A debate should be moderated properly so there is no clapping during it (apart from start and finish), otherwise it can become unnecessarily rancourous. No matter your position, debates should be held respectfully and calmly so that people can be educated to both perspectives.

Thank you Catholic Answers for opening the comment section here!

Pro tip for atheists: Arguing that God behaved in a way that you feel was immoral is not an argument against the existence of God, it’s an argument that God does not behave in the way you would like him to.

I've watched dozens of debates and this has got to be one of the most intense ones I've ever seen.

Thanks CA.

5:06 The Argument from Existence 18:34 General Arguments against a Generic God 22:26 The Christian God 40:17 Would I Quit the Catholic Church over the Abuse Scandal 47:18 Can Something Come from Nothing 48:30 Defenses of the Biblical God 1:01:06 Child Sacrifice 1:05:59 Does God Answer Prayers 1:10:45 Story of Phinehas in the Old Testament 1:51:38 Resurrection of Jesus 1:58:25 Why Do We Disagre

Great debate, watched all of it

Why is audio for the Q and A section so poor? These people are asking questions and it sounds like the mic is not even on.

Great debate!

I find it astonishing that people who present unsubstantiated claims, when challenged, simply think that making additional unsubstantiated claims bolsters their case.

@1:06:00 Trent tells Dan that if Jesus came down, Dan would ask for an apology but if Trent can do a magic trick he would believe

Never liked this kind of debate. It doesn’t allow much room for conversion of the debaters themselves. Without the audience, Trent and Dan May be able to conduct a more heartfelt conversation between just the two of them

I think the political debates should watch them for time allotment.

Really impressed with Trent. Dan’s definition of nothing is actually not nothing; it’s something. Grateful for both these guys.

I don't know what causes the audio drop-out between sentences. I suspect that it's some automatic background filter. All I know is that it's EXTREMELY annoying.

So funny - watching this debate on youtube! 1:22:16 Horn says: "You are probably an atheist, cause you are born in 21. century america and you have access to youtube"

Side note - has anyone ever gotten to attend one of these debates in person? If so, what was it like?

They clap for anything I guess!!

...................................................................... Thank you AL V. You have improved my Articulation.

"Im not goin to leave Jesus because of judas"

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a question!

They throw the goal out of the window as soon as it starts. Props to this channel for keeping comments open.

Before I keep going after hearing the intro. Does this debate have cross examination? I heard the announcer say there was only gonna be two rebuttals after opening statements?

Failure to distinguish between prescriptive and descriptive appears as a common error in misapprehension of scripture.

Улюблені частини (я буду оновлювати): I'm Orthodox (Ukrainian jurisdiction) 36:24 Trent Horn's few minutes of demolishing Dan's assertion 39:21 Trent Horn talks about abortion 59:22 Dan Barker argues that the church is where God reveals Himself (This is true, but he didn't specify which Church. The only true churches are the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, not Mr. Barker's 30,000 Protestant churches that he was part of) 1:00:00 Based Eucharist explanation 1:17:59 Lesser child abuses in RCC.

Nearly every debate on this topic with Trent that I've seen goes the same way: Trent calmly presents rational philosophical arguments and the atheist completely steps around those arguments with emotional buzzwords and attempts at "crowd pleasing". Funny how everyone seems to think that atheists are rational "free-thinkers" and Christians are overly-emotional Luddites.

Great debate, but I wish the sound was better - it doesn't bode well for the professionalism of the sound person/equipment being used.

Can some Christian please let us know which passages of the Bible are literal and which ones are not literal?

Although I am currently an atheist, I’m skeptical of Dan Barker’s claim that women took care of the tombs in the Middle East at the time. I can’t find anything about it.

Amazing debate. I'm currently trying to learn the teachings of Catholic faith well enough to defend it, and this was a great video for that.

Choose The Correct Answer : The greatest magnet in religion that attracts a large majority of its followers to it with tremendous force is : 1. Morality in Social life 2. Obedience to Authority 3. Love/devotion/patronage/zeal for one's deity (emotional attachment) 4. Traditional/Heritage/Cultural moorings 5. Supernatural Benefits and Salvation orientation. Please reply 🔻

what are the 2 books on the old testament they recommend?? thanks

Decent debate. Great food for thought on both sides, and presented with respect. That alone is a rarity in any direction. The AV Club that rigged the sound needs some work though. Good grief.

If you have to make excuses for immoral acts by God then I want nothing to do with it.

This video is great, but the guest speakers either need to repeat the questions from the audience OR do something better with the sound.

I can’t wrap my head around people applauding the argument genocide and death as the punishment for intermarriage etc is moral if god has some plan in mind that will bear fruit at some unknown to us point in the future.

Dan can you please tell these Christians that parallelomania is the same thing that early Christians did with Jewish scripture in the Old testament.

