A strong suggestion for arguing God is the cause of the universe, is to never leave God being created by us unchallenged. When that is unchallenged, there's no logical path remaining for God being an uncaused cause. When that's left in place, diet coke makes more sense (at least it can be verified to exist).
If that forum is anything like the one on DDO (the website most of us fled from), it is full of posers who are offended by any real religious discussion even if that discussion is explicitly to praise God. I once posted a paper from school, on why (assuming God is loving) God cannot be all powerful due to respect for free will in his role as a parent... Were it in person, I would have been stoned to death for sacrilege.
Neatly I used to be Christian, but scam artists at church got me one too many times. I still sometimes debate in favor of religion, since either side to these is an intellectual exercise which won't change anyone's mind...
Weird thing, I went to a bible study the other night (was visiting a very religious friend for their graduation), and there was a lady there who insisted with excitement in her eyes that Jesus kills hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people while riding around on a horse. This stemmed from a discussion of how wonderful it is that God murders innocent people and sends them to hell for not knowing him (most of the rest of the discussion was sane).
---RFD (1 of 9)---
Interpreting the resolution:
For pro to win, God must be implied to exist with some confidence (statistical or otherwise).
For con to win, God’s existence must be left within reasonable doubt.
Gist:
Pro’s whole case could have called for Zeus or Ra having done it (names he brought into this debate), with equal certainty to one of the other thousands of fictional beings did it. Con cast strong doubt on any of them, chiefly by reminding us that none of pro’s models actually calls for any God to be involved, and even if they did there’s no reason it’s God instead of the FSM.
In the final round there’s a list of five major things pro dropped, but he concedes them as not mattering (this includes that God is fictional!).
---RFD (2 of 9)---
Blunder:
I got barely started R2 before I noticed a massive tactical error from pro. Con gave a definition for God that would be wholly encapsulated by the FSM (all hail his noodly appendage); had con embraced that he would have flipped a good chunk of con’s own counter evidence to his favor. Instead by trying to argue against the validity of any being as likely as the FSM, he completely undermined his own case for any being of similar likelihood such as God.
0. Tests
Good start to the debate, two methods for validating evidence (as much as no one has been able to prove the FSM is fictional, nor even that Jesus Christ is not his son...). Pro’s argument against the FSM validity test was suspect, and based on false information which con quickly corrected (the nature of gods is never physical form; no one says ‘you called God HE, and men have penises, which are physical matter, so God cannot exist...’)
---RFD (3 of 9)---
1. Lack of evidence (No direct evidence)
Con counters the KCA via questioning the validity of composition AKA it’s not proven (which pro defends with repeating himself and making a diet coke straw-person), and more importantly that even if his premises were true the conclusions that one particular God did it was not even implied; to which pro left effectively unchallenged. The FSM test pro has a decent defense of “Adding superfluous details in order to make the argument seem stupid is not a real objection.” Granted con was not so much adding superfluous details as pointing them out; and pro decided to reject the FSM instead of using him as God (no evidence exists to say that’s not God’s true form).
---RFD (4 of 9)---
The teleological argument did not lead to any conclusion of God, merely attempted to imply we don’t know as much about our universe or the multiverse as we would like. To quote con on this point: “there is no necessity for that fine tuning to be performed by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being with an interest in human affairs.” Later this gets into how the universe is mostly hostile to life, which implies that it was not made by any smart creator (both debaters missed that this is proof of the FSM, as he was stupid and outright drunk when he made the universe... again, had pro just embraced the FSM he could have flipped all this evidence against his case to be in favor of it).
---RFD (5 of 9)---
Without proving God is somehow needed in any of his models, he insists “This constitutes direct evidence for a God.” He even doubles down on his lack of evidence being his evidence, insisting we need to just accept his appeal to authority without any (had the authority come with evidence rather than mere assertion, it would have been the non-fallacious form... the equation would not need to be typed into the debate, a quick link to where Penrose got his numbers would do a better job anyway). Note: this was a major place the writing of sources hurt an argument.
