What are the dumbest arguments you have ever heard?

The title is self-explanatory.

1. God doesn't exist because the movies and music meant to honor Him are so bad.

    From YouTube personality The Atheist Voice. Firstly: this has nothing to do with God's existence. Secondly: Johann Sebastian Bach.

2. Text is the worst form of communication.

    From DDO user backwardseden. He communicated this using text.

3. God exists because there is no evidence that He doesn't.

    From any online theist who doesn't quite understand how the burden of proof works.

Please do not make troll posts such as "Any argument used by YECs and flat earthers - but I repeat myself." Use specific arguments.

I was in student congress debate in high school (essentially, it was a mock congress). One of the bills we debated had to do with our troop presence in South Korea. This was to qualify for nationals. Someone's argument was that, instead of passing the bill, we should kill Kim Jong-Un.

Another argument that I heard: "we should ban gay marriage because gays are inherently sub-human and disgusting." Note that there was no warrant to back up his assertion. He didn't know this at the time, but the judge was gay. He didn't win in that chamber. 

One last one. Someone cited the Onion as a source when they were debating if they should heavily penalize texting and driving. 

This is not representative of high school debate in its totality. There are plenty of adept speakers who present cogent arguments on par with, (and often better,) than some of the politicians in power right now. 

I don't even support gay marriage, but that statement is revolting. No one is sub-human. It's absolutely stunning that was used in a competitive debate.

Did he use a story from the Onion unwittingly, or did he outright say that was his source?

It was a middle schooler who used it. They were unaware about the Onion's satirical content. I was judging as a high schooler (which you can do if all the competitors are in middle school). I wasn't too upset by it. They were inexperienced, and it isn't usually until high school when people start developing media literacy skills. I just let them know on the feedback sheets we use to score the speakers.

It's really amazing how many people mistake satire sites for real news.

On the other hand, maybe that's because our real news is getting increasingly indistinguishable from satire.

That is becoming true. Both in the sense that yellow journalism is making a comeback and how stupefying events are occuring in the world and being shared at a rapid pace.

Type1 created a lot of dumb resolutions but was pretty lazy on the follow through.  “Kyke is my favorite word” was one    He actually made an effort on “Chimpanzees are smarter than humans”.

Ive tried a couple Braveheart debates on DART but that started with a DDO debate years ago where the instigator offered to prove that Braveheart was historically accurate which led me to reading how Braveheart is often nominated for least historically accurate movie of all time.  As soon as we were done he repeated the challenge again.

currently I am arguing that John Kerry and Adolph Hitler are likely not lizard people who are secretly aliens who are  secretly demons trapped in Antarctica until the end times.  

No such thing. There's also no such thing as the smartest argument I've ever heard, out of context.

It is always context based. The single most intelligent debating technique and thus argument to form is one that hurts you in some way while making the other side even more hurt by it. At the moment I am debating someone using such a technique against me: https://www.debateart.com/debates/1580/does-religiosity-make-people-dumb but they are going to see that I know how to counter this strategy quite well. The idea is that you admit something that hurts one side of your burden of proof to then force the opponent to support the other way you support your side, in order to counter your self-hurting one. I call it 'Burden-of-Proof sandwiching' and basically am the only user of this website so far who proficiently does it. It does lose you debates at times to use it, because many voters will think you lost due to the sacrifice to your side that you made, but overall it's flawless so long as the voters catch on and you put a lot of effort into making it crystal clear. I have used it against MagicAintReal and am the only user he ever vs'd on here whom he himself admitted was proficient at debating, afterwards. 

You can't always do this. It only works when the debate is angled in a way where the proof for one side is reliant on 'facts' as opposed to reasoning. What you need to do is say 'yes, these facts are valid but they mean this instead.' That's the fundamental concept behind BoP sandwiching.

Blamonkey has displayed an understanding of how to implement it but tends to simply start off doing it and then stick to one angle that's easier to prove, not pressuring the opponent to properly have to give in.

Here are some of mine...

1. If the bible was true, everyone would believe it.

2. We cannot find out what is true because everyone has a different claim of what is true.

3. Abiogenesis must be true because no  other viable theory exists.

4. Since God doesn't just show Himself, He cannot exist.

5. Atheists tend to be objective, original thinkers.

Extraordinary claims need extraordernary evidence.

Just illogical. Each and every one of them.

This one does have some valid uses. For instance, I would require a far higher bar of proof for the existence of the Illuminati than I would for the existence of a gun that can shoot 30 times every half second.

hey, everyone, I fucked my car up really bad

This one time, we asked the opponents what their sources were and they said common sense. And the worst part is our team lost the debate.

worked for Thomas Paine

Did you do PF or policy debate in high school?

We were debating school uniforms, we were put into groups of two, my teammate when questioned on the bullying that would occur as a result of poor children not washing their uniforms, stated that poor kids are ugly and would just hang out with other smelly poor children, and therefore it's not a problem. Funnily enough we wound up winning all 3 major debates that year in middle school.

Don't really know what those are but the debate I mentioned was on a junk food tax

lol

Monty Python and the Holy Grail???? HELLO THAT'S A GREAT MOVIE

That just hurts.

I ran a Greece K

What's a Greece K, and how is it different from a normal K?

It is a name of a K

Anyone from the days of DDO fucking remembers the infamous ScottyDouglas line that launched the very creation of the Weekly Stupid. 

"Newsflash: Even if you don't believe in the Devil, you do"

- An actual argument between ScottyDouglas and an atheist, the atheist explaining that he does not fear the Devil because he does not believe the Devil actually exists. 

I get it, but evidence is just evidence, extraordinary evidence is an oxymoron. What people mean is extraordinary claims require stronger proofs.

I don’t know if our current mods would let us even do a Weekly Stupid.

This brings the speak of the devil line to mind. Just the other day I was just telling everyone in the moderator chat about how how certain recent things really make me miss the Weekly Stupid.

As always, thank you for the entertainment it provided.

...

Note: Hopefully this doesn't jinx the thread... This is a fine discussion to have. General argument lines are being called out, but individual users are not being insulted; the main targets don't even seem site specific. Type1 was named, but the mention was in reference to specific actions he chose to take (and probably still would).

Im glad I did it at the time I did it (in college when I had fuckloads of free time) because there's just no way I would be able to do something similar today. The site is still fairly inactive compared to DDO during its hey-day when the Weekly Stupid aired, and even though it was only twice a month there still was a big time requirement of looking for stupid and recording and filming things that I just dont have the time to do anymore. 

I might be able to do another movie type of feature where I whittle away at it over time until I have something put together, but I cant commit to a bi-weekly production that is fairly effort-intensive that chews up a lot of free time I might not even have from week to week