How to Debate | William Lane Craig

Welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate Sala. Now, today I have a very special video for you because today

I'm sitting with Dr. William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig is an author, he's a philosopher, an apologist.

He's the head of an organization that's an amazing organization. It's called Reasonable Faith. You should definitely go check it out if you have not already.

Reasonablefaith .org. His bona fides are all over the place. He was actually named one of the 50 most influential living philosophers right now.

So, he is a man of many skills and talents. Because of that, we're talking about something a little less common.

I don't think he's really had an interview purely based on this particular subject. Today, I'm talking to Dr.

Craig about debate, and it's all about debate. How did he get into debate in the first place? What does he do?

What does his prep look like? What do his notes look like? We get into all of that and more. What was the craziest debate that he's ever participated in?

So, definitely stick with me. This is going to be a good one for you. I hope it blesses you. And now, without further ado, here is my interview with Dr.

William Lane Craig. Dr. Craig, thank you so much for joining me.

Sam Harris once said about you that you are the one Christian apologist who seems to put the fear of God into many of his fellow atheists.

In my opinion, as a former debate teacher, you are one of the debaters, like, one of the best debaters that I have ever seen, and I think both

Christian and atheist can agree with that. So, thank you very much for taking the time to sit with me. Well, it's a pleasure,

Nate, really, because I so enjoy talking to someone like yourself who is a debate teacher and coach, and so who knows the art of debating and can talk about those aspects of this unusual ministry.

I often get a chance to talk on podcasts about philosophical or scientific questions, but very rarely do we get a chance to discuss these sorts of rhetorical issues of debate as a ministry, and so I'm really glad to do this with you today.

Oh, well, thank you so much. I'm looking forward to having this discussion, and I immediately regret the shirt

I wore, because I'm looking at yours, and that's a really great shirt. I should have... Well, you know,

I didn't think of this, but it's appropriate for the podcast today, because this was the debate, or this was the shirt that I wore in my debate with Victor Stenger at the

University of Hawaii. The hosts of the debate at the university bought us both

Hawaiian shirts, because that's what business casual is in the islands, and so both of us wore

Hawaiian shirts for that debate, and this is what that one was. That is so appropriate for this.

I appreciate you doing that. Well, so let's go back to the beginning, because I think that a lot of people are wondering, how did this happen?

How did William Lane Craig become a great debater? So can you tell us about your background? Did you do any debating in school, or did that come later on?

Oh, I certainly did. I was in eight years of high school and intercollegiate debate competition.

When I was in junior high school, I argued constantly with my older sister, who was a freshman, and she said to me, all you like to do is argue.

You should go out for the debate team. And I said, what's that? And she says, oh, it's this club at school, and all they do is argue.

And so when I went to high school the next year, I did join up and just absolutely loved it, and so for the next eight years,

I competed for our high school, and then in college on intercollegiate debate circuit, debating questions of public policy.

It wasn't in any way a Christian ministry. For me, it was just an intellectual sport.

I was no good at athletics, but I could represent my school on the debate team competitively, and so I engaged in that kind of intellectual sport for eight years.

Yeah. What was the thing for you, because usually with my students, I could track this in their eyes, you know, but there's a moment where they just get hooked, you know.

Was it your first debate? Was it maybe some drill that you were doing? Like, what hooked you to the art?

I have to say, that was so long ago, I no longer remember. I only know that I went out for the team my freshman year, and I had the very wonderful and unusual opportunity to be on a debate team, which the previous year, before I arrived, had won the

Illinois State Championship. So this was a superlative team, and they saw in me potential as a freshman, and so took me under their wing and kind of discipled me and trained me in the art of debate.

And so working with these other students and with our debate coach, Bill Sanders, who was a tremendous communications and debate teacher, he later went on to Nutrier High School in the

Chicago area, it was just right from the very beginning

I was hooked. Yeah. So, I was what's called a forensics teacher, and so I taught both debate and speech.

Were you also thrown into like the speech side of things and doing like dramatic interpretation or some other kind of form of speech?