2. mundane explanations (no indirect evidence)
Pro does a two-line reply which does not really challenge this. I would call it dropped, but not outright conceded (I should look up the jargon, to ensure I’m using these terms correctly).
---RFD (6 of 9)---
3. God changes (likely made up)
Actually a good start, given thousands of false gods we imagined into being, why would a later one not stem from the same source? Pro majorly drops the ball here, conceding that con is right, but then insisting one random one of them he’s apparently met must have done it anyway (so much talk of probably, so if there’s ten-thousand false idols claiming to be God, what are the odds you’ve found the true one to which you are arguing in this debate? 0.01%). As con puts it “Unicorns may exist, the matrix may exist, the Star Wars universe may exist - but knowing that they are works of fiction makes that idea less likely plausible and inherently unlikely that humans ‘just so happened’ to invent a fictional super being, and turned out to be correct.” Pro tries to bring Zeus and others in, but nothing gets around the core problem of decreased likelihoods.
---RFD (7 of 9)---
4. Occams Razor (unnecessary to solve any specific problems)
On the multiverse, pro fully Leeroy Jenkined the composition fallacy con had already pointed out to him (why even make a pre-refuted argument?). It apparently violates the local laws we know, so can’t exist! *lol*
Neatly pro argues that minds randomly float around in space and before time, and it would be the composition fallacy to say they can’t be there (more credit would go to him here had he named it); but makes a rather obvious false attribution of BoP to the person not claiming the seeming impossible.
5. Mop up and drops
Seriously, I’m going to steal this for future debates, putting it in one round before the end. Pro ends up intentionally dropping (at this point I’d call that a concession) the entire bullet list.
---RFD (8 of 9)---
Arguments: con
See above review of key points.
Sources: tied
Pro, next time I suggest using the advice at: http://tiny.cc/DebateArt
Due to effort I am leaving this tied... However, either make links in arguments and/or number your sources.
In case it’s not been explained before: Books are not the type of sources judges here care about, we look for what we can easy verify on websites (an example being links to scientific papers, which so long as there’s a summary we can read we trust it without needing to pay to access them).
S&G: con
Pro intentionally wasted the time of the voters by claiming R1 or R2 contained the list of (as he outright quoted) "Objections so horrendously bad I couldn't have made them up"; which it did not, rendering his reply both incoherent and incomprehensible, while self-accusing his own prior arguments of being just that for not containing what he specified they contained.
---RFD (9 of 9)---
Similarly, while his sources themselves were fine, the connections to his arguments were left incoherent by the poor method of their display. Pro, this kind of mistake can cause accidental plagiarism, so please take my advice as seen in the sources section.
Speaking of numbers, even if headings change, maintaining the numbers on them would have made arguments less painful to track down when trying to follow the thread of each through the 30,000 character rounds.
Conduct: tied
Con was better (particularly that final round nicety), but I am putting the major offense here into the S&G category as pro is new, so may have never been told before what quotations mean in written debates.
For character limits I suggest pre-write your R1, then triple the length. To attract voters, 5k is the longest you'd want to go, but 10k gives a strong safety net.
They'd be the best way to verify it, but watching (particularly without sound) would take too long for most historical events to be a casual way to learn.
I'm about a quarter of the way through this monstrosity... I have a social life to get to, so I'll analyze some more arguments tomorrow or the next day.
@PGA2.0
I blocked you from tagging me in things due to your repeated shit behavior at: https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/1936
I never tagged you in anything after that, and you make this call-out in my debate only to block me to prevent yourself from being tagged. *slow-clap*
If you've gained the maternity to challenge someone to a debate, rather than just being a forum troll, bring it.
Thanks for the debate. While I did not address it in my arguments, you did an amazing job! Seriously, you actually got me to concede a subpoint to one of my contentions, which is rare.
We can debate again sometime, and I'm also open to discussing the topic in a non-combative manner (just don't be an ad infinitum moron).
