2017

Dr Richard Carrier is the world’s
leading doubter of the historical Jesus.

Honest Debate Format

Update: Last Friday I debated Dr Carrier and lost decisively. Several things went wrong. Then again, several things went right. Other than that, I’m saving my commentary until the video of the debate goes up.

Friday, August 11th, I'll be debating Dr Richard Carrier, the world's leading doubter of historical Jesus. This debate is the fourth in our series, and it uses the “honest debate” format inspired by Daniel Dennett and Jonathan Haidt. Classic debates are polemical, and they date from an era when “men” thought that Reason was a divine faculty. Now we know that cognition is messy, and we understand that a productive dialog requires a better format than dueling proofs. Verbal disagreements tend to trigger tribal instincts of us-versus-them, and our debate format is designed to avoid that reaction. Here's a rundown of our event outline, with commentary. Richard and I are termed "advocates" because we each advocate a position. We're not opponents because we have a shared goal of presenting both sides clearly to the audience. A moderator runs the dialog. 

We are recording the event for publication online. 

Link to Event — August 11

Debate Format

We want to start by defining the positions Richard & Jonathan represent, so we start by polling the audience, and giving each advocate a 2-minute opening statement.

We want to show our audience where both sides agree, so we’re doing a quick Agreement Round. We quickly cover points that establish a common ground, making it easier to understand the context of each position. On an emotional level, this exchange sends a signal to everyone that this dialog is not a fight.

We want to show our audience where both sides disagree, so we’re doing a quick Disagreement Round. Again we cover points quickly, framing the scope of the debate and hitting some high points.

We then want to dig into why each advocate believes what he believes, so we’re doing a Straight Debate Round.  

• The Straight Debate Round will consist of 3 major topics.
• The Moderator asks each advocate to summarize the other advocate’s views.  (This is to help our debate stay focused; it’s even more helpful, though, to allow the audience to focus on the big points.)
• Our three topics are the mainstream narrative of Christian origins, Richard's narrative of Christian origins*, and the state of Jesus scholarship. 

We want to see how the audience is responding, so we take a halftime poll.

We want to collect audience questions, so we take an intermission and hand out index cards.

• At the beginning of the intermission, both advocates privately ask each other if they’re succeeding at keeping the tone polite and respectful.

We want to address audience questions, so we do a Q&A Round.

• Questions are submitted on cards to prevent verbally aggressive audience members from dominating air time. 
• During the Q&A Round, we’ll go extreme in re-stating the other advocate’s opinion.
• Again, the purpose of this is to help keep the debate on track — but even more it’s to model “first understand, then discuss” for people in our community. Part of why we do these debates is to improve people’s understanding of what good debate looks like.
• Specifically, here’s how it will go: 
• The Moderator reads an audience question.
• Richard will have 1 (uninterrupted) minute to answer the question.
• Jonathan will get 1 sentence to restate the gist of Richard’s answer.
• The Moderator asks Richard if Jonathan got it at least 80% right.  If so, then we switch.
• Jonathan will have 1 (uninterrupted) minute to answer the question.
• Richard will get 1 sentence to restate the gist of Jonathan’s answer.
• The Moderator asks Jonathan if Richard got it at least 80% right.  If so…
• Both panelists have a 5-minute free debate — which might look more like a two-way conversation, or like more a moderated dialog, depending on how it shapes up.

We want to bring all the information together, so we conclude by giving each advocate a 2-minute closing statement.

We want to see how views have changed (if at all), so we take a final poll. 

*This section, Richard’s account of early Christian origins, is the part that got dropped, due to miscommunication.

Moderating and Humanizing

Two features of the debate are not apparent from the outline. 

The moderator sometimes takes an active role in getting the advocates to come to terms with each others’ questions or arguments. 

We put some work into humanizing everyone involved, for example with personal details in bios. The human touch helps set a tone of collaboration. 


Other “Jesus” Pages
Several posts on this blog flesh out my take on Jesus as a historical figure. See my blog posts on Jesus. 

Other “Honest Debate” Pages

These are the other posts I've made about this debate format.

Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad: Good example of the format working right, with me as Moderator. Link to video. 2016. 

Agreeing How to Disagree: Theory behind the practice, with reading list. 2014.



Evidence Can Bring Us Together

At Seattle's March for Science, I said that evidence can bring us together, and I think that's true with history as well. Here are some great resources, assembled by a Daniel N. Gullotta, a Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies (Christianity) at Stanford.

Dale Martin at Yale Universityhttp://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

Philip Harland of the University of Toronto's podcast on ancient religion in the Mediterranean world:
http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/religions-of-the-ancient-mediterannean-podcast-collection-page-series-1-6/

Stanford's Continuing Studies podcast has a good one with Thomas Sheehan:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=10

Mark Goodacre of Duke University's the NT Pod:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/nt-pod/id420553592?mt=10

Bart D. Ehrman of UNC Chapel Hill has his great course on the Historical Jesus:
https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/the-historical-jesus

HDX's "The Letters of Paul" taught by Laura Nasrallah, who is based at Harvard University:
https://www.edx.org/course/early-christianity-letters-paul-harvardx-hds1544-1x

And finally, if you want to watch a documentary on the historical Jesus with the world's best scholars, the best one, with no pandering and no sensationalism is From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians from PBS. 
Part 1: https://youtu.be/kZPKCDOeyMg
Part 2: https://youtu.be/NB1WXhoEA0o
Part 3: https://youtu.be/S0pfQ2ZBe2Q
Part 4: https://youtu.be/-_jY2E8I_mA