Oh yes, very much so. I also competed in things like radio speaking, oratory.

In fact, I won the Illinois State Championship in original oration my senior year.

Extemporaneous speaking, I even tried my hand at impromptu speaking, so that is so nerve -wracking that I didn't enjoy doing that very much.

You know, they just hand you a topic and say, okay, talk on it, and you have to give a speech impromptu.

That was murder. I even did interpretive literature where I would do readings and so forth.

So, I did the whole gamut of forensic activities and really, really enjoyed it. Yeah. Do you think that there was crossover maybe between some of the skills that you developed in speech and sort of writing speeches, you know, getting up and making those speeches, and then also debate, which trades on a lot of, you know, your opening and your rebuttals, they all trade on the ability to communicate and articulate very well.

So, did you find that you were developing the same muscle on both sides of the forensic equation?

Oh yes, I think very much so, Nate. It's not enough to be a sort of academic egghead and get up and mumble through complicated arguments, however good and however well -supported they are.

They need to be presented effectively with confidence, with clarity, with a good demeanor, and this is especially important when you are involved in debate as a ministry, that your demeanor exemplifies the character of Christ, and that means not being defensive, not getting angry at your opponent, even if they insult you or call you names, but to remain unflappable.

All sorts of things go into that debate situation that are connected with good public speaking.

Yeah. Well, so, I think we mentioned a little bit about prep, and, you know, prep is one of those,

I think it's one of the most common questions right now that I'm getting. I created a series on debate reactions, and so this is one of the questions that people are asking the most, which is, what does debate prep look like?

So, for you, let's say you agree that you're going to go up against an opponent, what does your debate prep look like from start to finish?

Well, first, I have my affirmative case that I develop, and then

I need to anticipate what objections my opponent will raise to that case, and in order to anticipate those objections,

I need to read what my opponent has published on the issue, I will watch any videos or listen to recordings that he has made in which he addresses these issues.

Sometimes I'll even talk to people who are students in his classes who can tell me privately insights into his thinking and character, and then on the basis of that knowledge,

I prepare responses to anticipated objections that I think that he will bring up, and I vastly over -prepare because, oddly enough, most of these fellows are real good on paper with the objections and so forth, but they never bring them up in the debate, so for the most part there's little to respond to.

So I then put these, I make briefs where I will have an objection that is apt to come up, and then

I will have two or three responses to it, and then I file these briefs into folders, and I have some of them right here with me.

These are folders on things like the fine -tuning argument, the

Kalam cosmological argument, Jesus and the Gospels, science and religion, the moral argument, and so forth, and then

I spread these manila folders out in front of me on the desk where I'm debating, and as the opponent speaks and raises his points,

I just pull these briefs from these folders and never have to think on my feet because I'm completely prepared.

The key is never to have to think on your feet, to be so well -prepared that you have your responses ready for anything he brings up, and so this has worked out really, really well for me, and I believe that this kind of preparation is really essential to effective debating.

Yeah, no, I totally agree, and you know, I think for somebody walking in and just watching a particularly like a debate of yours, they're gonna probably think to themselves, wow,

Dr. Craig can really handle himself well in a pinch, but really there's a lot of forethought.

There's a lot of thinking going on before you even walk up on that stage, and so maybe this is a question because it's kind of hard to articulate.

This is really an art. I don't know.

Anticipating your opponent. Anticipating what they're gonna say. Now, you mentioned a little bit of this already where, you know, people that you've gone up against, they're published, so their thoughts are on paper, and you can look at that, but can you say a little bit more for the viewer who wants to know how to develop that art of anticipating what they're going to hear when they're on stage?

Yes, it is a matter of reading the published work and watching videos of your opponent.

So for example, let's take that Sam Harris debate on the grounding of moral values and duties.

Harris has a moral theory that he has laid out in his book called The Moral Landscape, and so I wanted to read that.

I wanted to perceive what I thought were its weaknesses, as well as what objections he would raise against grounding moral values and duties in God, and then prepared responses for each of these.

