Why Apologetics? A Conversation with Dr. Phil Fernandez

Opening Remarks and Introduction of Dr. Phil Fernandez

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I am feeling a little under the weather. So I do apologize if I took some Advil cold and sinus. So I shouldn't be thrown into fits of sneezing, but if I do, I just wanna give you just a preemptive couple of remarks there.

At any rate, I'm very happy to have Dr. Phil Fernandez on with me to discuss apologetics in general, and perhaps we'll get into some of the specific things that he's working on. And of course, I do want to point you into the direction of some of his books that are available on Amazon.

I have found some of his notes and outlines to be very helpful, and so folks might be interested in that. Now, we usually have the show at 9 p .m. Eastern, but it is 10. So sometimes we have to work around the schedules of the guests, and that's hopefully, if there are a couple of people still up right now, hopefully you guys will find this conversation beneficial.

So without further ado, I'm gonna just give some background on Dr. Phil Fernandez, and then I'm gonna invite him on the screen with me, and we'll begin this conversation, okay? Dr. Phil Fernandez has earned the following degrees, a PhD in Philosophy of Religion from Greenwich University, a Master of Arts in Religion from Liberty University, and a Bachelor of Theology from Columbia Evangelical Seminary.

Dr. Fernandez is a member of four professional societies, the Evangelical Theological Society, Evangelical Philosophical Society, the International Society of Christian Apologetics, the International Society of Christian Apologetics, and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Dr. Fernandez is the author of several books, The God Who Sits Enthroned, Evidence for God's Existence, No Other Gods, A Defense of Biblical Christianity, God, Government, and The Road to Tyranny, Contend Earnestly for the Faith, and Theism Versus Theism.

He's also debated various atheists. I believe he's debated Dan Barker, and I think he co-authored a sort of internet debate with the atheist, Dr. Michael Martin. Dr. Fernandez has also contributed a chapter to The Big Argument, Does God Exist, edited by John Ashton and Michael Westacott, and Dr. Fernandez honorably served his country from 1980 to 1983 in the United States Marine Corps.

I will always appreciate, there's a comment here, I will always appreciate the love, patience, and encouragement of my wife, and that's behind every great man is, of course, a great woman, right? So I like that as I'm reading his little information segment here.

Military Background, Boxing, and the Road to Conversion

So without further ado, let me introduce Dr. Phil Fernandez. Thank you so much, Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil, I'm just gonna call you Phil, if that's okay.

That's okay, you can call me whatever you want there, brother.

Well, welcome on to Revealed Apologetics. I'm happy that you could make it.

Oh, it's great to be here, great to be here. You sound like a good guy, so.

Well, I appreciate that. So why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself, perhaps something that I missed, or some information that they, that folks might find useful about yourself?

Well, I wanted, just because it took me about, what, 15 years to finish, but I finally finished up my doctorate of ministry and Christian apologetics through Veritas International University. I started it with Southern Evangelical Seminary, because I was constantly following Dr. Norm Geisler around the country, which is how I would get enrolled.

He'd start another school or take another position. And so, but I finished that doctorate of ministry, but since it took me so long to finish it, because I'm not a practical guy, so when it came to the project, they kept getting it rejected.

No, this is a dissertation, we need a project. So I'll throw that in there, and so that would kind of get you caught up there. And then I, well, I would just say that there's a lot of, I really think that apologists, as we continue to defend the deity of Christ, God's existence, Jesus' resurrection, biblical inerrancy and inspiration, I also like it when we spend a little bit of time with guys like Gray Cockle doing cultural apologetics, because I think it'd be a shame if, we need to preach the gospel, but it would also be nice to be the watchman on the wall and sound the warning.

And I think that freedom is very, very rapidly eroding in this country. So I'm doing a lot of work right now on cultural apologetics and all.

Sure, sure, that's an important thing. I think a lot of people get bogged down in kind of like the apologetic methodology debates, like classicalism, evidentialism, presuppositionalism, which I think are important topics, but we do need to, what you just said here is kind of applying some of this stuff to the culture.

We do need to find ways to really make this applicable to the current situation and not just sit in our armchairs debating methodologies.

