Instigator / Pro
2
1762
rating
45
debates
88.89%
won
Topic
#1127

Resolved: Scientific, historic, and metaphysical evidence indicates the Biblical Noah's Flood could have, and did happened on Earth.

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
3
Better sources
0
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
1

After 1 vote and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...

oromagi
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Three days
Max argument characters
20,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
7
1922
rating
117
debates
97.44%
won
Description

Note that we can use both scientific AND historic evidence, as well as some metaphysical argumentation.

R1-Argument (Constructive with no responses to my case.)
R2-Rebuttal (Respond to my case, but NOT my Rebuttal)
R3-Defense/closing thoughts and conclusions (Respond to my Rebuttal, but you cannot comment on my Defense.)
Rules are simple
1.No Insults or Personal Attacks
2.No Forfeits
3.No Kritiks
4.No New arguments made in final round
5.No trolling
6.No getting off topic
7.No waiving
8.You must follow the Debate Structure
9.You can not agree with my stance
10.No swears
11.No offensive words
12.No Plagiarism
**ANY violation of these rules merits a loss**
Good luck and have fun!

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@Dynasty

I don't think you read my argument. Not that this is my opinion, I just find the topic fun, but there are no fallacies to be found. Unless you are saying that Oromagi should not have been able to point out what he claimed was a fallacy, which I think isn't fair personally, but it was an option

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@MisterChris

You should have adding "No logical fallacies" on your rules list.

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@Barney

I appreciate your time and effort into voting, even if we do not see eye-to-eye on this one. If you need a vote, don't hesitate to ask.

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@Barney

Thanks for your time & effort, Ragnar. Much appreciated.

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@oromagi
@MisterChris

---RFD---

Interpreting the resolution:
I want to just say ‘Noah’s flood = factual,’ but this resolution is a jumble of different separate (but related) cases to not be understated. Key thing is it is not about weak likelihood, it is about a strong degree of certainty (at least to within each of the proposed measurement standards). Or as con puts it “Noah's flood is proven true.”
…So I write this section before reading debates, but in the final round pro seemed to try to move the goalpost to generally that a worldwide flood may have happened (and that Noah’s is just the best historical record). If that was the originally intended debate, Noah would have not been mentioned in the resolution, nor so much in R1.

Gist:
This was just way too much to try to fit into one debate.

1. Definitions
They are agreed (surprised the year one was agreed to, but oh well).
Pro, technically it’s not a concession unless you previously disagreed, as is you just agree.

2. Possibilities
By agreeing to judge this, I have agreed to the possibility, making this contention slightly redundant unless Con prior to R1 made a contention about impossibility. Double redundancy comes from if something is proven to have happened, it is automatically possible.

3. Water
The “1,085,166,768 cubic miles of water” indeed seems unlikely. Some back and forth, talk about the ocean floor spontaneously turning to magma pushing all the water up, and other things that seem in the realm of proving a vague possibility instead of proving that it actually happened.
Worse was the salt issue, that all the land recovered would have been submerged in saltwater for an extended period, killing the plants we enjoy today.
That various ice samples from around the world do not indicate a flood, gets a bit weird with in the inclusion of magma probably having melted them all… But assuming they’re not accurate over longer periods of time, when trying to prove said flood happened in such a narrow window of a few thousand years of recent human activity (the recorded history argument which was accepted), it becomes suspect that they would all be that inaccurate.

4. Human Life Span
Originally started by pro under the science heading, and refuted under the history heading… It’s important enough to get its own. Given how doubtful it is for a 600 year old to build much of anything, I am surprised this started as a key scientific argument from pro.
Pro claims humans live greater than 950 years (the reported life of Noah), con uses a source to say we physically reach our upper limit around 150. That is the end of it inside this debate.
Pro’s very last comment is: “I still have shown historical record for long-lived humans, and biological possibilities regarding them.” Even using word searches, I could not find this within the debate.

5. Boat Design
This is oddly where pro took the major source hit. When trying to over hype the Ark he quoted information about the shape being the best ever as reported by a scientist, but con went to the trouble of reading the actual paper the scientist wrote which contradicted that quote. While con did well in explaining even that scientist was not peer reviewed, I am going to accept that the boat design was possible (honestly infering details about hamster style water bottles, it’s odd but I just don’t consider this section important).

6. God
This came up a bit, but let me set the record straight: If he’s great or sucks is off topic.

---

Arguments:
See above review of key points. There were more, but there was already way too much doubt for it to come close to being closed with in depth talk of ocean craters.

Sources: Con
Bible of course, that’s not really considered a source on these… A key problem came up. Pro almost exclusively used AnsweringGensis.org, but it was proven to be lying (the Dr. Hong paper, which pro never defended). Since the source lied about what Dr. Hong wrote, it is no longer credible on any related matters. Without backup sources, pro lost massive ground on the debate by putting all his eggs in that basket.
Con on the other hand used a wide variety of sources (most often Wikipedia, which I consider informational, but in this case well played…), but he is mostly getting the point for challenging pro’s sole source. One big thing he did was proving the age limits on humans on scientific grounds, to include why we have a maximal age, which challenges the very possibility of Noah having built the ark hundreds of years after his death.
One source I do give pro some credit for, was the grid about flood legends (https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/flood-legends/). It very well supports that historically the flood in question could have happened (it does not support that it outright did by any standard other than history, and history a little loosely).

S&G: tied, but leaning con.
When trying to attract judges the character limit determines our commitment. We agree to read up to 20k per round, finding various links inside to the arguments surpassing that does not endear us.
Also bolding whole paragraphs of your text without reason is not charming. I suggest using this for in line quotations to ease the distinction between your words and someone elses, but not your own for more than a couple key words at a time. … Basic rule on this is that if everything were maximally important, nothing would above average importance.

