Total votes: 29
"by the choice of one side to miss at least 40% of the debate, the requirement [to consider arguments] ceases." -DA Voting Policy
full forfeit.
"first of all, pro argued against his own side, so I don't know what to say.
Second, we are not debating whether passing laws should be legal, we are debating whether Christianity should be made illegal. You can pass a law that legally makes something illegal, that should not have been made illegal. We are debating the normative ethics in which you should argue that we ought to make Christianity illegal. No argument has been given for this, so the resolution defaults to con.
My argument is that the United States should not make Christianity illegal because the first amendment guarantees the freedom on religion and speech/expression. "
pro has to prove that North Korea is the best country in the world, con does not have to show it is the worst. Consider this a full forfeit from pro as he has not even attempted to uphold his burden of proof. The resolution defaults to con.
While con does not bear the burden of proof, pro has given me nothing to even respond to, so North Korea is not the best country in the world because it ranks 177th in GDP per capita which measures the average prosperity of every individual citizen. It is also among a collection of only 16 countries that "have the worst aggregate scores for political rights and civil liberties."
ez domination
Conclusion
Pro cannot make a moral ought claim without bridging the is-ought divide, so a voting decision for this debate must necessarily go towards con. Pro has not made a valid argument that upholds the resolution and has dropped all of con's arguments.
z. Is-ought problem
Dropped/Extend.
z.1 Moral framework
Extend (see z.1 from round two as well as z from round one)
I. Practicality/Consequentialism
Dropped. Extend (see I. from rounds 1 & 2).
Conclusion
Pro cannot make a moral ought claim without bridging the is-ought divide, so a voting decision for this debate must necessarily go towards con. Pro has not made a valid argument that upholds the resolution and has dropped all of con's arguments.
Full forfeit.
full forfeit.
Pro ends up conceding in the end. Undefeatable has probably faced the most difficult competition of anyone on the site, which is something I admire. Pro claimed that cons' arguments were vague because they didn't take into account everything; I found Pro to be hypocritical here because the burden of proof was on him, but as con correctly pointed out, neither did pros own sources. With this being said i remained unconvinced up till pros forfeiture that the MAJORITY of police racial disparities were because of race.
both had good conduct in my opinion.
Through much of the debate, it felt as if pro and con were simply talking past one another, never actually addressing much of their respective points. However, the burden of proof favours pro pretty heavily in this debate. If I am left feeling as if Con does not show PSA to be untenable, I ought to vote for him. Much of the Cons' arguments were arguments far beyond the topic, such as arguing that Jesus may be Lucifer and other such things far beyond the topical discussion.
Pro argument 1:
Pro makes an argument for the idea that PSA is simply incomprehensible for the human mind to understand. He admits people may see this as a copout, and for the purpose of logical discussion, it ought to be viewed as a copout in a debate. Anyone could create an appeal to ignorance argument on essentially any topic to win, so pro doesn't get any points on that argument from me even if it's true.
Pros threshold deontology is not directly addressed, while Con addresses it indirectly as irrelevant by pointing out supposed contradictions in the Bible.
Pro argument 2:
In my opinion, the best rebuttal and argument from the pro in my eyes is his argument for human free will still being justified within the Christian faith. Through his argument and sourcing from the Bible, he shows God does not tempt people to sin but simply gives them the path to be able too. Unless he can refute this point, all of the cons' arguments for a lack of free will and God causing people to sin are moot. and subsequent round 3 arguments for Adam and Eve seem irrelevant to me because of this.
Cons arguments:
Most cons arguments are non-sequiturs and redherrings, simply acting as distractions from the debate. Such as arguing that Jesus looks like an Indian man or might be Lucifer, just irrelevant stuff.
The best argument from con, in my opinion, was simply him arguing that Jesus's sacrifice was unnecessary if we could be saved without Jesus dying for us on the cross. However, this struck me more as damage control or lessening the impact of the crucifixion as opposed to making it wholly unnecessary.
Considering pro arguments for God being omniscient, simply being irrelevant to making people sin, and this point going uncontested by Con except through damage control, I have to give my vote to Pro.
Conclusion:
Much of the opposition's arguments feel more like damage control or downplaying the significance of Jesus' sacrifice rather than disproving it as a good altogether. I believe he would have to show God was the reason why we sin, but since pros argument to compatibilist free will goes unresponded too, I remain unconvinced of it being an untenable framework.
Full forfeit.
Simply here to pad RM's record for next time i beat him i will attain such juicy gains.
Con forfeited.
Forfeiture.
Forfeiture and pure facts from rationalmadman.
Forfeiture.
Will be RFD in comments.
Ossa won through rawdog.
1. Is/Ought Divide
CON attempts to argue that the is/ought divide does not matter due to the fact that certain philosophers deny the difference. CON follows by claiming that objective morality can be built off axioms. Applying the same logic, one realises that the difference between is/ought facts can be established by taking a very simple axiom: that what we see of the world is in fact reality. Furthermore, CON has not really offered sources to back his claim regarding a lack of is facts. The facts that philosophers do not agree says nothing about the nonexistence of descriptive facts. Furthermore, such an argument might hold if one takes the stance that there is an external world inaccessible by our senses. As humans are limited to senses however, it seems that descriptions of sensory experience are enough to fulfill the criterion of being a descriptive fact.
