Deep Dive into Apologetics and Evangelism by Dr. Michael Vlach & Prof. Jesse Johnson - A Philosophical DebateThe debate, sponsored by the UCI Speech and Debate team and moderated by David Agopian, centered on the fundamental question: "Does God exist?" The two debaters were Dr. Greg Bahnsen, arguing for Christian theism, and Dr. Gordon Stein, presenting the atheist viewpoint.Dr. Greg Bahnsen employed a unique presuppositional approach, arguing for the Christian worldview as a coherent system and the triune God based on Old and New Testament revelation. His core argument was the Transcendental Argument for God's Existence (TAG): that without God, it is impossible to account for the preconditions of intelligible experience, such as laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, and moral absolutes. He contended that atheism is irrational and cannot consistently justify these universal, invariant, and immaterial principles, accusing Stein of a "pretended neutrality fallacy" and a "pre-commitment to naturalism" by disallowing supernatural explanations.Dr. Gordon Stein, from an atheist stance, adopted an evidentialist approach. He defined atheism not as proving God's non-existence, but as finding theistic proofs "inadequate" or "unproven." Stein systematically attempted to refute eleven major arguments for God, including the cosmological and teleological arguments, which he claimed led to logical binds. He maintained that scientific laws and laws of logic are "consensuses based on observations" reflecting the "inherent properties of matter," thereby providing order and rationality to the universe without a need for God.The debate highlighted a fundamental clash of worldviews. Bahnsen consistently challenged Stein's foundational assumptions about reason and evidence, arguing that Stein's naturalistic framework could not account for the very tools he used. Stein, accustomed to traditional evidential arguments, appeared unprepared for Bahnsen's deeper philosophical challenge, often dismissing Bahnsen's core arguments as "nonsense" while struggling to provide a consistent, non-circular basis for logic and order within his own worldview.Reformed Theologian GPT: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-XXwzX1gnv-reformed-theologianhttps://buymeacoffee.com/edi2730

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