic hiding his position. And so when the skeptic hides their position, it becomes very difficult to actually debate both sides of the coin. Since when a skeptic successfully hides their position, then it's only your position that's being attacked.

And the other person's position is hiding safely away. And so the nature of the transcendental argument is that it forces the skeptic to actually show his hand. In other words, you can't respond to the transcendental argument unless you show your hand.

Since the claim of the transcendental argument is that the truth of the Christian worldview is that if it were not true, you couldn't prove anything at all. Well, how could you answer that argument? Well, you're going to have to lay out your worldview and show that you can have a foundation for proof given your own principles.

That's the very nature of the argument. So it's not shifting a burden of proof. Rather, it's showing that in a worldview versus worldview situation, everyone has a burden of proof. And so I laid it out in that way so that it was set up at the beginning that he would not just sit there and disagree with everything I'm saying, but not actually put forth his own case.

Since what was I arguing for? Which worldview provides the preconditions for knowledge? Which worldview makes sense out of the debate we're about to have? And so I followed very closely Greg Bonson's structure and then added my own twist and emphasis towards the middle and end parts of my opening statement.

But I really like in Greg Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein, how he laid out the issues. You know, it's an issue of worldview, an issue of interpretive grids. We're not just talking about neutral facts.

Facts are interpreted in light of worldview perspectives. And I think a lot of people miss that. They just assume that we can just argue about individual facts and it doesn't really matter because we kind of just generally agree that these specific things are what they are and we can interpret them in various ways.

I wanted to highlight that you have to not be neutral in these kinds of discussions. And so that's the reason why I structured the opening statement the way that I did.

All right. So I mean, I think the thing that I usually find with this topic, right, the topic was, does God exist? And typically what I find is someone that professes to be an atheist or agnostic, as you said, they usually don't give you their position, which Chris actually did, Rick and the Gecko.

Surprisingly, so that's what made it very easy.

It made it very easy, it made it good, yeah. But typically what they want to do is just kind of sit back, avoid and just say, oh, you have the burden of proof. The way they'll do it is say, well, I can't prove a negative, right?

And so they put the burden of proof on you, which in this case, technically, yes, you did have the burden of proof because you're taking the affirmative. Right. And I think that I was wrong about the person I said, maybe an atheist.

He says, not an atheist, just a fan of logic. But I think what you did was, you know, by laying it out, the real question is, he's going to make an argument that God doesn't exist or to his best, to his knowledge, at least God doesn't exist.

And yet really the case you're making is, well, to even make that claim requires immaterial, transcendental things to have this discussion in the first place, which is the burden I think he does have when he denies God to have to say, okay, how can you have these transcendentals, which is why I think you went that way.

For some people that may not understand that, maybe transcendentals are a little bit of a new topic for some folks. Maybe we should spend a little bit of time. And folks, if you want to join, by the way, you just go to apologeticslive .com and you can join in the discussion.

You can ask questions, you can give some challenges. And then later on, if you have opened any other questions after we get done with post-debate, we can discuss those as well. So just go to apologeticslive .com to join us and either engage in this conversation or ask us any questions that you have.

So let's get into transcendentals. First off, what I'd like you to do, since you're not having as much of a 10-minute time window here, we have a little bit more time. Can you explain for folks what a transcendental is?

And then why is that so important in this discussion?

Right. Well, instead of just talking about transcendentals in isolation, I want to talk about transcendentals in the context of an argument. What is a transcendental argument? Because it's a unique argument.

And as one of the commenters was suggesting that I was shifting the burden of proof, I wasn't. I welcome the burden of proof, but I don't want to pretend as though I'm the only one with a burden because we are arguing worldview versus worldview.

And I'm arguing that my worldview provides the necessary preconditions for intelligible experience. So if the unbeliever disagrees with that, then the very nature of the argument is that they actually provide a foundation for their own worldview.

Because that is the nature of my argument. So just throwing that out there. Now, transcendental arguments ask, what are the preconditions for something? In the case of my opening statement, what are the preconditions for intelligible experience?

What are the preconditions for knowledge? What must be true in order for knowledge to be possible? And that question really is challenging whether one's worldview grid is coherent in the first place to even offer an argument in favor of something or against something, right?