I probably would not have attacked sources so hard (not to mention some of the smaller points, like ectopic pregnancy), were it not for a couple people who should not vote swearing they would... For context to why it's a problem with abortion debates: On another site there was a small group of people who would vote in favor of any pro-life argument (even if the argument was babies make better foodstuff than fetuses...), because they believe pro-lifers are in need of participation trophies and public safe spaces free from their ideas being challenged... While the promised voters here are not such idiots, I was still going to stack the deck again them (for clarity, neither of them ended up voting).
I was away for the weekend... I'll put some work in on it today; and I'm not really worried about the details of this debate, as it seems more like a beta test for how to get this type of thing working.
Thanks for the feedback on this debate. I suspect you are the first person to read it all.
> "Jesus is that brutal serial killer God of His creation which makes it hard for me to call Him ever loving and forgiving, but I have to accept this and move on."
Well if you don't call him "ever loving and forgiving," it's off to the torture chambers for you.
> "I do not try and apologetically spin doctor His true self away"
It's honestly a breath of fresh air, particularly (as I proved in the debate with multiple scientific sources) since the vast majority of Christians only know Jesus by reputation, rather than reading the bible.
> "our 1400 square mile Heaven"
Hate to be a naysayer, but that should be cubed miles; as it was a massive square (I wonder if Star Trek writers were picturing this when they made the Borg?). Anyway this should decrease the overcrowding, and give a much bigger perimeter to walk around... I admit to finding it weird that this measurement was verified; the writer is reported to have actually spent several months (or years) double checking everything with a rod.
Would you two mind redoing this with either a third round or actually starting in R1? ... based on the flow of comments, more rounds might be warrnted.
It was back on DDO, I believe the main debate for it got deleted for hate speech (AKA, someone cried enough about how they could not take a joke), but there's some samples of it remaining: https://www.debate.org/opinions/does-australia-exist
Thanks for voting, and for the feedback. Hope you get some good sleep...
---1 of 3---
And yes, I of course hope you reweigh things with the damage from sources factored in (it's easy, as I outlined them at the end of each round, and that pro's evidence often directly opposed his case went uncontested).
---2 of 3---
Pro-lifers chanting "abortion is murder" is a pet peeve of mine (and similar for anti-meat protesters), much like pro's opinion of pro-choicers saying "you hate women."
Both of these come up in debates too often, and when the person making the claim specifically uses the legal definition, I point out that they haven't proven abortion is the illegal killing of a human to prove that it's murder. I assume were I to have pulled the "you hate women" pro would have pointed out a similar lack of evidence toward that precise conclusion. In R3 he conceded that it is not murder, which was the contention. Were he to have used to more mellow claim that it's comparable to murder, that would be the start to a potentially constructive conversation.
On "Health" I indeed dropped the stillborn sub-point, but I literally flipped how much of pro's evidence on the main point? Then supported this one with the constitution prohibiting inflicting potential death on them (some points crossover).
---3 of 3---
On "Slavery," my main evidence used the legal definitions (as this was a debate about law), as seen in block-text in R2.
On "constitution" I am surprised this one is not weighted higher, given that this is a legal debate, and pro's own evidence proved that abortion should remain legal according to the foundation of law itself (it was his late debate attempt at a silver bullet, but it shot his case instead of mine).
I fully admit to being confused by the decision to award pro a bonus round (or penalize me? same outcome). I'm a firm believer in dismissing any brand new points, and decreasing the weight given, but to outright assign without warning an unequal number of argument rounds on principle seems odd.
1. Having debated Tiwaz (https://www.debateart.com/debates/866), I totally understand why you'd ban him from participating.
2. You are not actually waiving a round by writing the description, so there's no need for pro to waive the last round. I'm guessing that's a copy paste from DDO, but even there it would be R1 for acceptance only. Worse, you've created a setup that does not allow the person to defend their case.
3. The resolution is deeply slanted, perhaps to the point of being a truism (thus troll debate), due to using an absolute qualifier ("completely"). To give an example; an atomic bomb detonating within a populated city is not completely evil via the definitions.
When you create a debate, you can actually make it about a book chapter or article, and pre-specify in the description that your first round will be entirely a quote from said material... I do however suggest retiring your current account, to get a fresh start free from the reputation you've earned.
