Did Trent Horn admit Christian belief is unreasonable? (REBUTTED)

Trent Horn:

He’s not really interested in making people atheist per se. I think he’s just more interested in offering criticisms of Christian apologetics. And that’s fine, I mean, I appreciate it when Christians offer criticisms of Christian apologetics, because everybody should be trying to use the best arguments that they have. If you’re an atheist, if you are an atheist who makes public statements or videos or blog posts criticizing Christianity or defending atheism, you are an apologist either for atheism, or I think as Doug might call himself, an apologist for the position that Christianity is false. So whoever you are, you should be open to criticism and try to always make your arguments better.

Trent Horn:

So I was interested, so I went through the video that he put up and I was not impressed for various reasons. So what I want to do now is I’m going to go through parts of the video. I’m not going to go through the whole thing because in a lot of it, he doesn’t actually address me. He talks about other issues and other Christian apologists, but I’m going to go through the most pertinent parts of his response to me. And we’ll see what’s wrong with the criticisms that Doug offers.

Trent Horn:

Let me offer three tests to see if belief in an unusual event is reasonable. Number one, does the belief contradict well-established facts about the subject in question? If it does, then the belief is unreasonable.

Doug:

So point number one, does the belief contradict well established facts about the subject in question. If it does, then the belief is unreasonable. So for example, I sometimes joke about my great, great, great, great ancestor who could fly unaided. He just ran off the cliffs of the Grand Canyon and he started flying just on his own. That belief contradicts well-established facts about the subject in question, the flying man. So if you believe in my ancestor, the flying man, that belief is unreasonable based on point number one alone.

Trent Horn:

All right. So in the debate I offered a three-prong test to show if belief in an unusual event is unreasonable and I showed that Jesus’s resurrection passes these three tests and other similar paranormal, supernatural or miraculous claims that other religions do not. And so what Doug is trying to do here is to say, well, no, look at this silly example, the flying man.

Trent Horn:

My great grandfather flew across the Grand Canyon, flapping his arms. You don’t believe in that. So why do you believe in the resurrection? So I would say, well, I don’t believe in that. Let’s look at the reasons for why I don’t believe in that. Let’s apply the three-prong test and Doug just misunderstands the first test. It’s about the subject in question, not just facts in general. So Jesus rising from the dead, there is another well-established fact. Dead people tend to stay dead, but the two of them, they’re not in contradiction if Jesus’s resurrection is a miracle.

Trent Horn:

In order for Jesus’s resurrection to be a miracle, you have to have dead people stay dead. If they got up, if they rose from the dead every Tuesday, Jesus’s resurrection wouldn’t be a miracle. It would just be Tuesday. So there, test number one does not apply to Jesus’s resurrection. If you could show Jesus’s body is in the ground, then you could show belief in Jesus’s resurrection is unreasonable. That would be a well-established fact about the subject in question: Jesus. If you can show Jesus is dead, then believing that he is risen to immortal life, that would be unreasonable.

Trent Horn:

So when it comes to Doug’s flying, man, you’re right. It’s a well-established fact human beings don’t fly by flapping their arms. But I don’t have any facts about Doug’s ancestor. I don’t know anything about him. So I don’t have well-established facts about that subject, so I can’t apply test number one to the belief in the flying man. But the other tests I can, as we’ll see here shortly.

Trent Horn:

Here’s test number two. Is there a lack of evidence we would expect if the event did occur? If there is, then it’s unreasonable to believe the event occurred.

Doug:

Great point. So with my flying man, if my great ancestor really did fly off the cliff of the Grand Canyon, there would be reports in all the newspapers in northern Arizona and Kingman. Maybe would’ve gotten all the way to California, heck, could have gone worldwide, but unfortunately we don’t have these worldwide reports of my ancestor flying. All we have is four diaries and a creed written by one of his followers.

Trent Horn:

So does rule number two apply to Doug’s flying man? Well, it depends on the details of the story. If Doug’s ancestor only flew across the Grand Canyon in front of one other person, then we wouldn’t expect newspaper accounts. We would just expect a handful of stories in his family heritage. If he flew in front of 2000 people who had access to reporters and telephones and communication devices, we would expect them to tell other people and people would believe that. There would be a council them saying, “Yeah, I saw this guy,” or the people saying, “These people are making all this up.”