So if the worldview is unable to hold itself up, then that person has no foundation because they are working through a defective grid, so to speak, a defective paradigm, right? So transcendental arguments ask, what are the preconditions?

What must be true in order for knowledge to be possible, intelligibility to be possible, science to be possible, coherency of history to be possible? And I would argue that atheism doesn't have it. Atheism does not have a leg to stand on.

If we grant the truth of atheism, regardless of what manifestation of atheism one wants to hold, if someone wants to qualify and say, well, not all atheists believe the same thing. Granted, any atheistic perspective, I would argue, lacks the preconditions for intelligible experience.

Now, in my opening statement, I highlighted the point that that is not a mere claim. I'm not just saying atheism cannot. I am willing to interact and show that my worldview can provide the preconditions.

And the nature of my argument is that it requires the atheist to show that he can provide the necessary preconditions. And from the debate, if you watch the debate, he holds to an atheistic perspective.

He's a pragmatist in regards to knowledge, and even admits, given his own perspective, that we can't know objective truth. And so, right, there you go. I know he knows a bunch of things, but given the truth of his own perspective, he can't know the things that he says he knows.

And there lies the inconsistency.

Yeah, and I think one of the things that I notice with debates like this is you first have to have common ground. You're going to try to say, OK, we're going to discuss whether God exists. You have the burden of proof to prove God exists.

And I'm going to argue, as I did in the debate that we'll do a review of when I get back from California, I argue that immaterial entities, any immaterial entities cannot be a product of pure chemical reaction.

Therefore, they require an immaterial source. A transcendental would be an immaterial entity. And so the issue is you need to have a, you need to have some common ground in the debate. Otherwise, you talk past each other, which happened more in my debate on the Gospel Truth channel than yours.

Right, right. But Andrew, real quick, common ground is not neutral ground.

Correct. And that's why I was very specific about that. Right. Why don't you explain the difference between neutral ground is and then I'll explain why I said common ground.

Yeah, well, when we talk about neutrality, we could look at a fact in a neutral fashion and then go from there. It almost presupposes the reality of brute facts, kind of these uninterpreted facts. They just are, they just are self-evident.

And Cornelius Van Til, who is really the father of presuppositional apologetics, he said in regards to brute facts, brute facts are mute facts. Facts don't speak. Right. In order to understand the fact that needs to be interpreted within a worldview system.

Right. And so we do not speak about individual facts as though they could be understood independent of a worldview. And so that's why I don't discuss the resurrection in isolation. I don't discuss miracles in isolation.

Miracles, resurrection, thoughts of science or whatever are always and only can be discussed within a framework. And so I want to highlight that I have a Christian framework, and therefore I can make sense out of these things.

If you have a non-Christian framework, say an atheistic framework, I would argue that given that framework, the things you think you know about those specific facts, you don't know if your framework is true.

If atheism is true, then you can't know the things you think you know. Again, not a claim. That's the challenge. That's the transcendental challenge. Prove me wrong by putting forth an atheistic, metaphysic, epistemology, ethic, a coherent system, and then make sense out of individual facts.

And I would argue it can't be done.

All right. And so the reason that I said common ground is because I'm not trying to, I'm not arguing that we have a neutral position that we can get to. But in having any kind of debate, we have to have some common way of saying how we're going to argue.

In other words, a lot of times you get into these debates, what you hear from people is they're going to say, well, I want you to prove that God exists using science. Right. And right there, we're going to have a category error because science is the study of the material world.

God is not material. He's immaterial. Therefore, using science can never get you to be able to prove God, which is why I think they like to do that. They like to do that because it automatically puts them in kind of a winning position.

Now, the flip side, you try to use science to prove something like George Washington was the first president. You can't do that from the scientific method. Why? Because we can't produce that, reproduce that or observe that.

You'd use history, right? So that's a different branch of study from science. So they always want to appeal to what you have to use science, the scientific method. And yet what we end up seeing is the scientific method never seems to be challenged in the fact that you can't use that for studying a whole lot of things.

Definitely can't use that for the study of the immaterial world.