Mr. Horn- your arguments for the faith are solid!

I wish they would have fixed the microphones when people are asking questions!

So God, who embodies the ultimate good, orders the killing of a “mixed-race” couple (whatever that is), and that’s all right. But committing adultery? Tut, tut.

1:20:43 this aged very badly. All charges against the cardinal were dropped.

@ 34:10 "and he's perfect, so God won't change his mind." I guess he's forgetting all the times in the bible where God changes his mind, or regrets his decisions...

... must be really hard to get mics to work for the audience

16:45 "...pray for a miracle?" 😂😂😂

57:40 Barker would have done better to bring up the fact that composing a song in his head is an act of physical power, his brain is physically working to achieve that and we can see it in brain scans.

wow.. good on trent for posting this and leaving the comment section open. william lane craig never ever ever allows a comment. which, of course, says more than a thousand comments ever could. obviously, we tend to think 'our side' won whatever debate we hear, but i think even Christians and maybe trent himself could admit that this particular performance was.. underwhelming. i've seen him do significantly better. overall i enjoyed it a lot. thanks

In my opinion Trent's statement that the principle of sufficient reason (the idea that everything has a reason for its existence) has to be assumed by science comes out of a misunderstanding. It's more like science makes a hypothesis, tentatively, and then sees if it succeeds at understanding the world. If so, well and good! But it can only do so on the basis of evidence. On a pragmatic level, the methodology of science operates under the assumption that we can find a reason for the state of affairs of existence, but it would (in my eyes) be confused to conflate this pragmatic methodology with some sort of necessary faith. It is, as Bertrand Russell, says, an "unwarrantable extension" to apply this methodology outside the realm of science and empirical observation, to assume that it applies to things outside our experience and to the ultimate reality behind the universe. As Bertrand Russell says: "The physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck." And Immanuel Kant says, in a bit more oblique philosophical language: "We may, indeed, be permitted to assume the existence of a being of supreme sufficiency as cause for all possible effects, in order to facilitate reason's search for unity among its bases of explanation. But to presume so much as to say that such a being necessarily exists is no longer the modest utterance of a permitted hypothesis, but the audacious claim to an apodictic certainty. For the cognition of what one alleges to cognize as absolutely necessary must likewise carry with it absolute necessity." Immanuel Kant (if I recall correctly) says that the principle of sufficient reason operates only within the realm of our experience, and outside of this context it is meaningless. I feel like that's the problem with most arguments for God, that they unwarrantedly extend the principles of our experience beyond their proper realm of experience.

Interesting debate , but this is an eternal debate about whether god exist or not. It seems like throughout history that God is an experience , the bible is a mixture of interpretative experiences that are relative to those who experienced it. Death is a mystery, no one knows what happens after, all we have is beliefs on a hereafter or not

This whole debate is Dan Barker rattling off as many atheist tik tok memes as possible and Trent simply physically not having enough time alloted to address them all

I believe I'm a Christian and believer in God but Trent used unfalsifable arguments against Dan and this was just plain wrong. Dan Barker's atheist arguments were stronger, by far, in my mind. One issue that is constantly brought up is that morality comes only from God and that our understanding of what constitutes moral behaviour cannot come to us otherwise. But in this debate it was obvious that no matter the level of immorality, no matter the level of crime, that if it were not God proclaiming or performing the immoral acts asked of by Dan Barker. The dashing of babies and cutting from wombs, that if this was not being attributed to God, then if it was deemed solely to be a human crime and without inspiration from God, that Trent would have found this to be immoral but could not as it was via God. That is a disgusting isolation of events to protect God and God's character from 'crimes' that humanity in our age would consider completely immoral. I also believe that the creation of a being, a creature of any sort, such that we could create nowadays in a lab, such as Dolly the Sheep. That sole consideration come down to the creator, that we could create 10 million Dolly the sheep and torture each and every one of them, that I would deem immoral but God has created us in the billions and to allow any Creator the ability to treat each of us to any degree of harm, violent torture, to deal out any and all forms of punishment, for crimes we may never have committed apart from being born in sin. That the creator can create does not automatically allow that creator to destroy or harm to the extent, whatever that may be, based only on the fact they are the creator of that sentient or at least feeling being. This is again wrong and immoral. It can be hard to fully believe in God and Jesus but be unable to relate to such as if there can only be good from God, no matter how bad this would appear if it were to be commissioned by anyone else on this planet. Morals are attainable by man alone. How many videos online now show animals protecting and saving other animals, not humans saving or protecting humans, a morally incapable creature such as a wolf protecting another 'baby' animal. This may not be normal in the wild but it has been seen to have happened. Protection of this sort is a form of moral action but it most definitely cannot have come through Christianity or the reading of any religious work. It just happens and cannot be excluded as something other than an animal being a protector or saviour for an otherwise doomed animal. It is a moral action committed without even rudimentary understanding of morals and yet man is assumed to be incapable of such morality unless this has been passed to us by God. Even though Dan Barker is now an atheist and I disagree with his belief that God does not exist, beyond that I feel that his arguments were far stronger than Trent's and that Trent essentialy chose to purposely make inaccurate statements in refutation to Dan's arguments. Trent did not do God a great service here by showing a true lack of reciprocal ability to argue against this atheist's understanding of what God, The Bible and the Church are meant to be.

