Debate Teacher Reacts: Trent Horn vs. Matt Dillahunty

I'm not a resurrection investigator, but of the ones Greg Keener investigated, how many

resurrections did he confirm actually happened?

Somebody write this down.

I got a great television idea for a show starring David Duchovny.

It's about an FBI agent that goes around and he studies resurrection claims.

It's called The Rez Files.

What is up?

It's Friday.

It's time to party.

I'm your excellent host, Nate Zala.

With me as always is Garth.

Party on, Wade.

Party on, Garth.

Okay.

All right.

Well, we got a wonderful debate for you today.

So you guys voted as per Youge and you told me that what you want to see is Trent Horn

versus Matt Dillahunty.

Is belief in the resurrection reasonable?

Now this is a very interesting debate on a channel that's actually super cool.

It kind of reminds me of Capturing Christianity.

It's called Pints with Aquinas.

I can only imagine pints somehow has to do with blood and vampires.

Is that, am I way off?

I'm way off, aren't I?

Well, anyway, it's a great channel.

Got to check it out.

Matt Fradd is the name.

Like that, like that.

Now, if you're brand new to this particular series, welcome, welcome.

I'm really glad that you're here.

Look, the whole goal of this particular series is to raise the level of discourse when it comes to debates.

That's it.

Christians sometimes lose debates.

Atheists sometimes lose debates in this particular series.

It really does come down to who was a better debater.

Now, as you know, cross examination is where it's at.

I always used to tell my students in the classroom that this is where you get to shine or stink really badly.

Now, here's the deal.

We've seen some Matt Dillahunty debates in the past, okay?

We've walked through them together in this series.

We've never seen a Trent Horn debate before, so I'm excited.

Let's go ahead and jump into the debate right now.

Let me just set this timer.

Set the timer, baby.

So just to kind of reiterate this, especially for the crowd who are watching, and by the way, we've got over 1 ,100 people watching

right now.

It's fantastic.

During the cross -examination period, the one who is doing the cross -examining is

welcome to interrupt the other debater, to press them, to cut them off, and this isn't considered being rude.

This is just so that the debaters can ask questions regarding the opening statements, I suppose, that were

just made.

And so we'll start with eight -.

Oftentimes, too.

So in cross -examination, this is absolutely correct.

Kudos to Matt Fradd for letting the audience know, right?

Because not a lot of regular folks on the street, they understand cross -examination or they understand the real rules

of a debate or a more formal debate.

But here's the deal.

Without even knowing it, sometimes people will start to bloviate.

They'll start to filibuster instead of answer the questions.

So you'll find a lot of cross -examination questions to really be boom, boom, boom, down the line, like super quick and fast.

And if the interlocutor understands that his opponent is not answering the question, they're going to cut him off and they're either going to

reiterate the question or move on.

So that's good.

So Trent, whenever you're ready.

Sure.

And Matt, just for common ground, I also am irked by Christians who deny basic aspects of science.

I am very irked at those who deny the efficacy of vaccines, the fact the universe

is billions of years old.

So for a fine common ground, I share your frustration.

I want to be reasonable in my beliefs.

And frankly, there are Catholics even who believe things about the Catholic faith that I don't share because I believe they're being

unreasonable.

So here are a few questions I have.

You said something really interesting.

You said 2 ,000 years ago, it could be reasonable for someone to believe in geocentrism

because that's just how the world appeared.

That's the way the evidence was.

Did I hear that right?

Well, I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know if I tied that to 2 ,000 years ago.

At some point in the past, it was reasonable.

All of the best evidence, the most reasonable conclusion was that the earth orbited the sun.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm just saying because like 500 years ago, people believe that's when we... 2 ,000 years ago is pretty uniform.

Okay.

So if that's the case, then is it reasonable for people to live according to this motto?

Things are as they appear unless evidence shows otherwise.

No.

No.

What would you consider faulty about that kind of a way of approaching the world?

It's one of those things that I would say is probably generally true.

And by the way, thanks for the comment earlier.

I don't want to take any of your time up, but it's been frustrating to me to watch people who

deny vaccines and COVID and all that stuff.

