Just because you say my mother is 2000lbs, doesn’t make it true.
Just because you say God is “the ultimate reality”, doesn’t make that true either!
This is the massive flaw I everything you’re saying that you just don’t understand.
Just because you, and any number of other people have “decided” that the word God means “Reality” doesn’t mean that’s God exists - because tomorrow a bunch of people could get together and decide that’s not the word means - God wouldn’t cease to exist then, would he.
Reality obviously exists, but that doesn’t mean God exists, because God is more than just “reality” - even if you accept your definition, he’s an entity, with an opinion, a mind, powers, etc. That’s the hilarious error you make:
A fictional God in a series of books is also defined as Ultimate Reality. The God defined in Good Omens is the Ultimate Reality too. The God in Monty Othtons Holy Grail is defined as the Ultimate Reality.
All of those things share the same definition as your example - yet they don’t exist.
You - a human being - saying that God isn’t the ultimate reality doesn’t mean he exists.
We're not at a particle physics convention - we are on a debate website, where points can be allocated based whether the spelling and grammar of a debater substantially affects the readability. Half of pros sentences made no sense whatsoever - even after translation, and for the rest his excessive over use of different terms that he capitalized substantially affected the readability of the debate. This choice was extreme and utterly unnecessary - and his spelling and Grammar was markes accordingly.
You’re argument is basically that his obtuse, repeated and utterly contextually unnecessary use of capitalized terms rather than just “God” was “technically” correct, and so I should have looked past the complete unreadability of his position that was caused as a result - that makes no sense.
I would have looked past general capitalization as required by a general religious debate - but this went far and above what I could and would deem reasonable. I always give the benefit of the doubt - but pros grammar and spelling caused his position to be nearly impossible to read.
As I said, a definition is merely a label associated with something, that you “proved”, that God is defined in a particular way merely proves you have given God that label but does not prove that God has any of those properties.
In comment, you didn’t argue that it is unreasonable for me to find pros choice of language unreadable - you are arguing that it is a technically correct way of writing. I understand that, and that’s the difference. Even though the language was technically correct the extent to which he did it was unnecessary and gratuitous. Even transcribing the sentences were difficult to read - hence why I asked you specific examples of what pro meant even after it was translated in just the way you suggest.
That is specifically what he is being marked down for: the unnecessary and gratuitous use of these terms in that way that substantially impacted the readability to someone like me by a large extent for no legitimate reason over other alternatives - together withfrequent examples where even performing substitution his phrasing made it completely unclear as to what he meant.
I think you should read back a few pages - I don’t think that specific thing factored into his vote. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt - and will challenge areas where I think his vote is unfair - but I think the issue is how he’s expressing his assesment of your debate, which we’ve all agreed will be corrected.
It’s hard to distinguish between having an issue with his vote because I disagree with his conclusion, and whether I have an issue with his vote because there is a genuine error in his reasoning - and so if his vote has no errors or omissions and is well explained - even if we disagree - we have to accept it. It will balance it out in the end.
Are you saying that his excessive capitalization should not have had any meaningful impact in the readability of the debate? Are you saying that the overwhelming majority of his arguments were not phrased, presented or written in a way that made them harder to understand, or make little sense at all?
If the answer to either of these are yes: then I would vehemently disagree - and thus far you haven’t seemed to be arguing as if it is unreasonable for me to have been repeatedly tripped up by his language.
If the answer is no, then the reason why I chose to mark him down using a criteria expressly for penalizing spelling and grammar that renders a debate excessively hard to read should answer itself.
Remember:
“All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.”
“This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticizing concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating.”
“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.”
“Read rhymes with lead, and read rhymes with lead, but read and lead don’t rhyme, and neither do read and lead”
And
“The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt.”
Are all perfectly grammatically correct - but I would absolutely expect you to vote down a debate if it was riddled with this sort of example, rather than excuse it on a technicality.
So far, Raltar has been mature and grown up - defending his vote, and I think it’s too easy to simply dismiss someone who isn’t voting the way you want. I don’t necessarily agree with his vote - but I have no reason to believe he necessarily came up with is vote in bad faith, and I think it’s important
To give him the benefit of the doubt. I think the main thing is that he didn’t think your rebuttal was sufficient (he said that in his original too), and provided his reasons are coherent - I think it’s important to accept it; your opponent almost certainly thinks the same of me.
Your entire argument is that God exists because of the specific definition you, and others use to describe him.
If the only argument to support his existence is that you’ve defined him in a particular way, then you are defining him into existence.
This is not the same as calling a trunk with branches a tree - as this object will objectively exist whether I decide to call it a tree or not. The existence of a thing is completely unrelated to the label human beings give it.
Definitions are simply words, constructed labels that human beings give or assign to objects and entities. That’s all, they are not active properties, and what you decide to call something that is real, or fictional can never and will never alter its existence or properties.
If God doesn’t exist - he would not be the ultimate reality - no matter how many times you or anyone else said he was. As a result, simply saying he is the ultimate reality does not - in any way - imply or infer he exists.
“How do you prove that God exists? It seems absurd to think that the existence of God could be proven by using appeals to God. If you doubt God exists, do you not at least know that it is true that you have doubts? It's an unreasonable demand, to ask for proof of the truth.”