And so in that debate I had, as I recall, three arguments against Harris's own moral theory which

I thought were knockdown arguments. You rarely have these in philosophy, but as I said at the time,

I think the objections that I offered to Harris's moral theory were really knockdown arguments, and it was so interesting because he didn't respond to any of those objections.

Instead he went off on rabbit trails talking about transubstantiation and other things almost designed to insult the

Catholic audience at the University of Notre Dame where the debate was held, but it was apparent that he wasn't prepared to defend his own view.

And I find this in general to be true, Nate, that in general I find that the opponents aren't used to being challenged.

And so if you say I have three objections to your position, it's amazing how weak they are in defending their own view or giving a case for it.

It's baffling to me, but over the years I just run into this pattern.

Yeah. No, I totally get it. It's funny, I watched that debate, and you're right,

I mean, he threw everything and the kitchen sink into the kitchen sink, you know what

I mean? It was a lot. I think one of the most devastating moments, if I remember that debate, was you bringing up his own admission in the moral landscape that given his idea of morality, there is no significant difference between a saint and someone who rapes somebody, or I forget how it goes.

And that was quite significant. Oh good, I'm glad. One of the good techniques in debate is whenever you can quote an opponent against himself, that is really a powerful device.

You may have noticed in my dialogue with Rebecca Goldstein and Jordan Peterson in Canada on the meaning of life, at one point

I read this quotation that undermined Rebecca Goldstein's position, and I said, do you know who said this?

And she said, no. And I said, Steven Pinker, your husband. So I was actually quoting her husband against her own view, and oh, she was so mad at that.

After the debate, she wanted to see that quotation, and I said, sure, here it is, and I gave it to her.

Let her keep it. And after the debate with Sam Harris, he also said, where did

I ever say that? And I was able to take out my manuscript, point to the footnote, cite the quotation, and give him the page number so that he could see that this is all done above board.

Yeah. It's very powerful, very powerful, rhetorically speaking, to do something like that.

So good on you for that. You go through the prep time, you prepare, you write everything out, you get your briefs together, but it's like 30 seconds before you're supposed to walk out there, and the moderator is making the announcement.

What is running through your mind in that particular moment? Are you refreshing your memory about what you want to say?

Is something else going on? Generally, what I'm trying to do is to relax, to get rid of the butterflies, so I will slouch in my chair and just try to let my body go loose, and then

I'm usually praying. I'm saying, Lord Jesus, help me to go forth to war on your behalf, and let me be a good soldier that will exemplify your character and stand for truth, and just ask for God's help in these situations.

That's so good. Again, you have this really great ability to be able to understand the topic.

It's clear that you've thought about it for months and months. May I ask, related to that, how long, like how many, is it weeks and months that you take to prep?

Is it a year? Is it shorter? Oh, that really depends on the opponent, especially on how much he's written.

I have debated some people who have published almost nothing, and therefore there was very little preparation to be made because I simply didn't know what to expect.

On the other hand, for example, the debate I had at Willow Creek with Frank Zindler from the

American Atheist Association. Zindler had just reams and reams of material that he had published in these atheist magazines, and so Willow Creek actually gave me a team of volunteers to read

Zindler's stuff and prepare for me summaries of these different articles so that I would have a sense of where he's coming from without having to read everything.

And so it can take months, it can take weeks, but in some cases not even days because the person hasn't published anything.

It just varies greatly with the opponent that you have. I suppose related to that, you'll probably feel more confident if you're dealing with somebody who's published or has written.

So, you know, is it for somebody that has nothing, is there an element of uncertainty that you're sensing as you get out on that stage?

Certainly, that's true, but because I'm the affirmative speaker, I always get to lay the groundwork for the debate by presenting my five arguments, say, on behalf of God or Christianity, and so I know that the opponent is going to have to respond to those, and there's only a limited number of ways to respond to those arguments, so at least

I can count on that. Where it will be uncertain will be if he has any good arguments for his side, and that can throw you, though rarely, but it can happen.

