What do Think about this debate?
In my mind Bart won this one easy.
I watched through all 3 hours (nearly) of that. And, honestly, it was a good debate.
So there's a few things I want to mention.
First, Bart Ehrman is considered one of the premier scholars in the world today on New Testament textual criticism. This is THE area of expertise for him.
Conversely, Dr. James White is in a league of very few for being a "Jack of All Trades" apologists who, unlike the euphemism, is actually very knowledgeable on many, many topics ie., Christian theology, world religions (Islam, Catholicism, JWs, Mormonism etc.) and other related topics. Within the debate, Ehrman actually said as much, that his study was specifically in textual criticism (and that he knew nothing of Islam).
In keeping with that understanding, it, to me, was amazing that White easily held his own and in fact I believe won the debate.
The burden of proof is on the critic. When you see that no other ancient literary work has the supportive, and variant copies of manuscripts that the New Testament does, it puts things into perspective. Socrates never wrote his wisdom out (hence the Socratic Problem) - they were written down after his death by Plato and others. Similarly, works by Josephus and every other ancient writing fall victim to difficult-to-prove-false criticisms. Using the mind of the critic to lead us to its "logical" ends, one would almost conclude that nothing written before the printing press is reliable in any sense. This is actually illogical.
When thousands of corroborating documents have been found and produced which support each other in meaning and retelling (penned generally by unscholarly individuals bent on spreading the "gospel" message), it points to as James White would describe as a driving force of truth (I can't remember the exact term he said).
Also, I like what one questioner at the end had to say, in that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was found to contain Isaiah (from the Old Testament) in 98% accuracy compared against the modern translation of the Bible. He brought out how the methodology of textual transmission of the Old Testament is considered very similar to how the New Testament came about (by Bart Ehrman in some of his writings). Ehrman had to admit that this was true though he continued to say that the book of Jeremiah was 15% shorter in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
My question is basically, what do you do with all of these writings then? They are some of the most numerous, and congruous historical writings the world has ever known? Further than that, one of Dr. James White's arguments (and one of textual apologists in general) is, that, unlike the controlled removal of variant copies in Islam, the number of variances in Biblical texts gives credence to a central and true message that they all point to (without interference - which is what happened in Islam).
Again, I would give the nod to Dr. James White and the side of the debate that says that the New Testament is a reliable and accurate compilation of the original manuscripts.