I have replaced references to “The Truth” with “God”
Could you explain what this section means? (You’re right - it’s not one sentence) I don’t know if I’ve misunderstood, he’s asserting without justification that you shouldn’t ask for proof that something is true, that truth itself exists, or that God exists, or some other option. I can’t figure out what the argument is, what is he trying to convey, and how does this fit in context. Could you enlighten me?
I completely understand the capitalization of God, and Him, of Lord: and I very much would not penalize anyone for using those terms.
However, pro used a multitude of examples: “The word”, “The Truth”, “Almighty”, “Spirit of Truth”, sometimes in his references it is uncapitalized as “truth” and “spirit of truth”, so I have to figure out whether he’s referencing Truth, truth, or made a miscapitalization, the you have the Word of Truth and the Spirit of Truth based on God the Father and the Holy Spirit - which appears pretty much nonsensical and irrelevant in terms of the debate. You have One Essence, Undivided, then you have The Most Perfect Image, even though you have an Invisible God - which is nonsensical by itself, then Orthodox Theology - that doesn’t even need to be capitalized at all, is he making a God reference? I have to stop and check. Then we have God is The Truth: which is literally God is God, and then The Truth Is God straight after - which is that God is God - flowery but incoherent sentences. Let’s throw in a Lord Over All, The Absolute, apparently The Truth is Eternal.
I cannot, with a straight face, accept that this repeated terminological tomfoolery, did not massively impact your ability to understand.
I think the BoP can be removed (you can also remove your own vote).
If you don’t like Pros behaviour - I would suggest marking him for conduct.
I would also (for being fair), explicitly reference why you felt the remainder of cons argument (rounds 3/4/5 where Con argues that pro is defining God into existence) it seemed like you weren’t considering it.
I understand your position, I understand what you’re saying. I am saying that in the context of this debate it is not accurate.
1.) is a debate has a positive claim: “X is true, X is false” by default the burden of proof is on “pro”.
2.) if the contention is “X is true”, then if pro as Burden of proof, con does not need to show “x is false” (though he can), it is sufficient for him to show that pro “hasn’t proven x is true”.
3.) Con - in the comments - said he is no claiming “X is false”, and that is perfectly valid, as burden of proof in this case means it is sufficient for him to simply show that pro has not established “X is true”
Or in other words, if the debate is titled “Ramshutu is a parrot”, pro must prove I am a parrot, and all Con needs to do is show that pro did not prove I’m a parrot. Con is not required to show that ramshutu is not a parrot to win - though it is a reasonable Pproach.
This is a critical to understand point in terms of BoP - you can’t penalize someone for not showing ramshutu is not a parrot, when his burden of proof is simply to show the opponent did not establish that I am.
It’s a key distinction to make - and is based on the implicit default position set up in the debate resolution and terms.
I’m familiar with the topic, I’m an ex Christian. Pros choice of grammar, as explained made his debate round next to incomprehensible. His choice of capitalization on its own, would have made me mark him down on grammar as it severely impedes the readability of the debate because of his excessive overcapitalization.
I would strongly contend that while you may “understand” sentences such as this:
“How do you prove that The Truth exists? It seems absurd to think that the existence of The Truth could be proven by using appeals to Truth. If you doubt The Truth exists, do you not at least know that it is true that you have doubts? It's an unreasonable demand, to ask for proof of the truth.”
... it likely took you several reads, notes, and several minutes of squinting. This is just a nonsense sentence, that is detrimental to the reader due to the choice of capitalization, assuming proper nouns, and mixing and matching of proper nouns in weird contexts. I’ve read this 8 times, and I still don’t fully know wtf it means, and I am pretty sure that if you had a go, it would be a crap shoot.
You can’t say with a straight face, that this is a completely reasonable, grammatically fine, understandable sentence: and pros entire debate is riddled with sentences that are just as bad. Hence - he loses grammar.
Note: I appreciate that this is constructive and grown up. I am more than happy to explain every facet of my vote, and I’m glad you’re doing the same.
If you feel the debate is unfairly setup - I would absolutely score him in conduct - I’ve done that specifically on several occasions.
Nevertheless, Pro has sole Burden of proof here; I completely agree that you must consider is argument as sufficient to meeting the basic level of proof, but it is unfair to award pro the win on burden of proof because you, personally, have decided that despite the typical rules of debate do not apply, because you have personally viewed cons actions negatively. You’re a voter, not a participant and as such can’t ad-hoc change the rules of debate because you don’t like something a debater said or did external to the arguments. That’s literally the definition of voting bias - and what the Cox is written to try and prevent.
In terms of arguments, as I mentioned: rounds 3/4 and 5 describe a specific argument you don’t reference: while you may not view it as sufficient, it formed a large part of cons ending argument - and as a result while you may not view it as sufficient, you don’t appear to have specifically considered a major part of his argument in your RFD
I’m writing on an iPhone, and it makes it very hard to proof read. For that reason, among others, I can’t effectively engage in debates at all, and would Absolutely expect if I made the errors I make in a debate, for me to be scored down for spelling and grammar - and if I did engage in a debate, I would very much make sure I proof read and validated my arguments.
As I explained, Pro was incoherent for several reasons: First using Seminary English with twisted and non-intuitive grammar obfuscated what he was saying to the point that it made it unclear how or even why what he was saying was relevant. You may have been able to tease out what he meant without more detailed Christian background - but talking about the trinity and The Word and One Essence appeared to be incoherent drivel that was neither relevant to the contention, or made any sense in that context. Then there was his capitalization. It was beyond excessive with almost every other word at one point capitalized because - as I said he repeatedly wrote descriptive prose as if a proper noun, and used a billion different examples all the way through.
