Welcome back to Shemus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and I wanted to review the recent debate between Alex O'Connor,

Cosmic Skeptic on YouTube, and David Wood, who has Act 17 Ministries. So it's a skeptic and

agnostic, I believe, atheist, actually, against a Christian. And the resolution is, did Jesus claim to

be God? Now, longtime viewers of this channel may know,

I've actually reviewed another of Alex's debates

back when he debated Dinesh Chesuza,

and as a Christian, I'm happy to say

this one went way better for the Christian side.

To be honest, I actually think it went really well for both sides.

I know it sounds like participation trophies, but really

both sides made really important points where I found myself thinking, I was not going to go that

direction at all, and I'm really glad they did. And there's something I can benefit from with what

they just said, and I think other people can too. So I wanted to kind of unpack, in both cases, one thing I thought they did poorly,

and one thing I thought they did well.

So I'm going to start with David and then turn to Alex.

So as I say, I think David Wood did a good job on this debate.

I think he did a spectacular job in terms of strategy, in terms of

where he was going to go with the debate to prove that Jesus presents himself as God. It was a

pretty unexpected direction and a really good one. However, to get there, you had to make it through

about a hundred seconds of really uncomfortable opening ice breakers.

Now, that might not sound like a lot, but look, I didn't know before I watched this debate

who David Wood was. I'd heard his name. I'd never watched anything he'd been in or read anything.

...