Probably C .S. Lewis is probably the most balanced that I could think of in the 20th century, because, I mean, he covered not only rational arguments in Christianity, but he also did cultural apologetics with the abolition of man.

And then he even led people to Christ through the imagination, kind of narrative, what I would call narrative apologetics. I have a book, The Fernandez Guide to Apologetic Methodologies. And I actually think there's about 17 different apologetic methodologies that are out there.

And we just kind of force apologists into four or five groups when they don't really fit. Right.

Well, okay, so I do wanna jump into some of the apologetic stuff, but why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a Christian, and then we'll transition into talking about what got you into apologetics.

Okay, yeah. Well, I grew up in a Roman Catholic home. I was the grandson of Portuguese immigrants and Italian immigrants. And my father's first language, he was born in 1920. He wanted 13 kids. His first language was Portuguese.

Grew up during the, he grew up during the depression and stuff. So the Italians were just being accepted in New Jersey because of the, you know, the mafia connection. They didn't know why, until they figured out the Veloci papers and the mafia families, they didn't know why every time they arrest 10 gangsters, you know, six of them are Italian.

So they thought it reflected on the people, but then they found out, no, they were just, we were just more organized in our crime than other ethnic groups. And so the Italians were excited. The Portuguese, nobody knew what a Portuguese was.

So that was kind of interesting. So I'd hang out with some guys and they'd make fun of me for being Italian. And, but I grew up with the Italians and they made fun of me for being Portuguese. So one thing led to another.

So I became, I was a really small guy. So I became a good fighter. And, and so I did some boxing back in Jersey and stuff. And that always kind of blew up in my face. A lot of politics in New Jersey boxing.

Sure. And, you know, if you didn't knock out Lou Duva's guys, they'd get the decision and the crowd would express its disfavor with that, with some choice language. But, but so eventually I had, you know, mopping floors and boxing.

I wasn't getting anywhere. So a light heavyweight from the gym that I boxed at talked me into joining the Marine Corps with him. And he was an orphan, you know, so he didn't have anything going for him.

And, and, but he wanted to be a Marine. So he talked me into going to Marine Corps with him on the buddy system. And so I figured, you know, I don't want to be a Marine, but, you know, we got hostages in, in Iran.

I'm not patriotic, but, you know, I need to, you know, if they'll pay for, Marine would pay for my way out of Jersey, you know, I'll go with it. And, and plus everywhere I get stationed, Rob Tucker will be there with, Ooh, I didn't want to mention his name anyway.

But it turned out he didn't show up to take the oath. Okay. So here I was, he convinced me to join in, sign up with him. But I ended up going into Marine Corps alone cause he didn't show up to, he didn't follow through.

And so I thought, okay, I just threw away three years of my life. But, but with Marine Corps bootcamp was tough on me because, you know, in New Jersey, you're taught nobody, you're from Long Island, you know this, they're taught nobody badmouth your mother or your family.

You take them down, you take them down hard. And that's all your drill instructors do in a Marine Corps. They just, they badmouth your family, they get in your face, you can't retaliate, right? I wasn't even a Christian.

In fact, I was questioning God's existence at that point in my life. But, but I was already learning how to turn the other cheek. And cause I, the only way out of Parris Island is, you know, I didn't want to go get kicked out and all.

Now, by the way, my friend Tucker, he, he went in a month later and him and another guy ended up beating up a drill instructor and then going UA on out to his absence and he got busted, did break time, a long story there.

So, so God was used to light heavyweight from my gym to get me into Marine Corps, to get me out of my comfort zone back in Jersey where I thought it was a hotshot. And, yet saw to it that I wasn't with this guy because it would have been a bad influence on my life.

And so we took two different, two different tracks in life. And, but then they sent me, you know, Ronald Reagan gets elected when I'm in bootcamp. So then Ayatollah Khomeini is coughing up the hostages.

So I thought, hey, you know, I don't, you know, I don't want to kill people, but if that's what my job is and they pay me to do it, you know, it's a paycheck, you know? And, but all of a sudden there's no war.

Khomeini is coughing up the hostages. So they sent me to, to Washington State guarding nuclear weapons. Which is like some of the most boring duty on the planet earth. Bin Ladens in the world are not going to mess with the United States Marines guarding nuclear weapons.

