oromagi

Pro triple forfeits which was less than Con's good topic/effort deserved.

Pro's feuding was funnier, falser, and fielded fewer forfeitures.

conduct to Con for Pro's double forfeit

Pro's thesis is generally accepted, verging on tautological. All pills are poison beyond some determinable dose. Pro ought to be able to lay down a few solid proofs and win the day but Pro's argument is too schizophrenic to persuade.

Pro argues:

1. Medicine is evil sorcery. (warranted only be one possible translation of ancient Greek)

2. Drugs have many side effects, over-warranted by long lists, more than 100 side effects in the first set with many repetitions and eccentric numbering. Pro's penchant for overlisting impairs this debates readability overall.

3. Perhaps 20% of ADHD children are misdiagnosed according to one study. This is Pro's most dependable sourcing but the fact is never linked to support for thesis. Pro states that 1 million children each year but that's not in the source and obviously false.

4. Pharmaceuticals (Pro desperately needs to define this term, drugs, poison, etc.) are the 4th leading cause of death in the US. This is false- perhaps Pro meant 4th leading means of suicide?

5. Over 100,000 people die from prescription drugs (over all? not a very impressive statistic. Annually? False. Total 2017 US deaths by legal and illegal drugs is 70,237.

6. Prescription drugs are more dangerous than illegal drugs. False, most injury due to prescription drugs come from unprescribed (therefore illegal) use.

7 The US Govt. puts fluoride in water to make Americans stupid and docile. Not linked to thesis. Not warranted. The US Govt does endorse fluoridation but almost all american tap water is managed locally. Fluoride in bottled water is not regulated but most bottled water originates from public sources.

8. "They" put pharmaceutical drugs in tap water. Another long list of drugs and side effects.

9. Drugs in water can cause us to stop breathing (unwarranted)

10. Drugs in water can cause paranoia, psychosis (unwarranted unless this debate is meant to serve as evidence).

Con effectively points out false data, unwarranted claims, failed links to thesis. I think Con would have been better off talking about dosing (he does a little with fluoride) and pushing BoP at Pro. Most substances are poisonous beyond some limit when ingested, most substances are quite safe below some determinable limit. Most of this debate is meaningless without essential quantification.

R2 is less fathomable. Quotes from R1 are not well delineated from other text. Pro doubles down on false mortality claims without evidence. The weakness of Con's reasoning and evidence is frequently reinforced:

" i eat many strange plants most of these plants would interact with the medication from tap water."

"since there no way that 25 medications would be put in the waters of America to help people it must be put in there to hurt people"

"if [fluoride] was so safe why did germany put it in the water of the jews."

"do you now how many children use i can not pay attention in class as an excuse. and the dumb parents and teacher solution is to drug them up"

Con counters point by point without really offering a counter-thesis but the debate is so disorganized I think this forgivable.

Pro forfeits R3 which is probably just as well.

Pro never assembled a cohesive argument, Con gave us plenty of good piecemeal reasons to doubt Pro's claims. Arguments to Con.

Pro sources were fair in the first round, much worse in the second. The string of anti-fluoride pseudoscience blogs was particularly odious. Con only used a couple of sources, both fine.

Conduct to Con for Pro's forfeit.

https://imgflip.com/i/2z4mj7

Pro argues that intentionally killing is unethical even in self-defense if some less lethal alternative is available.

Pro's support is minimal:

Killing is mostly illegal. Pro fails to link illegal behavior to unethical behavior .

Capital Punishment is used sparingly in the US. If the govt. mostly refrains from killing US citizens, ought not we follow the govt. example?

Con's argument forwards public perception ahead of personal ethics: murder prophylactically to prevent potential future harm by the offender, murder because your murder will be perceived as less unjust.

Pro correctly points out that Con dropped Pro's point and incorrectly counters that criminal justice is not resolved relative to situation.

Con talks about himself a bit, essentially a second forfeit.

Really terrible debate on both sides. Pro asserts that 1493 executions over 43 years amounts to barely 3 execution per year. Let's check our simple division, shall we?

Con double forfeits and fails to engage Pro's argument.

Argument to Pro for offering one.
Sources to Pro for offering two.
Conduct to Pro for Con's double forfeit.

Pro would have better off just making the topic Evolution. Pro's topic suggests a contradiction between theories and facts that is not so. Many famous theories can be facts; many facts are famous theories.

Pro's supports are sound enough although the quality of the one source and the degree of effort in presentation are both fairly sub-par. Con's stronger effort in reply is cheering but ill-reasoned.

Pro argues that DNA maps out the inter-relatedness of all life. Con argues that the map is proof of intelligence design. How is evolution made less factual by some theistic veneer? If God made DNA then God likely designed evolution- why wouldn't a God designed adaptation system be just as factual as a non-God designed adaptation system? Irrelevant counter.

Pro argues that the fossil record documents intermediate stages in species transitions. Con argues that Wikipedia cites less than 200 fossils that substantiate Pro's claim and gives us a link to better evidence than Pro's.

Pro argues that vestigial characteristics are evidence of no-longer-adaptive traits. Con does not oppose.