Trent Horn:

We would expect to see people… maybe not saying that it happened, but at least people talking about whether it or talking about the people who sincerely believed it happened a hundred years ago. But if the account is that he flew in front of let’s say 500 people and the only evidence we have is Doug talking about it a hundred years later. And there’s no evidence of anyone in the past hundred years even believing that this happened, then we’d be missing evidence that we should have. And so it would be unreasonable to believe in the flying man, if it was to that many people.

Trent Horn:

Now compare that with Jesus’s resurrection. Jesus appeared to the 12, James, Paul, Peter. He also appeared to 500 other believers. And so we wouldn’t expect them to write about this stuff. We’d expect a handful of writings because only a few people were literate and we do have a handful of writings. We would expect them to go and tell other people about it. Some people would believe and other people wouldn’t. And then what we see in the years after Jesus’s resurrection are the very rapid establishment of communities of believers.

Trent Horn:

So people who say, “Yeah, Jesus rose from the dead,” and this belief spreads very rapidly. It’s what we would expect if there were, let’s say… Yeah, about… What would it be then? 520 witnesses of the resurrection then going out and spreading this belief in the ancient world. But it wouldn’t be comparable to Doug’s flying man, because all we have is him telling us about it today and no evidence of anyone ever having believed this in the past that even atheists have to admit that Christians…

Trent Horn:

There were Christians in the first century who believed Jesus rose from the dead, including those who knew Jesus himself. The question is why do they believe that? Doug didn’t know his flying ancestor. So he’s not going to be a great witness to that, but the people who would’ve known that person and the people who knew Jesus, we have to ask: why did they believe Jesus rose from the dead? And as I show him the debate, the best reason to believe that is Jesus rose and actually appeared to them.

Trent Horn:

Is the evidence for the unusual event just as easily accounted for by a usual explanation? If it is, then it is unreasonable to believe in the unusual event.

Doug:

Excellent point is the evidence for the unusual event just as easily accounted for by a usual explanation. In other words, instead of saying, “Oh yeah, Doug, your flying ancestor really did fly.” Or maybe he didn’t. And maybe just these four diaries, you say you have just says so and he didn’t. Maybe these are stories made up. Maybe you did have an ancestor who claimed to fly, but maybe they just built a story around that.

Trent Horn:

So the biggest difference between belief in the resurrection and belief in the flying man is going to be test number three: does a usual explanation present itself? So for the flying man, we have Doug telling a story about something that happened a hundred years ago and no other evidence. This could be a joke. This could be a lie. This could be someone who is mentally unbalanced. This could be a legend that developed over time. Maybe he flew with a glider and then a legend developed over that over a hundred years.

Trent Horn:

In fact, that’s going to be the biggest difference for me that these other alternative explanations easily present themselves because the first account of the event is so long after the fact. It’s the same reason I don’t believe in some stories about the saints and Catholicism, that the first account of the saint’s miracle is 100 or 200 years later. That’s too far removed for me to determine whether it really happened or whether it was legend. But as I showed in the debate, we have early accounts from eyewitnesses or people who directly knew eye witnesses and other evidence that comes together to show that the usual explanations as I showed in the debate that lying, legend, hallucination don’t make sense of the facts as we have them. So the two cases when applying rule number three, it invalidates the flying man, but it doesn’t invalidate belief in Jesus’s resurrection.

Doug:

And I think the way he gets around this is saying, “But Jesus is special.” In fact, if you watch the full video… I’m taking this out of context, of course, that doesn’t mean it’s evil or wrong. But I think if you go back and watch his opening statement, which I will not play, and I’m not showing the debate because it’s just… I already made a video saying the resurrection debate to end all resurrection debates. So it’s done. It’s over. But how does he… How can he say three things that I agree with so strongly and yet still believe that a man rose from the dead?

