Published debate record
8 eligible one-on-one scorecards. Average published score: 80.9/100. Scores describe these debates, not the person's overall ability or worth.
David Wood vs Michael Shermer: Does God Exist? · 2022
Wood defended theism through intelligibility, moral grounding, and wider eschatological context; Shermer prevailed through empirical discrimination, natural mechanisms, secular morality, and suffering.
David Wood: 73 · Michael Shermer: 80. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Frank Turek vs Michael Shermer: What Best Explains Reality? · 2018
Turek advances a cumulative theistic explanation, while Shermer's calibrated skepticism, natural mechanisms, and evidential challenges more completely answer the debate's central burdens.
Frank Turek: 72 · Michael Shermer: 83. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Kyle Butt vs Michael Shermer: Does the God of the Bible Exist? · 2023
Shermer’s calibrated skepticism and natural alternatives consistently challenged Butt’s ambitious causal, design, moral, historical, and suffering-based case for the biblical God.
Kyle Butt: 71 · Michael Shermer: 86. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Frank Turek vs Michael Shermer: Is Morality Better Explained by God or Science? · 2015
Turek pressed divine grounding and the is-ought gap; Shermer answered through sentient flourishing, autonomy, evolved capacities, and challenges about religious reliability.
Frank Turek: 76 · Michael Shermer: 79. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Is God a Figment of Our Imagination? Michael Shermer vs. Alister McGrath · 2017
Shermer prevailed by connecting religious diversity, evidential burdens, naturalistic morality, and unfalsifiability to human construction, while McGrath offered thoughtful but less evidentially complete defenses of faith.
Michael Shermer: 77 · Alister McGrath: 72. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Does God Exist? John Lennox vs. Michael Shermer · 2008
Shermer’s disciplined evidential restraint narrowly prevailed over Lennox’s wide-ranging cumulative case, chiefly through stronger replies on suffering, historical underdetermination, and uncertainty.
John Lennox: 76 · Michael Shermer: 81. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Michael Shermer vs Glen Scrivener — Can We Be Good Without God? · 2024
Scrivener narrowly wins by pressing universal human worth and outsider scope, while Shermer offers strong fallibilist reasons but leaves equal rights incompletely grounded.
Michael Shermer: 79 · Glen Scrivener: 82. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Michael Shermer vs Luuk Vandeweghe — Are the Miracles of Jesus Unbelievable? · 2019
Shermer wins by pressing claim-specific evidence and comparative religious testimony, while Vandeweghe offers substantive but incompletely connected historical witness arguments.
Michael Shermer: 82 · Luuk Vandeweghe: 75. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.
Team and other excluded appearances
These records do not contribute to individual averages.
Sean Carroll and Michael Shermer vs Ian Hutchinson and Dinesh D'Souza: Has Science Refuted Religion? · 2012
Carroll and Shermer argue that naturalism and scientific explanations have displaced religious claims; Hutchinson and D'Souza argue that science has not refuted religion because it cannot settle every religious, historical, moral, or existential claim.
Sean Carroll and Michael Shermer: 81 · Ian Hutchinson and Dinesh D'Souza: 84. Scores assess the reasoning in this debate.