Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Why I Don't Like Public Debates by Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth over the years I've done a lot of public debates, and deep down I suppose I think they can do some good.
[00:00:14] Maybe not on a large scale, but it leaves for a few individuals in the audience who are open both to thinking about an important issue and to realizing that the view they've always held and simply assumed to be true may not be.
[00:00:28] If there are 300 people there and five of them are like that, okay, that's great.
[00:00:33] Think Genesis 18:23 33 on the other hand, even though I get enthusiastic when I do debates, I really don't enjoy them. I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed one, as some of you have heard me say in virtually every debate I'm in. Partway through I start writing notes to myself. Why are you doing this?
[00:00:55] I had a debate last week with my friend and conservative evangelical apologist Mike Lacona on whether the apostolic authorities Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually wrote the gospels named after them. During the debate I once again started writing myself my obligatory notes. Why am I here?
[00:01:14] As in so many other times, early on it became crystal clear to me that a debate opponent with an actual stake in the question will not budge an inch, even in the face of arguments that really do seem important and okay to people on the other side. Persuasive One problem is that if someone is interested or rather invested in the question for some reason other than historical curiosity, if their life would somehow change for the worse, or even the worst if they were wrong, invariably they simply cannot see the problems with their arguments or the strength of the arguments on the other side.
[00:01:51] So what's the point of debating them?
[00:01:54] Again? I suppose it's not to persuade them, but possibly a few others.
[00:01:59] No doubt my opponents think exactly the same about me, and maybe I go too far in being self assured that I don't have much of a stake in the issue, but just am historically curious since after all, virtually everything I debate about is something I've changed my mind on in the past, when I saw that the evidence pointed in a different direction from what I've thought.
[00:02:18] And has that ever happened to them?
[00:02:21] Not on any major point so far as I've ever been able to tell.
[00:02:25] But what really gets under my skin is when someone like that insists to the audience they have approached the question objectively with a complete openness to changing their mind. But now they have studied the problem fully, without bias toward the answer. They've come to see that the view that they are now propounding is absolutely right.
[00:02:44] And in every case it is the view they've held since they were seven years old and have always assumed was right.
[00:02:51] Now they know it's right, and they can objectively show that, well, they have always been right.
[00:02:58] Really, it doesn't matter what the big topic is, the Bible having no contradictions that historians can prove Jesus was raised from the dead, or that, well, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were really written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
[00:03:13] Now that I've looked into it without any biases one way or the other, I have realized I was right.
[00:03:20] It seems to me that anyone in that boat might reflect how weirdly coincidental it is that everything they heard about the Christian faith when they were in second grade Sunday school and have believed ever since just happens to be demonstrably true, based on a careful, objective, unbiased examination of all the relevant facts.
[00:03:41] That they were just luckily born in the right time, place and families of the world as part of a vast minority to be told these truths when they were young. Religious truths that can now be proved as opposed to everyone else, the vast majority who unfortunately were taught views that are and can be proved to be completely wrong.
[00:04:03] I say this of course, as one born in the right times, places and families where such things were taken as obviously true, but who later came to realize they are not.
[00:04:13] So I know what it's like to think that way, but I've obviously changed my mind about them all.
[00:04:19] I should stress the fact that I changed my views, whereas Mike and those like him have not, does not mean I'm now right.
[00:04:27] And it's not even a whiff of evidence that I'm right.
[00:04:30] The issues have to be decided on the basis of the arguments themselves.
[00:04:35] But if you can't listen to the evidence because you deep down already know you're right, even if you say you're being objective about it, then, well, the evidence no longer matters.
[00:04:46] No one will say they approach things that way, of course, but shouldn't it seem strange that the evidence always supports the views you always had?
[00:04:56] I think that anyone either participating in a debate like this or listening to it can take one of two approaches. And that unfortunately, almost everyone takes the broad and easy way instead of the narrow and difficult one.
[00:05:09] Matthew 7, 13, 14.
[00:05:11] The easy way is to be certain you are right, since it's what you think. And look for any kind of evidence whatsoever to support your view.
[00:05:20] Any kind of evidence, no matter how weak, inconsequential, or flat out dubious works.
[00:05:25] The difficult way is to wonder if you are right and be genuinely open to finding out, being more concerned with the evidence than with the outcome, so that you are not looking for a way to justify your view, but you're looking for what is really true, no matter where the path leads you.
[00:05:43] It is very hard to do this. Hence the narrow and difficult way.
[00:05:48] Most people have no inclination to do it.
[00:05:51] Few go that way.
[00:05:53] Many people claim to be doing it, especially those with a stake in the matter, but are wearing blinders thinking they're on the difficult path, when it's just a restricted vision of the easy one.
[00:06:04] One indication of this is that the person always ends up proving what they already knew to be true.
[00:06:11] The goal of intellectual inquiry is to be honest about the matter, every matter, and simply seek for the truth.
[00:06:19] That doesn't guarantee you'll find it, but it does mean that you will be genuinely, as opposed to allegedly open, to realizing you have been wrong all along, even if it is about something that means a good deal to you.