So to say things are as they appear unless evidence shows otherwise is the sort of truism that feels right and

may be a good kind of starting rule, but we already have at this point in human history, a

good understanding of how we can be fooled, optical illusions, let's say, and mirages.

We know those sorts of things exist.

And so now I would say that while generally speaking,

we should largely trust our senses and how things first appear.

We have to do so tentatively with the knowledge that we might be wrong.

Well, unless evidence shows us how things appear, that's not the way they are.

I mean, this is almost a qualification without a difference.

It just depends on what you mean by appear and what you mean by evidence, right?

Well, it's one thing to say, I'm convinced that this is likely to be the case.

And it's another thing to say, I think this is the case.

And what I worry about is that this statement would be like, oh, I'm right and rationally justified until you prove

me wrong.

And that's not the way.

Okay.

So look, here's what Trent is doing.

Trent is, he's starting, he's trying to start off by finding a point of an agreement, right?

So that from there, he can work towards areas of disagreement with Matt, okay?

This is a very good debate tactic.

Even when you're not debating, it's just a really great way of communicating with people like in normal conversations.

Matt did appear to suggest in his opening statement that there are things that we used to believe, but now we don't believe them, right?

You should check out the opening statements of both interlocutors.

And there's a link to the full debate in the show notes.

I mean, obviously we don't believe things that we used to believe because we've discovered new evidence to the contrary.

So I mean, I don't think Trent is really saying anything controversial that Matt should disagree with.

I mean, he's made that clarification about optical illusions, but he's agreeing, you know, probably what Trent is

doing right here is he's setting up Matt for a knockout punch later, right?

We call this setting the garden path.

You know, you ask what appeared to be a series of relatively innocuous questions, and that's

at the forefront, but what you're doing is you're setting yourself up for a humdinger of a question later, okay?

Let's go to the meat of this.

I would fill in the blank.

The belief in Jesus's resurrection is unreasonable because, and I tried to, I think you put down

multiple things.

At the very beginning, you said something like, it's unreasonable because it's not consistent with what we know to be

true or in accord with reality.

Is there a way you could give me like a one or two sentence if that's correct or more needs to be added on?

Belief in the resurrection is unreasonable because, I caught it at the beginning, not consistent with what we know to be true.

A reasonable belief has to be consistent with what we know to be true, is what you said earlier.

Well, at the closing of my opening, it was, it's not reasonably because there isn't

sufficient evidence.

There isn't physical evidence.

There's none of this.

We just have testimonial accounts.

Okay.

But part of it is, you also said that it's like, it's an extraordinary event because

resurrections don't happen.

They've never been confirmed.

Right.

Okay.

How many resurrection claims have you investigated?

Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh.

Well, just -.

Excuse me.

Hold on a second.

I think I'm bleeding.

I think I'm bleeding from that uppercut.

This is what happens when you make sweeping claims like resurrections have never been confirmed.

You're not citing a study.

You're not pointing to any article or journal or anything.

You're just saying it.

The only thing supporting your words right now is the authoritarian confidence in your tone.

Okay.

Well, guess what?

That means that your credibility as an expert on resurrection confirmations must be questioned.

It must be questioned.

This is textbook.

What you need to do when someone like Matt Dillahunty says these things.

Just from the Bible, we have Jesus's, Lazarus's, and then all of the saints who rose up out of their graves and

marched on Jerusalem in the middle of it.

I find no compelling evidence for any of those.

There was a resurrection -.

And -.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I got the term wrong.

Right.

Were you alluding?

I'm curious, the question is just how many resurrection claims

outside of the Bible have you investigated to see if this does happen?

Well, I don't know what we're going to call investigating.

I saw a YouTube video that purported to be of a resurrection, but there was no way to investigate it.

If there's no way to look into the details of the claim beyond the claim itself, I don't know what investigation can

happen.

I don't know how to investigate something that supposedly took place.

In Craig Keener's two -volume work on miracles, he lists about 600

resurrection claims.

I think about 500 of them, or at least more than 500 are outside of the Bible.

Let's say only 5 of them, 30 of them, you could contact

witnesses or things like that.

It seems like there are these claims of resurrection out there.