There are too many of us and we're too well-trained. So you knew nobody was going to hit you. So I went from a pretty fast life style back in Jersey. And slow down. Really boring. I mean, I could hear birds chirping.

People didn't, you know, I used to hate guys from Brooklyn and the Bronx. They got to the point where I'd give my right arm to meet a guy from Brooklyn or the Bronx because they were the only guys who understood me, you know?

Sure, sure, sure. I had guys used to, they'd yell at me and question my manhood and I'd take them to the wall and they don't want to fight. Right. Like in New Jersey, you don't mess with a guy unless you want to fight.

So, so I was like, totally like a fish out of water. And I thought I was gonna have a nervous breakdown. And I started drinking. That didn't, that didn't go too well. Oh, and in the meantime, boxing was out of the picture because I gained 20 pounds in Marine Corps bootcamp.

They had Navy doctors looking at me because everybody else was losing 20 pounds. I gained 20 pounds, lost my six pack abs. I went in weight. How'd you manage to do that? Did you sneak in some jelly doughnuts and while you were in the Marine Corps?

No, Marine Corps just, they fed me so well, but Marine Corps bootcamp, but they trained Marines hard, but not as hard as New Jersey boxers. So I was, I was getting out of shape and overeating. Hmm. Okay.

And so, cause they did feed us real well. Once they found out I had been a boxer before I joined the Marine Corps, they realized I was just getting out of shape. So that's when I had to become a weightlifter because there's, believe it or not, there's no future for a five foot five heavyweight.

And so I wasn't gonna get down to the lightweight class anymore. So, and

You can only reach the knee, punching the knees. It doesn't really, doesn't really help you.

You could, I boxed one Marine who was 6 '7", 270 when I got up to 160 in body weight. And, and I noticed I was eye level with his solar plexus. So I just kept slipping under his jab and drilling him with a right hand to the solar plexus.

So I got the wind out of him and then he quit. And it was only about a minute and a half into it. So, so What was your, what was your record? Oh, it wasn't, it wasn't good. Only AAU sanctioned fights, I only had two.

Lost both, but I fought a guy, an Irish kid, Danny McElhinney, who was one of Lou Duva's fighters. He ended up turning pro. All the guys I fought turned pro, but I battered him for three rounds. Even he apologized after the fight.

He knew he lost. And the crowd said, BS, BS. But they said, word, because they know I got the decision. But then, but he was a junior Olympic champ. So the water was out. I was a hard hitter just to kind of avoid me and stuff, so it was hard to get one night fights and stuff.

And so then I ended up gaining weight, going into 147 class. I was out of shape. I battered a kid, John Martin, from Irvington PAL. But I got tired and I, when I get tired, instead of sitting and ducking below a punch and then throwing to the body, I was leaning forward and he hit me on the top of the head.

It's the most embarrassing way to get knocked out. It doesn't even, Marvis Frazier got knocked out by, I think, James Broad.

Well, let's not rekindle the painful memories.

I fought a lot of exhibitions at the Colwell Police Athletic League and other gyms and stuff. And I probably won two thirds of my fight, but my trainer knew I would have been better as a pro than an amateur, because I like to take my time and trade punches with guys.

And that doesn't work as an amateur. And then I almost turned pro. At age 30, a promoter out of Portland offered me $400 for four round fights. But then I tore my bicep in a freak accident. So I took that as God telling me he wanted me to preach, didn't want me to get back in it.

Sure, sure. So why don't we transition there? So you have a military background. You're a fighter. You were a fighter. And what was the specific thing that led you to Christ? I mean, what was, how did you become a Christian?

Well, yeah, I was looking for meaning. I didn't care about truth at the time. And I was looking for meaning, nothing seemed to make sense. And Marine Corps duty was so boring. They never showed me videos of Marines shining their boots and mopping floors, but that's all I was doing.

That wasn't in the promotional video, right? Yeah, so. Where's the lava monster? You remember that commercial or the Marine Corps commercial where the guy's hiding? Yeah, yeah, I do. You don't know lava monsters in the Corps?