For example, in my debate with Austin Dacey at Purdue University, he presented an argument attacking substance dualism, and hence

God, which I simply did not anticipate, and I had no brief prepared for that, and so I had to wing it, and after that debate,

I reflected and thought I could do a lot better on this, and so when

I was invited to have a second debate with Austin at Sacramento State University, I eagerly accepted, and this time,

I came prepared for the hilt on that objection, and that debate went, I think, much better in my favor.

That's interesting, because I know that you've debated the same person on more than one occasion, so Austin comes to mind.

Lawrence Krauss also comes to mind. Do you notice? That was wild, and I debated him in the

United States, I think at the University of North Carolina, but then

I had an Australian tour where he and I had four debates in Australia that was hosted by a group there, and that was really wild, because Krauss was just a wild man.

He was uncontrollable. He wouldn't stick to the time limits. He constantly interrupted.

It was very, very difficult to manage him. The red buzzer, right?

He brought the red buzzer. Yeah, he had a red buzzer where he would press it when I made a point he didn't agree with, and he was playing the clown, frankly, and that made it difficult, because I want to emphasize that for me, these debates are serious intellectual encounters.

They are serious intellectual exchanges. I don't take cheap shots, and I don't expect my opponent to do.

I expect to have an honest, rigorous exchange of arguments and counter -arguments from which our audience will benefit.

So dealing with someone like Krauss, who wasn't really serious, was very exasperating.

Oh, I can imagine. Yeah, that must have been extremely difficult. I mean, this is kind of a speculation question, but was he, or maybe he told you why afterwards, but was he just trying to create some kind of online soundbite or something?

Is that why he acted that way, or was there another reason, you think? Well, my impression is that he's not very sophisticated philosophically, even though he's a fine physicist.

And so when it comes to issues pertinent to theology and philosophy, his thinking is really amateurish.

I remember at one point in he said, if God exists, then why didn't he reveal calculus to Moses?

And I thought to myself, oh my goodness, I'm talking with a village atheist.

I mean, these are the kind of stupid objections you hear on the street corner. And that was very sobering to me, because until then

I thought that we were going to have a serious exchange, and then I realized I'm not dealing with a person who's capable of that.

Yeah. Well, so you used a word a moment ago, and I want to circle back around to that.

You said groundwork. Now, I use the word framework to really refer to the way that a debate opponent will kind of tell the audience a story about the debate.

You know, it's a way to talk about the debate itself in order for the audience, for the judges to properly understand and think through the debate, and I call that a framework.

We use that language. I'm not sure if that's what you referred it to, but the bottom line is I believe that whoever lays a better framework more often than not wins the debate, and you are just excellent at doing that, laying a proper framework, you know, kind of returning to it throughout the debate so that the audience can follow.

How important do you think that is for a debate? Well, thank you, Nate, for saying that. One of the things that you're trained in debate, as you know, of course, is that as an affirmative speaker you need to present what is called a prima facie case for the proposition that is under debate, and a prima facie case will be one that will establish the truth of the proposition you're defending.

So if I'm defending the proposition that God exists, I will want to give three, four, five arguments leading to that conclusion that God exists, and then

I will lay those out with great clarity in my opening speech and say this is the groundwork for the debate.

I'm not interested in talking about other issues, for example, is Christianity bad for society, or were the

Crusades evil, or things of that sort. These are the arguments that I am offering and will defend tonight in support of the proposition, and then as you say,

I come back to those in every speech over and over again. The goal is to make the opponent argue on your grounds.

You don't go over to his grounds and let your audience forget your affirmative case.

Rather the key is that you reorganize his speech so that you answer his objections insofar as they reply to your arguments.

So you may answer them in a very different order than he gave them because you will be saying, for example, now what answer or response did he have to the cosmological argument?

I see two basic responses and then you deal with those. Then you go to the fine -tuning argument and say here

I didn't see any response in his opening speech to this argument, and so until he responds to this

I think we can conclude that a designer exists. Then go to the third argument and then you deal with any objections he might have presented to that.