Is your answer to the question, how many resurrection claims outside of the Bible have you investigated?

The answer is one, by watching a YouTube video.

Oh, man.

I don't know how this is remotely relevant, because what I was trying to say is...

It's relevant, Matt, because you're saying that resurrections don't happen.

It's an extraordinary event.

It's not consistent with reality.

That's a claim, but I'm wondering what's the evidence for that claim?

Bingo.

This is what you have to remember, ladies and gentlemen.

Whenever you disagree with someone and you provide an argument and they dispute it by saying something along the lines of, well, your argument is false

because these things never happen, you have to fight the urge to defend yourself.

Because normally, think about that, in a regular conversation, you say that.

Normally what happens is when you hear the response, you jump back in and you go, oh, sure they do, and here are

nine more reasons why they happen.

That's not your job.

That's not your job.

You need to be like Neo in the Matrix and just see things for what they really are.

As a matter of fact, a great exercise, I think, to do would be to go back to the opening statements, both

of the opening statements, and flow them.

Flow means take notes.

Take notes of the opening statements, both of them, then go back and annotate those notes.

Here's your question.

Here's your annotation question.

What are claims?

What are evidences?

And what are arguments?

And keep track of them.

Identify where the arguments are, the claims are, the evidences are.

If you do that, you're going to quickly notice that Trent Horn provided a lot of arguments, and then he spent

time unpacking each of the arguments that he provided.

He even included, I think, three tests to determine whether or not a belief is reasonable or unreasonable.

Whether you agree with that or not, I'm just saying, this is what he did in his opening statements, and he unpacked all of his arguments.

Matt didn't provide a whole lot of arguments.

He just didn't do anything close to the level of work that Trent Horn did in his opening

statement, and it shows here.

If resurrections were known, and we would have scientific journals on them, people would be getting Nobel Prizes for

demonstrating resurrections.

People would be coming on the news to say, hey, here's a resurrection, which is what happened with the YouTube video that was purportedly a

resurrection.

I'm not a resurrection investigator, but of the ones that Keener investigated, how many

resurrections did he confirm actually happened?

Somebody write this down.

I got a great television idea for a show starring David Duchovny.

It's about an FBI agent that goes around and he studies resurrection claims.

It's called The Res Files.

Anybody?

Anybody?

Just me?

Well, he's providing the evidence there for other people to look at, so I'm just curious.

You say it doesn't happen, but there are claims out there even today, but they're not investigated.

Do you believe those claims, Trent?

Do you believe those claims?

You can ask me in your cross -examination, Matt, that's fine.

That's good.

That's good to remember.

Cross -examination belongs to only one specific interlocutor at a time, and turning

the tables and asking questions is basically bait a good debater should not bite.

All right?

By the way, Trent is attacking Matt's opening statement here.

I don't know if you noticed this, but that's exactly what you're supposed to do.

Trent has actually been flowing Matt's opening statement.

He's been writing stuff down and he's referring to it in his cross -examination.

That's exactly what you need to do as a good debater.

The other thing that's noteworthy about what Trent is doing here is he's following the framework that he laid out in his

own opening statement.

Remember, a framework is your way of narrating to the audience how they should think through

this debate, how they should judge the debate, and how they should determine a winner.

Trent did an excellent job of laying down a framework on multiple occasions in his opening, and his questions so far

have been kind of tracking the framework that he laid.

So far, I'd say Trent has the upper hand.

Okay, here's the next one.

You say that we don't have sufficient evidence for the resurrection, so that's why it's unreasonable to believe in it.

What would sufficient evidence for Jesus' resurrection look like?

I listed the thing.

It would be nice to be able to show that we have good reason to think that a person existed, that they died, and that they rose

afterwards.

Something other than just a story and claims of that.

Is there physical evidence for this?

Okay.

Fine, then.

Is it reasonable to believe that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate?

I don't think so.

Okay, so do you think that all historians in the world

that teach at major universities, it's unreasonable for them that they believe Jesus was crucified under Pontius

Pilate?

For them to believe it?

Perhaps.

Yeah.

Perhaps it's unreasonable for them to believe it.