This is one of the most incoherent and incomprehensible waffle word salad of a debate I have ever read on this site or elsewhere, and I am actually way more vehement of my grammar vote here than I am on the arguments as a result.
The debate contention is a positive claim, this is not about what pro or con said in the debate: but who has default burden of proof. In debates that is always the person supporting a positive claim. This is less about con evading the burden of proof, and more that this is how all debates and all logical arguments work - burden of proof is always on the positive claim. So treating con as if he has to offer a plausible reason for God not to exist - as you explain in the RFD - is unfair - as unless otherwise specified or agreed this is not how Burden of Proof works, nor, most importantly, was the burden of proof contested or objected to by Pro at any point. If pro protested, or the definitions explicitly state burden of proof - I wouldn’t treat your position as unfair. But you explicitly said con lost the debate based upon BoP.
Now, while con objected to the definition pro uses being authoritative - this wasn’t his only argument. I would submit that the first paragraph of round 3, the majority of round 4, and round 5: are not arguments that are simply “complaining about the dictionary”, and are attacking pros logic, by pointing that pros position is essentially defining God into existance: that just because God is defined in such a way doesn’t necessitate he exists in a particular way, this is a major portion of his argument that you don’t appear to have considered in your RFD either.
This isn’t a generic “you’re vote is shitty”, those are unhelpful and normally nonsense, it’s more to give you the ability to clarify your decision so that so that people don’t think you’re being unfair - I would expect anyone who had a specific issue with my vote to do the same.
Just for your benefit (and to explain why I didn’t consider BoP in the same way), Raltar, BoP is normally on the person making the claim (This would be Pro here), unless otherwise explicitly stated in the debate terms - so I think giving Con shared BoP is a bit unfair in this regard. I’d be totally with you if the debate terms indicated shared BoP, but I think it would be a reasonable expectation that pro should make his case, and con refutes.
You pointed out an instance of a sufficient vote that - literally - made the same arguments my vote did, I went into more detail and have been more specifically critical of your arguments.
So yeah, this is not about my vote, as much as my specific criticism and you being angry at me personally for finding your arguments non compelling, and your grammar and spelling in one debate exceptionally poor.
Like I said, if you have a specific issue with a specific vote that you would like to raise - go ahead. But so far, all I have to go on is that my grammar core is wrong because I voted for the specific reasons (with examples) that you said I should, and because for some arbitrary reason you feel my vote is “not sufficient”
Perhaps angrily chiding me for having the audacity to be critical of you, and being unable to really back your accusations up is not the best approach to take on a debate site. I’m sure relatives and friends would be a better bet for you to soothe whatever feelings I hurt.
Also, I literally ignored every part of his argument where he was pleading with you and rambling about you not killing yourself - I literally said as much.
“The next round, pro focuses on his specific effects: his carbon footprint being a net negative, his fiancé not being able to replace him while he is alive, and that he isn’t helping starving children in Africa.
Con points out that pro is ignoring the positive impact of his life, and not providing an argument as to why one outweighs the other. While that is a good argument, as pro offered additional specific examples, I felt that con needed to give answers in return. But as he attacks the form of pros premise: that he is unfairly weighting life and not life - I can’t give pro the win on this round, and must score it a draw.”
Or, to clarify:: you raised a good point. Con countered it with a generic argument about how you weighted the value of your past and future lives - and how it is possible to mitigate ongoing negatives, which for me was convincing, but I scored this round as a draw because he didn’t counter your specifics with other specific examples.
I literally dealt explicitly with this part of your argument in my vote: and weight it more I’m your favour than others
Cons argument that you were weighting your future actions based on your past actions was killer - and is why you lost. If con had said something along the lines “you can mitigate your footprint by planting a few trees a year”, it would have been a total one sided victory. That’s what I was explaining in my vote.
I awarded grammar points based on my view - and multiple examples that rendered the debate incomprehensible. You’re claiming that I should only award grammar and spelling points if the debate is incomprehensible. I award grammar points not for individual or even cumulative errors but for substantive and repeated errors that substantially affect the readability of the debate.
I’m awarding points here, on your and debate, and elsewhere. on exactly the basis you’ve said I should award them - and are now claiming that by awarding them just the way you said they should be awarded, that I am not awarding them correctly.
I’m sorry that you are not mentally equipped, or emotionally mature enough to deal with criticism -but it seems your objecting more due to your own personal inability to accept criticism that I must somehow be biased or acting maliciously.
No - I’m scoring everyone equally - one of your debates was okay, one was horrendous, this one was horrendous, others are horrendous. I will vote when they are horrendous, not because I want to alter the outcome of the debate - that is purely down to your own o erinflated sense of ego. In reality, it doesn’t actually matter that much to me either way.
Now, if you actually have a specific objection to anything I’ve said - thus far it seems mostly abstract attacks rather than challenging any specific decision - I will be happy to discuss it: but otherwise I’m going to treat your claims that I’m abusing the system by voting exactly the way you have said I should be voting with the disdain they deserve.
I did do an “impact” analysis. It’s just in that analysis was that the impact was in itself irrelevant. As I said in my vote:, your first round argument was that you had a specific negative impact on people - which was uncontested - cons whole argument was that you were implicitly conflating past impact with future impact. This was compounded by the fact that you yourself don’t really provide any compelling why the negative impacts necessitate your death as opposed to anything else.
