Total votes: 1,434
FF
Concession.
Con had a good chance of winning prior to the forfeited round; the main thing he was lacking was a simple data bit on when someone reached that number. The problem with T-series would be the same problem with using the aggregate of all Minecraft videos.
FF
1. Appeal to tradition
That dead people did not like it, is quickly countered with said dead people supporting slavery. Con tries to extend with special pleading... I don't buy it.
2. Depression
Everyone gets it, and nothing to suggest even a higher rate... so no progress for con here.
3. AIDS
Cons main case, that AIDS exists, and homosexuals can contract it. There's actually a good source (a pie chart) showing that gay males are about three times more likely to contract it, but said chart also agrees with pro's counter that straight people catch it too... This leaves it in a weird realm that to say it's not okay under the arguments offered would be to say being straight is also not ok (way more risks than if asexual).
S&G: Very hard to follow debate due to the quote formatting and lack of headlines.
Conduct: Some insults, but it seemed due to not understanding proper form than intentional disruption to the debate.
Another troll spam debate (given that he's previously conceded evolution is how life got here, not God, pretty safe to say the trolling is intentional)... Given the amount of copy/paste, vote against pro would be justified on that alone.
1. Didit fallacy
Pro offers his usual didit fallacy (normally each debate stands wholly alone, but at a certain point we can't pretend someone isn't spamming the same drivel), with no explanation for why any god (let alone a random one from the middle east) would have done it (or that they even exist for that matter). Con calls him out on this in a much wordier format. Summary of it from con: "If an all powerful super being wanted us to fix our illnesses: why make us sick in the first place?" Not even getting into the failing to fix said illnesses most of the time.
1. Evolution
Seems to be the better explanation for what is observed (and as for us being able to benefit from eating other carbon based organisms, well the DNA repair is listed by con as "That such enzymes and antioxidants are beneficial to other animals with DNA, is unsurprising and is explainable using EXACTLY the same trial, error and selection principles as outlined in point 1,2 and 3 in R1."), and no counter case is offered to suggest otherwise. Were this Minecraft and there were exclusively beneficial effects, pro might have a case.
S&G should be self explanatory; but pro decided to hide his points behind a wall of bad grammar, missing punctuation, wrong capitalization, extra spaces at random, etc. Con on the other hand was legible.
Sources and conduct would also be warranted, but I am not putting the extra time into them on a troll debate.
Interpreting the resolution:
Definition of God (seriously, this debate moved to that).
Gist:
So a lot of bandwagon appeals… A couple decent Ks… Got to say it, this is a fine example of why three rounds is preferable to two… Final thing, pro let con control the debate, not introducing any of his own contentions (which is fine to do, but is also risky).
1. Definitions
Con wants to just say God is the name for whatever willingly created the universe, pro wants God to be the usual Christian definition.
The debate description did define God as he, but that is very ambiguous. Were con to have not engaged in the contention about Incoherence of Impersonal Causes, I would be more sympathetic to pro. More rounds also might have helped, as this was effectively a two round debate, and demanding such a large change and retooling would reduce it down to basically a single round debate.
I don’t understand pro’s final round bit about “Next time I'll argue the definition of chocolate instead in a God debate.” As for the truism claim, it had been countered by the bandwagon appeal to atheism.
2. KCA
Usual KCA, but with the definition in use it side-steps the usual problem that the KCA does not indicate any particular God (nor even an intelligent deity involved… which he goes on to address under the next contention).
The strawperson “when I see a video online of a tree growing it is not a sign of God it is a sign of a tree growing” failed to refute this argument line. Also pointing out the flawed way the KCA is normally used also fails to refute.
3. Incoherence Problem
I was not moved by this, but it bridged several gaps.
Reductio ad infinitum (/but what created that first cause?/ That actually agrees with con’s definition for God as skipping to the first cause instead of any number down the chain) does not counter this; and I should mention that con brought this up R1.
---
Arguments:
See above review of key points.
Conduct:
This took a small hit in the final round, when con could not respond anymore pro did large scale direct rebuttals on the definition. Not enough to lose the point, but worth noting.
Spam troll debate, so not putting much into this...
“If PRO measured in micrometers and maybe kept the first few decimal places- many interesting and important asymmetries could be accurately recorded.” con also points out that God would not use rounded imperial units, and pro immediately insists on using that bad standard and further insisting that against reason God used it. He the. Gives some really bad math about how many children human women tend to have (1,000,000 each...).
