Some Christian minister calling himself a “Servant of God” challenged me on Twitter to debate a Doctor Somebody. I don’t know or care who his champion is. To my experience, any theologian who calls himself Doctor either doesn’t actually have a legitimate PhD or it’s in an irrelevant field: but even if was legit, they’d still be wrong. How many of their PhDs have I already dealt with first hand, and look how poorly they’ve fared. Even if he wanted me to debate the pope or any of their most famous Protestant theologians, I’ve already seen the best they can do, and it ain’t good enough. So I wrote back: “It doesn’t matter who the opponent is, only the topic to be addressed.”
The reason the topic matters is that some questions to be debated depend on opinion or interpretation rather than a clearly demonstrable point of fact. I want the topic to be something that isn’t so nebulous that there’s no way to win.
Then the “Servant of God” said:
“most Athiest are very ignorent and do not wish to debate anyone of knowledge, Aron has made many false statemenrs”.
No, I haven’t made any false statements, but I’ll enjoy making him walk that back. I’ve never heard of any atheist who was afraid to debate a knowledgeable person either. Not that it matters, because if you’re a creationist, then you’re not anyone of knowledge. At least whatever you know either isn’t true or it won’t help your case.
He suggested that the topic should be whether the Bible is trustworthy. That too is a bit ambiguous, but I could have way too much fun with that! So I swallowed the bait without negotiation and invited him to schedule a date. He had already told me they’d fly me out and cover expenses and all that. However after that he tweeted:
This is to be a real debate, I would have no problem debating you, but i drive semi and have no time,
If you can not handle a real debate let me know and i will find someone.else
It never ceases to amaze me how Athiest talk big but fear a honest debate.
It never ceases to amaze me how much believers puff up and posture and project their own faults onto others. To my experience, every creationist fears honest debate, where no atheist even has reason to fear. Why would we? And I had already accepted his challenge without hesitation. I’m not obviously not afraid regardless who his champion is. So what’s this guy on about? I guess he’s just gotta tell himself that to feel better: following a life-long pattern, I suspect.
Much of what he tweeted was intended for me, but he didn’t tag me. So how was I supposed to know he was even talking to me? He even tweeted “What is your phone number”. Since he didn’t tag who that message was intended for, I have to wonder if any of his 177 followers thought he was talking to one of them. I certainly wasn’t going to post my phone number on Twitter. So he posted his email address instead.
I emailed him as requested.
You invited me to debate someone over whether the Bible is reliable. OK.
You said I needed to hear your man’s proposal. OK. What is it?
That was May 21st. I still haven’t heard back.
I suspect that what happened is that once again, someone believes in their champion and challenged me on their behalf, but without their knowledge, only to find out afterward that their champion is unwilling to debate me. Maybe it’s because they’re afraid of an honest debate with a knowledgeable person, I don’t know: but it’s happened before.
Edit: It took three weeks for the guy to finally get back to me. That discussion continues here.