Trent Horn:

This is one reason why I’m not impressed with Doug’s reply that I do give reasons in the debate. You could say the reasons aren’t good or they don’t work, or there’s something wrong with them. But to just hand wave them away like this just shows you’re not willing to seriously examine the other person’s case. So I’m willing to examine Doug’s case. I’m not so sure he’s willing to do that for mine, frankly.

Doug:

Well, let’s go back to point number one: does the belief contradict well-established facts about the subject in question. If it does, then the belief is unreasonable. Trent Horn, here’s some questions for you to reflect on. Is it unreasonable to believe a man walked on water? Is it unreasonable to believe a man multiplied loaves and fishes? Is it unreasonable to say that a man turned water into wine? Does this go against the established facts about the subject in question? Is it unreasonable to be in a storm and have one man say, “Be calm,” and the storm immediately becomes calm. Does that contradict well established facts? Of course it does.

Trent Horn:

So once again, Doug has misunderstood test number one. Test number one is not about just facts in general. It’s about the subject in question. It’s unreasonable to believe the earth is flat or that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old because we have facts about the Earth that conclusively prove otherwise. So if Doug had a fact, if you could say, I can prove Jesus did not rise from the dead. We have facts to show Jesus is in his tomb. We have facts to show Jesus did not perform miracles. That would fall under test number one.

Trent Horn:

The fact that people in general don’t perform miracles and don’t rise from the dead, that actually is supportive of Jesus’ resurrection claim, his miraculous resurrection. Because remember, if people rose from the dead or multiplied bread and fish every Tuesday, Jesus doing it wouldn’t be special. It wouldn’t be a miracle. It would just be Tuesday. So Doug is just fundamentally misunderstood test number one here. Unless he can show, “Hey, I followed Jesus around with a video camera and it shows he never did these things.” Then he can’t employ test number one to show belief in the resurrection is unreasonable. He could try the other tests, but not test number one.

Doug:

Is there a lack of evidence we would expect if the event did occur? If there is then is unreasonable to believe the event occurred. So when Jesus died, it’s reported that the temple curtain, which was a very valued thing was cut in two. It was cut asunder. There’s no reports of that other than in the Bible, other than in the New Testament. Would you expect that there would be reports… Contemporary reports at the time that, “Hey, look, a historian wrote the temple, the curtain, just cutting two on one Friday evening.” But we have no reports of that. Would you expect you would have reports of that?

Trent Horn:

This would show is that the detail about the temple curtain in Matthew’s Gospel was a legend or it’s not literal in nature. It wouldn’t disprove Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, but more importantly, in order for Doug to show we have an absence of evidence here, he needs to show that somebody would have recorded this. So my question for him would be who? Who would have recorded this? Our primary source for Judaism in the first century during Jesus’s time is the historian Josephus and the Jewish writer Philo, but there are a lot of events that they don’t record.

Trent Horn:

For example, Josephus failed to record that there was a riot in Jerusalem after blasphemous golden shields were put up in the city. So he failed to record this major riot that threatened Pilate’s reign. It was a very newsworthy event. Philo talks about it, but Josephus doesn’t. Josephus, and Philo failed to talk about how all of the Jews were expelled from the city of Rome by Emperor Claudius sometime in the forties. That’s a major event for the Jewish people and they failed to record it.

Trent Horn:

Only Suetonius writes about it and Luke and chapter in acts chapter 18. So in order for Doug to show, there’s an absence of evidence. He need to say, “Here’s such and such writer, such and such historian. Surely this person would have written about it.” But Josephus and Philo, there’s lots of things they didn’t write about. So there’s no reason to think that they would write about this particular event because there’s lots of stuff they don’t cover.

Doug:

Do we have reports even before Jesus is crucifixion and alleged resurrection that… Of his miracles. Now we have reports later on like decades later that Jesus was supposedly a miracle worker, but maybe they’re just reflecting the beliefs of Christians at the time. But do we have contemporary reports of people witnessing Jesus’s miracles? Now, remember it says in an internal critique that Jesus was known all throughout Judea, all throughout Syria. You would think that Jesus did these miracles that he did, that someone would write about it at the time. By the way, if you’re a Christian here, welcome. And if you’re not aware, we have zero contemporary evidence for Jesus; what he did, what he said. We have zero. Absolutely nothing written at the time while he was alive. Written at the time he was alive, we have nothing. Would you expect that, Trent Horn?

