Would the video or audio of the talk be available? I would love to share the QA with our High School Ministry group. I don't think we get to see a lot of young apologist out there (not that the older group can't relate). Young people identify more with their own age group...

WHAT DID YOU TELL HIM YOU USED TO BACK UP YOUR CLAIMS?

I WOULD HAVE SAID SCRIPTURE (THE BIBLE WHICH IS THE MOST ACCURATE HISTORICAL REFERENCE WE HAVE) YOU PROBABLY DID USE IT, I'M ASSUMING, SO HOW DID YOU RESPOND AFTER YOU DIFFUSED THE INSULT?

THIS IS PARTICULARLY POIGNANT TO ME TODAY AS I AM CONSTANTLY DEFENDING CHRISTIANITY TO A FRIEND AND ITS PLACE IN OUR GOVERNMENT AND LAWS.

THANK YOU.

Acting rude is a central part of Kevin's identity, it really isn't personal or about religion.

Anyways those of us who were there really did enjoy meeting and interacting with the students you brought up to Berkeley. However regarding your presentation, something I've noticed in thinking about it, is that it really is a very weak claim. As I mentioned to you before the presentation started, I grew up in Calvary Chapel, and was until 18 a very devout Christian. So I did start my quest with Christianity, so even if you are right that I should start my quest there, it changes absolutely nothing about what I should believe, or what I should study today. And even if I was considerably more religious in the past than probably anyone else in the group, we all have carefully considered the claims of Christianity at some point.

I think to make an argument which could be effective in convincing atheists you need to show not just that Christianity is testable, but also that it in fact passes those tests.

Also world view fit is probably nearly irrelevant to how likely something is to be true. And salvation being free in Christianity certainly is not a good reason to think it actually is true.

A couple points --

First, an issue of semantics. I did not utter the phrase "stoned on crack," simply because it would be kind of like saying someone was "drunk on vicodin." But, with that useless point out of the way, onwards -

Although it makes a much nicer story when you frame it as you did, issues of word choice aside, I still did not express the sentiment attributed to me in your post. By the time we had reached the Q&A section of the event, I had decided that it would be better not to try to argue with your presentation as a whole. I thought this for two reasons; because it seemed to be intended as simply an interesting series of ideas rather than as a coherent argument, and secondly, because the time it would have taken me to list off the flaws in your lines of thought would have taken far more than the time alotted. If you would like to see a full rebuttal to your presentation, I am sure that we would be happy to prepare one.

Instead, I challenged you on two specific factual points. I'm not even sure 'challenged' is the right word -- I just asked for sources. I was pretty sure that you would not have made strong factual claims that you did not have a source onhand for, simply because you are not the type of person to do so. I did make a crack about crack before getting on to the "give me a source" part, just because your Sagan anecdote seemed incredibly ludicrous. (I think it was something to the effect of "If someone other than you said this, I'd assume they were on crack..." but am not sure as I do not have a recording of the event.)

The first point I challenged was the the idea that salvation by faith was unique to the Christian religion. I put forth the example of the tradition of Pureland/Amida Buddhism set forth by Shinran (e.g., Shin Buddhism.) You had a quote from a Christian theologian apparently refuting this onhand, which was surprising, since it ran contrary to what one of my professors at Berkeley had previously said (and I, at first glance, strongly suspected that a professor of Chinese history specializing in religion at the best public university in the country was better-positioned to put forth claims about buddhism than most Christian theologians.)

Further poking around recently has confirmed my view on this issue. Obviously, there are some differences between the concepts of grace between the two systems (necessitated by lack of the concept of sin or God in the Christian sense,) but it is factually wrong to claim as you did that salvation in Shin Buddhism requires some degree of works and is not offered through faith alone. Shin Buddhism requires absolute faith in the saving power of the Amida Buddha (coupled in many traditions with one recitation of the phrase "I trust in the Buddha of Immeasurable Light.".) With absolute faith (unless, in some traditions, you have committed one of the five gravest sins - patricide, matricide, arahanticide, buddhacide, or creating a schism in a monastery) salvation is assured -- without works.

The other issue I challenged was a fairly insane anecdote about Sagan. The cite you pulled for it was from a book by Chuck Colson. I haven't actually checked it because the UCB library doesn't have it (I could get it on ILL, but haven't bothered yet) but even if it does support your anecdote, I am still extremely skeptical of an anecdote about sagan exclusively sourced from, of all places, a Chuck Colson book.

If someone gave a presentation before your congregation and declared "Christianity is a world view incompatible with reality because Pat Robertson molests little kiddies," and used a citation from Hitchens, your initial reaction would be one of utter disbelief, no? I was in a similar position; as Nick said, if I wanted to actually insult you, it would have been considerably more direct.