Christians are Delusional
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 3 votes and with 5 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- One day
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
This debate will be focused around whether or not Christians are delusional. For the purposes of debate, we will be assuming that reality is real/true (no brains in jars or other baseless philosophical nonsense). With that presupposition in place, good luck to my competitor.
delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.
reality: the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
rational: based on or in accordance with reason or logic.
https://www.google.com/search?q=delusion
https://www.google.com/search?q=reality
https://www.google.com/search?q=rational
Reason for argument points.
Pro's side:
"All Christians believe in one or more of the Christian tenants objectively centered around magic. Though the attributed tenants differ from denomination to denomination, every known denomination subscribes to at least one or more magical Christian tenant. Whether it's Jesus's resurrection, Creationism events, a thought policing dictator (God), answered prayers, talking snakes and donkeys, burning bushes, a staff parting a sea, a global flood, walking on water or turning water to wine, they all are considered by definition to be magic.
Nothing in our observable reality demonstrates magic is real. Furthermore, holding a belief in it, despite contradicting scientific evidence and observation, is absurdly disjointed from reality. Nonetheless, Christians still believe various magic based tenants of Christianity".
Pro established pretty clearly in my opinion that all Christians, at least subscribe to the basic tenants of Christianity. Pro rightly points out that Christians essentially belief in some kind of magic. This is enough in my opinion to warrant that Christians can adopt mass delusions since Pro also rightly points out later that the views tend to be idiosyncratic.
Con's argument had three main prongs. First that Christians weren't idiosyncratic, second that magic isn't magic if it's real, and third that some Christians use metaphors, I didn't find any of these arguments strong and pro showed in future rounds why this didn't follow. Con did a little to show that views weren't idiosyncratic, but not enough to stop mass delusions. Pro also pointed out that there is scientific evidence for mass delusion which helped his case quite a bit here. Con's critique of magic was more a definitional trick and not really practical or in tune with reality. Furthermore, con's examples came from the bible which would have been fine except Con did nothing to support them further aside from assert them ad infinitum. On the metaphors, the problem was that Con was referring to a fringe group and did not make a strong enough effort to show how this could refute pro's claim.
In the end, Pro came out on the winning side of the argument point because pro did not rebut the points enough in my opinion. Pro still had plenty of room off of his initial claims to show his argument reasonable.
Tied on all other points.
Arguments.
This is a good old fashioned definitional argument. It mostly comprises of both sides covering the definitions
1.) idiosyncratic
Con argues that as there are 2.3bn Christians, the belief cannot be idiosyncratic. Pro argues that it can be considered idiosyncratic to christianity. Con argues that the definition used by pro is being applied far too broadly - and that other definitions clearly imply that 2.3bn people believing the same thing is not “unusual”.
I think con did better on this point, if felt like pro was very much stretching the definitions used.
2.) contradicted by reality.
Con has two main thrusts - that in Christian majority countries the reality is christianity. The second is that the religious believes are nominally unfalsifiable so they can’t contradict reality. I am not going to consider cons argument against atheism - even if I accept it, it doesn’t prove or refute the resolution so I would consider it non topical.
Pros response is to point out some claims are falsifiable and where they have they have been falsified - and specifically lists a series of the more major ones. I also particularly like the collective delusion argument - for me this leads me to believe that the definition of “accepted reality”, is more rooted in objectively demonstrable reality, rather than any false constructed reality shared by many.
Con raises a definition objection here that pro is arguing against his own definition - I felt pros definition or collective delusion was somewhat more convincing than an appeal to the dictionary - however pros argument that the literal biblical beliefs are not commonly held by even “most”
Christians. This negates much of the falsification pro was raising.
3.) Christianity is explicitly excluded from delusion.
Con cites some specific diagnostic criteria, while pros response is to outline a series of whacky behaviour (speaking in tongues, believe they have witnessed miracles. This point ties in with a few others I will cover in a second.
4.) Magic.
A big part of this debate was characterization of miracles, about the violation of natural law. I feel that this is where pro did a little better. While I feel the term magic was a little bit ad hom, he did a good job of covering the seeming “magic” in miracles based on core Christian beliefs (such as the resurrection), and did well in my view to paint them as absurd - cons primary response was what felt like a shady non response - talking about magic only as an apparent influence: in my view if explliarmus worked in the real world - I would categorize this as magic.
Conclusion.
I’m going to start with the most broad definition of this debate resolution - that many or most Christians are deluded - and believe in whacky and irrational claims.