Can God create a book so confusing that we still argue about the existence of it's protagonist today? Would he allow it if he could dictate it? Why allow his "flawed" and "fallen" creation to compile those stories rather than give a instruction guide for living a good life to Adam and Eve before "the fall"? Those same two progenitors that knew nothing of sin, shame, right or wrong...yet followed the directions of another one of God's creations?

Why God exists?What’s the ultimate purpose of God?Does God have desire and needs?How can we feel God?

The exchange that starts at about 1:05:00 is Trent in a nutshell. Stop evading. It's not a parlour trick. Read Matthew 21:22, read John 15:7. Dan's request is quite fair. It's important it touches on the reliability of the Bible, on the question of whether prayer is effective, on the validity of the Catholic magisterium that included these texts about prayer in the canon. Does God answer prayer as advertised? Ultimately, Trent has no expectation whatsoever of that. He says he believes those claims, but throws that under the bus a minute later. This is what indoctrinated thinking looks like. Nothing can falsify his belief in prayer. Even the realization he doesn't believe prayer as the Bible advertised will not dent that belief. Sheer lunacy. I wish I was debating Trent. Truly. Dan had all the fun.

1:32:15 I'm glad that question was asked because my version (NAB) does not have his verbiage in there lol

Trent believes that those who never hear the gospel will be able to be saved based on what is written on their hearts, but that means the most gracious thing to do would have been to NEVER tell anyone about the Bible.

Whether it be reading the bible or listening to any preacher, I see no god but the people who pretend to act on its behalf. After all, what is god anyway but a term or concept formed by certain people to serve their own purpose. The more I listen to apologists the more their gods diminished. I don't see any psychologist claiming to know people as much as believers, preachers and apologists claim to know their gods. The more I read the bible and the more I listen to them the more their gods diminished.

“Many people once thought that thunder and lightning were caused by gods like Thor. Then we learned more. That’s how it is with cosmological arguments for the Christian God.” - gist of one of Dan Barker’s opening arguments. There is so much wrong there that I wouldn’t even know where to start. Category error, non sequitur, hasty generalization, and confusion.

Trent Horn did great!

you heard it yourselves.. the guy actually said genocide would be good if it "minimized" suffering in the future. i'm not at all surprised a religious person said such a thing.

This is just another perfect example where deductive theism is completely deflected or ignored, by invoking theological rhetoric and misunderstanding.

It's amazing how faith in things not seen, has an answer for everything!

So sad that Mr. Barker does not recognize the love of God - he keeps saying we are slaves when God specifically said "I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you." John 15:15 - A God who bled and died for us, humbly came as an infant, does that sound like a tyrant to you? Would anyone of you know any great athiest who affected the world in a significant way? The only famous ones I could find were Margaret Sanger and Che Guevarra. I believe they both made the world a worse place.

32:30 sounds like someone took a giant crunchy bite of a tortilla chip right on the mic 🤣

Can someone put a time stamp?

Interesting how Dan Barker's audio is always muffled and clipping while Trent's is crystal clear...

I was an atheist for 15 years then reverted to the Catholic Church. The bottom line is that Christians live better lives according to the social sciences in almost every way. Christianity offers the chance of eternal benefit. That simply cannot be ignored.

The true Debate is in the comments.

Why can’t we ever hear the questions the audience asks ?

Trent does well to dodge questions that might discredit his claims.

Great debate. I’m a Catholic but I do sympathize with a lot of Dan’s arguments.

God is The Creator, the life giver. Life is a gift. The Creator is The ONLY ONE who can destroy or end it as He sees fit. It would not be wrong, because he created it, God is the ONLY ONE with That Authority.

6 days to create the entire universe... but 800 years to write a book about it.

Trent is asking for Dan to demonstrate the reasonableness for his lack of belief, which is absurd, shifting the burden of proof. Does one present evidence for their lack of belief in the existence of bigfoot? Simply, no, one does not demonstrate why belief is unwarranted, rather, it behooves those who DO believe to demonstrate why their acceptance is reasonable.

When someone says that genocide is a moral good, but love between consenting adults is an evil punishable by death, I KNOW that I am listening to someone who has NO moral compass AT ALL. Religion is poison. Full stop.

