The grand age of evangelical-atheist debates: A retrospective

For one brief, shining moment, evangelicals and atheists went toe-to-toe in the form of debates. It lasted about ten years all told, this war of ideas. And then, abruptly, the entire squabble fizzled out and ended. Since then, evangelicals have sought out comparatively few debates with atheists. Today, let’s explore this onetime spectacle, see why it might have ended, and ask about their long-term impact. And then, let’s see how the big names in those debates are doing today.

(This post went live on Patreon on 9/13/2024. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and should be publicly available by the time you read this!)

A short history of Christian debates in general

Debates can be informal or formal. They’re supposed to be a more civil and genteel way to argue a point. In Christianity, debates generally help Christian leaders decide doctrinal policies and culture-war stances.

And Christians have needed these clarifying debates from the very beginning of their religion. As Patrick Verel wrote for Fordham University in 2010:

In the second and third centuries, Christians spent a lot of time creating, debating and refining ideas about what it meant to be a sexually differentiated human being created in God’s image.

But Christians argued about every other element of their faith, too. Every single doctrine that Christians generally take as established fact, including exactly who and what Jesus was, was once hotly contested by someone in Christianity.

(See also: Book review of “How the Great Pan Died,” which presents a Gnostic take on Jesus’ identity. Also, “Jesus and the Jewish Resistance” by Hyam Maccoby, which presents Jesus as a super-charismatic madman.)

One Calvinist tells us that during the Reformation in the 16th century, Catholic theologians debated a number of topics like “justification,” meaning roughly a ticket out of Hell, the use of the Bible as Christians’ sole authority, and the role of Christian leaders in determining the interpretation of the Bible for the current world.

During the 1960s and 1970s, according to political historian Laura Gifford, Christian leaders debated a number of doctrines and stances:

One element that is often under-represented in recent scholarship on the Religious Right is the lively and often fractious debate in many Christian denominations on issues including biblical inerrancy, the role of women in the church, and ecumenism through the 1960s and 1970s. These conflicts were part of a larger collection of debates about the role of the church in society (Engel v. Vitale, for example) and concern about adolescent rebellion, the emergence of second-wave feminism, and other developments. In some cases, these conflicts generated schisms that produced more ideologically homogeneous and polarized denominations.

However, these discussions were generally more like slightly more civil arguments than debates. In that sense, informal debates have been around for just forever. For many years, evangelicals engaged in such debates on a variety of topics with a wide range of opponents. When I was in college, I got really good at debating Mormons, for example. Indeed, Mormons have apparently been accustomed to these debates since at least the 1950s, if this Brigham Young University book introduction is anything to go by.

I suspect that just as my college friends and I discovered, few opinions changed during any of these debates. From what I saw, every participant only walked away feeling more certain of their starting position.

As you might have noticed, almost all of these informal debates involved only Christians. When I was Christian, I don’t think I ever heard about debates concerning atheists, pagans, Buddhists, or the like. If a Christian’s debate opponent didn’t share the same basic religious worldview and foundational assumptions, then any discussion regarding Christianity was a non-starter. Just as none of my friends and I could provide any objective reason to think our beliefs were correct, Christians have never been able to demonstrate any objective reason to think their assertions are true.

The Grand Age of Modern Evangelical Debates

In the mid-2000s, someone got the idea of pitting evangelicals against atheists in formal debates.

These debates followed the same rough rules that high school and college Debate Clubs used. Debates run in this way aren’t decided on the basis of actual facts, but rather upon how well each side’s debaters worked within that constraining ruleset to present their arguments.

Here’s a link outlining debate rules. It’s in Comic Sans, but it covers the information decently well. Formal debates run along very tight timers, with each side given only a few minutes to address whatever step the debate has reached right then. A moderator enforces these time limits and prevents interruptions.