As con pointed out, pro never offers any evidence for how or why his imaginary friend did all these measurements, nor anything to suggest said imaginary friend is real to have done such.
“I admit that he could have been murdered." Concession. Walked back or not, still the most logical part of pro’s argument. Things like “666” do not indicate someone is alive.
Cons arguments were mainly that pros were terrible, challenging the sources as fake news, etc. his case would have been better to open with any source pointing to the death certificate, but the talk of crime families wanting to kill him did a decent job getting pro to concede.
As a reminder, pro had BoP to at least suggest the public figure is still alive, which requires something to suggest that, not just complaints that we don’t have a video of him dying.
See comments:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/1265/comment_links/18552
Con turned it into a troll debate anyway.
Gist:
Ultimately a concession, but before that it was frustratingly unclear. This feels a little bit like the warm up ponderings we get in our heads before a debate starts.
1. Opposing Views
It really should not have been pro who brought up “cognitive dissonance,” but once it was mentioned con should have capitalized on it (potentially making a whole point of contention around it)... For con this only really got under way in R2 with the mention of contradicting belief systems introduced by monotheism.
2. Death and Taxes
Pro executed a decent Epistemological argument, that faith leads to death, and in death His Name Is Robert Paulson (this is a Fight Club refence pro did not actually make; he also did not mention taxes, but I suspect that old saying is what he based this K on). Con attempts to dismiss that as not an argument, and claim it included the common Christian torture dungeon threat (which it did not). ... Con then uses short term untruths (he likely should have focused on the destruction factor, that if that’s what’s waiting for us, which we can’t know to be wrong, then in death we will not know anything to include if we were right or wrong).
Regarding the No K rule... Honestly, I’m conflicted if I would call pro’s argument a K or not given that knowledge was the subject of the debate (I kind of think of K’s as out of left field, and this was very much the type of argument to be expected on this topic). Then again, one definition for K I am toying with is arguments which avoid the other person’s argument, so...
3. Reliability
This is what pro conceded on in the end (not that they were wrong, but that their case failed to wholly address this part of the resolution).
---
Arguments:
See above review of key points.
Conduct:
Given for concession.
---
If doing this again...
Advice to Con:
I would make this argument on two fronts. First religion (front load that popular modern religions contradict each other; such as only 10,000 Mormons get into heaven). Second would be government, as 2+2 should equal 4, but 1984 taught us that in politics it can equal a different number every day if you have faith in the party. The second front is important to make things easy for judges, as grounds the debate in knowable truths. On both, focus on the paths of faith leading to more untruths. ... Also never be afraid to Google a term someone uses.
Advice to Pro:
Before your final sentence concession, I was conflicted as to who won (I would have reread the debate as it was short). I hate ever telling someone not to concede (as way more people should), but don’t make it your first instinct, you’ve got a lot of potential to become a strong debater.
For your arguments, work on expanding things out more.
On this more references to where we could go (IDK, the great bubblegum forest?). Big thing on the current argument would be the time of false beliefs, we might live a hundred years on Earth, but if there’s an afterlife, it can be assumed an average of a million years there knowing truth (against eternity there’s reincarnation which might be fast, and annihilation would be 0 time knowing truth).
Concession. Skimmed a little, in R2 pro failed to adequately refute the birthism conspiracy theory as racially motivated; personally not liking the sources, doesn't weaken their credibility (for the politifact one for example, countering it with another fact check website that verifies Trump either didn't do it or didn't lie... if he's not racist and this is all made up, it should be easy to find).
Gist:
Massive BoP failure based around non-sequiturs.
1. Medicine
Pro builds a case around some assertions about modern medicine (which doesn't predate life, so relevance?). Con counters in a few ways, explaining why it's a non-sequitur via putting it into logical form, and outright reminding us: “No evidence is offered by PRO to establish medicine as of exclusively divine origin.” All of these are wholly dropped by pro.
2. Space
Off topic to life...
Let's see, pro tries to use the moon (which has no living organisms) as proof of God creating life, but he fails to ever connect it to life, and con proves the numbers provided are false.
Pro insists all objects in space are synced, con explains that would mean moving at the same speed which is false.
Pro offers a big Gish Gallop of random numbers, but as con reminds us "None of PRO's coincidences demand a supernatural explanation."