So it seems you’re mostly butthurt because I didn’t view the implicit nature of the argument and the approach you presented the way you wanted me to in the context of the debate - mainly because con did much better at framing the difference between your claims and his in respect to context.
Ahh excellent, so you agree that grammar in this case is perfectly reasonable to award: you are just butthurt because I scored your multiple grammatical and spelling errors in one of your debates.
I don’t often award spelling and grammar - I do it when the debate is incomprehensible, the spelling and grammatical errors are frequent and break up the flow. To award grammar - I have to give examples, and I will - but I’m not going to list the dozens upon dozens of errors that all contribute to that decision - which in your case there were.
Also - it is incredibly hard for you to be honest as to why my vote sucked, when you have yet to provide any actual explanation as to what part of my vote you feel was incorrect, invalid, or otherwise “sucky”.
If you had read my vote: I scored grammar, as Pros choice of phrasing and capitalization in multiple cases throughout is points made his argument incomprehensible, and nearly impossible to read. - I have several examples. As Grammar should be awarded when the spelling and grammar is substantially detrimental to the readability of the debate - the grammar points in this respect are wholly warranted.
The Drafterman vote was saying exactly the same thing as my vote - literally the same thing - except I went into more detail to break down the individual arguments.
Note: not mentioned in the RFD, there is a lot of content that was not mentioned intentionally. A substantial fraction of this debate had little to do with the debate contention on both sides - these arguments were ignored as irrelevant.
Actually Mopac - OED defines omnipotence as “(of a deity) having unlimited power.” This is exactly what con was arguing, and it was pro who was attempting to argue a different position. Both pro and con were effectively arguing that omnipotence as defined can’t exist.
Your RFD appears to be pulling much information from outside of this debate, including from your own beliefs - as you appear to be justifying your RFD based on argument from some sort of “absolute Truth”, which is an argument pro didn’t make. You should be making voting decisions based on whether pro and con made a better argument, not whether con didn’t refute information you have in your head.
Yes. A tequila sunrise is actually yellow and is actually red.
To win arguments you had to exclude pros position, none of your arguments excluded anything he said: in the same way arguing a tequila sunrise is yellow does not necessarily preclude it from also being red.
You proved they were social constructs: That at best they were not objective definitions. Because of that, pros argument that LA is in the west is still true - LA is in the west where west is a social constuct.
Multiple sets of empirical data and experimentation presented in the form of a peer reviewed scientific paper that supports the position of Abiogenesis “Isn’t evidence”.
At this point, I don’t really have to say anything; I can just sit and watch you refute yourself.
I find it personally hilarious watching you stamp your feet at how you feel there is no evidence for Abiogenesis in a debate where the opening rounds consists of MagicAintReal producing reams and reams and reams of evidence, supported by evidence, the appropriate study, and his own summarized explanation.
Erm no, I’m afraid I’m not going to let you project on the this one.
Our last conversation consisted of you raising multiple false claims, each one being systematically shot down as either dishonest or otherwise false, only for you to raise yet another parroted false claim - culminating you being proven incorrect so many times in a row, and so obviously dishonest you stopped responding.
And again, rather than talk about Abiogenesis, you seem to be more adamant in hurling insults and accusations. How about you debate MagicAintReal, and we can see how valid your objections are to the broad wealth of explanations and data he’s linked in this argument.
Complaining over and over again that there is no evidence, ignoring the evidence that is presented, then calling anyone who disagrees an idiot, is neither an argument, nor a rational position to hold.
You don’t seem particularly able to deal with either Evolution, or Abiogenesis, and instead are interested merely in irrational diatribes that only serve to emphasize your complete lack of ability to discuss science that you have an emotional aversion to on its merits.
I think “lost” in this case was a bit harsh he just edged ahead and it was close. If you had split this out into three debates you would have won 2 of them, it was just that I feel that the most important argument for the purposes of the debate contention was the first point.
It wasn’t bad by any means, and I felt that this was the best debate to vote on that I’ve seen here.
I messed up pro/ con in the final weighting should be con +5, pro+1, pro+3. Great debate. I didn’t know which way I would score it till the end, and it appears I ended up agreeing with RM; though I agree on principle with armoured cats side.
Yes I get it. He exists because you’ve said he is the ultimate reality - and as such is required to exist as that’s what ultimate reality requires.
... and You’ve defined him into existence. Like I said.
God is the most powerful it is possible to be. If a being that exists can do something, if a being that doesn’t exist can also do that thing, despite them not existing - they are obviously more powerful.
As God is the most powerful being possible - he can’t exist.
You almost had it!
Just because you say my mother is 2000lbs, doesn’t make it true.
Just because you say God is “the ultimate reality”, doesn’t make that true either!
This is the massive flaw I everything you’re saying that you just don’t understand.
Just because you, and any number of other people have “decided” that the word God means “Reality” doesn’t mean that’s God exists - because tomorrow a bunch of people could get together and decide that’s not the word means - God wouldn’t cease to exist then, would he.
Reality obviously exists, but that doesn’t mean God exists, because God is more than just “reality” - even if you accept your definition, he’s an entity, with an opinion, a mind, powers, etc. That’s the hilarious error you make:
I understand, it’s just wrong.
A fictional God in a series of books is also defined as Ultimate Reality. The God defined in Good Omens is the Ultimate Reality too. The God in Monty Othtons Holy Grail is defined as the Ultimate Reality.