Part of pro's case finally makes sense to me. I treated that as a self evident intuitive leap once the price tag was in place (to me $12K is a very large amount...).
We voters are an inherently subjective measure. If you feel you won or lost, a few outside opinions need not change that.
Plus nukes are scary, expect voters to be biased against them. Had your R2 arguments been a little stronger, I suspect people would have voted differently.
I assume it's collaborative. I suggest using a couple shared google docs, for a quick start you can make a copy of this one and then share (with full edit permissions) to your team: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DMjSk6ylGArN4920junXXukjr0czi6i1-8ONvG2UhEc/edit?usp=sharing
I'm fine with helping out either, or even both sides.
A few quick things:
1. While this debate need not be USA specific, for clarity it should pick one country for the framework.
2. There are various different types of taxes, but all of them ultimately raise the price consumers pay (Socialist countries have tried to get around this, it leads to collapse).
3. It is very easy for taxes to be regressive, in that they charge the poor a higher percentage of their earnings than the rich (AKA victimizing those who can't afford it). Cigarettes and alcohol are notorious for this.
4. What is under discussion is a Sin Tax. Sin Taxes in the USA cannot merely target something they opposes, but must also be written to be raising funds for some specific social good.
By what standard do you believe Israel is not a state?
Bare in mind, the usual definition for country is "a state or nation." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/country
?
Thank you so much for voting. This will be the last time I take on a debate even half this long.
I fully agree on my second area of contention being weak. It was meant primarily to be entertaining.
Why do you bump this so often?
A strong suggestion for arguing God is the cause of the universe, is to never leave God being created by us unchallenged. When that is unchallenged, there's no logical path remaining for God being an uncaused cause. When that's left in place, diet coke makes more sense (at least it can be verified to exist).
I was tempted to say truism, but there's actually a good counter case here.
Not the case I would make, but he's got an alibi in all the other homes he broke into that night!
If that forum is anything like the one on DDO (the website most of us fled from), it is full of posers who are offended by any real religious discussion even if that discussion is explicitly to praise God. I once posted a paper from school, on why (assuming God is loving) God cannot be all powerful due to respect for free will in his role as a parent... Were it in person, I would have been stoned to death for sacrilege.
Neatly I used to be Christian, but scam artists at church got me one too many times. I still sometimes debate in favor of religion, since either side to these is an intellectual exercise which won't change anyone's mind...
Weird thing, I went to a bible study the other night (was visiting a very religious friend for their graduation), and there was a lady there who insisted with excitement in her eyes that Jesus kills hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people while riding around on a horse. This stemmed from a discussion of how wonderful it is that God murders innocent people and sends them to hell for not knowing him (most of the rest of the discussion was sane).
---RFD (1 of 9)---
Interpreting the resolution:
For pro to win, God must be implied to exist with some confidence (statistical or otherwise).
For con to win, God’s existence must be left within reasonable doubt.
Gist:
Pro’s whole case could have called for Zeus or Ra having done it (names he brought into this debate), with equal certainty to one of the other thousands of fictional beings did it. Con cast strong doubt on any of them, chiefly by reminding us that none of pro’s models actually calls for any God to be involved, and even if they did there’s no reason it’s God instead of the FSM.
In the final round there’s a list of five major things pro dropped, but he concedes them as not mattering (this includes that God is fictional!).
---RFD (2 of 9)---
Blunder:
I got barely started R2 before I noticed a massive tactical error from pro. Con gave a definition for God that would be wholly encapsulated by the FSM (all hail his noodly appendage); had con embraced that he would have flipped a good chunk of con’s own counter evidence to his favor. Instead by trying to argue against the validity of any being as likely as the FSM, he completely undermined his own case for any being of similar likelihood such as God.
0. Tests
Good start to the debate, two methods for validating evidence (as much as no one has been able to prove the FSM is fictional, nor even that Jesus Christ is not his son...). Pro’s argument against the FSM validity test was suspect, and based on false information which con quickly corrected (the nature of gods is never physical form; no one says ‘you called God HE, and men have penises, which are physical matter, so God cannot exist...’)