Trent Horn:

We have no accounts of Jesus’s ministry written during his ministry, just like we have no accounts of the reign of Pontius Pilate during his time of prefect in Judea. Almost all ancient history was written years, decades, or even centuries after the events they describe. But that doesn’t mean that we throw it away. Instead, we assess it for accuracy. We have way better evidence for the life of Jesus than we do for other wonder workers, miracle workers. The first legends of Buddha, Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana… They’re written centuries later.

Trent Horn:

The miracle Jesus’s resurrection was the foundation of people ever writing about him in the first place. So when Doug says, “There are people all over Syria and Judea, they should have been writing about this.” My question for him is who? Who should have been writing about this? And when we read in Josephus… Josephus, in the part that scholars would say is not a Christian interpolation, Josephus says that Jesus performed many strange and startling deeds.

Trent Horn:

So he wasn’t Christian. He didn’t believe Jesus was an actual prophet, but he did relate to us that Jesus performed what he called strange and startling deeds. Of course, that was 40 or 50 years later. Doug wants contemporary accounts. But guess what? There was no one writing at that time. Who would have been writing? What account should be looked for? Maybe somebody wrote about it, but it hasn’t survived to the present day. But from the accounts that we do have, primarily coming from the New Testament, we do have the evidence we would expect if Jesus performed these kinds of miracles and engage in this type of ministry.

Doug:

It’s reported in Matthew 27 that when Jesus died, the graves were opened and people started walking around. If that actually happened, do you expect based on your point number two here, that we would have someone talking about it other than in Matthew 27, for example? Dead people walking around. It could have been hundreds. The Bible doesn’t say.

Doug:

When Jesus died, it’s reported in the Gospels that it became dark all throughout the area, whether that’s whole world or just Jerusalem area, doesn’t matter. It came became dark for three stinking hours. No, the hours didn’t stink, but for three long hours. This is not an eclipse. Three hours is not an eclipse in one local area. Three hours. You would think someone would write about that. But your point two says there’s a… Is there a lack of evidence we would expect if the event did occur? Wouldn’t we expect someone other than Gospel narratives decades after reporting this? Wouldn’t we expect something at the time being written about three hours of darkness?

Trent Horn:

Once again, this doesn’t refute the resurrection. It might cast doubt on some of these other ancillary details like about other saints being raised in Matthew’s Gospel or the darkness of Jesus’ crucifixion, but it doesn’t refute the central point that the resurrection best explains how Christianity got started even in the first place.

Trent Horn:

But so you could even take the position that these ancillary details are not literal or they’re legendary. I don’t see a reason to do that with the raised saints… I don’t know. It says “many.” Maybe it’s 200, it could be four or five or three or four. That’d be many raised saints to me. And those would be resuscitations like when Lazarus was raised from the dead in John’s Gospel. These are the people who had just been buried even that day and then were raised and walked out of their tombs. And as I showed, not every historian, not every Gospel author records every detail or every historical event that happens.

Trent Horn:

And some of these it’s not even… I wouldn’t even mean necessarily a miracle claim. Like the darkness of Jesus’s crucifixion in the third century, the Ecclesial writer origin said this may have been just very dark clouds. Like, yeah, I agree. It doesn’t sound like an eclipse, but it just could have been, hey, you get… I’ve been in situations where you have really, really dark storm clouds and then they obscure the sun’s light or causes the sun’s light to fail, as it says in the Gospel accounts. So none of this here goes through rule two to show that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.

Doug:

Wouldn’t we expect testimony from the guards at the tomb? Like if that event actually happened, if there was guards, whether they were Jewish guards or Roman guards, wouldn’t we expect the guards to report that, “Hey, we were carrying the tomb. And then all of a sudden, the stone rolled away.” And I don’t know if they would’ve seen Jesus or whatever, but it was empty.