---
Arguments: See above. Pro never even tried to touch on the topic of where life comes from.
Sources: "This is a fact just google search it and you will get this number." Telling the audience your evidence is they can do your research for you, will always be a pretty bad hit on this... Pro denies being able to find "wear" con got his bad numbers, when the links were presented right over the numbers themselves, as con later explains (not that it was needed). Generally pro offers a bunch of off topic random sites, whereas con offers useful verifiable information... Big thing was con catching pro's own source disagreeing with pro, "...reports the sun/moon ratios are only approximate, that the Moon's orbit is elliptical and slowly escaping Earth's gravity so these ratios are never precise, and that the odds of such a configuration are unknowable because we have so little data. PRO offers this source as more reliable than Wikipedia, so let's note that PRO's second argument is soundly refuted by PRO's own source."
S&G: Pro intentionally obfuscates his points behind a wall of illegibility. Extra lines enters in the
middle of
sentences, extra spaces at random, missing punctuation, and as an example this gem: "on the site it link is from Einstein and Nutan. it is still a huge coincidence. newton discovered that god fined tuned the notion of gravity. nutan did not discover how this came to be like con seems to be saying. he discovered that this is the way it is" [sic]
Concession.
Interpreting the resolution:
Christianity’s rules are more beneficial than harmful.
Gist:
Pro wanted to debate more than con. With all arguments dropped through multiple rounds, there isn’t much to consider.
If doing a follow-up, an alternative moral system should be pointed to for comparison.
1. Homosexuality (con)
Con cites multiple parts of the bible preaching burning people to death (or worse) for non-crimes. Pro responds by saying that if they’re Christian they can do what they want... This strikes me as a dangerous standard which did not refute the problem to begin with.
2. Slavery (pro)
The bible normalizes slavery. Pro argues that was servants not slaves, and that the bible further tells people to assist runaway slaves in fleeing captivity.
Side note: Surprised I did not see reference to the principles of jubilee, or that time God commanded an abused slave to return to her master.
3. Women (tie)
We have competing interpretations of the same passages, without context for which one Christians practice (I know it’s both, but the debate should have gone to which is more often followed... a con case for any frequency of abuse would have gone a long way).
Instructing that if women get out of line to shave their heads... I’m reminded heavily of Britney Spears, and not in a good way. Granted, pro did not say she should be forced to do that, but that she should willingly do it herself (honestly, it’s really weird without more context).
4. Law of Love
Unchallenged, but really could have used some clarifications...
5. K the rules
Pro K’s the no forfeit rule,
Con weirdly brings up the no K rule, to which was specific to the resolution anyways, plus was in violation of the “Observe good sportsmanship” rule (which pro really should have mentioned...).
Continued under conduct.
---
Arguments:
See above review of key points. On #3 I am calling it tied more as a reminder of how incomplete it felt, but with it outright dropped by con through multiple rounds, it goes to pro.
Conduct:
“Violation of any of these rules merits a loss.”
Yup, it totally merits a loss of the conduct point.
FF.
I expected to see a debate about Donald Trump's fighting abilities, and the benefit of sending him alone against a whole nation (possibly launched by catapult?).
Jokes aside, con based his assertions on religion, pro pointed out that politics instead of religion are what any hypothetical war would be about. While a victory would not be assured (something con really should have pointed out), pro flipped con's own point about the will of the Iranian people.
FF. Plus pro did not build any real warrants for his case.
Pro: This is not an endorsement of you being right, merely of the debate outcome being akin to full forfeiture.
Con: Always do your work in a text editor (Google Docs for example saves itself as you write, so no data loss even if your computer crashes), not on the webpage.
Were this a single round debate, or even a two round debate, I would give this to con. Even while both sides forfeited in R3, that round still happened; pro left off with his defenses (weak as they were) unchallenged, whereas con left off having dropped everything (not the same as a forfeit, it was more like a waived round, but still not ideal... the simple phrase 'still not proof' would have gone a long way).
So pro tried to prove God didit with a bunch of numbers (largely false numbers, but such did not come up in the debate arguments), and carbon based organisms having some success at eating carbon based plants. Con said it doesn't prove God and that bad things exist, but then effectively dropped out for R2 and R3.
I don't think I would have voted on this due to my bias against the pro position, but full forfeiture...
Full forfeiture.
Pro, this will help: https://tiny.cc/DebateArt
Interpreting the resolution:
The moon is not a naturally occurring object.