For them to teach it as this is what is believed is not problematic.

No, I'm saying that.

So you're saying it's unreasonable to affirm that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

This is what happened.

I'm saying I am not convinced.

I am not personally convinced that that's the case.

And there it is, right?

I was waiting for this, and there it is.

He took his debater hat off, and now he puts on his audience member hat, and now he gets to be a judge

of the debate when that's not his role.

This tactic has no place in a real debate, and it's really a sneaky way of positioning to

always claiming that the other side somehow lost because at the end of the day, I'm just not convinced.

Okay, you can say everything that you want to, but I'm still not convinced.

And then you can say that you won.

And I'm not saying that that's what Matt is doing on purpose, but that is the effect of all of this.

You're not supposed to do that.

You're not supposed to jump around and play different roles in a debate.

You only have one role.

It's the role of the debater.

And Matt needs to make the case and really defend his position in this particular debate.

I'm not interested in what you're convinced by, because you agree there's a difference between what would

convince you and what is reasonable to believe.

Are there any things out there?

Well, let me ask you a question.

Are there any things that you don't believe, but you think it's reasonable for other

people to believe them?

Other people at different times, yes, as I already alluded to.

But no, of course, I think I'm reasonable.

Okay, so I'm not saying you're not reasonable.

I'm saying there are other...

Sorry, we might be running out of...

That was to keep me on track.

Did you want to finish that question, have Matt respond, and then I'll let him go?

No, I gave an example in my opening statement.

At least from what I saw with your engagement with Alex O 'Connor, you do not believe a person.

What's wrong?

What the hell does Alex O 'Connor have to do with this?

You've mentioned him twice.

He's an atheist.

The discussion wasn't about...

Okay.

What I'm trying to find is that there is a belief you're not convinced of, but you wouldn't say is

unreasonable.

Do you think ethical veganism that Alex endorses is unreasonable?

Yes.

Ooh, I was getting ready to get that to that in my response.

So in this last part of the conversation, Matt at least stood his ground and tried to be consistent, right?

I mean, from a tactical standpoint, if he agrees with Trent that there are some areas where

someone can reasonably believe things to be true that Matt is not convinced of, then the next question

obviously is, well, isn't the resurrection an area like that?

And if not, why not, right?

What Trent is doing is he's really trying to zoom in on a clear standard or criteria of a reasonable belief.

Matt didn't provide one though.

That's the thing.

He said things like a claim is reasonable if it's consistent with what we already know to be true about

reality.

But then he defines what we know to be true about reality, right?

I mean, which is really super convenient.

All of a sudden he's traveled all over the world in order to be the expert on what does and does not happen in

reality every single day.

Even to say that there is no physical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, he's not defining what he means or what he's looking

for.

It's really weird to ask for physical evidence for a resurrection that took place in the past.

I mean, what is he even talking about?

He doesn't define it.

He just says it doesn't exist, okay?

And so a lot of this, it hides really what's going on at base with Matt, which is

Matt's verificationism.

That's his method.

He doesn't come out and say, look, I'm a verificationist or I'm an empiricist or whatever, but he certainly talks

like one.

You know, we talked about this in the past.

Verificationism is the idea that only those things that can be empirically verified are the things that we should hold to or

are the things that we should consider to be meaningful.

That's how Matt can cross his arms and he can lean back and he can just say, well, you know, the resurrection never happened.

I am not convinced, right?

The problem is verificationism by its own standard is false.

That means it's self -defeating, which is really weird why Matt would sit here and pull

out this dead theory.

In the 1960s, he was considered to be dead and just trotted around like it's weekend at Bernie's.

So I wanted to thank Trump from the start because he said something that

was incredibly true and that other people frequently get wrong in his opening, which is my position

is not to show that it's not reasonable to believe that it did happen and

not to show that it's reasonable to believe that it did not happen.

I don't have to be convinced that it didn't happen.

I just am unconvinced that it did.

And so on the issue -.

There it is again.

My position in this debate is that I'm an audience member.

That's what he just said.

I mean, that is what?

That's gobbledygook.

Amazing.

His ethical veganism is reasonable.

No, I don't think it's reasonable.