It doesn't matter who is right and who is wrong. What really matters is that you care. (you might buy a book).

Dan Barker is probably one of the weakest atheists I've ever come across. All of his arguments or lack thereof, appeal to emotion and feelings. Not logical incoherence. Totally unimpressed. Trent easily mopped the floor here.

Is that shia labouef

Trent Horn defending Catholic Theology intelligently as always!

The atheist interlocutor is always way more interesting.

How did the Christian god evolve into a great ape-like mammal in the sky?

Okay we can not use science for the god question. What other method is proposed to differentiate the imaginary/conceptual from the real or actual? Trent Horn seems to be saying going with your gut is a good reliable method. He then starts to present syllogism for which he just assert the premises and never demonstrates them. No I do not agree with your premises. Please demonstrate their soundness.

I HATE when Believers Act “Stupid”. Trent said “What do you mean by GOOD”? Really!!!!

The recording done to hear the audience questions was horrible! Lol God would not accept! 😁 But decent debate tho!

41:18 Way to smack literally all of philosophy in the face, Mr. Barker

Dan’s intensive breathing makes me anxious

Taking something metaphorically doesn't mean you aren't taking it seriously. In fact, that just means you are interpreting a deeper meaning behind a passage. Atheists interpret the Bible just like fundamentalists - surface-level, literalist readings that does not arrive at the transcendent purpose of any given verse.

Why do our “wills become locked in place”? 1:38:00

The story of Job proves that God isn’t all knowing. Why make a wager with Satan, based on whether or not Job is loyal; when you already know the outcome?

It's interesting that Trent thinks that all the times Yahweh orders execution, genocide and death it's just "symbolic". It is presented as history, but it's inconvenient... so the Bible obviously didn't mean it!

Trent's argument boils down to: "Kalam Cosmological Argument, and the New Testament says so." Dan's argument seems to be: "The New Testament is contradictory to the Old Testament in numerous ways, therefore either it, or both it AND the OT must be wrong." It's unfortunate that Dan allows himself to get really sidetracked into all kinds of side-topics such as the Catholic Church being bad and the genocides both committed and commanded by YHWH of the Old Testament. None of which has anything really to do with the topic. He would have been much better off just forcing Trent to try to demonstrate that he knows ANYthing about the beginning of the universe, when he can't possibly do. We don't know whether or not the universe began to exist. We only know that there's an incredibly tiny point at which our existing physics breaks down. Including, by the way, the physics of time. We don't need an infinite past if time itself does not exist earlier than a certain point. And we don't know anything for certain about what kicked off the rapid expansion from the singularity. To say that "therefore it must have been God" is highly presumptuous and classic "God of the gaps". The other leg to attack is the reliability of the New Testament. We don't know who wrote the vast majority of it, and we have no compelling reason to be confident that any of its authors were eyewitnesses to the resurrected Jesus in a physical body. More recently than this debate, Paulogia has done a lot of work to tighten up what he calls the "Minimal Witnesses Theory" that accounts, in a perfectly plausible and naturalistic way, the few reasonably solid facts that we have about the early origin of the Church and the New Testament.

What about the sheer remoteness and highly improbable likelihood of our earth existing in this vast cosmos? I mean, show me a habitable planet just as friendly and fitting as ours and then I'll stop believing in God?

I have been through 1 hour of the video and for me a Christian, Dan Barker is winning.

Wow, Trent is really good at what he does. BTW, I am one who did convert to Christianity as an adult because of a debate so please don't give up on the idea that people can be influenced by philosophical arguments. Does it happen readily or frequently that people are swayed by debates? I'd say nope, but I do argue that they are important and can move people's minds.

I did enjoy the debate but I found the format frustrating.

The philosophical arguments for god are powerful. Not to say they're true but they place god within a framework of metaphysics and ontology. But you have to realize this is no different of a position than new age beliefs. It's actually a weak foundation that requires no evidence and often makes claims which are incorrect

In all honesty there are a lot of smart philosophers and scientists that believe in God. It is strange that if there is no God that he cannot just be easily dismissed.

Any christian women in the comment section needs to refer to Timothy 2:12.

Trent Horn has to be the most dishonest debater I’ve ever seen. His entire position is a tautology based on presuppositions and backed by circular reasoning. His entire position can be summarized as: 1) I presuppose that God and miracles can exist within or outside our universe 2) The Bible is the revealed word of God and everything in it is true even the unbelievable things 3) If God does exist and he raised Jesus from the dead, because Jesus believed in the Old Testament, I can believe it too even if I don’t understand or agree Essentially his whole position is “If these things are true than they are true” The cognitive dissonance one needs to hold this position is insane.

Google, Night Signs, by Aquilla Fleetwood, Jr.

Is it just me, or did Trent seem awfully defensive? Like angry defensive, not just rebutting the points defensive.