Gist:
I hate to say BoP, but pro never attempted to prove anything, merely point out that the moon is pretty neat.
1. Stability
Pro concedes this point (yes, them saying they would if they could not find a counter argument, and then forfeiting, I am giving them the benefit of doubt to their stated intentions).
2. Eclipses
That we can calculate when they’ll occur was pretty meaningless, and pro missed con’s counter that if eclipses were the goal they would be aligned so much better.
3. 237
Pro offered coincidence as proof, con explained that it’s not coincidence with sources, and pro said “I don’t know why.” ... The next point was just the logic of this one repeated.
---
Arguments:
See above review of key points.
Sources:
Was not going to award this, but con found con using faulty numbers, which was verified within the links. This happened before contentions 3 and 4, which were both based on numbers, causing them to not be able to be taken seriously. Another example was the Waltham source, which itself disagreed with pro’s case for using it as evidence (as con identified with quotations from it).
Conduct:
Two rounds of forfeiture.
See comment section:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/1032/comment_links/17398
Gist:
Technically the right poisons in low doses heal, which pro misses is the opposite of harm... Anyway, if pro ever met his BoP, he hid such inside the Gish Gallop.
Full full forfeiture.
See comments:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/1198/comment_links/17329
Gist:
I learned more about intersexed people than I ever thought I needed. While I disagree with pro, he makes a strong case.
Effectively full forfeit (every round after the first, with the exception of a single sentence of off topic commentary designed to disrespect the other debater)...
Concession.
67% Forfeiture.
I would have been tempted to award conduct for the R1 insults of blasphemy for initiating this debate... It could have been a somewhat valid claim later by lowering God to the standard of Michael Jordan,
This was a disagreement over if Christians define God as omnipotent anyways, and maybe should have just been a debate on if Christians define God as omnipotent or not, since pro clearly does not (well at least not without a healthy dose of moving the goalpost).
Concession.
If debating this again, I would not push the Empire as the "good guys" but as morally better than the rebels. And again, pre-define which edition is considered factual (and presumably the rest as New Republic propaganda...).
Concession.
Full forfeit.
See comments:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/1197/comment_links/16641
See comments:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/1127/comment_links/16560
Full forfeiture.
See comments: https://www.debateart.com/debates/1066/comment_links/16483
Gist:
Pro bet the farm on the known and named uncaused cause, then failed to try to imply that God (as defined by the four O’s) would be that cause; which resulted in neither being suggested. Con on the other hand outlined a case for why those O’s are actually contradictory, which while challenged, was not successfully refuted.
Full forfeiture.
Full forfeiture.
Pro, I advise opening this one again to find a real debater.
Concession.
The affirmative case was countered with "xtra peanut butter sandwich at lunch" and "Flintstones vitamin," which says even more than the forfeitures. While the negative case was layered, the core argument on cost without benefit sums up everything important about this debate.
On BoP, even were we to add the word 'should' into the resolution or talk about crime in the non-legal sense, someone needs to be the victim of said crime; and no victims were ever identified.
While cats are objectively superior, pro failed to demonstrate that in any way opting to instead FF.
See comment section: https://www.debateart.com/debates/1072/comment_links/16053
Gist:
Two great men, but unfortunately the comparison stopped with the negatives of Roosevelt uncontested, and all positives of Nixon unchallenged by any negatives.
Interpreting the resolution:
On average of power dimensions to be listed, X>Y
Gist:
Both agree money isn’t the only type of power, and Y was shown to excel at more dimensions of power (even if a greater number in any doesn’t prove they would utilize it better).
1. Money: Pro
“1.2 trillion dollars richer by nominal GDP” or “7 thousand dollars richer per person”
Con counters with an example of rich people having power not determined proportionally to their money (oddly the Israel example from pro furthers this).
2. Might: Con
More or less conceded anyway, but the “as of now” qualifier undermines pro’s own arguments that X could overtake Y if they wanted to.
That they would be ruined by a conflict does not change this, rather it seems to question the weight of economic power in comparison to what could easily destroy that.
Some credit to pro for the Israel reference (size isn’t everything).
3. Soft-Power: Con
I momentarily considered dismissing this as per the description of the debate, but that would equally apply to non-military might such as money. Culture is as much a power as money if leveraged.
