^
Thanks for posting that. It really is worth watching through from the beginning, which includes an introductory discussion between four presuppositionalising young-Earth creationists. I believe this helps to better situate the argument in its religious context.
As for the debate itself, I was pleased that Avalos restricted himself as much as possible to what he knows: he is a biblical scholar, and his arguments were primarily drawn from an historical critical study of scriptural texts. Having said that, I was disappointed that he wasn't more emphatic in his rebuttals of Valdes' incredibly weak responses. Two fundamental points were in the English renderings of Hebrew words, רקיע ,ברא ,בראשית, translated "in the beginning", "to create", and "sky" by most modern translations. Valdes effectively admitted that he doesn't know the language, and yet felt comfortable countering Avalos' arguments by claiming basically that "lots" of Bible scholars translate these words that way. Of course, he ignored (and sadly, Prof. Avalos did not correct him on this) the pivotal religious and political reasons for why modern Bible translations are often very slow to revise based on new, or current scholarship and discovery. In actual fact, those slow to correct (ESV, NASB, NIV) are hindered by a lot of dogmatic baggage. As Avalos showed, the most recent and most scholarly modern renderings ALL correct the text to reflect a more accurate understanding of the language.
It would have been good for him to have asked Valdes to provide an account of those "many scholars" who agree with the old translations of these words.
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