Yeah, no, a lot of mop.

I wanted to take a picture of me putting the mop in the rack with other Marines like Iwo Jima. And I couldn't get three other Marines to do it with me. There were two pictures. But whatever the case, so I started drinking and then I was getting in fights, getting in trouble.

So I thought, okay, I'm just gonna quit drinking totally. So I just quit drinking. Probably the only Marine I knew that quit drinking. So then I thought, well, maybe I'll find some meaning in boxing again.

But Marines don't know how to box. So I used to get boxing bigger and bigger football player type guy, they didn't know how to box. So I was like, well, this is dumb. And so then I thought, well, my dad found, seemed to find meaning in Catholic mass.

So I started going back to Catholic mass. And then a lady invited me and the other Marines to her house for a home cooked meal. And we got there, it was all pictures of Jesus on the wall. So I thought, oh man, I've been set up.

But she knew she wouldn't have an open door with us. We were all from New York and New Jersey. So she said, I've got a friend who wants to talk to you and he's an ex-convict. And the guy had done eight years and he was a pretty tough guy.

And so I kind of respected him. And then the Lord knew I'd only listened to Catholics on spiritual issues. And so it turned out they were part of the Catholic charismatic movement, but they were a back to the Bible movement in 1981.

So at age 21, they led me to Christ. And I was seeking, I was looking for things. I even started reading Hal Lindsey books and I was anticipating the return of Christ, not realizing had he come at that point, I would have been on the wrong side of the aisle.

And, but these guys presented the gospel message with me in a way that I understood. And so I trusted in Jesus for salvation. And it took about two years of study in the Bible to realize I need to get out of the Catholic church and I need to get out of the charismatic movement.

And after three years of navigator studies, I enrolled at Liberty University and did some of it through extension. They had a really good program and some of it on campus, got to be good friends with Gary Habermas, leading expert on the bodily resurrection of Christ.

And so, one thing led to another. Eventually I started a Bible study and then people asked me to start a church. So I started Trinity Bible Fellowship. That was back in 88. But I loved answering Marines questions.

I loved listening to Walter Martin, the old Bible answer man. Oh yeah. Got into apologetics and started defending the faith and then started debating local guys. And one of the local guys that I debated, I supposed to debate his teacher, Mr. Turner at Central Kitsap High School.

But the guy's wife died a few days before the debates. They said, but don't worry, the captain of our high school debate team will debate you. But I'm like, I got graduate degrees. I can't be debating a high school student, but it would look really bad to pull out because my opponent's wife died.

So we took the debate. Well, the guy's name was Jeffrey J. Louder. I didn't know he was going to go on to start the world's largest atheist website at Infidels. And so a few years later, after debating local guys, he remembered me and got ahold of me to debate an online debate, internet debate with Dr. Michael Martin, philosophy professor of Boston University.

Back then he wrote Atheism, A Philosophical Justification and the Case Against Christianity.

Apologetics, Presuppositionalism, and the Value of Debates

Well, folks will know because we typically do presuppositional apologetics here. They'll be familiar with Greg Bonson's in-depth critique series of lectures.

Outstanding critique of Michael Martin. That's right. In fact, I probably listened to about 300 to 400 lectures of Bonson in my research on presuppositionalism. I actually consider him a better Vantillian presuppositionalist than Vantill was.

I agree. Me and J .P. Moreland used to think at one point that Vantill was a babbler and he didn't know what he was talking about. Reading his former students, John Frame and Bonson, Vantill was a brilliant thinker, but a horrible communicator.

I mean, this guy equivocated all over the place. Sometimes there's common ground, sometimes there's not common ground. And so it took a guy like Bonson to say, well, what he's saying is there is no neutral ground, but all the ground we stand on is Christian ground because God created this universe.

And so I really respected Bonson. I can remember throwing a 30-second fit when my wife woke me up to tell me that he had passed away once. He would Yeah. As a 95. Thank the Lord. And I never met him, but I appreciated his brilliance.

And I love reading guys who disagree with me, you know? Sure. So I think there's a real place for presuppositional apologists. I'm rather eclectic, but I'm pretty much a classical apologist. Maybe even a neotomist.

