My name is Trenhorn and my first contention is that today's popular debate formats are stupid and unproductive.

Hey. Hello. Howdy.

Okay, so you say popular debate formats are stupid, but you're arguing that in a popular debate format.

So you've just contradicted yourself. I am very intelligent.

I actually haven't contradicted myself because you can critique a system that you belong to.

For example, oh, I'm sorry, you already lost the debate because you took too long to answer.

So now I can clip this and put it on TikTok and make it look like I totally own you.

Wait, what?

But you're arguing that in a popular debate format.

So you've just contradicted yourself.

I am very intelligent.

As a Christian, I want to share my faith with as many people as possible.

And Christians have often used

debates to do that. But in today's episode, we'll see how debates have become dumb ways of sharing

the truth and how we can restore debates to their former glory. Public disputations, aka debates,

were a big part of medieval Christian culture, which carried into the Reformation, as can be seen in the

Leipzig disputation between Martin Luther and Johann Eck. Then with the rise of Democratic Republic

centuries later, debates became a way to persuade voters. In 1858, people would gather to listen to

Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate for three hours, where each speaker had long, uninterrupted

periods to lay out his case for how America

should be governed. But now we live in a very different time, as can be seen in the mockery of what we now

call presidential debates. Donald, Donald, I understand rules are very hard for you. Mr. Trump,

...