Conversations with Trey Jadlow Index

I'm not sure exactly how well this will work, but I now have had close to a dozen YouTube conversations with a Christian named Trey Jadlow. Trey has a somewhat peculiar apologetic style. He slides around from the argument from contingency to the argument from teleology to a first cause argument, and then throws in a bunch of jargon that has been called "word salad" by others in the "Great Debate" community on YouTube and Google+. In any case, I am friends with Trey on Facebook (for better or for worse) and we frequently engage in debate on the various posts we each share on our pages. Trey resists putting his arguments in writing (I would suggest because they are a muddled mess) and prefers to engage in a live discussion. I would also argue that he prefers this to a written exchange because it is easy for him to deflect and toss out red herrings. For me, it is easier to track any conversation when it is in writing.

Anyway, why am I writing about this here? One of Trey's favorite things to do is to declare himself
the winner in all of our exchanges. Trey contends that no one has ever exposed a single flaw in his argumentation. He has a playlist on his YouTube channel with all of our exchanges. One of Trey's favorite things is to post a link to that playlist (no matter what the subject at hand happens to be) and sarcastically mock me saying things like "David has never dominated a conversation" to poison the well against me for any of our mutual friends and acquaintances on Facebook who might read through the often lengthy exchanges in comments on Facebook. The purpose of this post is to serve as a counter post to Trey's repeated assertion that he has gone unanswered. It is my firm belief that I have identified problems with his arguments in each of our exchanges which he has not adequately rebutted.

My plan here is to use this page as an index with links to a separate blog post, one for each YouTube video, where I will break down the conversation, do my best to represent and/or quote Trey's words in the exchange and my responses. Most of the time, Trey's response to criticism is laughter, incredulity, and/or mockery. He does little or nothing to actually defuse the criticism. I'm undecided as to whether or not he understands the criticisms and is dismissing them this way because he ultimately only cares about the spectacle in these exchanges, or if he simply doesn't grasp the issues.

As you will see, if you don't know him already, Trey has no formal philosophical education and has not attended college. What Trey does know of philosophy, 90% was gleaned from listening to lectures by theologian/apologist R.C. Sproul. I myself don't know how accurately Trey portrays Sproul's arguments. I have listened to a bit of Sproul on YouTube, but I lose interest fairly quickly as he does more preaching than actual philosophy. If any of you are familiar with Sproul and can bear to listen to these conversations between Trey and myself, please provide insight as to whether Trey's representation is faithful to the original.

Here is the link to Trey's entire playlist of our conversations.

Below this point you will find hyperlinks to posts where I have broken down each conversation. Each page will contain the video embedded and linked. I will add more links and video break downs as I have time until I am caught up. Each link below will have the number of the exchange, the title, and a brief synopsis of the planned subject.





1. Conversation with Trey Jadlow and Gavagai (part 1?)
Our first encounter, we introduce ourselves, briefly give our backgrounds, Trey lays out his standard argument from contingency and purpose mishmash.

In development....

2. Gavagai and Trey Jadlow on the "In God We Trust" Motto
Our second discussion. Separation of church and state.


3. Gavagai and Trey Discuss Gay 'Marriage', the U.S. Constitution and Maybe a Bit of Meta-narrative
The title pretty much says it all.


4. Trey and Gavagai talk about space exploration and teleology


5. Trey and Gavagai Discuss Christian Hell


6. David and Trey Discuss the Existence of God


7. David and Trey Discuss Street Epistemology


8. Gavagai and Trey Discussion about Yahweh's morality


9. Is a Meta-narrative Necessary to Cohere Society?