All of those things share the same definition as your example - yet they don’t exist.
You - a human being - saying that God isn’t the ultimate reality doesn’t mean he exists.
The overarching maker in the wheel of time was defined as The Ultimate Reality. That God is fictional.
Shouting at me at how good your definition is doesn’t make your God exist.
You literally just claimed it.... again.
Erm no, I’m saying what a definition on its own cannot prove anything exists. That’s not what a definition is.
That’s exactly how defitions work. They are human words applied to objects and things to attempt to label those things.
No matter what words you, or any other human, has decided to define God as - they are just words; a mere label, and do not show that he exists.
We're not at a particle physics convention - we are on a debate website, where points can be allocated based whether the spelling and grammar of a debater substantially affects the readability. Half of pros sentences made no sense whatsoever - even after translation, and for the rest his excessive over use of different terms that he capitalized substantially affected the readability of the debate. This choice was extreme and utterly unnecessary - and his spelling and Grammar was markes accordingly.
You’re argument is basically that his obtuse, repeated and utterly contextually unnecessary use of capitalized terms rather than just “God” was “technically” correct, and so I should have looked past the complete unreadability of his position that was caused as a result - that makes no sense.
I would have looked past general capitalization as required by a general religious debate - but this went far and above what I could and would deem reasonable. I always give the benefit of the doubt - but pros grammar and spelling caused his position to be nearly impossible to read.
As I said, a definition is merely a label associated with something, that you “proved”, that God is defined in a particular way merely proves you have given God that label but does not prove that God has any of those properties.
In comment, you didn’t argue that it is unreasonable for me to find pros choice of language unreadable - you are arguing that it is a technically correct way of writing. I understand that, and that’s the difference. Even though the language was technically correct the extent to which he did it was unnecessary and gratuitous. Even transcribing the sentences were difficult to read - hence why I asked you specific examples of what pro meant even after it was translated in just the way you suggest.
That is specifically what he is being marked down for: the unnecessary and gratuitous use of these terms in that way that substantially impacted the readability to someone like me by a large extent for no legitimate reason over other alternatives - together withfrequent examples where even performing substitution his phrasing made it completely unclear as to what he meant.
That absolutely falls under spelling and grammar.
I think you should read back a few pages - I don’t think that specific thing factored into his vote. I am giving him the benefit of the doubt - and will challenge areas where I think his vote is unfair - but I think the issue is how he’s expressing his assesment of your debate, which we’ve all agreed will be corrected.
It’s hard to distinguish between having an issue with his vote because I disagree with his conclusion, and whether I have an issue with his vote because there is a genuine error in his reasoning - and so if his vote has no errors or omissions and is well explained - even if we disagree - we have to accept it. It will balance it out in the end.
Are you saying that his excessive capitalization should not have had any meaningful impact in the readability of the debate? Are you saying that the overwhelming majority of his arguments were not phrased, presented or written in a way that made them harder to understand, or make little sense at all?
If the answer to either of these are yes: then I would vehemently disagree - and thus far you haven’t seemed to be arguing as if it is unreasonable for me to have been repeatedly tripped up by his language.
If the answer is no, then the reason why I chose to mark him down using a criteria expressly for penalizing spelling and grammar that renders a debate excessively hard to read should answer itself.
Remember:
“All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life.”
“This exceeding trifling witling, considering ranting criticizing concerning adopting fitting wording being exhibiting transcending learning, was displaying, notwithstanding ridiculing, surpassing boasting swelling reasoning, respecting correcting erring writing, and touching detecting deceiving arguing during debating.”
“I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalizes intercommunications’ incomprehensibleness.”
“Read rhymes with lead, and read rhymes with lead, but read and lead don’t rhyme, and neither do read and lead”
And
“The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt.”
Are all perfectly grammatically correct - but I would absolutely expect you to vote down a debate if it was riddled with this sort of example, rather than excuse it on a technicality.
So far, Raltar has been mature and grown up - defending his vote, and I think it’s too easy to simply dismiss someone who isn’t voting the way you want. I don’t necessarily agree with his vote - but I have no reason to believe he necessarily came up with is vote in bad faith, and I think it’s important
To give him the benefit of the doubt. I think the main thing is that he didn’t think your rebuttal was sufficient (he said that in his original too), and provided his reasons are coherent - I think it’s important to accept it; your opponent almost certainly thinks the same of me.
Your entire argument is that God exists because of the specific definition you, and others use to describe him.
If the only argument to support his existence is that you’ve defined him in a particular way, then you are defining him into existence.
This is not the same as calling a trunk with branches a tree - as this object will objectively exist whether I decide to call it a tree or not. The existence of a thing is completely unrelated to the label human beings give it.
Definitions are simply words, constructed labels that human beings give or assign to objects and entities. That’s all, they are not active properties, and what you decide to call something that is real, or fictional can never and will never alter its existence or properties.
If God doesn’t exist - he would not be the ultimate reality - no matter how many times you or anyone else said he was. As a result, simply saying he is the ultimate reality does not - in any way - imply or infer he exists.
“How do you prove that God exists? It seems absurd to think that the existence of God could be proven by using appeals to God. If you doubt God exists, do you not at least know that it is true that you have doubts? It's an unreasonable demand, to ask for proof of the truth.”