Doug:

No reports of such a thing. Wouldn’t we expect that Trent? And of course we have no testimony from any of the rulers or governing authorities at the time who put Jesus to death that he’s alive. Wouldn’t we expect we would have reports of that if it actually happened? That Jesus actually appeared to people like Pilate? I would, but maybe this is just the difference between me and a lot of Christians. My standards are higher. I don’t know.

Trent Horn:

I think Doug must’ve misspoken here when he said Jesus appearing to Pilate because Christians don’t believe that the resurrected Jesus appeared to Pontius Pilate. There is an… I think an Apocryphal account written centuries later, claiming that this happened. But Christians, the New Testament does not describe Jesus appearing to Pontius Pilate.

Trent Horn:

Maybe Doug means when Jesus was before Pontius Pilate during his trial, wouldn’t we expect Pilate or Roman officials to write about him? Well, what did Pontius Pilate? Right? Let’s look at Pontius Pilate’s writings. What did Pontius Pilate write about? Nothing. Nothing. Pontius Pilate wrote about nothing. We have nothing from his time his prefect. We have nothing from the officials that served under him.

Trent Horn:

In fact, the only Roman source we have about Pontius Pilate, the only non-Jewish Roman source, we have about the reign of Pontius Pilate in a ancient document, a literary account, would be in Tacitus’ Annals of Roman history and Tacitus there, he only mentions Pilate in relation to Jesus. He says that Nero crucified Christians, they’re called Christians because Christus, their leader was crucified under Pontius Pilate. That is it. That is the only ancient Roman source, a non-Jewish source, a Roman literary source talking about Pontius Pilate. That is all. So when atheists make these arguments from silence saying, “Well, we don’t, we, we should have more evidence.” I really question whether they have a firm grasp of ancient history and the sources that we do have.

Doug:

Now, if I talk about my flying ancestor, who could literally fly, it’s very easy for someone, a Christian, like Trent Horn to say, “Well, you just made that up Doug. Or if you didn’t make it up, someone else did, they just wrote a story down. This didn’t happen, Doug, in history. Come on, get serious. You don’t have the… You don’t have the large historical traditional canon and history to back this up.” But even if I did, would you believe it? Isn’t it more likely that it’s still just a story, even if it goes a thousand years back and written by many, many people. Couldn’t lies… Couldn’t someone lie about my flying ancestor be a better explanation?

Trent Horn:

So it’s interesting here that Doug kind of scoffs saying, “Well, my story of the flying man. Yeah, it doesn’t have the historical pedigree.” Well, yeah, your hypothetical doesn’t have the same historical evidence as Christianity. You’re even saying that you’re the only source talking about it a hundred years later. That’s nothing like Christianity. So if you’re going to critique belief in Jesus’s resurrection, then you’re going to need to come up with a hypothetical where the evidence is similar to belief in Jesus’s resurrection.

Trent Horn:

And if the evidence similar in quality and kind, then I’m going to give it serious investigation. But the flying man doesn’t have that. And other purported miracle claims do not have that either. That’s why I mentioned in the debate, Anthony Flu, who said in his conversation with Gary Habermas that, oh, you know that he’s an atheist. He never came to believe in the resurrection. They at least admitted that it had far better evidence for it than any other kind of miracle in antiquity.

Trent Horn:

So when it comes to Doug’s hypotheticals, if you’re not going to make the hypothetical have the same evidence as the resurrection, of course, I’m going to reject it and believe in the resurrection and I’ll have good reasons for doing so.

Doug:

The first thing I should say when I’m talking to a theist is tell me about your personal experience with Jesus. Because that’s what nine times out of 10, it boils down to. And I think on Trent Horn’s interview with Pints with Aquinas, he kind of eludes to this. Let’s see. Let me back it up a bit here.

Trent Horn:

A tragic experience. Was it a very painful experience? Realizing that you may have had to become a Catholic? I don’t think it would…

Doug:

So Trent Horn was an unbeliever. I think he became a Protestant first and then a Catholic.

Trent Horn:

Be quite nearly as painful as if I were to leave the Catholic faith now, because I’m so much more invested in entrenched in it. Yeah.

