Debate- Trad Catholic vs protestant

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Here’s a recent debate between calvinist radio show personality Matt Slick and a traditional Catholic. Its two part videos. The topic was baptism. So who do all of you believe did the best job at presenting biblical truth?

Here’s the 1st video to the beginning of the debate…


Here’s the 2nd video of the rest of the debate…

 
Who is Matt Slick? Why should I care? Define biblical truth and why as Catholics we should use that as the yardstick for who won the debate…
 
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Interesting debate. Is the Catholic scholar a current member of CAF? I thought that he did a great job.
 
That traditional Catholic did seem to do a good job at refuting several protestant claims against the necessity of water baptism. Especially with regards to Acts 22:16. I think Matt Slick was taken by surprise that the Catholic was able to do that, so maybe that’s why Matt was trying to end the debate. It seemed to me like Matt was trying to end it.
 
Catholics777 said:
refuting several protestant claims against the necessity of water baptism
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I don’t know why these debates need to be had, it’s basically useless in fighting amongst an increasingly secular world. I’d rather someone be a Jew, Muslim, even Hindu or Budist. Why? Because they grasp that there is something greater than themselves. For the record plenty of Protestant churches consider water a necessity or at least proper form.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
Who is Matt Slick?
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He’s the guy who runs CARM or at least writes many of the articles for it. As far as Reformed apologists go, he’s no better than R.C. Sproul or James White, at least in writing. I’m not sure about his debating skills, though.
 
PJH_74 said:
I don’t know why these debates need to be had, it’s basically useless in fighting amongst an increasingly secular world. I’d rather someone be a Jew, Muslim, even Hindu or Budist. Why? Because they grasp that there is something greater than themselves.
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Who told you we non-believers think there is not something greater than ourselves? You say you were created by God, in the image of God. We make no such claims. You say you have internal life. We do not. You say you have more certainty. We do not. Where do any of us say there is nothing greater than ourselves?
 
A debate is a good evangelistic tool to reach out to Evangelical Protestants, as there are many Evangelical Protestants who will listen to a good debate, especially if the rule is “Scripture Only.”

I love a good debate (former Evangelical Protestant)!

A debate is NOT a fight! It’s a back-and-forth civil discussion. In a good debate, there are rules of engagement. There are actually debate competitions in high schools, rare nowadays, but many of the private high schools still offer classes in debate and the opportunity for their students to participate in debate competition.

Do you remember during the campaign for the Republican Presidential nominee, one of the Ted Cruz’s accolades was that he was a debate champion in his school (can’t remember if it was high school or college).

Even in the beloved Little House books, the families listened to debates as entertainment. TWICE, Laura Ingalls Wilder describes this in her books–anyone know what those two occasions were? 🙂

If a debate is not your idea of “entertainment,” then don’t listen. My husband and I don’t consider soccer a sport and would only watch a game if our lives depended on it, but that’ doesn’t make soccer less of a sport for all the people in the world who love it.

But please don’t call a debate a “fight.” It isn’t
 
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I agree. I believe it’s possible to have a good debate whereby Catholic truth refutes unbiblical beliefs in real time. I believe this debate was an example of that The traditional Catholic did an impressive job at refuting protestant claims against the necessity of baptism.
 
mrsdizzyd said:
Who is Matt Slick? Why should I care? Define biblical truth and why as Catholics we should use that as the yardstick for who won the debate…
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He’s the founder/owner/operator of the anti-Catholic website, CARM.org (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry).
 
FiveLinden said:
Who told you we non-believers think there is not something greater than ourselves? You say you were created by God, in the image of God. We make no such claims. You say you have internal life. We do not. You say you have more certainty. We do not. Where do any of us say there is nothing greater than ourselves?
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Whoa! Maybe I wasn’t succinct enough given that the primary audience here are (very) conservative Catholics. I certainly make a difference between an agnostic position and an atheist position. My only issue with people who claim agnosticism is they often do nothing spiritual, it’s just safe, uninvolved position.

Now as to that claims… I’m an Engineer by training and happen to have a pretty liberal social outlook. Eternal life (I’m assuming you meant external not internal as that would be about a soul I’d guess), I can only hope for. What else is there? Being the image of God, to me that is a message of equality. We are all made equally.

I also would not claim more certainty. All I can be certain of, especially pertaining to Jesus, is that much of the New Testament has at least historical some historical basis. Academically there seems to be little refutation that a man named Jesus was running around 2000 some years ago and stirring things up big time. There are 3rd party references to him and people like Pontius Pilate were real. Paul is also widely accepted as a real man too. Now the difference is faith, not just among Christians, but also Muslims, and to some degree Jews.

Now, with essentially an Applied Physics Degree, science is a big thing for me also. The wonder of the Universe and the mere fact that we started as a bunch of particles floating in space that combined and evolved into something that can understand that fact to a fairly decent degree. But I also know that we can’t know everything if the light (energy) of something is going away from us, we will never be able to observe it. I am no creationist, but if you read the Jewish and Christian creation stories the is some amazing coincidences to what we know scientifically about creation. I make no point of faith by that, I just find it worth noting.
 
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PJH_74 said:
Whoa! Maybe I wasn’t succinct enough given that the primary audience here are (very) conservative Catholics
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So who told you we non-believers think there is nothing greater than ourselves?
 
FiveLinden said:
So who told you we non-believers think there is nothing greater than ourselves?
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I think I more than laid that our in my explanation of agnosticism vs atheism; “non-believer” is a huge class of beliefs. Now look, I’m not here to have a flame war, please appreciate that I took a decent amount of time to consider your response. I believe you to be someone who comes here for genuine reasons, but you should clearly expect differences of opinion, especially some stronger ones.
 
What is the appeal of this Matt Slick person? He has come up on several threads now.

As far as I’m concerned he’s just another Protestant who has it wrong - why should I care what he presented?
ZMystiCat said:
He’s the guy who runs CARM or at least writes many of the articles for it.
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Oh, lovely, so he runs a forum where everybody pretty much hates Catholics to an unreasonable degree? That makes me ask even more why we are even wasting our time thinking about him except to pray for him.
 
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Catholics777 said:
I observed the miraculous
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What did you observe, how did you know it was miraculous, and how are you sure you can attiribute it to the God in whom you believe, and not another spiritual entity?
 
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FiveLinden said:
What did you observe, how did you know it was miraculous, and how are you sure you can attiribute it to the God in whom you believe, and not another spiritual entity?
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Well, before I answer. First answer this.,… If a man that looks like the person on the Shroud of Turin appeared to you out of thin air and said he is Jesus, then he tells you that to prove he is God, he says he’ll snap his fingers to make the entire universe disappear, except for Earth itself.,… So let’s say he does it, and the universe disappears. After several days, astronomers conclude that the universe most certainly is gone. Then would you say that man’s claims that he is both Jesus and God is more credible vs someone making that claim and snapping their finger whereby nothing happens? Yes or No?
 
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