Even If I start here - I feel pro falls short on two points:
A.) That enough Christians hold this irrational belief. I feel pro relied too much on implying that all Christians hold these beliefs in the way he claims.
B.) That the belief is inherently held irrationally - rather than just a belief that isn’t paid too much attention - to the point we could consider it irrational.
IMO con was sufficiently good to prevent pro from establishing even the most limited form of the resolution - and I believe pro was a victim of his own narrowly defined resolution.
Arguments to con: all other points tied.
Argument (Con):
Pro's basic argument was that Christianity is a delusion because it contradicts reality. Con tried to refute this by saying that not all Christians believe in the things that Pro described, such as resurrections, but Pro made it clear that a Christian believed in the Bible, which says that Christians must believe in Jesus' resurrection. I will give that point to Pro.
However, Con additionally refuted Pro's main claim by showing first how science cannot necessarily disprove supernatural claims, and also why Christianity is not idiosyncratic because it is widely accepted as the truth. Pro laid the definitions in the description, which I always count as a higher power over rounds. I'd advise debators to stick to anything and everything that you put in your description, because I will count it against you if you don't.
Pro tried to say that Christian beliefs were idiosyncratic to Christianity itself, which makes no sense to me, so I cannot give him that point.
One thing I really liked that Pro said is how Christian beliefs can be delusional if the contradicted actual reality. The only problem I found with this is that his original definition of delusion was shown as what goes against what is generally accepted as reality. This is what Con was arguing against, so this didn't really help Pro in the end.
I am giving the point to Con because he focused on the original definitions given in the description, while Pro's points tended to sway from that.
Sources (Con):
Con's sources firstly explain what an idosyncrasy is, and then furthers his claims by showing how Christianity has been excluded from the definition of delusion by experts. Pro's sources did not have much to do with the debate, like when he cites sources about different denominations. Con's showed statistics, which furthered his points much more. That is why he gets sources.
Spelling & Grammar (Tie):
Both parties had some grammatical inconsistencies, but they did not impede the flow of the argument.
Conduct (Tie):
Both parties conducted themselves professionally, so there's nothing else to say here.
Why is mine the only one that didn't get reported? lol
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Vote Reported: Wrick-It-Ralph // Mod Action: Not Removed
Points awarded: 3 points to pro for arguments
Reason for mod action: The vote is sufficient
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I removed your vote by mistake when I meant to remove the one below you. I apologize for this
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Vote Reported: Melcharaz // Mod Action: Removed
Points awarded: 5 points to con for conduct and sources
RFD: While Pro did well to stipulate definitions in the very beginning, he failed to stipulate the meaning of "idiosyncratic," a major component in the description of delusion, the subject over which they argue. Con did well to stipulate the definition of idiosyncratic, thereby taking command of the description of "delusion." As far as I'm concerned, since Con won the semantics debate over the term, "delusion," he won the debate, since the subject over which they argue is "Christians are Delusional." However, if we extend the arguments beyond semantics, Con still provided more substantive arguments, particularly when he distinguished the concerns of Science and Religion. Pro focused far too much on scientific authority, which may have been valid had he established reality is subject to the domain of science. This was close, but eventually, I award "more convincing arguments" to Con.
Reason for mod action: The voter fails to meet the standards set forth by the COC here: https://www.debateart.com/rules
See below. Neither arguments nor sources are sufficient.
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Vote Reported: Athias // Mod Action: Not Removed
Points awarded: 3 points to con for arguments
Reason for mod action: The vote is borderline, but it is more sufficient than not so we will let it stand. If you have any problems or objections, please DM me.
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ent. In order to award argument points, a voter must explicitly, and in the text of their RFD, perform the following tasks:
Survey the main arguments and counterarguments presented in the debate
Weigh those arguments against each other (or explain why certain arguments need not be weighed based on what transpired within the debate itself)
Explain how, through the process of weighing, they arrived at their voting decision with regard to assigning argument points
Weighing entails analyzing how the relative strength of one argument or set of arguments outweighed (that is, out-impacted) and/or precluded another argument or set of arguments. Weighing requires analyzing and situating arguments and counterarguments within the context of the debate as a whole.
(2) The source point is not sufficient. In order to award sources points, a voter must explicitly, and in the text of their RFD, perform the following tasks:
Explain, on balance, how each debater's sources impact the debate
Directly evaluate at least one source in particular cited in the debate and explain how it either bolstered or weakened the argument it was used to support
Must explain how and why one debater's use of sources overall was superior to the other's
Mere appeals to quantity are not sufficient to justify awarding sources points.