---RFD (3 of 9)---
1. Lack of evidence (No direct evidence)
Con counters the KCA via questioning the validity of composition AKA it’s not proven (which pro defends with repeating himself and making a diet coke straw-person), and more importantly that even if his premises were true the conclusions that one particular God did it was not even implied; to which pro left effectively unchallenged. The FSM test pro has a decent defense of “Adding superfluous details in order to make the argument seem stupid is not a real objection.” Granted con was not so much adding superfluous details as pointing them out; and pro decided to reject the FSM instead of using him as God (no evidence exists to say that’s not God’s true form).
---RFD (4 of 9)---
The teleological argument did not lead to any conclusion of God, merely attempted to imply we don’t know as much about our universe or the multiverse as we would like. To quote con on this point: “there is no necessity for that fine tuning to be performed by an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being with an interest in human affairs.” Later this gets into how the universe is mostly hostile to life, which implies that it was not made by any smart creator (both debaters missed that this is proof of the FSM, as he was stupid and outright drunk when he made the universe... again, had pro just embraced the FSM he could have flipped all this evidence against his case to be in favor of it).
---RFD (5 of 9)---
Without proving God is somehow needed in any of his models, he insists “This constitutes direct evidence for a God.” He even doubles down on his lack of evidence being his evidence, insisting we need to just accept his appeal to authority without any (had the authority come with evidence rather than mere assertion, it would have been the non-fallacious form... the equation would not need to be typed into the debate, a quick link to where Penrose got his numbers would do a better job anyway). Note: this was a major place the writing of sources hurt an argument.
2. mundane explanations (no indirect evidence)
Pro does a two-line reply which does not really challenge this. I would call it dropped, but not outright conceded (I should look up the jargon, to ensure I’m using these terms correctly).
---RFD (6 of 9)---
3. God changes (likely made up)
Actually a good start, given thousands of false gods we imagined into being, why would a later one not stem from the same source? Pro majorly drops the ball here, conceding that con is right, but then insisting one random one of them he’s apparently met must have done it anyway (so much talk of probably, so if there’s ten-thousand false idols claiming to be God, what are the odds you’ve found the true one to which you are arguing in this debate? 0.01%). As con puts it “Unicorns may exist, the matrix may exist, the Star Wars universe may exist - but knowing that they are works of fiction makes that idea less likely plausible and inherently unlikely that humans ‘just so happened’ to invent a fictional super being, and turned out to be correct.” Pro tries to bring Zeus and others in, but nothing gets around the core problem of decreased likelihoods.
---RFD (7 of 9)---
4. Occams Razor (unnecessary to solve any specific problems)
On the multiverse, pro fully Leeroy Jenkined the composition fallacy con had already pointed out to him (why even make a pre-refuted argument?). It apparently violates the local laws we know, so can’t exist! *lol*
Neatly pro argues that minds randomly float around in space and before time, and it would be the composition fallacy to say they can’t be there (more credit would go to him here had he named it); but makes a rather obvious false attribution of BoP to the person not claiming the seeming impossible.
5. Mop up and drops
Seriously, I’m going to steal this for future debates, putting it in one round before the end. Pro ends up intentionally dropping (at this point I’d call that a concession) the entire bullet list.
---
---RFD (8 of 9)---
Arguments: con
See above review of key points.
Sources: tied
Pro, next time I suggest using the advice at: http://tiny.cc/DebateArt
Due to effort I am leaving this tied... However, either make links in arguments and/or number your sources.
In case it’s not been explained before: Books are not the type of sources judges here care about, we look for what we can easy verify on websites (an example being links to scientific papers, which so long as there’s a summary we can read we trust it without needing to pay to access them).
S&G: con
Pro intentionally wasted the time of the voters by claiming R1 or R2 contained the list of (as he outright quoted) "Objections so horrendously bad I couldn't have made them up"; which it did not, rendering his reply both incoherent and incomprehensible, while self-accusing his own prior arguments of being just that for not containing what he specified they contained.