So the point is that you stick with your affirmative case and you apply his objections to your case and answer them only insofar as they are are relevant, and by the end of the debate the goal is that the audience will remember that basic affirmative case and will see that it has emerged victorious in the contest.

Because, I mean, a number of debates are, I mean, first of all

Christian apologetics debates, theology debates, they're not formal debates.

Not the way that I was, you know, exposed to debates being in the public high school arena.

And so, you know, there's an informal nature to these kinds of things, so I get it. But there definitely is this technical nature, the technical language that goes into some of the debates that are floating around, especially on YouTube.

And so in those cases you get somebody who in the audience is just an average, everyday, regular

Joe. They're not tracking the technical language, and so that's where it's really important that they're keeping track with the framework, the groundwork, so to speak.

Like, is it really important, this, what we're talking about right here? Yes, absolutely, because you're right.

The audience is not taking notes. By contrast, when I'm in a debate, as you know,

I am taking notes. I'm keeping a flowchart on the debate, and this is a flowchart from one of my last debates.

In the left -hand column are my arguments, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, the resurrection of Jesus, personal experience of God, and then in the next column

I record whatever responses my opponent has, and then in the next column my responses to those responses, and so on right down to the last rebuttal.

And so by taking notes I'm sure to respond to my opponent and everything that he brings up, but the audience isn't keeping a flowchart, and so you have to verbally remind them constantly, here are my three points, and this is what the opponent said, and keep those fresh in their minds.

And I have to say, Nate, in contrast to many other Christian apologists who don't have the kind of training that you and I do, the debates that I engage in are formal debates.

These are academic debates that feature timed, constructive speeches, rebuttal speeches, and then closing statements, and sometimes cross -examination.

And we always have a timekeeper who's in the front row that keeps the clock on the debate, so the kind of debate

I engage in is very much the formal academic debate.

Now some people don't like that as much, they'd rather see the rough and tumble of a dialogue, and I've done those as well, but I enjoy the more formal debate structure, because it enables you to make an extended argument without interruption, and then allow the opponent to do the same.

It's a level playing field, and you're not allowed to interrupt the other speaker. And so I find the formal debate procedure to be superior in terms of having a good intellectual exchange of ideas.

Yeah, that's so good. Now you mentioned flow, your flow chart, and so I have to ask you, because again, this is something that's come up.

Like I said, I'll tell you a quick story. We started doing a YouTube channel for our ministry, and one of the things that we were trying to do was, what kind of videos can we make that are interesting and haven't been done before?

And so that's where I sat down and I go, well, I used to be a debate teacher, what if, you know, I sat down and reacted to debates and spoke from kind of behind the scenes and how judges would think?

And that has turned out to be very popular, which has in turn, I've just observed, a lot of people are just really interested in this,

Dr. Craig. Oh, I think what you're doing, Nate, is so valuable.

That's why I'm so enthusiastic about it. There aren't very many people who have debate training, and so for someone who was a professional coach of a debate team like you, to be able to review the debate and explain it and unpack it and analyze it for the audience is just tremendously helpful.

Oh, thank you. Well, so I guess where I'm going with this is, I would mention things like flow, flow chart, laying a framework, groundwork, all those things.

And the questions keep coming up. So, this is one of the most asked questions as well. Can you just say a little bit more about how you flow, how you take the notes?

Because I was trying to explain, there is a bit of abbreviation that goes into this that's unique to the debater, but can you just say a little bit more about how you specifically take those notes?

Because it has to happen quickly. What I do is I prepare the left -hand column in advance.

You don't need to do that during the debate because you're giving the first speech. So, before I even arrive at the university, that left -hand column is filled in.

And then as the debate proceeds, I just make very short notes as to what the opponent is saying, and then put opposite what brief

I'm going to use here, what points I'm going to make, and that will be based upon my prepared briefs.

So, they're very short. Let's see what it says here. Well, the fellow says,

God doesn't explain anything. That's one of his objections. And my response is that I am using deductive arguments.