But whatever the case, I see a place for presuppositional. I think we're gonna become good friends because you seem to be a presuppositionalist who doesn't question the spiritual maturity of anybody who disagrees with you.

Right. Guys, you know. Some guys, they call me an idolater and all, and I'm just like, ah, whatever, dude, you know? Yeah. So, but whatever the case, I really did appreciate Bonson's work. Gary Habermas had him at Liberty, and Habermas does historical, evidential apologetics, and Bonson told him, no, I think you're serving a really important purpose in God's kingdom.

He didn't tell him what the purpose was, but it made Habermas. To this day, Habermas has good feelings about that.

Well, I had Dr. Habermas on, and he told me a funny story because Dr. Habermas is known for his minimal facts approach to the resurrection. And so he said that he presented the minimal facts to Dr. Bonson, and Dr. Bonson was like, no, that's a presuppositional argument.

He goes, well, what do you mean? He's like, well, you're hypothetically granting the standards of the unbeliever and showing that given their own presuppositions and standards of historiography, that these are the facts that could be established and you could build a case for the resurrection with that.

So I would imagine that would have been a fun conversation, but definitely I think coming from a presuppositional approach myself, I think the work of Dr. Habermas is excellent. I teach my presupp brothers and sisters to, if they wanna be as consistent within their methodology and still appreciate the work of others is learn how to contextualize their work and contextualize it within your presuppositional framework.

And the classical argument is if you can argue from God to reason, morality, and meaning, why can't you argue from reason, morality, and meaning to God? It would seem if they're a packaged deal, it would seem that the argument will go either way.

So I appreciate presuppositional arguments, but I also think you can argue in the other direction. Like Nietzsche is basically saying, look, if God is dead, truth is dead, morality is dead, meaning is dead.

I think he failed to see though, man is dead too. He thought he produced the Superman. No, it's man is dead. And Jordan Peterson sees that inconsistency in Nietzsche. But then that would seem to mean, well, then if you could argue from truth, meaning and morality to God, because that's very strange furniture for a world without God, but whatever the case.

So when I got the debate with Michael Martin, I think in 97, it caught people's attention. Brian Auten, I think he's an American guy who moved to Ireland and loved my stuff. And then I asked permission at Firefighters for Christ.

I was not a tech guy. They took my old audio cassettes, 700 lectures, and I gave them to him for free. And they digitized it on Firefighters for Christ, and it started getting millions of downloads. And then Apologetics 315 took it and made the ultimate apologetics package.

I just wish Apologetics 315 would update my stuff because everybody thinks that Phil Fernandes was good in 2002 and stuff, but he's not. I was the guy in 1998 that everybody laughed at. We were presenting the paper, the coming death of Western civilization.

Well, when I represented in 2015, they didn't laugh anymore. And so I was taking my apologetics and go into Francis Schaeffer and C .S. Lewis and applying to what's going on in culture. And so I get former students.

I started teaching on a high school level in 1999, and I get former students that are emailing me and Facebooking me all the time saying, Doc, you were right. I thought you're an idiot, but all this stuff is coming down now.

But whatever the case, so the law was good to me. And then Princeton got ahold of me and Atheist Society over there. I guess William Lane Craig was supposed to debate one of their guys. Well, Craig showed up.

Well, it's not hard to believe, but no atheist wanted to debate him. So Craig spoke unopposed, and they were having some revival there at Princeton. Even a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards got saved during that revival at Princeton.

I got to pray with the guy before I debated Eliot Ratzman there in a room in which Einstein had taught. But so there I am at Princeton debating God's existence. And Eliot Ratzman, great guy, but he just laid down and died for me.

So I connected real well with the audience. And but I also had debated, I think I debated before that though. I debated Jeffrey J. Lauder at a major atheist conference at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

I never ask people, will you debate me? Sure. I get the phone call or the email or the Facebook thing asking me. And I turn most of them down because I teach. And they want me to come in the middle of the year, but if I can make it, I'll do it.

So I debated.

Well, why don't I stop there? Cause I think that I'm fascinated with this. I've done a couple of debates myself, but I've turned down a lot of invitations. I was just invited to engage a philosophy of religion professor.

