I think you owe me two and a half hours. It's unfortunate that Tzortzis couldn't hear me calling him an idiot every few minutes. Here are a few observations:
1) A believer in an eternal God denies that anything with an infinite past can exist. Wtf?
2) A believer in an uncaused God argues that nothing can arise without a cause. Wtf?
3) A believer in a God that causes the universe argues that there can only be one God because of Occam's Razor. But the argument works precisely the same with zero Gods.
4) He completely mis-states what a cause is, as if every event has a single cause that makes that event inevitable. This is inconsistent with modern science.
5) He doesn't seem to know what an agnostic is, thinking they are "on the fence".
6) His argument that the "remarkableness" of the Koran suggests it is miraculous is absurd. No matter how many times he says it's "logical", that doesn't make it so. The biggest flaw is that it is impossible to prove that a miracle occurred in the past. To be a miracle, it must be a violation of the normal rules of cause and effect. But to infer anything about the past based solely by looking at the present, we must assume the normal rules of cause and effect hold.
7) His comparison of the Koran to China and reporting is silly. If we had as many inconsistent reports about China as we do about Holy books, we'd legitimately start to wonder if China really exists. One of the reasons I believe China exists is because I don't have equally competent reports saying it's in North America, saying it's in Europe, saying it's mythical, saying it's underwater, and so on.
He loves to list a couple of possibilities including the one he believes and a few silly straw men and then disprove the straw men. He does this too many times for me to list them all. (For example, the Koran must have been written by a human, Mohammed, or God. Why not intelligent aliens? If you think that sounds absurd to you, that God wrote it sounds *much* more absurd to me. This is a form of special pleading.)
9) His arguments are permeated with the error that you can discard incredibly unlikely possibilities. You cannot do so. For example, if I flip 100 coins, whatever outcome I get is incredibly unlikely. If you discard unlikely possibilities, you conclude there is no way I can flip 100 coins. This is obviously incorrect. In fact, incredibly unlikely events happen all the time.
10) His argument that Mohammed can't be deluded because he said some things that people recognize are important is comically absurd. And, again, he ignores much more likely examples that that Mohammed was sent by God, for example, that Mohammed had his mind engineered by intelligent aliens. (I consider God at least as unlikely and absurd as you consider intelligent aliens.)
11) And, of course, every religion can make precisely these same arguments. Any argument that equally supports multiple inconsistent conclusions, cannot be valid.
12) He thinks his arguments are correct unless someone can come up with better arguments for different answers to the same questions. This is silly. "I think Abraham Lincoln had bread for lunch on his 12th birthday because I saw it in a vision. You must accept this unless you can come up with a better argument showing what Abraham Lincoln had for lunch on his 12th birthday."
13) Tzortzis was blatantly dishonest in complaining that Buckner failed to rebut his arguments in his opening. Tozrtzis went first, so he got to make his argument first. This means that when Buckner speaks, he either has to rebut Tzortzis before ever making his own argument (and thus be on defense the whole debate) or largely ignore Tozortzis' arguments (until rebuttal time) and make his own opening (which is what he's supposed to do, it's *his* opening). For Tzortzis to complain that his arguments weren't rebutted *before* *rebuttal* *even* *started* is dishonest and scummy. And as an experienced debater, he had to know what he was doing. (Buckner pointed this out, but it's hard to point out that your opponent is being a rude jerk and should know better.)
14) Other evils don't justify an evil. If religion starts wars, that's an evil of religion, period. It makes no difference what other evils start other wars. A rapist doesn't defend himself by pointing out that there are murderers out here.
15) Tzortzis doesn't seem to understand how you show an argument is inconsistent. When Buckner presents an argument, "You believe X, that leads to Y, which leads to Z, which is false", he responds, "You can't make that argument because you don't believe X". Wtf? (For example, that the problem of evil is a problem for atheists. No, no problem for atheists at all.)
16) Tzortzis is a very good debater and very adept at making the weaker argument appear the stronger. Buckner's refusal to be dishonest (and inability to achieve what he needs to achieve honestly) hurts him a lot. It's a skill he just doesn't have, but in fairness, it's very hard to debate someone who argues the way Tzortzis does. (Look how poorly he pointed out Tzortzis' cheating in 13 above.)
Tzortzis won the debate. Buckner needs to learn how to counter that style of debating better. (It's very, very hard.)