I have replaced references to “The Truth” with “God”
Could you explain what this section means? (You’re right - it’s not one sentence) I don’t know if I’ve misunderstood, he’s asserting without justification that you shouldn’t ask for proof that something is true, that truth itself exists, or that God exists, or some other option. I can’t figure out what the argument is, what is he trying to convey, and how does this fit in context. Could you enlighten me?
I completely understand the capitalization of God, and Him, of Lord: and I very much would not penalize anyone for using those terms.
However, pro used a multitude of examples: “The word”, “The Truth”, “Almighty”, “Spirit of Truth”, sometimes in his references it is uncapitalized as “truth” and “spirit of truth”, so I have to figure out whether he’s referencing Truth, truth, or made a miscapitalization, the you have the Word of Truth and the Spirit of Truth based on God the Father and the Holy Spirit - which appears pretty much nonsensical and irrelevant in terms of the debate. You have One Essence, Undivided, then you have The Most Perfect Image, even though you have an Invisible God - which is nonsensical by itself, then Orthodox Theology - that doesn’t even need to be capitalized at all, is he making a God reference? I have to stop and check. Then we have God is The Truth: which is literally God is God, and then The Truth Is God straight after - which is that God is God - flowery but incoherent sentences. Let’s throw in a Lord Over All, The Absolute, apparently The Truth is Eternal.
I cannot, with a straight face, accept that this repeated terminological tomfoolery, did not massively impact your ability to understand.
I think the BoP can be removed (you can also remove your own vote).
If you don’t like Pros behaviour - I would suggest marking him for conduct.
I would also (for being fair), explicitly reference why you felt the remainder of cons argument (rounds 3/4/5 where Con argues that pro is defining God into existence) it seemed like you weren’t considering it.
I understand your position, I understand what you’re saying. I am saying that in the context of this debate it is not accurate.
1.) is a debate has a positive claim: “X is true, X is false” by default the burden of proof is on “pro”.
2.) if the contention is “X is true”, then if pro as Burden of proof, con does not need to show “x is false” (though he can), it is sufficient for him to show that pro “hasn’t proven x is true”.
3.) Con - in the comments - said he is no claiming “X is false”, and that is perfectly valid, as burden of proof in this case means it is sufficient for him to simply show that pro has not established “X is true”
Or in other words, if the debate is titled “Ramshutu is a parrot”, pro must prove I am a parrot, and all Con needs to do is show that pro did not prove I’m a parrot. Con is not required to show that ramshutu is not a parrot to win - though it is a reasonable Pproach.
This is a critical to understand point in terms of BoP - you can’t penalize someone for not showing ramshutu is not a parrot, when his burden of proof is simply to show the opponent did not establish that I am.
It’s a key distinction to make - and is based on the implicit default position set up in the debate resolution and terms.
I’m familiar with the topic, I’m an ex Christian. Pros choice of grammar, as explained made his debate round next to incomprehensible. His choice of capitalization on its own, would have made me mark him down on grammar as it severely impedes the readability of the debate because of his excessive overcapitalization.
I would strongly contend that while you may “understand” sentences such as this:
“How do you prove that The Truth exists? It seems absurd to think that the existence of The Truth could be proven by using appeals to Truth. If you doubt The Truth exists, do you not at least know that it is true that you have doubts? It's an unreasonable demand, to ask for proof of the truth.”
... it likely took you several reads, notes, and several minutes of squinting. This is just a nonsense sentence, that is detrimental to the reader due to the choice of capitalization, assuming proper nouns, and mixing and matching of proper nouns in weird contexts. I’ve read this 8 times, and I still don’t fully know wtf it means, and I am pretty sure that if you had a go, it would be a crap shoot.
You can’t say with a straight face, that this is a completely reasonable, grammatically fine, understandable sentence: and pros entire debate is riddled with sentences that are just as bad. Hence - he loses grammar.
Note: I appreciate that this is constructive and grown up. I am more than happy to explain every facet of my vote, and I’m glad you’re doing the same.
If you feel the debate is unfairly setup - I would absolutely score him in conduct - I’ve done that specifically on several occasions.
Nevertheless, Pro has sole Burden of proof here; I completely agree that you must consider is argument as sufficient to meeting the basic level of proof, but it is unfair to award pro the win on burden of proof because you, personally, have decided that despite the typical rules of debate do not apply, because you have personally viewed cons actions negatively. You’re a voter, not a participant and as such can’t ad-hoc change the rules of debate because you don’t like something a debater said or did external to the arguments. That’s literally the definition of voting bias - and what the Cox is written to try and prevent.
In terms of arguments, as I mentioned: rounds 3/4 and 5 describe a specific argument you don’t reference: while you may not view it as sufficient, it formed a large part of cons ending argument - and as a result while you may not view it as sufficient, you don’t appear to have specifically considered a major part of his argument in your RFD
I’m writing on an iPhone, and it makes it very hard to proof read. For that reason, among others, I can’t effectively engage in debates at all, and would Absolutely expect if I made the errors I make in a debate, for me to be scored down for spelling and grammar - and if I did engage in a debate, I would very much make sure I proof read and validated my arguments.
As I explained, Pro was incoherent for several reasons: First using Seminary English with twisted and non-intuitive grammar obfuscated what he was saying to the point that it made it unclear how or even why what he was saying was relevant. You may have been able to tease out what he meant without more detailed Christian background - but talking about the trinity and The Word and One Essence appeared to be incoherent drivel that was neither relevant to the contention, or made any sense in that context. Then there was his capitalization. It was beyond excessive with almost every other word at one point capitalized because - as I said he repeatedly wrote descriptive prose as if a proper noun, and used a billion different examples all the way through.
