Atheist Debates: Debate Review vs Ben Fischer

Ben and I debated "Is there Good evidence for God?" and here are my thoughts on him presenting no evidence...

[MrOttopants]

That debate was absolutely impossible to listen to. He literally said nothing but that he believes his argument is convincing, despite never having produced a single piece of evidence.

They almost all end up being presuppositionalists in the end.

[Self-replicating_whatnot]

A person who "recovered" their faith is the worst kind of debate opponent, since they already made a choice between need to believe and desire to understand, and they chose the former.

[mrmaat]

Ben’s position was worse than that. His main defense was an argument from ignorance. He kept saying “I don’t see another solution.”

[josephmcc]

I was waiting for this review! The debate was so frustrating! Ben saying that he had in fact presented evidence when he had nothing. And his opening was just silly, reminded me of a children's church activity with those letter written on his palms to be displayed along with his speech.

[pseudohuman]

“I assume God exists, therefore God exists.”

[tonetony]

These breakdowns that you do are so important for people who are trying to figure this stuff out. But the reality is that Ben is no different than every other theist that has ever lived in that he’s just a person who thinks they have reason on their side, yet they demonstrably do not.

[fayewilliams]

Hey. Started watching the line and have just started finding your own stuff from the more political stuff. Love your content thanks

[ipocketrocket]

Yup that "debate" was SO frustrating to watch. You were incredibly patient Matt. Reminded me of that gentleman who runs the Bayesian "evidence" concept. Evidence insufficient to prove a claim is insufficient evidence and, in a court, if that's all that is presented, the case can be dismissed. Theists have yet to bring anything compelling to the table. Axiomatic, uggh, that was one of the worst ones yet.

[jeremymacklem]

I was hoping (knew) you would do a video on the debate...you of course explained exactly what the problem was with Ben's approach (or lack thereof) so that viewers can see it for themselves. Great video and debate sir! 👍

[AdamAlbilya]

4:00
Yeah, I'll take you solely base on your words; considering I'm literally hearing your testimony via watching the RECORDED end result 😄

[tpseeker]

To me it seems Ben is the Perfect Example of someone that got a 1st place Participation Trophy 🏆 in everything he did his whole life.
Ben seemed to be debating himself over what the word Evidence is, yet not providing any for anything.
Hat's off to Matt on how he handled the so called debate with Ben. Really hope Ben watches it & really goes over what Matt told him.

[Lolbert_Tarian]

This is why Aron Ra has the best definition of evidence: A body of objectively verifiable facts that are positively indicative of and/or exclusively concordant with one hypothesis over any other.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[JayMaverick]

Bold strategy approaching a debate regarding *good evidence* by providing *no evidence at all*. It's like the theist hat trick: you think they're gonna deliver some weak apologist garbage we've seen a dozen times over, and then they underdeliver on your lowest expectations.

[jameskrause]

It wasn’t just “not a debate, ” it was sad.

He had the intellectual cadence and tone but I think that’s as deep as his argument got.

[andrewhampson]

Turned away from the debate after Ben's intro. Sounds like it was the right choice. I'm fond of evidence.

[zoobyisbambam]

I think Ben’s problem is he’s trying to explain an axiom by proposing an axiom. Things are the way they are, and this thing I want to be axiomatic explains that. Except the notion that “things are the way they are” is already axiomatic. We cannot demonstrate that is actually true, but it appears to be the case, and therefore accept it as true. Just proposing another axiom isn’t going to fix that problem, especially when it is demonstrably NOT an axiom, since it is not universally accepted as true.

[Salwerth]

Sounds like another attempt to define god into existence.

[allykaman]

This was the debate that made me realize that theists really don't have any argument. It was infuriatingly incomprehensible in the sense that he didn't address the concepts, he had very specific views of epistemology and reality that he could not comprehend would be questioned, he essentially was arguing why he liked his mindset. Like everything Matt said went in one ear, died, went to heaven, realized there is no heaven, came back down, tried to get into his brain but failed, shrugged, and went out the other.

[Raz.C]

People who want to denigrate Wikipedia by saying such things as "It's crap because anyone can edit it to say anything, " need to try editing it to say "anything."
These people will quickly find that their edits have been reviewed, rejected and then deleted (presuming they add information that is either untrue, unverifiable or irrelevant). If they keep adding bad information/ making unwelcome edits, they'll soon find their I.P. address banned from Wikipedia altogether. It's very hard indeed to edit Wikipedia pages if you're no longer able to access Wikipedia due to being banned. This is how Wikipedia ensures the quality of their product. Admittedly, however, if such a person as above chooses to make an edit that's very hard to notice and yet completely changes the meaning of the information presented (such as changing the sentence "There are _no known_ examples of..." to instead read "There are _many_ examples of...") and they do this on some obscure page that very rarely ever sees any traffic, then their vandalism is likely to go unnoticed for much longer than if they make obvious edits to well-travelled pages. Yet regardless of what they edit, or where, their edits WILL be seen and will be evaluated by people who evaluate such things for a living.

TLDR: Ultimately, Wikipedia is a mostly reliable source of information, that is- for the most part- highly reliable.

[colaboytje]

As soon as he said that god was axiomatic, the debate was over. That's when I completely lost interest in the debate and turned it off.