CON has failed to establish that this divide does not exist.
2. Feelings of the majority
Even if all of society unanimously felt something to be the case, that does not elevate the feeling into objectivity, rather some sort of intersubjectivity.
CON argues that our society current feels an objective morality while simultaneously positing that past cultures were simply wrong in their unanimous feelings. The fact that a culture can unanimously wrong, which both sides of the debate agree on, means that CONs assertion that our current morality veers into objectivity is unverifiable, thus an incoherent argument. Even if there existed some sort of objective morality, CONs attempt to reach this objective morality by arguing through an unverifiable fallacy of the majority means that the burden of proof CON has is not fulfilled.
3. Unanimous feelings still contradict
There is a difference between moral frameworks and moral axioms. Morality refers to the implementation of moral frameworks in society. On closer examination, unanimously held moral axioms still contradict, even if taking the axioms as objective, as I have brought up in earlier examples.
The contradiction between these axioms when making any moral choice means a preference, which is inherently subjective.
4. External morality
CON's did not tackle the external side of objective morality, leaving it to purely stipulating that there could be many sources, a largely unsatisfactory argument.
5. Immutability
While an objective and mutable morality could be argued for, CONs analysis does not sufficiently prove this. To hold that morality can both be objective and mutable in fact undermines the nature of morality which CON attempts to account for, as I explained in argument 2.
pro forfeited.
Honestly, it felt like the mall was just asking Ossa questions instead of trying to debunk anything Ossa said. Pretty much everything ossa says goes unchallenged, from his Hume's fork to his categories of how humans form knowledge. Considering pro never really made a case for his philosophy but simply asked ossa about his (failing to debunk any), ossa fulfilled his burden of proof, while mall didn't.
RationalMadman won in the first round. His statistics and sources citing the overwhelming advantage received by the top 1% in terms of college, university, and so on were simply too much to overcome. All Pro could do at that point was damage control. Pro never really refuted Rationalmadman's round 1 statistics, and if they couldn't do that, I think it is safe to say rich people simply get an unfair jump up from the rest, which creates unjustified differences in average outcomes simply based on heritage.
RFD in comments.
After having read all the arguments from both sides, I feel like Nyx had a clear chance to be a decisive victor in this debate. All she needed to do was stay on track by talking about how gender is actually sex (the unseen aspect of sex). But as bones correctly pointed out, it felt like she was gish galloping between two different definitions (at least in the first two rounds). She only put 110% energy into the sex-based argument in the last round. I imagine this happened due to inexperience debating the topic. If Nyx and Bones had this debate again, I think Nyx would win. But I can't say that right now. As of right now, bones has won this debate. Nyx never truly brought down the sledgehammer to bones' syllogisms or linked sex to gender in a way where it doesn't feel like she contradicts herself based on what she said in previous rounds. I understand this is due to a lack of sorting out her thoughts, and she could have won this debate if she stuck to simply one definition.
Another gripe I had with Nyx was her saying we ought to follow or believe that which is most useful. Maybe that works in terms of definitions, but it doesn't within contexts. It could be useful, for instance, if someone dropped their money on the floor but they believed themselves robbed, which then leads them to properly secure their money. Naturally, this belief is not true, based on what really happened. But it was useful. Therefore, something being useful doesn't make it more true. Since this is a debate on philosophy and science, what is most consistent and logical ought to be the most rational, although not necessarily the most useful. Therefore, I found that whole argument invalid from the get go.
I also didn't like Nyx telling people to vote for her at the end of every round, although this isn't evil enough for me to give a bad conduct point, simply because they showed generosity to bones in other areas. Overall, I think bones won due to Nyx's not having a clear definition that doesn't contradict what they said in other rounds. Maybe my vote would be different if she said she is dropping the previous round's definitions/argument.
People are naturally empathetic to women more than men. Its simply the truth, most people care more for a woman than a man if we have to pick to save only one. People are more quick to help a homeless woman and so on and so on. I think Rationalmadman made a good argument to the fact women can wear male clothes and no one cares, yet if a guy wears stockings he's called gay and looked at like he's a woman and no longer can be considered a man. People no longer expect women to be meek housewives as much anymore, but men still have masculine pressure to be dominant and to have a good (in part by the fact women still like these traits). All in all, rationalmadman wins.
What a fever dream. I always struggle getting through one of Bones's debates, reading his arguments are extremely reminiscent of my time trying to read Kant or Hegel. Complex words, complex terminology and hard to grasp analogies with the "if x means such and such" stuff. If you want to read Bones, i recommend you have some Adderall on hand to get through the difficult text. What a nightmare.
But con, where to begin? they probably spent more time talking about capitalism than they did the actual debate topic or commenting on bones arguments. Reading their argument felt like an acid trip, i didnt know what was going on. One minute we're talking about Victorian era women, the next we're talking about free spirit Indians. What a trip. I understood their argument, i just don't see how it stacks up to a far more consistent philosophy which Bones presented.
Philosophy and science after all isn't about what is popular, what is trendy or culturally how things used to be and how they're probably going to be. But based on what is most consistent, i feel like bones clearly demonstrated their philosophy as more consistent, i didnt see a single mention to almost all of Bones' round 1 arguments. Con was waffling none stop, but saying not much of anything actually. Anything that actually defeats bones' ideas at least.