This is one of the most incoherent and incomprehensible waffle word salad of a debate I have ever read on this site or elsewhere, and I am actually way more vehement of my grammar vote here than I am on the arguments as a result.
The debate contention is a positive claim, this is not about what pro or con said in the debate: but who has default burden of proof. In debates that is always the person supporting a positive claim. This is less about con evading the burden of proof, and more that this is how all debates and all logical arguments work - burden of proof is always on the positive claim. So treating con as if he has to offer a plausible reason for God not to exist - as you explain in the RFD - is unfair - as unless otherwise specified or agreed this is not how Burden of Proof works, nor, most importantly, was the burden of proof contested or objected to by Pro at any point. If pro protested, or the definitions explicitly state burden of proof - I wouldn’t treat your position as unfair. But you explicitly said con lost the debate based upon BoP.
Now, while con objected to the definition pro uses being authoritative - this wasn’t his only argument. I would submit that the first paragraph of round 3, the majority of round 4, and round 5: are not arguments that are simply “complaining about the dictionary”, and are attacking pros logic, by pointing that pros position is essentially defining God into existance: that just because God is defined in such a way doesn’t necessitate he exists in a particular way, this is a major portion of his argument that you don’t appear to have considered in your RFD either.
This isn’t a generic “you’re vote is shitty”, those are unhelpful and normally nonsense, it’s more to give you the ability to clarify your decision so that so that people don’t think you’re being unfair - I would expect anyone who had a specific issue with my vote to do the same.
Just for your benefit (and to explain why I didn’t consider BoP in the same way), Raltar, BoP is normally on the person making the claim (This would be Pro here), unless otherwise explicitly stated in the debate terms - so I think giving Con shared BoP is a bit unfair in this regard. I’d be totally with you if the debate terms indicated shared BoP, but I think it would be a reasonable expectation that pro should make his case, and con refutes.
You pointed out an instance of a sufficient vote that - literally - made the same arguments my vote did, I went into more detail and have been more specifically critical of your arguments.
So yeah, this is not about my vote, as much as my specific criticism and you being angry at me personally for finding your arguments non compelling, and your grammar and spelling in one debate exceptionally poor.
Like I said, if you have a specific issue with a specific vote that you would like to raise - go ahead. But so far, all I have to go on is that my grammar core is wrong because I voted for the specific reasons (with examples) that you said I should, and because for some arbitrary reason you feel my vote is “not sufficient”
Perhaps angrily chiding me for having the audacity to be critical of you, and being unable to really back your accusations up is not the best approach to take on a debate site. I’m sure relatives and friends would be a better bet for you to soothe whatever feelings I hurt.
Also, I literally ignored every part of his argument where he was pleading with you and rambling about you not killing yourself - I literally said as much.
From my vote:
“The next round, pro focuses on his specific effects: his carbon footprint being a net negative, his fiancé not being able to replace him while he is alive, and that he isn’t helping starving children in Africa.
Con points out that pro is ignoring the positive impact of his life, and not providing an argument as to why one outweighs the other. While that is a good argument, as pro offered additional specific examples, I felt that con needed to give answers in return. But as he attacks the form of pros premise: that he is unfairly weighting life and not life - I can’t give pro the win on this round, and must score it a draw.”
Or, to clarify:: you raised a good point. Con countered it with a generic argument about how you weighted the value of your past and future lives - and how it is possible to mitigate ongoing negatives, which for me was convincing, but I scored this round as a draw because he didn’t counter your specifics with other specific examples.
I literally dealt explicitly with this part of your argument in my vote: and weight it more I’m your favour than others
Cons argument that you were weighting your future actions based on your past actions was killer - and is why you lost. If con had said something along the lines “you can mitigate your footprint by planting a few trees a year”, it would have been a total one sided victory. That’s what I was explaining in my vote.
I awarded grammar points based on my view - and multiple examples that rendered the debate incomprehensible. You’re claiming that I should only award grammar and spelling points if the debate is incomprehensible. I award grammar points not for individual or even cumulative errors but for substantive and repeated errors that substantially affect the readability of the debate.
I’m awarding points here, on your and debate, and elsewhere. on exactly the basis you’ve said I should award them - and are now claiming that by awarding them just the way you said they should be awarded, that I am not awarding them correctly.
I’m sorry that you are not mentally equipped, or emotionally mature enough to deal with criticism -but it seems your objecting more due to your own personal inability to accept criticism that I must somehow be biased or acting maliciously.
No - I’m scoring everyone equally - one of your debates was okay, one was horrendous, this one was horrendous, others are horrendous. I will vote when they are horrendous, not because I want to alter the outcome of the debate - that is purely down to your own o erinflated sense of ego. In reality, it doesn’t actually matter that much to me either way.
Now, if you actually have a specific objection to anything I’ve said - thus far it seems mostly abstract attacks rather than challenging any specific decision - I will be happy to discuss it: but otherwise I’m going to treat your claims that I’m abusing the system by voting exactly the way you have said I should be voting with the disdain they deserve.
I did do an “impact” analysis. It’s just in that analysis was that the impact was in itself irrelevant. As I said in my vote:, your first round argument was that you had a specific negative impact on people - which was uncontested - cons whole argument was that you were implicitly conflating past impact with future impact. This was compounded by the fact that you yourself don’t really provide any compelling why the negative impacts necessitate your death as opposed to anything else.