Quite a few of these formal debates centered on Creationism, with most of those centering in turn on Young-Earth Creationism (YEC). YEC asserts that Yahweh created the entire universe in six days about six thousand years ago. Others involved the big capital-P Problems in Christianity (the Problems of Evil, Suffering, and Hell; they’re capitalized because they’re utterly incompatible with modern Christian beliefs; accordingly, Christians have never come up with satisfying answers to any of them). Over at Bart Ehrman’s blog, his earliest debate in 2012 involved the Problem of Suffering. Still others centered on the historicity of Jesus or the Bible.

For a good ten years, evangelicals and atheists debated fairly often. These debates were part of what I call the Evangelical Keyboard Wars of 2005-2016ish, which had evangelicals deliberately seeking out arguments with their current ideological enemies. After most of these confrontational evangelicals withdrew, we still saw some ripples in the Christ-o-Sphere—as we see in this 2018 essay concerning “evolutionary Creationism,” which was written with Creationist debates in mind. But past about 2016, they became far less common.

Though formal debates between atheists and evangelicals are largely a thing of the past, they do still happen—just as we still sometimes see evangelicals picking religious fights online with non-Christians.

Important debates: Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry debate two Catholics, 2009

In 2009, Intelligence Squared Debates brought in two extremely well-known and quick-witted atheists, Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, to debate whether or not “the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.”

Their opponents were two Catholics I’d never even heard of before, Archbishop John Onaiyekan and Ann Widdecombe. The archbishop went on to become a cardinal in 2012, got well-known in Catholic theological circles, then retired in 2019. Widdecombe is a conservative politician in the UK and a Catholic convert. According to the Font of All Knowledge, she hates fox hunting, women’s bodily sovereignty, and gays in general. At the time of the debate, she served the UK as a Member of Parliament, then retired the next year in 2010.

It was an incredible debate—so much so, in fact, that I’m including it here even though the Christians involved weren’t evangelical. Culturally, they were right in step, though. The results? I’d never seen a debate so one-sided in my life. It felt like the Catholics had brought pocketknives to a gunfight. You can check it out here:

In Intelligence Squared Debates, the group polls debate attendees to ask if the debate had changed their minds. Thanks to a kind transcriber, we know how it shook out:

• Those who thought Catholicism is a force for good: 678 before debate; 268 afterward, for a shift of -410
• Those who thought it isn’t: 1102 before; 1876 after, for a shift of +774
• Undecided: 346 before; 34 after, for a shift of -312

I’d like to know more about these numbers. For example, how many “not good” people became persuaded that Catholicism was a force for good after all? Of those 346 undecided people, how many moved into the is side?

Still, these poll numbers felt very encouraging at the time—and still do. In a lot of ways, this debate also presented viewers with not only a really watchable and understandable presentation from the atheist side, but also a look at Christopher Hitchens at his best.

(RIP, Mr. Hitchens. You are sorely missed.)

Sam Harris vs William Lane Craig, 2011: A neuroscientist debates Yahweh’s goodness

For all of Sam Harris’ flaws, he is quick-witted on the debate stage. He’s a neuroscientist, so he has a whole other outlook on religion than, say, a philosopher. In 2011, he debated William Lane Craig about the source of goodness.

The University of Notre Dame sponsored this debate, along with an earlier one between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza. (That one was about whether religion was rational or a mind virus. Hitchens was in good form.)

Though I am a diehard Hitchens fangirl and he did great in that debate, I chose the Harris-Craig debate out of the two of them for this list. Harris made a number of excellent points, particularly with this observation about one hour into the video above (with his verbal tics edited out for readability):

When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we’re told that God is mysterious. Who can understand God’s will? And yet this merely human understanding of God’s will is precisely what believers use to establish his goodness in the first place.

Something good happens to a Christian, he feels some bliss while praying, or he sees some positive change in his life, and we’re told that God is good. But when children by the tens of thousands are torn from their parents’ arms and drowned, we’re told that God is mysterious. This is how you play tennis without the net.