Yeah. And I think science, when you say prove to me scientifically, again, now you're laying out your epistemology. So do you think all knowledge comes through scientific proof? If you believe all knowledge comes through scientific proof, you're laying out your epistemology.

But that epistemology does not provide the preconditions of intelligibility because given the truth of that epistemology, it's false. If it's true, it's false. If all knowledge comes through scientific proof, which scientific proof did you use to demonstrate that all knowledge comes through scientific proof?

It's literally contradictory. And the word proof should not be in the same sentence as science. And science is not a proofing discipline. It is a pragmatic discipline. As the atheist cosmologist Sean Carroll said, that science doesn't give us truth.

It gives us theory that work, right? When people say science is always changing and new information is coming in, that presupposes that whatever conclusion you already came to was not necessarily true because more information come in and you can fix it and rearrange your theory and then posit something else.

So, and that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing about science. I understand that. But you can't give science the role that it cannot hold, namely getting to absolute truth. Science itself presupposes a worldview context in which the very method itself makes sense.

And I would argue that in an atheistic worldview, I mean, if you want science to be your epistemology within an atheistic worldview, I would say that that itself is inconsistent given the principles of atheism, regardless of what kind of atheism you want to hold to.

You know, I really enjoyed what we once had on this channel, on this show. Someone came in and was challenging Matt Slick on this. And he said, all things, everything can be proven by science, by the scientific method.

And Matt just sat there and just with all seriousness said, can you prove that statement using the scientific method? And the guy just didn't even It's deliberately false. Well, he missed it. He totally didn't realize.

Matt's saying, well, okay, but you know this to be true. And the guy's like, yes. Okay, prove that using the scientific method. And the guy's like, we wouldn't use science to prove that. He said, but you said you could prove everything by the scientific method.

Like the guy didn't even recognize that when you say everything can be proven by scientific method, that includes that statement itself. And it just like right over his head.

Right. And I would argue that you can't prove anything scientifically. Science is not involved with proving in the sense of absolute certainty. You can come to conclusions.

I'm sorry. So science disproves, science doesn't prove, right? You can Right. Go ahead. No, go ahead. You can use science. So you get a hypothesis. You come out with a hypothesis. Here's what the science would say or assume.

And then you use science to attempt to prove the hypothesis wrong. Now, if you can't, it's assumed to be true. Right now, there's certain, I mean, that's simplifying it very much. But Eli dropped out.

Don't know what just happened to Eli. We'll see if he can come back in. That's always good. I like the technology when it works. Here's Eli. We're waiting for him to come back in. There you go. Now he's coming in slowly.

There we are. So I lost you there. Sorry about that. Now I got to get the Oh, here we go. So there's Jay. Jay Harry, who was the guy saying he's a lover of logic. I agree with Eli on this point. So there you go.

He was disagreeing with you or saying you had the burden of proof or you're shifting proof, but now he agrees with you. So that's good. So where were we before you dropped out? Oh, we were talking about science and proving.

So go ahead with what you were saying.

Well, I was saying that science doesn't engage in proof in the sense of getting us to an absolute certainty about anything. It's pragmatic. So you deal with theories that work. If you say, prove to me scientifically, and you're saying that by proof you mean getting to certainty, then you're using science in an inappropriate way.

And I think smart atheists understand that. Atheists who do science understand science is not getting you to certainty. And that's why theories can change, new information comes in, and science is something that is in constant flux.

And that is not a detriment to science. That's good if you understand science in the proper sense as a pragmatic discipline, not so much a knowledge, a certain knowledge gaining discipline.

And let's get into, and we're going to play Chris's opening in a bit. And you'll tell me when to stop, because I know there's some things you want to interact with it. But this is the first time you're doing a formal debate.

There was some prep work you did. I want, for folks who maybe have never done a debate, last week we had a debate here on Apologetics Live with a Baptist and a Lutheran. And the Lutheran, Rob, had never done a debate before.

And so the first time doing a debate can be a little bit nerve wracking. Let's talk about some of your prep for this and what you were hoping to achieve with your opening before we go to his opening.

Yeah, I don't know how other people prep. I know a lot of people read or listen to stuff. I'm an audio learner. And so I listened through, I learned through listening and I learned through discussion.