Of the claims that Craig Keener, since you referenced him, found about resurrections, how many of them was he able to

confirm actually occurred?

Well, I don't know because I haven't spoke with him about how many he believes happened.

I think some are related to him.

How many do you believe happen?

I don't know.

I've heard a claim.

Well, there's one by a guy named Simon Kimbangu in 19th century in Africa who had a reputation for

raising people from the dead that Robert Price cited as an example of having evidence

similar or less than to Jesus.

And that's a possibility.

But I'll be frank, I haven't investigated them thoroughly because I'm not

setting out to debunk them.

They could have happened.

They couldn't have happened.

It doesn't really change my major views on things.

So I haven't really set out to say they don't happen.

But I'm open to them having happened.

It's quite possible.

Okay.

Except that resurrection stories are at least likely happening now or that resurrection.

Sorry.

Not resurrection stories.

It's it's possible, but I think that it would be very infrequent.

How do you know it's possible?

How do you know it's possible?

Because because Jesus rose from the dead.

And so that's the thing we're debating.

You don't get to assume that.

How do you if you're.

Notice what's happening here.

Trent in his opening statement provided multiple lines of argumentation.

Okay.

He argued for what counts as evidence.

He argued for he gave an inference to the best explanation for the resurrection claims themselves.

He gave an argument from change for the existence of God.

He even gave three tests to determine whether or not a belief is reasonable or unreasonable.

He gave like a standard like a criteria.

What Matt should be doing is he should be attacking any of these arguments.

And actually, if he's if he's really with it, he should be attacking all of them point by point with some kind of questions to expose

their flaws and inconsistencies if he can find them.

Instead, he's asking Trent if he's open to resurrections happening now.

Why is he like if he's setting Trent up, you know, for some kind of a knockout punch later?

I mean, he's only got eight minutes here.

So, you know, also, did you notice what Matt did?

Matt said that Trent assumes the resurrection.

That's not what's going on.

It's almost like it's almost like Matt didn't even watch the opening statement and he was sitting right there.

I showed you.

Hang on.

If your belief that the resurrections are happening now is based on the fact that you think Jesus resurrected. That doesn't mean that

your belief is reasonable.

That just is a cascading unreasonableness.

Well, no, because I gave an argument for why it's reasonable to believe Jesus rose from the dead based on the evidence

provided.

And so if he rose from the dead and he's divine, he could have power to work miracles today or throughout history.

So so you're basically saying that you're willing to accept a claim of a resurrection as reasonable

without any physical evidence.

Well, what.

What kind of physical evidence would there is a resurrection of especially one in the past?

OK, just bingo.

All right.

That's what you have to ask.

You have to ask a definition of what the heck Matt is talking about.

What is Matt looking for here?

Because it kind of sounds a little strange.

Like, I can't think of physical evidence, particularly like what he's looking for,

which I think he said something about life, death, you know, like what is the physical evidence for this that he's looking for?

Be trying when it comes to a call.

Resurrections are in the past.

Everything is in the past, right?

I'm asking you, are you willing to accept a claim of resurrection is reasonable in the absence of any physical evidence?

What do you mean by physical evidence?

OK, well, did we have, you know, doctor's reports on the cause of illness and death and then

a period of time where they were confirmed to be dead and then a period of time where they were confirmed to be living again after that

with medical examinations?

And how do you know you're not being caught?

Yeah.

But what is a doctor's report?

Like what is confirmation of death?

These are literally someone else's eyewitness testimony to these things taking place.

Right.

I mean, again, does Matt know like what he's looking for specifically?

I mean, I don't think he does.

And so it's really weird to keep demanding something from your interlocutor that you can't even really define.

He literally says this in his opening statement, by the way.

I don't know if you paid attention that he does not know what would count as physical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

OK, he just knows that whatever anybody tries to provide him, that's not evidence.

You ever talk to that really old family member, you know, and they're like, well, what's the name of that movie?

You know, with the guy Robert Downey Jr.

And you're like, is it Iron Man, grandma?

And she's like, no, no, no, you know, that can't be it.

It's it's the one where he puts on the metal suit.

Right.