That is to say, if the premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily whether it explains anything or not.

It doesn't matter because I'm using deductive arguments. Also, I'm not proposing alternative theories to the standard scientific theories.

I'm not offering a kind of creation science. Rather, I'm using scientific evidence to support the premises of my theistic argument.

So, that would be an illustrative of what I do, is just to make these little short notes that will—they're like prompts, is what they are.

They're prompts for you to go to your briefs and then give the more extended response.

Do you have like a shorthand, you know? So, like, if you're talking about the argument for morality, do you abbreviate it down to, you know,

A -M or something? I didn't, although sometimes I will use the letter

Theta for God, Theta for Theos. So, that might be useful, but for the most part,

I just—no, I don't use a shorthand. So, anybody who would look at these, if they can read my handwriting, would be able to understand them.

That's excellent. Well, what is the craziest debate? Maybe you've already mentioned which one it is, but what's the craziest debate you've ever been in?

Well, I guess it depends what you mean by crazy. I think for me, one of the craziest ones was the debate that I did at the

Cambridge Debating Union at Cambridge University in England.

And the reason for me that it was crazy is because it was a British parliamentary style debate, which was totally unlike the

American debate format. In the British style of debate, anybody in the audience can stand up at any time and say, point of order!

And you have to call on a certain number of these and respond to their objections.

So, it's not just the opponents you're debating, it's the people in the audience.

And it was a team debate. I was partnered with Peter Williams, and we were against Arif Ahmed and Andrew Copson.

And the atmosphere in the room, I think, was very much against the

Christian side. And so, I had a sense when I spoke that it was like trying to turn a great ocean liner slowly, slowly toward our point of view.

And by the end of the debate, when it was over, the people exited in two different doorways.

If you were for the affirmative, you go through the I door, A -Y -E.

And if for the negative, you go through the no door, nay. And then people are there at the doors, and they record your vote by which door you exit through.

And then we all retired to the student bar upstairs, and the results were compiled.

And then a girl who was, I think, the secretary of the debate society came into the bar, ringing a brass bell and announcing the results of the debate.

And as it turned out, Peter and I won by a narrow margin. So, this was really a memorable experience, one that I'll never forget.

Oh, that's so crazy. Yeah, man, and dramatic, you know, ringing the bell, having them get up and walk out of a door.

It was very dramatic. It was in a room that was kind of like parliament with benches going up the sides.

And then we were down in the well, and we would speak in the well. And I could stride back and forth in the well in front of the audience or in front of my opponents at the other bench.

And then around the top of the room was a gallery in the balcony looking down on the debate and sitting in a large wooden seat overseeing the whole thing was the president of the debate society, and he was attired in full

Scottish regalia with a kilt and everything.

I mean, it was so picturesque, so colorful. And so, that was just really a very memorable experience.

Yeah, wow. That's great. And you know, what's also, well, an opportunity afterwards for, you know, especially debates like this is you get to sit with your interlocutor afterwards and just maybe in the spirit of,

I don't know, the collegiate spirit, in the spirit of friendship, just kind of have a beverage together and talk about things.

Has that ever happened? You've had a heated spirited debate, but then afterwards you went around the corner and shared a beverage?

A little bit, though I have to say that given my purpose in engaging in these debates,

I think it's far more important for me to interact with the students afterwards, because the purpose of these debates is not to persuade the opponent.

Anybody who gets up in front of hundreds or thousands of people denouncing God and Christianity isn't going to change his mind in the space of one evening.

But there are students in the audience who are seeking and looking for God, and so after these debates are over,

I'm typically thronged with a mob of students asking questions, and I love to just spend time with them interacting personally.

So that usually precludes extended interaction with my opponent, though on occasion that will take place.

If I might just relate one story that is just wild about that,

I had a debate with the German theologian Graut Ludemann at Boston College.

Now Ludemann denies the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, he thinks Jesus just rotted away in the grave, but when called upon to explain the origin of the

Christian faith, he has a kind of hallucination theory that due to deep guilt complexes that Peter had for denying

Christ, he projected visions of Jesus alive as a way of dealing with these guilt feelings that he had, and that was the origin of Christianity.

