After watching both debates a couple of times, Gary was actually reading off of what appears to be one or two screens. When his mic was not muted the one time, you can hear him typing. He was probably pulling up prewritten documents on his screen(s), and you can actually see his eyes moving back and forth while he is speaking. But Gary reading isn’t as obvious as Christie, since the latter appeared to have a lot more material he presented, as he went to the time limits a number of times. He also spoke a lot faster, apparently because of this, which explains why he spoke so rapidly. He probably knew he had a lot more information to present, so he needed to make sure he got it under the time limits.
Also, Christie did address a number of Gary’s points at the beginning of his rebuttals, before getting into his own comments. One thing to consider, because of the time constraints, the debaters cannot realistically address every point their opponent brings up. For instance, there were several of Christie’s challenges that Gary never really addressed, like the issue of the Targums or why the Catholic Church today doesn’t know whether the books Trent passed over in silence are inspired or not, since Jesus and the first century Church did. I think Christie’s arguments about the second century church depending on the ever-growing Septuagint, and other reasons he brought up, present a good argument how that knowledge of these boundaries got “lost” after the first century, and why you find inconsistent lists, even in the West as well as the fourth century councils, including Hippo and Carthage.
Also, in the live chat area, Dave Armstrong, who is no friend of Christie’s, pointed out there is nothing wrong with a debater reading prewritten material during a debate. Both Luther and Eck read prewritten material during their Dispensation at Leipzig in 1519, as did Gary during their debate.
BTW, I think it was cool that William (the moderator) brought up it was the 501st anniversary - to the day - of Luther’s/Eck’s Disputation that Gary’s/Christie’s debate was taking place. And I thought both of them did a good job presenting their arguments. Nice way to remember the Disputation anniversary with another debate on the OT canon.