Back in 2011, this was a mind-blowing idea. Perhaps it still is. At the time, I remember noticing that evangelicals bristled almost literally at the mere notion of their god being viewed as the worst, most monstrous evil that humans have ever conceived. But because Craig is really good at gaming formal debate rules, though, Harris didn’t come out looking great. Even Harris’ subreddit was disappointed about that. Around then, I suspect people began catching on to the flaws in the formal debate process that people like Craig were using to their advantage.

The year before, Harris teamed up with fellow skeptic Michael Shermer to debate Deepak Chopra and Jean Houston about “The Future of God.” ABC’s Nightline sponsored this one. If you want to see Harris and Shermer winning handily and challenging woo-peddlers, don’t miss this one.

I didn’t catch these two when they came out. I saw them only well after I joined an ex-Christian forum. At the time, I still considered myself loosely pagan. Harris’ clear presentation of how human brains work—and inevitably stop working or radically change their owners’ personalities and beliefs through illness or injury—is what helped me slip free of my lingering god-beliefs.

Ham on Nye, February 2014: The highwater mark of evangelical-atheist debates

Arguably, evangelical-atheist debates reached their highest point of popularity in 2014. That year, Ken Ham, a YEC, debated Bill Nye. This debate was quickly nicknamed “Ham on Nye.” It became a media circus.

Ken Ham, a popular huckster of pseudoscience, arranged the debate on his own home turf. He even sold some 800 tickets to it. Though he might have had more monetary goals in mind, he clearly expected to defeat Nye.

Their prearranged topic was: “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?”

For his own part, Nye prepared diligently. He learned the debate format itself, then prepared answers to what he expected Ham to claim.

That night, Ham presented Nye with a packed house. I spotted a number of children in the audience, too. Before the actual debate, someone gave out markers and big pieces of paper for attendees to write questions for atheists. These were all attempted zingers. For a while after the debate, atheists had fun answering them. (It’s so weird to read 2010s writing, even my own. We were all a little bit gonzo back then.)

I’m not sure what Ham expected that night. But Nye destroyed him. Utterly and completely destroyed him. When Christian Today polled its visitors after the debate, apparently 92% of them said Nye had won. (Alas, we don’t know the religious leanings of those who voted. One would think almost all of them were evangelical, like the site. But even then, brigading was a well-known trolling technique.) Either way, even other Christians wrote about their disappointment with the poor quality of Ham’s presentation.

The post-debate cooldown after Ham on Nye

It seemed like both sides of the Ham on Nye debate felt disappointed afterward.

Writing for Richard Dawkins’ website, Dan Arel wrote that he felt the Ham on Nye debate had given Ham an opportunity to evangelize anyone and everyone who’d watched it. Though Nye had “presented a great case,” he wondered if that case would, in the end, outweigh Ham’s overly-simplistic and unsubtle evangelism.

Other Creationists, like Casey Luskin at the tragically-misnamed Christian Research Institute, got upset with Ham for not mentioning all the fake evidence Creationists had concocted up to 2014 for their pseudoscience:

I know Ken Ham means well, and as a Christian, I’m always glad when the gospel is preached. But given that millions of people have reportedly watched the debate, it’s regrettable that the powerful evidence for design in nature was hardly discussed. A huge opportunity to reach skeptics was missed.

Tsk tsk, Ken Ham!

Despite each side’s disappointment, evangelical Creationists overall expressed certainty that Ham had won the debate. Science-embracing people expressed equal certainty that Nye had.

For my own part, I had a feeling that one day I’d be hearing deconversion extimonies that involved it. And yes, I personally know of two people whose deconversions were sparked by it in some way.

Sean Carroll wipes the floor with William Lane Craig at Biola, 2014

Hot on the heels of Ham on Nye in March 2014, Sean Carroll debated William Lane Craig. They debated at Biola University. Their topic: “God and Cosmology: The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology.” Later on, Craig put the transcription of the debate up on his website.

