I was kind of very disappointed with John Loftus' performance. He didn't use any new arguments when he recently debated Dinesh D'Souza, and it didn't work any better against David Wood than it did against D'Souza. Loftus said that neither he nor David could not completely refute each other, but it sure would be nice to have heard some real interaction with David's arguments. It was good to see David really press John on morality and John's worldview. I wanted to see some newer arguments from John Loftus that has not been used by him or anyone else before. And it was not there. Loftus did not answer anything.
James White had a very debate with Muslim Adnan Rashid. They debated which is more reliable: the Bible or the Qur'an? James White did a great job summarizing textual transmission of the Bible. Rashid disagreed on how White talked about how the Qur'an came to us. I've heard other scholars agree with White's presentation. Rashid seemed to lean heavily on the work and conclusions of Bart Ehrman and he never really did refute White's explanation about why Ehrman's conclusions is wrong. In fact he used the same defense White used for the Bible to defend the textual integrity of the Qur'an.
I find it interesting that Rashid ends up seeming to put the Gospel of Thomas as more authoritative than the four gospels. White explains how different the Gospel of Thomas is from the rest of the Gospels. It does not belong with the rest of the Gospels. Adnan seems more than willing to agree with the Qur'an that Jesus did not die because of crucifixion yet agree that history says that Jesus did die by crucifixion. He also tried to make it seem like Bruce M. Metzger agreed that the New Testament is unreliable. The man did not believe that. This is a great discussion.
Here is the information about the podcast containing the discussion.
Sean McDowell has written a great post for why apologists are not more successful. I think he brings up great and solid points. Like all aspects of ministry, we must allow God to lead us as to how to minister. We must depend on God to know when to be gentle and when to be forceful. I'd call Elijah's apologetic on top of Mt Carmel successful, but it most certainly was not gentle. Sometimes sarcasm is needed I'd expect most of time it's not. Love is always necessary.
I was kind of very disappointed with John Loftus' performance. He didn't use any new arguments when he recently debated Dinesh D'Souza, and it didn't work any better against David Wood than it did against D'Souza. Loftus said that neither he nor David could not completely refute each other, but it sure would be nice to have heard some real interaction with David's arguments. It was good to see David really press John on morality and John's worldview. I wanted to see some newer arguments from John Loftus that has not been used by him or anyone else before. And it was not there. Loftus did not answer anything. ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=31e22b05-0947-4910-90b9-f70c3edc2b59)
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