(4) The conduct point is not sufficient. In order to award conduct points, a voter must explicitly, and in the text of their RFD, perform the following tasks:
Provide specific references to instances of poor conduct which occurred in the debate
Demonstrate how this poor conduct was either excessive, unfair, or in violation of mutually agreed upon rules of conduct pertaining to the text of the debate
Compare each debater's conduct from the debate
Misconduct is excessive when it is extremely frequent and/or when it causes the debate to become incoherent or extremely toxic.
we all do. It's just habit.
haha secular amen!
I'm an atheist but I still use colloquial phrases like "oh my god", "thank god", "amen", etc..
Amen to that...…. wait Secular Amen?
I agree with @wrick here.. He should have the ability to cast HIS vote without being molested or interrogated for it. I'm thankful that he chose my side to fall on, but I would have no hard feelings if he chose yours - it's his opinion. @Mel and others choose to side with you. I'm not upset with them or holding a grudge because they have a different opinion than me. Nor am I interrogating them demanding justification for their opinion. I said what I had to say in the debate, and they are welcome to form whatever opinion they want from that. What you're doing I find childish, disrespectful and unprofessional.
Telling you to stop harassing me for my vote is not an ad hominem attack. You were being unreasonable and I don't need to explain my vote because I wrote a giant paragraph in my vote that tells you everything you need to know. You're just flaming and being a troll and disrespectful. You weren't just interrogating my ideas, you were telling me my vote was wrong which is bad form on your part. The difference between what I did is that I told you I respected your vote and addressed something separate from the topic that I wanted to know about your methodology. Never did I tell you your vote was wrong or make any of the accusations that you've made about me.
I'm not attacking, I'm asking for justification for claims made during a vote which were contrary to the truth. When I noticed that Ralph would rather trade ad hominems and misrepresent the other person, I blocked him.
I have to say, it's rather childish and unprofessional to cry in comments and attack people for their vote when it disagrees with your own opinion. The entire purpose of voting is to get other peoples opinions on it. You don't see me on here attacking @mel for voting against me. It's his opinion, and even if I disagree with it, he's entitled to it.
No way that even compares to the voter flame I just had to experience from this troll.
good I found it. This is the comment that Con mentioned saying I flamed him for voting. Everyone can just judge for themselves if I acted the same as him.
"I can't speak to what the voters decided. But I personally tend not to cite sources unless I need hard mathematical data.
In my worldview, I find sources containing rhetoric to be appeals to authority.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against rhetoric.
But if I'm going to hear somebody's opinion, I'd rather hear the opinion of my opponent rather than my opponent giving me somebody else's opinion. I don't care if my opponent's use sources but I generally don't.
I gladly accept the source point deduction if it means I get to argue in the way that I find most truthful.
I'm here to change minds and votes are just a bonus because that means that I did a good job at changing minds.
Once again, I appreciate the vote.
I believe the more voters, the better. "
That guy is a flaming jerk. I'm half inclined to pull up my comments that he mentioned just to show the difference in manners.
poor conduct? I'm not even in a debate dude! What are you talking about? When I commented to you, the first thing I said was "I respect you vote" and my question was concerning why you disbelieved a certain type of evidence, but did I not specifically say I respected your vote? don't you try to turn this on me like I"m the rude one. oh and now you immaturely block me, thanks buddy. I see where your maturity level is now. have a good day.
See, melcharaz voted for you because your argument spoke to him intuitively. Nothing wrong with that. You can't win every voter. Especially me cause I'm all of the place. I don't even take political parties, lol.
May I remind you that when I voted on one of your debates I responded to your questions about my vote (the whole five times when you tagged me).
Your poor conduct reflects badly on you and what reflects even worse on you is the fact that your votes are clearly biased. You've given the win to the atheistic position in five out of five debates related to religion that you've voted on. In one of these debates you gave the win to the debater with the lowest rating on this website over RM who is currently the highest rated. This was followed by three other users giving a clear win to RM. In this debate you are the only one out of four people to give my opponent the win for a reason that you do not seem to be able to justify during questioning.
Please don't vote on any of my debates again until your voting is objective.
to be clear, I don't agree with killshot's position, but that doesn't necessarily matter when I vote. He made a decent case with the magic assertion, it was intuitive for me and spoke to my life experience when dealing with Christians. I could think of exceptions, but it wasn't my job to think of them, it was yours.
actually, even that doesn't work cause they're not Christian, lol. Maybe the topic was doomed for you since the beginning, lol.