Conduct: tied
Had con not seemed to approve the character limit violations, this would go to con without a question. As is, con gets a note of respect in this area, but one that does not carry points.

finished reading, great debate, I would vote but I like one member and not so much the other so I would be biased

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@Cogent_Cognizer

I appreciate the analysis and kind words! Oromagi gave me a little run for my money in all fairness.... However, I doubt I will get the win on this one, since only about 2 people that I know of will actually vote on this, and they both have hard times leaving their personal scrutinization out of the votes sometimes.

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@Barney

Understood. Oromagi gave me quite the run for my money

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@MisterChris

I must say, you did really well with properly recognizing when fallacies are actually made and when they are not. You would be a worthy contender against me. I get the feeling I disagree a ton with you, but you did really well here.

I would like to vote on this actually, but I don't meet the requirements yet. Not sure I'm going to in time to vote.

While I personally would agree with the contender's conclusions, I find that the instigator is correct of false arguments from the contender. Indeed, the instigator did use a type of circular reasoning. The issue here is that many fallacies have a form of them which is logical, and pro used this. For example, slippery slope and ad populum both have logical versions of them. If someone provides sufficient evidence from the butterfly effect A, to the slippery slope argument Z, as in evidence from each step proving true causation(which by the way is something most people don't know how to prove properly) then it's not a fallacy. It just often is when people use the argument since most people don't seem to know how to prove causation, so it's more often than not the slippery slope fallacy, but a slippery slope can sometimes be a legitimate argument. Same thing with argumentum ad populum. For topics that are not subject to popularity, which this topic is one of them: whether the earth was flooded, it's a fallacy. However, some topics are subject to popularity. I.e language. Language's purpose is to properly communicate with other people. So, if you're the only one who thinks the definition of a term means one thing, while the majority or most of society doesn't, well, you're gonna suck at doing language's purpose: effective communication.

So, I really find the instigator's arguments rather convincing. While I have arguments of my own that I think would disprove what pro has said, con didn't present them. So I wouldn't in good conscience vote for con even though I agree with their conclusions. In this particular case, pro had better premises, the con had false premises. In argumentation, that's what matters more for who debated well, Pro's conclusion is false, in my opinion, but (s)he debated it well.

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@oromagi
@MisterChris

Came back... I'll try to post a RFD tonight or tomorrow morning (I have things to do with my day). It's looking like arguments and sources to con, but I have to re-read pro's closing round when free from the influence of a headache.

Key bit of advice is of course use a smaller scope (perhaps break this one into six separate small debates?), and stay inside the character limit.

Started to grade this, got to the point of human beings having a 600 year lifespan in the science section... I'll try again later.

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@Barney

I apologize, the sources were in order I just forgot to change the headlining!

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@oromagi
@MisterChris

I skimmed this debate while it was still underway, at which time pro’s R1 sources contained this line: “Rebuttal (No particular order yet:)” it no longer being there informs me that documents are being modified post hoc. I can give the benefit of the doubt that no sources were changed out, but if a judge even needs to ponder that is something to avoid.

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@oromagi

Good debate brother! I enjoyed it. May the best man win.

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@oromagi

Good debate brother! I enjoyed it. May the best man win.

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@oromagi

You published with less than 20 mins left, you absolute Mad Lad

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@oromagi

Published with less than an hour to spare like a pro! hahaha

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@MisterChris

I think that’s fine. If it helps write the whole thing in docs and just link to it

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@oromagi

Would you be opposed to my using of some extra space on docs in the event that I can't quite fit everything?

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@MisterChris

Yes. Busy weekend & I had to force myself to get it done last night when I really wanted to sleep. I’ll try to get a head start on rebuts today

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@oromagi

Good work on your constructive! You were pushing the time limit a little so I got worried there for a second. I'll be responding in the next few days.

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@Ramshutu

That may very well be true! I have done both styles and don't necessarily prefer one over the other, but I can see the merits of a non-formalized structure. Oromagi seems to want to debate the given structure, so we will stick with that for now, though.

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@oromagi

lol me too man.

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@MisterChris

I’m not so keen on the formalized round structure, and prefer more back and forth. Mainly because R1 would be you saying why a flood is true, and my R2 would be explaining in part why the evidence doesn’t show a flood. Most of the stuff in my first rebuttal would probably reference my opening round - so it often makes more sense and as less redundancy to just let the opening round be arguments and an initial rebuttal, especially for such diametrically opposes positions.

I can't do much about my intelligence at this point- I get stupider by the day, but I will endeavor to be civil

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@oromagi

Thank you for accepting! Let's keep the conduct civil and the discussions intelligent! :)

Expect a constructive within the next few days.

okey dokey

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@Ramshutu

I would be willing to negotiate a less rigid structure if you have any ideas. However, it seems that others are keen on hopping in on this debate

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@zedvictor4
@oromagi

I am proposing that the Flood of mass extinction used in Biblical Mythology happened, and was likely directed by a metaphysical being. So, yes, that restricts arguments to human history. :)

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@MisterChris

set up is fine with me but I'd want some assurance that we are restricting arguments to human history- say, less than glacial max, x < 24,000 yrs ago

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@MisterChris

If you are less rigid on the structure (I prefer more fluid back and forth), and can extend arguments to 1 week (I probably won’t need more than 2 days but I could be super busy over the next weekend or two), I would like to take this.

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@MisterChris

A very ambiguous proposition.

Are you suggesting a flood as per the Biblical Myth, or just a significant flood event that would have been regarded as such?

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@MisterChris

I like it. Are u merely proving that water once covered the whole earth or that a mass extinction event flood nearly ended mankind within the memory of man?