---
Arguments:
See above review of key points. With a tad more data I could run a math program, but there would still be the subjective elements of either assuming they are all equal or trying to assign weighted averages... With none proven to be superior or to override the others, it is unlikely to create a different result than just lumping them all into the three dimensions and counting them.
Sources:
Sourcing could have been done better, but both sides seemed to put the effort in (if there’s an issue I don’t mind reviewing the sources, I am just a little sleepy right now, and they look like they’ll fall somewhere near the mean).
Interpreting the resolution:
As best I can make sense of it, pro started a debate to try to prove that the USA is not a nation.
Gist:
Pro has a problem with social science, yet wants to complain about societal aspects on the basis of having cognitive dissonance (dismissing math due to disliking the results not being what he or she wants them to be...).
1. Racist Phone Calls: tie
Pro says it happens, con agrees it sometimes happens, to which pro attempts reverse psychology to insist it either does not happen at all or that every white person is always doing it. The latter makes no sense given the employment rates.
Labeling this a tie due to zero impact on the resolution (as was revealed, some statistically negligible number of people have made bad phone calls, which says nothing of the nation other than there are people in it).
2. Jobs: con
The president of the nation promised to create thousands of jobs, con points out he outperformed that promise, and pro insists it does not count as honoring a promise (to use a quick analogy, if your friend borrows $20 but pays you back $1000, pro would insist they still owe the $20). It gets pretty funny from there, such as pro insisting that Trump and Obama are secretly the same person (that would be a good debate topic)...
2. Blue Lives Matter: con
Basically, pro tries to prove not knowing the definition of fraud... Back and forth, but no attempt to reach BoP for this (if a fraud, who is defrauded and in what way?). Pro insists if a police officer is black, they don’t care, but con literally shows on their website them paying respects to a fallen black officer, to which pro insists that never happened due to pro’s cognitive dissonance not allowing it...
3. Con did not answer questions: con
“my opponent is still refusing to answer the (specific) questions that I've asked” which was pre-refuted by the questions being answered, and further refuted with this summary: “Just because you do not like my answer doesn't mean that it's not there.”
This was basically just pro asking to be penalized on conduct.
---
Arguments:
See above review of key points.
Conduct:
Pro tried to end the debate by lying about the debate content. I see this happen a lot online, seemingly because people think what actually happened in the text format can’t be verified with CTRL+F.
As a non-moderated non-debate, I'm just giving a conduct penalty for pro attempting to cheat in the comment section.
I am marking this as sources instead of conduct to honor the request of pro, that interruptions to flow be deducted on sources, to which this conduct violation most closely resembles within the paradigm. ... Additionally (would not be enough for the point by itself), con made good use of a source to bolster his case (it enhanced the burn, even while not needing to be understood in the middle of his argument).
Countering the suspected friend or alt account's vote.
Con offers three key rules of morality from the bible, which within the context they are objectively horrible. Pro tried to counter with an appeal to the cosmological argument (I suspect he meant to use Divine Command Theory), but failed to suggest any reason why it's relevant to this debate, or that we should use the bible, or any way con's offered counter evidence against those morals should be rejected or reinterpreted.
So con's argument stands wholly uncontested, and pro never makes one (a vague assertion is not an argument).
50% forfeiture, and rule violation with the stipulated punishment of it meriting a loss. Further this rule being executed as such was brought up as a debate argument and left unchallenged when there was opportunity to challenge it. ... I would not be comfortable doing this for any single infraction of the rules (particular K had that occurred, as it's such a varied thing), but repeated ones, and dropping every single point, there's no likely recovery from that.
...
Advice: Got to say it, the resolution likely confused validness with soundness. Proving that MGB indeed exists is an impossible BoP, but one to which pro insisted on taking the full weight.
See comments: https://www.debateart.com/debates/1101/comment_links/15335
Gist:
Con misrepresents pro’s case by acting like it’s an all or nothing deal, and we intuitively know what pro meant, but pro does not sufficiently refute this (he argues that absolute socialism isn’t the socialism he’s arguing in favor of, but that misses that an increase in socialism is taking steps toward absolute socialism... It’s a slippery slope fallacy, but an incredibly well executed one). I’m quite surprised to not see any mention of the bell curve for gains and losses. Con also makes very good use of syllogism to prove that socialism hurts more than it gains.
Note:
I can see how arguments could go either way, I can see how sources could be tied, but there's no case for conduct not favoring con if the debate has been read.
Concession.