So the next morning after the debate we had breakfast with Ludemann in the refectory of the priest's quarters there at Boston College, and at one point in the conversation my wife

Jan says to Ludemann, how do you deal with sin in your life?

And he said, oh, I go to psychotherapy. And we said, really?

Well, what does the psychotherapist do for you? And he said, he induces visions in me.

And we said, what? And he said, yes, one vision that I typically have is a vision of God trying to thrust me into the abyss of darkness and despair and paralysis, but then

I turn upon God and I thrust God into the abyss, and now

I am free. Well Jan and I were just wide -eyed with horror at this.

I'd never heard anything so demonic in my life, and yet this is what this esteemed theologian does, and how that reflects on his theory of the origin of the

Christian faith. Yeah, you're right. Probably best to hang out with the students after the debate.

Wow, that's really interesting. Let me ask you this question. What has been your favorite argument to use in debates if you agree to a topic, you're like,

I'm going to use this one because this one is my most favorite? I suppose it would have to be the

Kalam Cosmological Argument. That is my bread and butter argument. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on it at the

University of Birmingham decades ago and have continued to study it since, and I'm persuaded that this is a really good argument.

And that persuasion has been, I think, borne out by the ineffectiveness of my opponents in refuting this argument.

Yeah, no, totally agree. One of the most requested videos on the channel, on Wise Disciple, is your debate with Sean Carroll.

I have not done a video reacting to that one, but I saw the debate a long time ago. It was a while ago now.

And my sort of hot take on this, which could be totally way off and wrong, because I was just curious what you thought about this, was that Carroll was kind of playing, he was doing something with language.

He was doing a semantics thing in order to win the debate. So when he held up the photo of Guth, you know, and he's saying that, you know,

Guth now believes that the universe was past eternal. I was thinking there, like, well, you know, where is

Vilenkin's photo? Where is the other scientist's photo? What's your take on all of that?

Yeah, I thought that was a very slick debate trick by Sean Carroll.

If this had been an academic debate at a university or high school, that would not have been admissible evidence in the debate, because there are rules for admissible evidence in a debate context.

It has to be published material that is publicly accessible and therefore available to your opponent.

So you can't have hearsay in a debate by saying, well, here's what

Alan Guth told me, and hold up a picture of him with a little sign. That would have been thrown out of the debate by the judge had we been in a formal debate, but of course the audience doesn't know the rules of formal debate, and so they're wondering, as was

I, what in the world could Guth have been referring to? Now the funny thing about this,

Nate, is that I found out later. I had a debate at Trinity College in Dublin with a

British philosopher named Daniel Kame, and Kame had seen my debate with Sean Carroll and wrote to Alan Guth and asked him, what were you talking about?

Why did you think the universe is past eternal, despite the Borg -Guth -Valenkin theorem? And lo and behold,

Guth wrote back to Daniel Kame, and he shared this correspondence with me, and said that Guth was referring to Sean Carroll's own model, which features a reversal of the arrow of time at some point in the finite past.

Now in the debate with Carroll, I went after that model hammer and tongs, both on the beginning of the universe and on the fine -tuning of the universe, and Carroll refused to say a word in defense of his own model.

He just let it pass. And yet it was precisely on the basis of that model that Alan Guth could hold up this little sign saying the universe is probably past eternal.

Yeah. I mean, can you help a viewer who probably is coming to that kind of a debate later?

I don't even know how many years ago that was, seven or something? But for somebody that's coming to it fresh, how can they understand what is going on between – so you have your principled arguments that are philosophical in nature, traits heavily in science, science that is actually testable, and then you have

Carroll, who really is just trotting out models. How can they adjudicate the regular viewer between the two?

Do you have anything to help them think through that? What I felt a person needs to do is to try to assess in an objective way where the evidence lies.

Is there good cosmological evidence for the beginning of the universe and for the fine -tuning of the universe for life?