Doug:

They’re talking about possibly leaving the belief now and he’s so entrenched in it. This is why Trent Horn can’t go through his own three part test objectively.

Trent Horn:

This is the part of Doug’s reply that I’m least impressed by. I’m fine with people telling me, “Hey, Trent, your facts are wrong. Hey, Trent, and your arguments are wrong. You made a fallacy or an error in your reasoning here.” Okay, let’s talk about it. Let’s see either you’re right and I got to change my thing, or I’m right and you need to reconsider your viewpoint.

Trent Horn:

I don’t appreciate it when somebody tries to psychoanalyze me. Try to say, “Oh, here’s why Trent really believes these unreasonable things. Like he has this reasonable test, but he still believes in the resurrection. So he must have some kind of psychological weakness or a bias.”

Trent Horn:

And so Doug goes back to this interview on Pints to try to show that actually I don’t really care about evidence and that I only follow my feelings, which is just weird psychoanalysis. And frankly, an uncharitable presentation of what I said in that Pints interview. So I’ll let it continue and I’ll show you why that is.

Doug:

Because he’s entrenched in it.

Trent Horn:

To leave the Catholic faith now, because I’m so much more invested in entrenched and so much more assured from the Holy Spirit and from God’s witnesses life that it’s…

Doug:

Why couldn’t he leave? Because he’s so convinced that it’s true from the Holy Spirit, the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit and his personal experiences.

Trent Horn:

And so much more assured from the Holy Spirit and from God’s witness in my life. That it’s true. Along with the evidence.

Doug:

Along with the evidence. It’s almost like a throwaway line now. It’s like… When Christians like Tran Horn are talking to atheists, it’s all about the evidence, right? It’s all about the minimal facts, the historical evidence, the reasons to believe that the things reported actually happened. But when they’re talking to Christians, when a Christian like Trent Horn is talking to a Christian like Matt Frad, it’s no problem for them to mention inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, personal experiences. No problem. In many I’m entrenched. And then evidence is like, what I think he’s talking about is like the historical evidence is like on the last on the list.

Trent Horn:

There is a difference between knowing something is true and being able to show that it’s true to other people. Sometimes we can do both, but there are cases where we can know something is true and be unable to show it to other people. So we have two kinds of evidence for that thing. We have subjective evidence and objective evidence. So let’s say you’re accused of a crime that you didn’t commit. You might have subjective evidence, your personal experience that, you know you didn’t commit the murder. But a jury could look at the objective evidence and reason from that incorrectly, even, that you committed the murder. Just because you failed to show them you’re innocent, that you couldn’t show that it’s true that you were not guilty. That doesn’t mean you should give up the subjective evidence you have, your own personal knowledge that you’re not guilty.

Trent Horn:

So for Christians, just because a Christian might be unable to show someone else Jesus rose from the dead, that doesn’t mean he or she should give up their own belief Jesus rose from the dead. And they could have more evidence than just the historical evidence in the New Testament. And I would say that they should, because Christianity is not just belief in a proposition. It is belief in a person. It is relationship with a person. And so it would be surprising if someone’s belief in Christianity was only rooted in evidence and they had nothing spiritual or anything from prayer or anything in their own personal experience testifying that this is true in their life. That would be very strange because they don’t just believe in a proposition. They believe in a person. But Doug is like trying to show like, “Oh, Trent, he’s just following his emotions. He’s not actually following the evidence.”

Trent Horn:

Anyone who knows me… Anyone who had watched that whole interview, which is why I think it’s weird he takes this one little clip from Matt Frad’s interview. In that very interview, I talk about how I wish I had more of these feelings. Doug goes on to say that there are other apologists who they become Christian because their wives are Christian or because they’re drunkards, and then later they rationalize their beliefs.

Trent Horn:

What happened to me was that I was a high school student who believed in a god out there. And that was it. I met some Catholic high school students and you know what I did? I went online and I watched… Well, I didn’t watch, I listen. This was 2002. So I listened to MP3 files of debates, I read books to examine the Christians and the atheist, and I thought the Christians had better evidence.