And I just don't have the time. I mean, prep is very time consuming. How long? Yeah. Yeah. So you've debated Dan Barker, you've debated other atheists. What is your process in terms of, okay, I'm gonna debate, this is my prep.

What does it look like? How do you study? How do you take notes? I mean, how do you review the material such that by the time you are there on the debate stage, you're ready to go?

Well, before I take debates now, I haven't done, I started the Institute of Biblical Defense back in 1990. So I've been doing apologetics for over 30 years. So my case is there and it's no secret. People can go.

I usually use a cumulative case for God where I'm just arguing for the preponderance of the evidence. You know, if you try to prove God's existence with certainty or beyond reasonable doubt,.

What you're saying is You could leave that to the preceptors. We'll argue that way.

Well, there's a question about that from classical apologists. We could argue about whether you're really proving the case due to the impossibility of the contrary. But whatever the case, and then plus, I would also say Aquinas and Norman Geisler, who was a Thomist, they actually believed they were proving God's existence with existential necessity.

Aquinas wasn't real concerned about logical necessity, but he believed if anything finite exists, then automatically some infinite necessary being must exist to ground the continuing existence of all finite beings.

So Aquinas believed he was giving full demonstrations. My problem is, though, is I'm not as smart as Aquinas or Geisler, and the audience sometimes isn't smart enough to pick up on the thrust. So I just say, okay, well, this atheism or theism, let's look at nine different aspects of human experience.

Which is it more reasonable to believe? Because Friedrich Nietzsche in the 1900s, he believed the universe didn't need a cause because it was eternal. Well, now there's a thing that happened in the 1990s with Edwin Hubble and the expansion of the universe and Big Bang cosmology.

Now pretty much everybody grants that the universe had a beginning. So now the debate between Christians and atheists is either in the beginning, God, either in the beginning, a miracle working God created the universe, or in the beginning, nothing created the universe.

Now they don't wanna explain it like that, but you hear Richard Dawkins try to spend a lot of time describing exactly what nothing is. Well, nothing is nothing, so nothing could do nothing, so nothing could cause nothing.

I think Lawrence Krauss got some, Dr. Lawrence Krauss got some, I guess, I'm not reprimanded, but I guess people were kind of taking up the task for describing nothing as a sort of something.

Yeah, yeah, and it's what Dawkins, that they play a game where there's a negative charge over here and a positive charge, and it equals zero. That's not nothing. Even if you wanted like quantum physics to cause the beginning of the universe, a quantum event, you need the laws of probability.

You have to, I mean, so whatever the case, but getting back to with the debates, my preparation, so I pretty much know my stuff now, and I think you've probably been at it long enough to where you know your stuff, so the issue really is learning the guy you're debating, and that can be difficult if the guy's name is Elliot Raxman and he wrote absolutely nothing on the topic of political activism, so I didn't know what I was gonna get.

Dan Barker, I could watch 20 of his interviews, which, by the way, would be a waste of time because it's the same thing over and over again, and I'm not saying that's good or bad. If it's good stuff, that's a good thing.

Like William Lane Craig, it's the same thing over and over again, but nobody's refuting it, why change it, and the same with Bonson. You watched several of his debates, but whatever the case, so it's getting to know your opponent and what he's saying, but the difficulty I have in debates, it seems the more education, just in general, because you and I are both into education, but it's gotta be being educated in the truth, and the fact of the matter is, though, the more educated a person is today in America, the less likely they're gonna have the ability of any to do original thinking or critical thinking, and so I can have, if my atheist is the local garbage man, I could have probably a much more advanced discussion and lively debate with him than with a guy who's got a four-year degree in ethics from Harvard sometimes.

I mean, it's amazing. People in our age of political correctness, they're just programmed to laugh at everybody who disagrees with them, to roll their eyes and just assume we're not educated, and to not even deal with what we're saying, but when the audience is like that, it's kind of tough, but whatever the case, if there's open people in the audience, that's a good thing.