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist as well as a professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. For years prior to 2014’s debate, he had risen through the ranks of formal atheist debaters. In 2010, he also wrote a good essay called “Does the Universe Need God?”

At the time, William Lane Craig had a big reputation as a debater. According to his personal site, he began debating in 1991. Thanks to his deep understanding of formal debate rules, he’d won a number of victories over the tribe’s enemies. He isn’t much of an apologist at all. His actual arguments are almost childish, albeit formally expressed by a well-educated person. Worse, he argues that the atrocities in the Bible—like genocides and the ritual rape of women and girls captured in battle—are actually morally pure. But get him on a debate podium, and he will game it to his advantage all day long.

Despite Craig’s skill at debate, this debate was an absolute bloodbath for him. I don’t think he saw it coming, either. With graceful ease, Carroll refuted every attempt of Craig’s to invoke physics and science-y sounding arguments to PROVE YES PROVE that his god is real. Even more than that, though, he made Craig look like a disingenuous, willfully-ignorant idiot.

If you want to hear more from Carroll, later that year he gave a great speech for the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

Whither the stalwart front line warriors of the Grand Age of Debates?

William Lane Craig: It’s funny to me to see that William Lane Craig is largely out of the entire debate sphere. After he got his ass kicked up one side and down the other by Sean Carroll in 2014, he only appeared in four more debates total between then and now. The last one occurred in 2018—and it was just him debating another Christian about Jesus’ supposed resurrection. Craig’s pretty famous for his “Four Facts of the Resurrection” claims, even if all four points are of extremely low quality.

Craig debated this exact topic with Bart Ehrman in 2006. Despite being repeatedly schooled about how poor his overall apologetics arguments are, he hasn’t changed his mind about them.

In recent years, Craig’s been almost invisible. His latest thing is “the historical Adam.” Occasionally, he pops up in evangelical podcasts. Sometimes, an atheist will talk about his older writing and debates, as John Loftus did in 2022. Evangelicals seem to have soured on him since realizing he’s not a YEC, with one guy outright—and hilariously—calling him “a menace to the faith” and snarling that he’s just an ickie “Socinian.”

(By their vicious nastiness toward each other, everyone shall know they are Calvinists, right?)

Ken Ham: He’s still kicking around at his grifting machine, Answers in Genesis. His Ark Encounter theme park has a powerful friend in the American government, Mike Johnson. About a decade ago, he was their attorney! He led Ark Encounters’ successful lawsuit against Kentucky for “viewpoint discrimination.” A commenter at that first site linked this spreadsheet of the park’s finances and visitor count. As of 2023 Ham’s various enterprises seem to be scraping by, though like many evangelical groups they haven’t recovered back to their pre-COVID-19 numbers. If you aren’t paying close attention to Creationists, you probably think he’s retired.

Sam Harris: He’s been keeping busy. Since 2013, he has run a popular podcast called Making Sense. In 2018, he released an app called “Waking Up With Sam Harris” that teaches mindfulness techniques. In 2019, he published a book about “spirituality without religion.”

Catholics, generally: They’re still bleeding members from any part of the world that cares about human rights. Between the huge sums of money their leaders are paying out to sex abuse victims, their priest and nun shortage, and their ongoing decline in members, relevance, and credibility, they’re probably doing the least well out of all of our featured debaters.

The many problems with debates

In 2022—and ten solid years after debating the Problem of Suffering—Bart Ehrman noted that Christians still kept parroting the same tired “simplistic answers to explain suffering.” I’m sure it frustrated him to think that his 2012 debate on that topic hadn’t put paid to the entire subject. (I really wish it had. But if Christians could accept that the Problem of Suffering is not possible for them to square with their conceptualization of their god, I wonder how many would remain Christian at all.)