Trent Horn:

So I came to believe. But even after believing, I get some experiences of Christ in my life, but not nearly as many as I wish that I had. In that very interview with Matt, I say this. That evidence is more what moves me. Not that I wish I had more of these personal, emotional experiences and I don’t. Here. Here’s the clip.

Trent Horn:

However, I want to be careful, though, that a person’s internal feelings are not 100% in indefeatable necessarily. I mean, you could have a personal feeling about something and yet the opposing evidence is so overwhelming. It should make you doubt that what that personal feeling is leading you towards.

Randall:

I think this how you and I maybe came to Christ in a different way. I had a very intense, emotional experience Sid World Youth Day Rome, 2000. it felt unlike any other experience I’d ever had, but it was emotional. Whereas you came to the faith through reasons and arguments. I sometimes envy people like yourself.

Trent Horn:

I envy people like yourself. Sometimes. You know, I don’t have a lot of these really deep, overwhelming, personal experiences of God. I mean, I’ve had them and I have them, but they’re more few and far between. I’ve prayed to have more of them, but I just… They’re not given to me.

Trent Horn:

So, yeah, this whole psychoanalysis thing. His unwillingness to even address the arguments that I put forward in my position to just critique my proposal, but not the evidence for it. And just seeing how Doug has engaged other people in the past, all of that put together. Because Doug might make a reply to this. I don’t know. Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t, but I have no interest in going on his show or engaging in a dialogue with him because I don’t think he will enter into the dialogue in good faith based on what I’ve seen in how he’s engaged my work on this issue.

Trent Horn:

And also how he has engaged other people. I watched an interview that he did with my friend Randall Rouser. Randall is a really good Protestant theologian and apologist. Randall is somebody… He and I have serious disagreements. Catholic and Protestant. Randall believes that the damned are annihilated rather than spending eternity in hell. We had a conversation about that, but Randall is somebody that I can sit down with and have a conversation about disagreements with, because I believe that Randall is willing to do the hard work of really thinking through the position and trying to understand his opponent and really engage in that.

Trent Horn:

And what I’ve seen of Doug is I don’t think he’s willing to do that. So I just don’t think it would be productive to have a conversation with him. And here’s an example of him engaging with Randall on this issue that I think demonstrates my point.

Doug:

To the apologists, I’ll give him a rough time. I’ll try to make them feel silly for believing what they believe with unabashedly. And like I said to you, I’ll tell people, don’t watch me. Please don’t watch me if it gives you anxieties or depression. I don’t want to hurt people in that way.

Randall:

Okay. So your goal is to make people feel silly.

Doug:

No, only people like you.

Randall:

Sure, no that’s a subjective feeling. So, so the question is objectively: what is the framework for them feeling silly? Is it simply that your better insults or is it that you believe you have some degree of evidence to provide and relative to that evidence, they should feel silly in retaining their beliefs?

Doug:

If you watch yourself with my interview of you, I think you can understand what I mean.

Trent Horn:

So if Doug thinks that my beliefs in the existence of God or in the resurrection of Jesus are silly and that they’re false, and he would do the world a service by disproving them, he can debate me on the issue in a neutral forum. He could come on the Reason In Theology channel with my friend Michael Often, and we could set up a debate and he can show why my beliefs are so silly.

Trent Horn:

But seeing how he engaged my work in such an uncritical way and in a weird way, I don’t think a dialogue with him would be very fruitful, frankly. I want to talk with people who want to have serious conversations on important issues, not people who just want to make those they disagree with look silly, frankly. So I’m willing to engage him, but it’s going to have to be in a debate in a neutral forum. And then we can see whose beliefs are actually silly.

Trent Horn:

But hey, I think it was still good that he did this because it’s nice to see… for people to see, okay, here are the criticisms that people offer of the Christian position. And it’s been 2000 years. And I would say that they still have not achieved their goal of showing that Christianity is unreasonable. So how is this helpful for you? I’m going to air my full debrief of my debate with Matt Dillahunty after I aired the Dillahunty debate. That’ll probably be sometime next week, but thank you guys so much and be sure to go to trenthornpodcast.com, support where we’re doing definitely want to help and reach more people. And I just hope you guys all have a very blessed.

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