And here I quoted the published scientific papers in support of those conclusions.

Now, what I didn't anticipate was that Carroll, as a professional cosmologist himself, felt that he didn't need to quote any peer -reviewed papers in support of his views, he would just make the assertions himself because he is an expert, and so it's his say -so.

And I did not anticipate the aura of authority that a professional cosmologist would have so that he would be able to just assert things and expect people to accept it on his say -so.

But I would encourage people to not just trust someone's say -so, but to demand published, peer -reviewed articles in support of the positions that one takes.

Yeah. No, that's excellent, excellent advice. And we, yeah, there is a journey that one takes from watching these kinds of debates, debates we've been talking about, and then getting into normal, regular conversations with your neighbor, with your co -worker, with your family member, who's a non -believer.

And so, I think this might be maybe the last question I have for you. By the way, thank you so much for taking this time with me.

What is your advice for people wanting to get into debate?

You know, where should they start? What should they do? What should they not do?

Stuff like that. All right. Well, those are two very different questions, how you use it in talking with your neighbor and someone who actually wants to do this as a ministry.

Let me say for that latter person, I don't encourage you to start doing this soon.

Debate is a performance art. It's like professional ice skating.

A professional ice skater makes it look so effortless, so easy as they glide around the ice.

But if you try to get out there and do that, you're going to fall flat on your bottom. And too many people get into these debates because a pastor thinks that he's prepared to take on a professional philosopher or scientist, and they get annihilated.

So what you need to do is not rush into this kind of thing. You need to spend years in preparation.

You need to take a debate class at your local college or university.

You need to participate in debates. You need to have mock debates where someone will play the role of your opponent, and then you respond to them.

And then you have to, of course, do the reading and learn how to flow the debate, how to construct an affirmative case.

There's just an enormous amount of preparation that goes into this.

And so if anybody is interested in this, I think that they need to pursue that kind of formal training, beginning with taking a debate course in a college or university setting.

Yeah, I completely agree. That's really great advice. Being in a position where you can do mock debates, where you can walk through the process of what it looks like, it's almost like I've likened it to first responders when they run their trainings, you know, just so that they're fresh.

They're ready to go when there's a real one that happens. That's really beneficial. When I was on the high school debate team, we had debates among ourselves where two people would play the negative team, two would be the affirmative team.

And then in another debate, we'd switch sides and argue the opposite sides. And we were constantly having these practice debates, honing our skills, before you go out to a tournament and actually compete in a real debate.

My friend Mike Lacona is a very good debater, and he has a friend who over the telephone will participate in mock debates.

If he's having a debate with Bart Ehrman, this person will pretend to be Bart Ehrman, and based upon his knowledge of Ehrman's works, anticipates the sort of objections he will raise, and they will have a debate like that in advance.

This kind of mock debating is really important preparation. Yeah, that's so good.

Yeah, thank you for that. Final question, and I mentioned those looking at debates online,

YouTube, and traveling some kind of a distance into regular conversations, because there are those who,

I guess they watch debates, they watch formal debates like yours, and then they think that they can somehow just go into regular conversations and do the same thing.

And I advise people not to do that, like that you should not talk to people in regular circumstances the way two interlocutors would on stage.

So I guess my question is, number one, do you agree with that, or what are your thoughts? And number two, how can debates help us communicate

Jesus Christ, the Christian worldview effectively? Yeah, I do think that in talking with an unbeliever, it is good to have in your arsenal a series of memorized arguments that you can present at the drop of a hat if the unbeliever has objections or questions.

And so I do encourage people to have, say, three arguments for God's existence, the premises of which they have memorized, that they could write out on a piece of paper or a napkin, talking to someone, and say, what do you think of this argument?

This seems pretty good to me, I'm convinced by it, and then have a conversation about it.

And I think that the familiarity with the premises and the arguments and the answers to objections will be very useful in having a conversation with an unbeliever about these matters.

Dr. William Lane Craig, philosopher, author, apologist. For more from Dr. Craig, check out reasonablefaith .org.