I'm not trying to, it's very doubtful that I'm gonna lead Dan Barker to Christ to our debate, but somebody in that audience, some student might move from their skepticism. And after my debates, I usually get five times the crowd than the other side gets, and I get people that are talking with me, and I say, well, that's great, they're telling me what they liked and everything, like at Washington State University when I debated Eddie Tabash, and the moderator was a philosophy professor for that debate.

I'll tell you about his response to that, but these two guys were just saying where they really liked my delivery, they liked what I had to say, and I said, so what, are you guys Christians or what? And they said, no, we're actually agnostics, but now you're causing us to think.

And so that's a scary thing. Right now, you've got to connect with the audience, tell some good stories, maybe a few good jokes, and then give some rational arguments, but keep in mind, rationality and truth are not high on the priority list right now.

But the moderator of the debate was a gentleman who was either one of their philosophy professors at Washington State University or the head of the department, and after the debate was over, he told me, he said, you did good.

And I said, yeah, yeah, so did Eddie. Eddie Tabash, he did, Bonson debated Eddie Tabash too, Craig debated Eddie Tabash. Eddie never understood any of our arguments, by the way.

Yeah, I was never really ever impressed with

No, and that's the scary thing I gotta say, but the less philosophically profound the atheist is, the harder the debate often is. Okay. When you refute their stuff, they're oblivious to it, and the audience is usually oblivious to it, and they look, and he doesn't, the atheist doesn't look nervous, and they think, okay, well then, the Christian guy is just shooting the baloney, and so guys like Michael Martin and Jeffrey J. Louder, I think I really had some dialogue there, but whatever the case, the philosophy professor in Wazoo, Washington State University, he told me, he said, after the debate, he said, you did really well.

And I said, yeah, so did Eddie, and he looked at me like I was crazy, he said, no, no, no, you did really well. So I know he was telling me, hey, I moderated this debate, but you kicked butt, you won hands down, but that's a philosopher.

Eddie was shooting the baloney the whole debate, but whatever the case, now, when Eddie began his closing statement, which I don't know why I ever agreed to 12-minute closing statements, never agreed.

A long time for a closing statement. Either five minutes or two minutes. Five minutes, yeah, five minutes. Yeah, but anyway, the audience, it was a Friday night, and the audience wanted to party, so half of the audience got up when they found out it was his final statement and left before he even uttered it, because they didn't even enjoy listening to the guy.

But what they do, they do this thing called question bombing. They ask the same question in five or six different ways, and you have to try, a good question might take two seconds to ask, if God, why evil?

Sure, yeah. Good response might take 40 minutes. Sure. Well, debates are all about time management, so if they just keep question bombing, it really puts us on the defensive, and that's what Eddie did in his final 12 minutes, was say, he didn't answer this question.

Yes, I did. He didn't answer that question. Well, that's the same question as the last question. I don't know if the audience bought it, but whatever the case, but Eddie wasn't really that much of a challenge.

But so when the philosophy professor told me I won, I said, well, what's your worldview? And he said, well, I'm an agnostic, but my wife is a very traditional Roman Catholic, so I not only take her to mass, but I go to mass with her out of respect for her faith.

And he told me, he was almost embarrassed to say, he said, I got to admit, I'm starting to like it. And so what the guy was telling me is he's a soft agnostic. Okay. In his view, he hasn't seen enough evidence to believe in God, but that doesn't mean that maybe Eli has, and he's willing to listen.

And maybe there's something to this religious beliefs of my wife and stuff, but he was, but that's the kind of fair assessment I wish I could get more of from my debates and all, but whatever the case, I debated like Doug Kruger and State University in New York.

There, what it was too was after the debate, again, he question bombed and I felt bad about that, but the kind of the campus crusade, the crew leader up there told me, he said, no, they've been getting harassed by their professors and they just needed to see an atheist professor get up against a Christian professor.

And they just needed to see there are answers to these objections.

Yeah, William Lane Craig calls them, well, he quotes, I don't remember what he quoted, but Dr. Craig quoted some other thinker describing, you know, the nature of these debates. He called them power encounters, where you have these power encounters between two representatives of, you know, these positions.

And of course, when the Christian side, you know, does well, it kind of rejuvenates, you know, the Christian audience members that like, yeah, there are answers to these, you know, and I wanna give credit there.