---RFD (9 of 9)---
Similarly, while his sources themselves were fine, the connections to his arguments were left incoherent by the poor method of their display. Pro, this kind of mistake can cause accidental plagiarism, so please take my advice as seen in the sources section.
Speaking of numbers, even if headings change, maintaining the numbers on them would have made arguments less painful to track down when trying to follow the thread of each through the 30,000 character rounds.
Conduct: tied
Con was better (particularly that final round nicety), but I am putting the major offense here into the S&G category as pro is new, so may have never been told before what quotations mean in written debates.
For character limits I suggest pre-write your R1, then triple the length. To attract voters, 5k is the longest you'd want to go, but 10k gives a strong safety net.
They'd be the best way to verify it, but watching (particularly without sound) would take too long for most historical events to be a casual way to learn.
I'm about a quarter of the way through this monstrosity... I have a social life to get to, so I'll analyze some more arguments tomorrow or the next day.
Welcome back!
Your very first point is my total feelings on this debate.
@PGA2.0
I blocked you from tagging me in things due to your repeated shit behavior at: https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/1936
I never tagged you in anything after that, and you make this call-out in my debate only to block me to prevent yourself from being tagged. *slow-clap*
If you've gained the maternity to challenge someone to a debate, rather than just being a forum troll, bring it.
Thanks for the debate. While I did not address it in my arguments, you did an amazing job! Seriously, you actually got me to concede a subpoint to one of my contentions, which is rare.
We can debate again sometime, and I'm also open to discussing the topic in a non-combative manner (just don't be an ad infinitum moron).
I probably would not have attacked sources so hard (not to mention some of the smaller points, like ectopic pregnancy), were it not for a couple people who should not vote swearing they would... For context to why it's a problem with abortion debates: On another site there was a small group of people who would vote in favor of any pro-life argument (even if the argument was babies make better foodstuff than fetuses...), because they believe pro-lifers are in need of participation trophies and public safe spaces free from their ideas being challenged... While the promised voters here are not such idiots, I was still going to stack the deck again them (for clarity, neither of them ended up voting).
The obvious K comes to mind of proving that elephants are better than humans.
I was away for the weekend... I'll put some work in on it today; and I'm not really worried about the details of this debate, as it seems more like a beta test for how to get this type of thing working.
A lot of misinformation about his divine noodliness. To minimize confusion, I suggest watching this quick primer: https://vimeo.com/31543194
Thank you both for voting!
Thanks for the feedback on this debate. I suspect you are the first person to read it all.
> "Jesus is that brutal serial killer God of His creation which makes it hard for me to call Him ever loving and forgiving, but I have to accept this and move on."
Well if you don't call him "ever loving and forgiving," it's off to the torture chambers for you.
> "I do not try and apologetically spin doctor His true self away"
It's honestly a breath of fresh air, particularly (as I proved in the debate with multiple scientific sources) since the vast majority of Christians only know Jesus by reputation, rather than reading the bible.
> "our 1400 square mile Heaven"
Hate to be a naysayer, but that should be cubed miles; as it was a massive square (I wonder if Star Trek writers were picturing this when they made the Borg?). Anyway this should decrease the overcrowding, and give a much bigger perimeter to walk around... I admit to finding it weird that this measurement was verified; the writer is reported to have actually spent several months (or years) double checking everything with a rod.
Minor correction: Reverse racism does not exist, as the term racism already covers everything people try to lump inside it.
Would you two mind redoing this with either a third round or actually starting in R1? ... based on the flow of comments, more rounds might be warrnted.
On it... And in case my RFD does not contain this enough: GROSS!
It was back on DDO, I believe the main debate for it got deleted for hate speech (AKA, someone cried enough about how they could not take a joke), but there's some samples of it remaining: https://www.debate.org/opinions/does-australia-exist
We debaters proved Australia doesn't exist, so pro can totally win this with the right sources.
Ok, this resolution would now be an easy win for con... Might have gone a little too far (or an error came up with all the editing).
Thanks for voting, and for the feedback. Hope you get some good sleep...