We must put that sentiment up against the Intelligence Squared poll results. Granted, people attending Intelligence Squared events are probably the type of people who are very willing to hear out evidence and change their minds if that evidence is compelling. They’re probably not the same audience as people who would happily pay for tickets to attend a Ken Ham debate.

For that matter, debates themselves have never struck me as the way to demonstrate that one has the facts on one’s side. That entire “why won’t you debate me” line of thinking sounds more like an invitation to scuffle after school than anything else. Debates are great for people who can think more quickly, utilize debate rules best, deploy speech techniques the most graciously, and sound the most certain. If someone has actual facts behind their claims, by contrast, then I just want to know what those facts are.

Antiprocess may stop debates’ points from hitting home

The biggest problem with debates, though, might simply be antiprocess.

We can’t leave a discussion about the usefulness of debates without mentioning it. Antiprocess describes the way that our brains subconsciously identify potential threats to our opinions—and then ignore or negate those threats somehow. Thinking takes energy and time that our brains try to skip whenever possible, and realizing we’re wrong can result in severe emotional discomfort that our brains similarly try to avoid.

Because of both those factors, the more cherished the opinion, the more invested our brains are in protecting it. Antiprocess operates so smoothly and subtly that often people don’t even realize they’re doing it. They may even think they’re completely open to changing their mind and earnestly listening to all sides before picking the one that makes the most rational sense. Both sides of the debate may walk away feeling extremely frustrated that their opponent didn’t really listen—while convinced that they themselves sure did!

Consequently, the people involved directly in religious debates on potentially either side will almost certainly not meaningfully engage with challenges to their religious opinions. If these debates’ audiences feel similarly challenged, they may utilize antiprocess in the same way.

Much later, though, perhaps when they’re alone with their thoughts, they might consider the points the opposing side made. That’s what happened in both of those deconverted evangelicals’ extimonies I mentioned earlier. As well, often religious debates impact onlookers far more than the debaters themselves, since those onlookers may be more open to engagement and feel curious about what both sides have to say.

Just like religion itself, antiprocess may be a universal part of the human situation. It’s not something to be ashamed of. It simply needs to be managed. Restating the other person’s side and asking if we got it right, practicing active listening, steelmanning their position as best we can, and investigating their sources, if any, may help us to climb over that hurdle so we can be sure we’re on the right track with our opinions.

Once, but long ago: The grand age of evangelical-atheist debates

Though evangelical-atheist debates still occur here and there, the grand age of those debates is long past. Even if we still had Christopher Hitchens, I don’t think his debate with those two Catholics would draw nearly as much attention nowadays as it did in the 2010s.

Nowadays, evangelicals don’t tend to engage directly with non-believers of any kind, much less specifically atheists. Commenters on this very blog noticed this too. Every so often, someone mentions that we never see drive-by Christian commenters anymore, when they used to be a fairly regular occurrence. It’s also been a dog’s age since some Christian emailed me to threaten my future ghost with eternal torture if I continued to reject their recruitment attempts.

As a group, evangelicals in particular have become far more insular—and far more focused on squabbles with their fellow Christians. I strongly suspect that their withdrawal from those confrontations happened because so few of them went their way.

(Some years back, a commenter on Jerry Coyne’s blog Why Evolution is True noted that evangelicals tended to pick fights both in real life and online, then complain about persecution when they lost those fights. I couldn’t un-see that truth ever again.)

In a way, I miss those days. It’s probably best they’re over with, though. Fast talking, quick wits, and the sound of certainty are all good in certain contexts. But maybe they’re not the best way to present facts against an ever-thickening haze of fakeries.

No, perhaps the very best thing debates accomplished was showing a great many Christians that non-Christians exist and can talk articulately about why they reject Christianity.

In that sense, at least, debates succeeded grandly.

NEXT UP: Some evangelical leaders recently expressed hope that a nationwide revival will end evangelicals’ ongoing radicalization and increasing politicization. But it won’t. We’ll explore why next time. Until then, have a great weekend! See you soon!

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