Reading The Old Testament Cover to Cover is The Fastest Way to Become an Atheist.

Pro's plan is doomed from formulation.

Pro's R1 suggests that the claim should read "Reading all of the OT is one way to become an atheist" or perhaps OT "is an effective way to become an Atheist." The last line of Pro's argument offers that OT reading is "the most common cause" of atheism, which may be close to Pro's intent but is equally unwarranted. The condition Pro has self-obligated to prove is "fastest." That's a problem for Pro because reading OT is time consuming and difficult and his terms are all undefined.

What is becoming an atheist anyway? Are people who have never heard of God atheists? If somebody holds a gun to your head and says, "Renounce your God" and you do, are you a momentary atheist? Isn't that faster than reading the Bible?

Con wisely jumps into the breach. A child born to atheists may be defined as an atheist at the moment of birth without effort. Lack of interest is offered as less effort than reading the Bible.

Pro fails to prove his plan for achieving atheism is faster than Con and Pro does not seem to recognize the threat in Con's counter. Pro accuses Con of debating in bad faith but this voter considers Con's approach sufficiently credible and Con's round2 double-down should have forced a detailed defense of OT reading as "faster' and improving the terms of the claim. Unfortunately, Pro just claims repetition.

Pro made a big claim without definitions or sources or specific examples or sharing the burden or rules limiting counterarguments, leaving many approaches open for Con. Con neatly offered a few ways to achieve atheism faster than reading one very long and difficult book and Pro never offered a refutation. Arguments to Con.

Sources to Con for using a few and also because the only links Pro offered were to this debate, leaving me wondering if this was meant to look like some kind of sourcing.

Ralph accepted the full BoP in the description.

In round 1, Ralph argued that the contradictions in the Bible are the quickest way to make a Christian lose his faith. RM argued that not being indoctrinated (i.e. never having read the Bible in the first place) is a faster way to become an atheist and that questioning the faith before reading it “cover to cover”, as the resolution states, is quicker as well. Ralph responded by pointing out that RM is debating in bad faith, which is likely true, but RM’s arguments are convincing and this debate was extremely hard to win for Pro due to the unfortunate formulation of the resolution and the acceptance of the sole BoP. RM restated and supported his opening arguments with further definitions and explanations which were however unnecessary as Ralph did not respond to them again and instead pointed to his own opening arguments. In the end, RM's argument being born to atheistic parents and/or losing faith just before reading the last sentence of the Bible, were not refuted sufficiently and convincing.

Bad faith debating? Probably. Successful bad faith debating? In my opinion, yes.

Conduct even, both debaters behaved reasonably, the bad faith from RM, in this case, does not constitute bad conduct in my opinion as Ralph shot himself in the foot by choosing the debate resolution and accepting the whole BoP. Had RM been the creator of this debate I would have awarded conduct to Ralph.

S&G even, both debater's arguments were comprehensible.

Sources even, RM presented sources that supported his points regarding susceptibility to irrational beliefs in early childhood while Ralph presented none but these sources had no significant impact on the debate outcome

Conduct: con clearly doesn’t argue in good faith - in this case I side with pro. Con simply attempts to make a semantic play for the points, which clearly wasn’t the debate that pro intended to have. However pro gets snippy and petulant - and this makes things a bit closer - but I view this sort of semantic knit picking as particularly odious.

Arguments: the resolution is clearly a bit tongue in cheek, and if it was clearly spelled out as a resolution as such I may have considered cons argument as valid. However cons semantic attack is too loosely coupled to the intent of the debate and my reading of the resolution for me to accept it unless con gives me a clear harm in terms of accepting what the resolution meant. As I can imagine a series of plausible methods of victory for con, and has pro took on burden of proof - I can’t see any reason not to accept the resolution as I would reasonably interpret it. Specifically that con is talking about deconversion.

This means con doesn’t offer a valid argument against the resolution.

At this point, i look at the debate description, then look at pro accepting burden of proof.

I look at the arguments, talking about the Old Testament being the “most common cause of conversion”, which doesn’t seem to be cover the specifics of the resolution either.

I also look at the justification - and feel that pro merely claims that the Old Testament is the most common cause - and doesn’t appear to warrant the claim that the Old Testament specifically is the not common cause. If the argument appealed to intuition I would have granted this as burden of proof.

So much as I hate awarding points to semantic trickery like this - pro didn’t do enough to meet the minimal burden of proof he set for himself, and as such I am forced to award this to RM by default.