And he fights the bad guys.

And you're like, grandma, is it Iron Man?

And she's like, no, no, no, that can't be it.

He's got the computer assistant Jarvis.

And I think Gwyneth Paltrow's in it, too.

And you're like, is it Iron Man, grandma?

It's Iron Man.

Come on now.

And she's like, no, no, no, that can't be the movie.

It can't be Iron Man.

Right.

I mean, this is ridiculous.

OK, so you're saying to be reasonable.

I think I was here tracking here for it to be reasonable.

To believe in resurrection, you'd have to affirm a person did exist and they died and they were

seen alive after their death.

In some cases, to pass the important points there.

I was I was specifically asking about with a lack of physical evidence and the physical evidence that I would be talking about

is medical scientific evidence about that individual.

It's not that, you know, that would be the case.

That wouldn't be physical evidence.

That would be another kind of testimonial evidence from someone like a doctor who says, yep, this

person is dead.

You know what?

Trent Horn is on his game.

Methinks Trent has done some debating in the past, OK?

Because he's really catching a lot of these things.

See, I wonder how long I'm late to the Matt Dillahunty game.

OK, I wonder how long Matt Dillahunty got away with this kind of crap without somebody calling him out on

this stuff.

Trent knows exactly what's going on.

He sees things for what for what they really are.

And he's calling it out.

I mean, he's doing a really great job.

Like a doctor who says, yep, this person is dead because I'm very familiar with what you know what

constitutes a dead person.

Now, modern medicine is fairly new.

So in older resurrection accounts like the one we're currently debating, we would have to rely on other kinds of

testimony.

And I think it's very likely.

Well, basically what happened is that Jesus did die from crucifixion based on the details, all the accounts related there.

So so you're willing to accept the.

A that an individual rose from the dead with nothing more than just testimonial

evidence.

Well, how do we know that anything happened in the past?

I don't know why you won't answer the question.

I'm asking you, are you saying you're willing?

Are you saying you're willing to believe a resurrection with nothing more than testimonial evidence?

I am willing to believe that Jesus Christ died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.

That is not the question I asked.

Why is it every time I ask a question, you go back to something that's not going to answer?

Is it my time to ask questions or not?

I thought the whole thing you can ask was to be able to interrupt, to redirect.

I'm willing to let you answer if you will answer the question.

Objection, Your Honor.

Non -responsive.

Are you saying you are?

Are you saying it's not going to get you?

Are you going to keep trying to talk over me while I'm asking the question again?

Go ahead.

Are you saying that you are willing to believe that a resurrection occurred based only on testimonial

evidence?

Will you allow me to answer the question sufficiently?

I promise I can do it in less than 30 seconds.

It's a yes or no question, Trent.

Yes, I believe that people can testify to things that happen.

That's not what I asked.

I said, are you willing to?

Fine, yes, yes, yes.

But you only want to answer no, then yes.

It's not interesting, but OK.

I'm not.

I'm not here for interesting.

I'm here to find out what's reasonable.

And here's the crux of it.

This is fun.

This is fun.

Now, here's the thing.

Matt, Matt was in the lead.

Matt was in the driver's seat on that particular exchange.

OK, and I mean, here's the thing about cross -examination.

Like I said, if you go back and look at more formal debates, you're going to notice a lot of yes or no answers, right?

Like that.

And that's the thing.

It's like you got to be ready to be faced with a question that is worded in such a way that is not

advantageous to your particular position.

And you have to answer yes or no.

You know, I mean, that's the deal.

So, you know, Trent got Trent got it a little bit from Matt Dillahunty.

So that's that's fun, which we can have this discussion afterwards because I don't I don't have any follow up questions after this.

And that is this.

You don't have any.

You are willing to explain what that are an extraordinary, miraculous event occurred based only on testimony.

And I am not.

That's it.

That is the foundational difference between our epistemology.

I will not accept that the physical understanding of the universe was

suspended for an individual based only on testimonial accounts.

It is unreasonable.

That is how you get conned.

That's how magicians.

What it boils down to is Matt does not accept this because once again, he's an audience member

when he wants to be an audience member, and he's a debater only when it's good for him to be a debater.

