The Bill, our regular followers, are a no stranger to Dr. Clark Irman, a New Testament scholar

focusing on textual criticism, the historical Jesus, the origins, and development of early

Christianity. He rejected his faith in Christ and has become a vocal critic of Christianity.

We have some excerpts from a recent debate that he had on the resurrection of Jesus with

Dr. Justin Bass, a New Testament scholar and author from the Dallas area. Primarily, we

want to see what Bart Irman is saying these days, and if it's changed much, since you debated

him on the resurrection in 2006. I can't believe it was that long ago. What are some of your

recollections about that debate, Bill? The debate was at Holy Cross out in Massachusetts, and I prepared

extensively for this debate because I was convinced that what Bart Irman was offering as his

objection to believe in the resurrection of Jesus was nothing more than a warmed over version

of David Hume's 18th century argument against miracles. And so I explained to the students that

this argument is demonstrably fallacious because Hume didn't have the probability calculus at that

time. That was developed later. And so Hume's argument against the probability of identifying an

event as a miracle is hopeless. It's demonstrably incorrect. And so I explained to the students using

PowerPoint slides, based theorem, and how you would calculate the probability of an event like

the resurrection. And then I exposed two errors. As I recall, they were called Bart's blunder and Irman's

egregious error. And showed that he was simply offering the same invalid argument as Hume. And I was

shocked at his response, Kevin. It became evident that he wasn't even familiar with the work of David Hume,

much less arguments against miracles. And that he thought I was offering a mathematical proof of

the existence of God. He said, you can't prove God mathematically. And then launched off on rhetorical

exploits. You could tell that Bart Irman used to be a preacher because the remainder of the debate

it was basically preaching, yelling and lots of rhetoric and never came to grips with the argument.

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