For me, the goal post for you was to find one singular case of a secular Christian. You came close, but a metaphorical is not secular. Honestly, you should have just mentioned cultural jews. They're basically atheist
okay. I really don't appreciate when people flame me for my vote. I'm entitled to my opinion so kindly shove a sock in it.
I already told you why I didn't vote for you. You didn't make a good enough case. Take that how you want but don't harass me.
I'm an agnostic atheist as well, I don't see why your religious views or absence of these should influence your vote in any way though.
I wrote "entirely non-literalist" several times throughout the debate while referring to several people and denominations, whereas I wrote higher metaphorical truth only once while referring to one psychology professor. I don't think claiming that it is "ambiguous" is fair at all since even the (In my opinion not ambiguous) "higher truth" was clarified as relating to a metaphorical truth.
Yeah my problem is the phrase "higher truth". If they thinks it's a truth, then it's not merely symbolic. The very disposition of supporting Christianity implies that you believe it to some extent. Now if you had argued for people using it as a secular moral guide, I might have thought differently about it, but taking the bible metaphorically, the way you outlined, still implies at least some belief in the truth of the story. I mean, I'm sure it makes sense to you, but I'm an atheist so this argument isn't intuitive to me. I feel like I was fair because I was the first one to say that killshot was being hyperbolic but there is still some responsibility on your part to counter his claims because I can't just insert my own beliefs into the vote. You have to lead me there by my hand like I'm a toddler who doesn't know what Christianity is.
How is that? If they reject a literal interpretation and take God symbolically or as "a higher truth" (as I outlined), then surely none of Pro's arguments apply:
Pro's argument:
P1: Everyone who believes in magic is delusional.
P2: All Christians believe in magic.
C: All Christians are delusional.
If there were even a single Christian out of all 2.3b, then P2 would be incorrect and the conclusion would not follow, since Pro's sole argument for all Christians being delusional was based on them believing in "magic" we can form the following syllogism:
P1: Only those who believe in magic are delusional (since that was Pro's sole argument).
P2: Some Christians do not believe in magic (i.e. the non-literalists).
C1: Some Christians are not delusional.
C2: Not all Christians are delusional
yeah but my problem was that you didn't go the extra step to show why a metaphorical Christian would shun "all" magic beliefs. to me it still seemed like the state of being a Christian would entail at least some supernatural belief. It mainly came down to the fact that I thought your rebuttals could have been more complete I guess.
Do those non-literalist Christians, at a bare minimum, believe in the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ as a literal messiah figure?
As far as I can tell from your vote, you agree that I have established in this debate that there is a fringe group of Christians (namely non-literalists such as those that take the Bible entirely symbolic, metaphorical or are cultural Christians). Is that correct?
No problem :)
Thanks for checking out the debate and voting!
Np!
Oh ok, thanks :D
You're allowed to write "tied in all others" without an explanation as long as you explain it when you tie and argument point.
Sorry bro, I'm trying to understand your point of view on it, even though I'm failing miserably haha
Maybe I'm not writing things clear enough or I'm reading past your points. If you want to explain it better, I'm happy to make another attempt at it.
Basically, I am trying to say:
Christian = belief in Jesus's death, resurrection & ascension
Anyone who doesn't hold at least that belief, is not Christian, according to scripture (Paul & Christian creeds).
Most hold that belief + other beliefs (differing from denomination to denomination)
Perhaps my logic is flawed and I'm wrong.
we're just talking past each other.
It's cool man
do your thing.
My argument was not based in any way on fundamentalism; it was actually the opposite. I stripped Christian doctrine down to it's most primal form.
It was only based on the core tenants, specifically the death, resurrection & ascension of Jesus. If they do not believe this, then I would not label them as Christian. It's like a person who decided that 1 + 1 = 3, yet still assumes the label of a mathematician. They made up a new version of mathematics, and it's not the same version that the fundamentals of mathematics was founded on. Much in the same way, if a "Christian" denies the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, they would not be a Christian, even if they hold other Christian-like beliefs because they are missing the "Christ" part that it's founded on. They would be x religion with amalgamated ideas from Christianity.
In you're example, 1 is fundamental and 2 aren't. I assume they all 3 believe in the death, resurrection & ascension of Jesus, so they would all be labeled as Christian (using my logic). If the fundamentalist believes that, but the other 2 don't, then only the fundamentalist is Christian. If someone does not believe in Christ, they are not Christian.
Do we still disagree? If so, can you clarify better? Maybe I'm not understanding your point fully..
