When I engaged in my last major debate: 'Demons - Fact Or Fantasy?- at Harrison College in May, 1991, I always ensured my sundry attacks - against my HC colleague John Phillips - were based on his own claims. Not my perversions or distortions of them in setting up strawmen. My opening statement set the tone for the debate:
"My opponent will insist that we need a Devil- or demons - to account for a host of unknown or "evil" phenomena, including so-called psychic manifestations. My contention is that such claims are unnecessary given we already possess ample artillery in the scientific arsenal with which to provide plausible explanations without the need to invoke "demons" as additions to reality. This approach is also consistent with a long standing principle of science known as Ockham's Razor which basically says 'hypothetical existences are not to be increased without necessity."
Adding:
"My opponent will also undoubtedly quote some biblical references to you at length to entice you to believe these are substitutes for truth and facts. They are not. They are carryovers from a semi-literate age, wherein zero scientific input existed. So I do not recognize any biblical documents as even historically accurate as even conceded by a number of religious scholars. Let us further bear in mind the Bible is not one book delivered from above, but sixty six books written by flawed humans over a thousand year period. And in that period multiple translators often found it necessary to put their own words into the mouths of the alleged scriptural authors. The Bible then is more fiction novel than history text and cannot be used to base the existence of the Devil or demons."
As predicted, John began by offering numerous citations from the bible. He cited Mark 1:27 for example, to argue Jesus had the power to cast out demons from "demoniacs" (Those possessed by the devil). If demoniacs existed, as demonstrated in the good book, then demons existed as well. From his references he went on to assert that Jesus spoke on several occasions of the power of demons to possess men.
"This is not fantasy!" John exclaimed, "this is grim, fateful reality!"
Thus, he left himself open to an abundance of my own questions as a skeptic, prefaced by saying:
"In an age of micro-computers, satellite technology and genetic engineering it seems to me a regression to base reality on beliefs from the Dark Ages."
Then asking:
- How many of these demons or devils are there?
- What is their primary purpose?
- What do they do with their time and how do we know this?
- Where do they reside when not tempting or possessing humans?
-- How do I tell if a demon is near?
- How do I know it isn't something else?
John, being who he is, took the bait. The purpose of demons, he argued, was to possess or tempt as many humans as possible to get them into "Hell". The number agreed upon was roughly two thousand, based on the number of fallen angels we know of. (E.g. Lucifer). He then mentioned a Larry King show only a year earlier in which a priest appeared, describing at length an exorcism he performed and challenged Paul Kurtz- an atheist - to deny it.
I had happened to see the episode too, fortunately, and recalled the topic was “The Devil.” Kurtz, along the same lines I used above, disputed that any such entity has ever existed, now or in the past. This was in contradiction to a priest on the same show, who claimed that he’d performed an actual exorcism of “demons”. (Some clips of the alleged exorcisms were included) But Kurtz never bit. He pointed out that it appeared the “possessed” person was being held down, and anyone held down would fight like hell to get up!
I also knew I had clinched the debate when John asserted:
"The main mission of demons on earth is the temptation of humans. We know the number of demons created originally from fallen angels was approximately 2.000."
I then asked John: "Seriously? Two thousand demons? How would a small, finite number of demons keep pace with an exploding population of humans? Do the demons procreate?"
"No! Demons can't procreate, they are spirits!"
I replied: "Well there are now six billion humans on planet Earth which means those two thousand demons must work very hard indeed! Doing the math they have barely a nanosecond to tempt each human in a given day!"
This brought the assembly down.
The parameters of that debate have been recalled anew as Charlie Kirk has come to the fore, in respect of his purported "debating skills." Namely a NY Times piece Tuesday by Ezra Klein:
Opinion | Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way - The New York Times
Klein actually claimed:
"You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion."
But is the use of sophistry "practicing politics the right way"? Not when it replaces the use of logic for the purpose of reasoned persuasion with logical fallacies. Sophistry is basically the cunning use of fallacious arguments with the intention of deceiving, especially a large audience mesmerized by the sophist's charisma. Some examples picked up from various Youtube debates are instructive, and each exemplifies how well-prepared opponents were able to overwhelm Kirk:
Charlie Kirk Gets Roasted By Professor And Everyone Loses It!
Charlie Kirk Has Views On Ab*rtion DISMANTLED By Medical Student!
Charlie Kirk Gets SCHOOLED By Oxford Student On Masculinity!
Other instances that show the sheer prejudice, effrontery and arrogance of Kirk, are exemplified in these sound bites from his "debates":
"Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more".– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
"If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?"– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024
"If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023
The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.
Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024
We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024
America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025
"The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white".– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024
A recent Daily Kos contributor nailed Kirk's basic shtick:
"What is noteworthy about Kirk’s supposed “debate prowess” was his penchant for flinging wild assertions without any supporting evidence, his apparent ignorance regarding who has the burden of proof, and his use of logical fallacies. For example, his banner at the Utah campus proclaimed, “Prove Me Wrong.” No, the burden of proof is on you to prove that you are correct. No one has any obligation to disprove an unproven claim. His proclamation was based on illogically shifting the burden of proof."
While physical claims are supported by data and objective evidence, the supernatural ones can only be accepted on faith, or the belief that some Textual authority said so. However, this commits the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. - a point I tried to convey to John Phillips in our 1991 debate. A peculiar element of all spurious existence claims is that they can never be disproven no matter how many counter examples are provided. This is because metaphysical claims require the would-be “disprover” to go or be anywhere and look everywhere. (I.e. “Prove to me there’re no Brontosaurus ghosts anywhere in the universe!”)
Consider
the following existence claim:
There are two- inch high green
fairies that speak Greek and give out money for lost teeth
This statement is impossible to disprove, but that impossibility doesn’t mean it’s true. The point being that the burden of proof rests on the believer or claimant given he is the one adding to existent, manifest reality. In other words, you can't say anything you want - irrespective of the topic- and not back it up if you wish to be taken seriously.
Beyond that the fundamental tenet of all debates is that it is impossible to prove a negative. This inverts logic, and renders the claimant in a near unassailable position as when Kirk prefaced all his encounters with the "Prove me wrong" bollocks. No, no one has to prove you wrong. You have to prove your claim is air tight, unimpeachable!
Same point I drove home in my debate at Harrison College. The onus is on the claimant to prove his case or at least provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for why it must hold. This Charlie Kirk consistently failed to do.
This brings up the latest piece (yesterday) from anti-elite troll Barton Swaim. In his forlorn WSJ column, ‘The Left’s Vast Lack Of Knowledge’, Swaim barks
“That voters are sorting themselves along lines of educational
attainment is the most salient fact of American politics in the 21st century.
The credentialed vote mostly Democratic; everybody else plumps mostly
Republican. You might be tempted to deduce that liberals and progressives know
more about their conservative opposites than vice versa. You would be exactly
wrong, as the fallout from Charlie Kirk’s assassination reminds us by the
hour.
The day after Kirk was killed, the New York
Times ran a story headlined “Where Charlie Kirk Stood on Key
Political Issues.” The authors pieced together quotations manifestly taken from
websites unfriendly to Kirk and made no attempt to convey the context or
intended point of the various reproduced assertions. A section on antisemitism
made Kirk, who’d been dead less than a day, sound like a Jew-hater of the
1930s."
The point missed by Swaim is that Kirk was often caught out in his actual denigrating remarks - see the Youtube videos. Failing that, Swaim needs to check out the following analysis by an Ethics professor. Yes, she's an "elite", Swaim. but I challenge you to see her make the case that Charlie Kirk is exactly the person we on "the Left" depict him as.
The Reality Of Charlie Kirk: Hate, Hypocrisy & Violence
See Also:
Looking At The Basic (And Most Common) Logical Fallacy Traps We Fall Into
And:
Charlie Kirk is using religion to trick young conservatives
And:
Charlie Kirk was WORSE than you think
And:
Charlie Kirk EMBARRASSES Himself
And:
Charlie Kirk Calls For STONING GAYS TO DEATH | The Kyle Kulinski Show
And:
RACIST ATTACK: Charlie Kirk Says Black Women are Stupid - All College Spots Are for White People!!!
And:
by Robert C. Koehler | September 18, 2025 - 4:39am | permalink
Charlie Kirk’s killing last week—and the aftermath of grief and political outrage—are too overwhelming to ignore, even though I couldn’t possibly have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.
The best I can do is wander into the spiritual unknown and perhaps ask an impossible question or two. The first one is this: Are words adequate for the exploration of life and death? I ask this question as a writer. To me, words are virtually magical entities. They give us the means to shape, if not the world itself, at least our comprehension of it... and thus we assume we know what’s going on around us.
For instance, here I am, sitting at my desk, looking out my window on a beautiful, blue-sky afternoon. The leaves on the tree in front of me flutter in the breeze. A woman in a red coat walks through the parking lot, which is mostly empty. Everything is calm. The time is 2:43 pm on a Tuesday. This all seems simple enough, right?
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