Doesn't matter what case Trent made at all.

Doesn't matter anything that he possibly said.

Doesn't matter.

He could have given 15 different arguments and he could have laid out nine different criteria for beliefs,

whether they're reasonable or unreasonable.

It doesn't matter because at the end of the day, I don't accept it.

That's Matt's position in this debate.

That is pathetic.

That is pathetic.

Very disappointing cross -examination from Matt.

Here's why Trent did better than Matt this time around.

OK, Matt should have attacked specifically Trent's contentions, his arguments and

everything that Trent gave in his opening statement, because in more formal debates, if you don't attack

the main contentions, if you don't attack the arguments and the evidence in your in your interlocutors opening

position, you concede them.

You concede them.

OK, so your goal is to do as much as you possibly can.

That's why you got to take notes.

And it seems like Matt wasn't even paying attention to Trent's opening statement.

I mean, that's how he came across.

I don't know if he really was or not.

Matt didn't do that.

Matt tried to basically cast doubt on evidence without identifying any kind of a specific criteria

that itself is not question begging, which is really funny.

In other words, Matt assumes verificationism, but never justifies it in the debate at all.

He just assumes it.

Guess what happens?

He runs right up against historians like he runs right up against history.

Now you have Matt saying, well, I think historians are actually being a little foolish.

Wow.

Like that is totally absurd.

And anybody trying to do this, if you're taken with Matt Dillahunty, I'm not trying to be disrespectful to Matt Dillahunty for no

reason.

But y 'all should be really ashamed.

Like this is embarrassing.

This particular style of argument, there's so many different ways to challenge Christianity that are so

much more productive than what I just saw here.

People who try this should be humbled.

Really, you know, but but I guess if you're Matt Dillahunty, you're not humbled.

You just stay confident and you carry on.

Now, here's the thing about this particular debate.

I mean, it really doesn't track any differently than any other Matt Dillahunty debate.

And for those who in the audience don't know any better.

Wow.

That sounds like he's really doing a great job.

Here's the thing.

He's not.

He's not.

He comes to debates with no real justification for his views, doesn't bother to provide any.

And then he just starts throwing out claims.

You know, every now and then there's an argument that he puts out there.

Doesn't really unpack it.

Doesn't really justify it.

Isn't really concerned with the fact that he has absolutely no idea what would count as

evidence for the resurrection, fiscal or otherwise.

Doesn't doesn't know.

But he certainly knows that all of the Christians that have stood in the place of Trent Horne, including Trent, they're

not providing evidence.

That's not good enough.

I mean, to me, this is as clear as the sun is out in the sky right now.

Like Matt Dillahunty lost.

Hands down, he lost.

He lost the moment he started opening his mouth.

So, I mean, here's where we are, right?

This is probably the last Matt Dillahunty debate that we're going to do at this series.

Wah wah.

Because why?

What is what else could Matt Dillahunty show us that he's he's he's doing the same things in every debate?

It's really to the point where this isn't instructive anymore.

So, look, why don't we go ahead and say our goodbyes to Matt Dillahunty?

We'll take all of our hats off in honor of Matt.

All of our hats.

And we shall say goodbye.

Trent Horne won for the reasons that I stated in the in the cross examination.

And Trent actually is probably one of the better debaters I've seen so far in this series.

Like up there, you know, like whether you like him or not.

William Lane Craig is probably one of the better debaters I've seen in this series.

James White is one of the better debaters that I've seen in this series.

Who else?

And Trent Horne is one of the better debaters that I've seen.

So, you know, it just shows that if you have a background in these things, you can actually see real

contentions.

You can see real arguments and real evidence.

And you can also identify when nothing is there.

Nothing is behind the words.

OK, and that's what Trent did.

He did a really great job of handling himself.

And Trent Horne won this debate.

Now, for those of you that watch the full thing again, why don't you tell me who you think won in the debate?

Put it in the comments below.

And we'll go ahead and tackle another debate upcoming in the near future.

Let me know if there's any debate that you want me to take a look at.

We're keeping a list and we're knocking them out.

In the meantime, thanks so much for watching.

And I will say bye for now.