Consider this. For every 1 fundamental in the family, there are at least 2 who only believe because of their family.
In fact, most people are Christians because of their families.
I don't think you're thinking this through. You're letting your opinion about Christians could your judgement .
I apologize, I just noticed a small typo in my final rebuttal. That's what I get for debating while working.. Anyways, I just wanted to make you aware of it.
1 Corinthians 14:14 should be 1 Corinthians 15:14
1 Corinthians 14 will get you there, eventually... lol
Considering it's their collective world view, I would argue they are pretty confident in it. Even Paul acknowledges this core tenant and affirms it's requirement in 1 Corinthians 15:14. Additionally, part of the Christian creed is the affirmation of this tenant and their conviction to belief in it. If someone believes parts of Christian mythology without this part specifically, they would be amalgamating Christian mythology into their own.
So under the tenants you mentioned, it would still be too inclusive. You need to divide it further into how confident they are in their believes and you have to do this for each individual sect because they will not have parallel results.
No, you're either mistaking my words or I am not explaining them well enough. Let me try again. I acknowledge and agree different denominations exist, and that those denominations have varying views and interpretations. I believe we agree to this point?
In reference to "all" Christians - what I mean is, all Christians share the common core tenants of Christianity, regardless of their denominational affiliation. The core tenant example I choose to most commonly refer to is the life, death, resurrection & ascension of Christ. This is a requirement of Christianity. It's also miraculous/magical.
That's your opinion. Not everybody agrees with. Including me. There is no one "worldview" for Christians. There's thousand of sects and even if they use the same book, they interpret it differently. One person might read the bible and become delusional. Another person might believe enough of the bible to think it's real, but might not necessarily believe other parts.
You're really only referring to fundamental Christians so you should stop trying to lump them and attack the group that you're really trying to attack here.
Christianity is just a label for someone who subscribes to the religious world views of Christianity. No matter what denomination you choose, it believes in one or more elements involving magic, and that is delusional. That's why I say "all" Christians. I'm not making up a new definition for it, I'm simply saying certain attributes belong to every denomination of Christianity, and those attributes can be considered delusional (aka Jesus death & resurrection, afterlife, etc).
Okay, well, if you want to go that route, you don't just get to pick whatever definition you want, you have to go with the ad populum usage. I don't care what the dictionaries say. A Christian is generally understood as being someone who believes in the resurrection of Christ. You're splitting hairs here.
I would have to respectfully disagree.
Words have meanings associated with them for purposes of communication. Labeling something erroneously or arbitrarily is unproductive to the efforts of communication in a normal colloquial sense.
Christian is a word used to describe a member of Christianity, which is a set of doctrines encompassing a religious world view and belief system. The various denominations do differ, but they all share a common foundation. Christian doctrine encompasses beliefs based in magic (resurrections, miracles, etc), and all established denominations share one or more of these beliefs.
If a person doesn't wish to follow or believe the Christian doctrines, that's perfectly fine; but, they are then not a Christian by the definition of the word. They are simply a person who amalgamated a few Christian ideas (like Islam borrowing Judaism ideas, and Judaism borrowing Zororastrian ideas, etc).
For example, if I say I am an atheist, but then I follow that up by saying I believe in a different God than most people do, I am not truly an atheist and the label is erroneous based on normal colloquial definition. This is also somewhat analogous to the popular gender issue. If a man calls himself a woman because he feels like a woman, that does not make it biologically true. The same examples apply to Christians. If they call themselves a Christian, yet fail to partake in the Christian beliefs, rituals and requirements, then they are not a Christian by definition.
So when I say "all" Christians believe in magic, I am referring to all people who belong to an established Christian denomination. Therefore, I am not committing the scottsman fallacy. Anyone who doesn't believe those things, or made up their own amalgamated version are excluded from my proposition because they do not meet the required attributes of the colloquial word.
that's a no true scottsman fallacy. You can't say what a Christian is. It's decided by societal norms. or arbitrarily.
You're doing the same things that theists do to us when they try to tell use what an atheist is.
Don't you think you should lead by example if you want the theists to be honest?
If a person doesn't believe the tenants of Christian doctrine, are they considered Christian? I would argue no. I can believe something Muhammad said, but that does not make me a Muslim. Furthermore, all versions of Christianity believe in some form of magic, such as their resurrection and everlasting eternal life after death.
if you said 99%, I would have been at least 10 times more likely to believe it, which still wouldn't get me there because I'm simply that far from believing it. I'd say it's more like 30%
and yet..... All theists? Nope, that treat is filled with poison.