So it seems you’re mostly butthurt because I didn’t view the implicit nature of the argument and the approach you presented the way you wanted me to in the context of the debate - mainly because con did much better at framing the difference between your claims and his in respect to context.
Ahh excellent, so you agree that grammar in this case is perfectly reasonable to award: you are just butthurt because I scored your multiple grammatical and spelling errors in one of your debates.
I don’t often award spelling and grammar - I do it when the debate is incomprehensible, the spelling and grammatical errors are frequent and break up the flow. To award grammar - I have to give examples, and I will - but I’m not going to list the dozens upon dozens of errors that all contribute to that decision - which in your case there were.
Also - it is incredibly hard for you to be honest as to why my vote sucked, when you have yet to provide any actual explanation as to what part of my vote you feel was incorrect, invalid, or otherwise “sucky”.
If you had read my vote: I scored grammar, as Pros choice of phrasing and capitalization in multiple cases throughout is points made his argument incomprehensible, and nearly impossible to read. - I have several examples. As Grammar should be awarded when the spelling and grammar is substantially detrimental to the readability of the debate - the grammar points in this respect are wholly warranted.
The Drafterman vote was saying exactly the same thing as my vote - literally the same thing - except I went into more detail to break down the individual arguments.
Gotta love mature, reasonable adults who are capable of emotionally dealing with people voting against them.
I think your phone autocorrected “a vote that happened to go against my position”, to “shitty vote”.
Damned iPhones.
Note: not mentioned in the RFD, there is a lot of content that was not mentioned intentionally. A substantial fraction of this debate had little to do with the debate contention on both sides - these arguments were ignored as irrelevant.
I can’t figure out whether is considered a troll debate or not.
Sorry! That was an accident!
Yes - among other things it means omnipotence - which means limitless power - which both pro and con argues does not exist.
Actually Mopac - OED defines omnipotence as “(of a deity) having unlimited power.” This is exactly what con was arguing, and it was pro who was attempting to argue a different position. Both pro and con were effectively arguing that omnipotence as defined can’t exist.
Your RFD appears to be pulling much information from outside of this debate, including from your own beliefs - as you appear to be justifying your RFD based on argument from some sort of “absolute Truth”, which is an argument pro didn’t make. You should be making voting decisions based on whether pro and con made a better argument, not whether con didn’t refute information you have in your head.
Yes. A tequila sunrise is actually yellow and is actually red.
To win arguments you had to exclude pros position, none of your arguments excluded anything he said: in the same way arguing a tequila sunrise is yellow does not necessarily preclude it from also being red.
You didn’t prove anything to the exclusion of pros contention
Your whole argument is like tying to say a Tequila sunrise isn’t red because it’s yellow.
You didn’t prove east and west don’t exist.
You proved they were social constructs: That at best they were not objective definitions. Because of that, pros argument that LA is in the west is still true - LA is in the west where west is a social constuct.
Heh.
Multiple sets of empirical data and experimentation presented in the form of a peer reviewed scientific paper that supports the position of Abiogenesis “Isn’t evidence”.
At this point, I don’t really have to say anything; I can just sit and watch you refute yourself.
I find it personally hilarious watching you stamp your feet at how you feel there is no evidence for Abiogenesis in a debate where the opening rounds consists of MagicAintReal producing reams and reams and reams of evidence, supported by evidence, the appropriate study, and his own summarized explanation.
Erm no, I’m afraid I’m not going to let you project on the this one.
Our last conversation consisted of you raising multiple false claims, each one being systematically shot down as either dishonest or otherwise false, only for you to raise yet another parroted false claim - culminating you being proven incorrect so many times in a row, and so obviously dishonest you stopped responding.
And again, rather than talk about Abiogenesis, you seem to be more adamant in hurling insults and accusations. How about you debate MagicAintReal, and we can see how valid your objections are to the broad wealth of explanations and data he’s linked in this argument.
Complaining over and over again that there is no evidence, ignoring the evidence that is presented, then calling anyone who disagrees an idiot, is neither an argument, nor a rational position to hold.
You don’t seem particularly able to deal with either Evolution, or Abiogenesis, and instead are interested merely in irrational diatribes that only serve to emphasize your complete lack of ability to discuss science that you have an emotional aversion to on its merits.
*would have won the debate
And you had won the debate had you said that in the debate.
I think “lost” in this case was a bit harsh he just edged ahead and it was close. If you had split this out into three debates you would have won 2 of them, it was just that I feel that the most important argument for the purposes of the debate contention was the first point.
It wasn’t bad by any means, and I felt that this was the best debate to vote on that I’ve seen here.
I messed up pro/ con in the final weighting should be con +5, pro+1, pro+3. Great debate. I didn’t know which way I would score it till the end, and it appears I ended up agreeing with RM; though I agree on principle with armoured cats side.
Yes I get it. He exists because you’ve said he is the ultimate reality - and as such is required to exist as that’s what ultimate reality requires.
... and You’ve defined him into existence. Like I said.
God is the most powerful it is possible to be. If a being that exists can do something, if a being that doesn’t exist can also do that thing, despite them not existing - they are obviously more powerful.
As God is the most powerful being possible - he can’t exist.
... and I just defined him out of existence.
... and yet you use the specific definitions of specific words in order to claim that God exist.