---1 of 3---
And yes, I of course hope you reweigh things with the damage from sources factored in (it's easy, as I outlined them at the end of each round, and that pro's evidence often directly opposed his case went uncontested).
---2 of 3---
Pro-lifers chanting "abortion is murder" is a pet peeve of mine (and similar for anti-meat protesters), much like pro's opinion of pro-choicers saying "you hate women."
Both of these come up in debates too often, and when the person making the claim specifically uses the legal definition, I point out that they haven't proven abortion is the illegal killing of a human to prove that it's murder. I assume were I to have pulled the "you hate women" pro would have pointed out a similar lack of evidence toward that precise conclusion. In R3 he conceded that it is not murder, which was the contention. Were he to have used to more mellow claim that it's comparable to murder, that would be the start to a potentially constructive conversation.
On "Health" I indeed dropped the stillborn sub-point, but I literally flipped how much of pro's evidence on the main point? Then supported this one with the constitution prohibiting inflicting potential death on them (some points crossover).
---3 of 3---
On "Slavery," my main evidence used the legal definitions (as this was a debate about law), as seen in block-text in R2.
On "constitution" I am surprised this one is not weighted higher, given that this is a legal debate, and pro's own evidence proved that abortion should remain legal according to the foundation of law itself (it was his late debate attempt at a silver bullet, but it shot his case instead of mine).
I fully admit to being confused by the decision to award pro a bonus round (or penalize me? same outcome). I'm a firm believer in dismissing any brand new points, and decreasing the weight given, but to outright assign without warning an unequal number of argument rounds on principle seems odd.
People don't know about mixed markets... I don't want to believe that, but I do.
Anyway, best of luck to you on this debate.
A few things about your setup:
1. Having debated Tiwaz (https://www.debateart.com/debates/866), I totally understand why you'd ban him from participating.
2. You are not actually waiving a round by writing the description, so there's no need for pro to waive the last round. I'm guessing that's a copy paste from DDO, but even there it would be R1 for acceptance only. Worse, you've created a setup that does not allow the person to defend their case.
3. The resolution is deeply slanted, perhaps to the point of being a truism (thus troll debate), due to using an absolute qualifier ("completely"). To give an example; an atomic bomb detonating within a populated city is not completely evil via the definitions.
When you create a debate, you can actually make it about a book chapter or article, and pre-specify in the description that your first round will be entirely a quote from said material... I do however suggest retiring your current account, to get a fresh start free from the reputation you've earned.
It's been two weeks without getting even one vote yet, so bump.
Part of pro's case finally makes sense to me. I treated that as a self evident intuitive leap once the price tag was in place (to me $12K is a very large amount...).
Who except for the very religious do you expect to argue against this?
Weird to say it isn't a religious debate, when the short description reads: "God supports this"
We voters are an inherently subjective measure. If you feel you won or lost, a few outside opinions need not change that.
Plus nukes are scary, expect voters to be biased against them. Had your R2 arguments been a little stronger, I suspect people would have voted differently.
It must have already been addressed, but why are there two of these? And are they true duplicates?
Thanks for voting.
I assume it's collaborative. I suggest using a couple shared google docs, for a quick start you can make a copy of this one and then share (with full edit permissions) to your team: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DMjSk6ylGArN4920junXXukjr0czi6i1-8ONvG2UhEc/edit?usp=sharing
You two should debate this topic as a debate, rather than as comments here... Or heck, maybe a changed topic to Africa should invade the USA?
Sure thing.
I'm fine with helping out either, or even both sides.
A few quick things:
1. While this debate need not be USA specific, for clarity it should pick one country for the framework.
2. There are various different types of taxes, but all of them ultimately raise the price consumers pay (Socialist countries have tried to get around this, it leads to collapse).
3. It is very easy for taxes to be regressive, in that they charge the poor a higher percentage of their earnings than the rich (AKA victimizing those who can't afford it). Cigarettes and alcohol are notorious for this.
4. What is under discussion is a Sin Tax. Sin Taxes in the USA cannot merely target something they opposes, but must also be written to be raising funds for some specific social good.