Pro gives us a link to further arguments and even claims in R2 that Con must respond to those arguments. In fact, that's a violation of DART voting rules:

The voter must assess the content of the debate and only the debate, any reasoning based on arguments made or information given outside of the debate rounds is unacceptable. This includes reasoning that stems from already-placed votes, comment sections, and separate forums. Votes that impermissibly factor in outside content and which are reported will be removed.

Con wisely dismisses Pro's claim to any credit for argument on some other site because voters here may not consider them.

Con was off point on the first contention, more supportive of Pro's argument than Pro in the second, and fine with third contention. Con lost this argument.

Conduct to Con for Pro's assertion of other people's arguments on other sites. Let's avoid the like in future.

My congratulations to both sides for a well-contested, well-pondered, well-written debate.

Epistemology gets so abstract so quickly that this voter leans hard on good examples to better understand principles. I wanted three good examples of indisputable truths and Pro only gave us one entirely unsuitable example in the first round:

B+C=A
man + unmarried = bachelor

Of course, divorcees and widowers are unmarried but not bachelors. This single example is so awkwardly, manifestly so often not true that it weakens Pro's authority going forward and Con's case by responding to it.

This voter far preferred Con's reframing "Pro will try to provide at least one example of knowledge that is impossible to doubt as it necessarily can not be false. I, on the other hand, am going to disprove any such examples and will win unless at least one example stands by the end of the debate." Pro agrees and I'm glad because these are rules I can parse with my feeble little brain.

Con offered one solid example of the imperfection of human reason. The first syllogism of Con's conclusion seems adequate, the second syllogism is both weaker and redundant. Not all human knowledge is based on reason (experience is often knowledge without reason, intuition is definitionally knowledge without reason, know-how vs. know-to, etc) and Pro's P3 also curiously separates knowledge from belief... isn't all knowledge a subset of belief? Is there really something we might know to be true that we don't also conditionally believe to be true? Isn't the distortion of belief the primary cause for the human fallibility on which Con's case depends?

Pro improves his prospects by upgrading his tautological example to 2+2=4. A marked improvement. Con falls back on Descartes- is 2+2=4 verifiably true beyond human perception? No, all human knowledge is filtered through human perceptions and subject to human distortion.

Pro's questions were pretty philosophical and didn't offer much that might shake Con's conclusion.

Con's questions aptly elicited examples of human fallibility- misunderstanding the joke of 51, Pro's 100% certainty of god's non-existence vs the human majority's faith in god. I frown on Con's citation of Pro's arguments from other debates- I don't think it harmed any argument here but we should refrain from dangerous precedents.

Going by Con's frame (one indubitable example), 2+2=4 was Pro's best shot. But even 2+2=4 is not provable beyond the range of fallible human sense, which Con has aptly demonstrated.

Arguments to Con but both debaters should take satisfaction in the quality of argument here.

Pro's plan is doomed from formulation.

Pro's R1 suggests that the claim should read "Reading all of the OT is one way to become an atheist" or perhaps OT "is an effective way to become an Atheist." The last line of Pro's argument offers that OT reading is "the most common cause" of atheism, which may be close to Pro's intent but is equally unwarranted. The condition Pro has self-obligated to prove is "fastest." That's a problem for Pro because reading OT is time consuming and difficult and his terms are all undefined.

What is becoming an atheist anyway? Are people who have never heard of God atheists? If somebody holds a gun to your head and says, "Renounce your God" and you do, are you a momentary atheist? Isn't that faster than reading the Bible?

Con wisely jumps into the breach. A child born to atheists may be defined as an atheist at the moment of birth without effort. Lack of interest is offered as less effort than reading the Bible.

Pro fails to prove his plan for achieving atheism is faster than Con and Pro does not seem to recognize the threat in Con's counter. Pro accuses Con of debating in bad faith but this voter considers Con's approach sufficiently credible and Con's round2 double-down should have forced a detailed defense of OT reading as "faster' and improving the terms of the claim. Unfortunately, Pro just claims repetition.

Pro made a big claim without definitions or sources or specific examples or sharing the burden or rules limiting counterarguments, leaving many approaches open for Con. Con neatly offered a few ways to achieve atheism faster than reading one very long and difficult book and Pro never offered a refutation. Arguments to Con.

Sources to Con for using a few and also because the only links Pro offered were to this debate, leaving me wondering if this was meant to look like some kind of sourcing.

Con instigates but throws over to Pro with a deeply subjective thesis and no definitions, so Pro's choice of an "severely defensive" argument seems strategically weak. In practice, little defense is offered by either side.

Pro argues that the US-Israeli alliance is strong and purposeful without warrant.

Pro argues that Israel is a figurative monster fighting a worse monster, Palestine which is characterized as insane and blackmailed without definition or warrant.

Pro goes on to irrelevantly characterize Pro's future arguments as well as Pro's skill as debater.

Con argues that Israel places Israeli interests before American interests. Since all alliances are predicated to a large degree on national self-interest, this argument is not particularly compelling.

Con offers 4 examples:

Con asserts that the Israeli attack the USS Liberty was attacked as a deliberate ruse to trick the US into joining the Six-Day War on the Israeli side. Of course, if this was true Israel would most likely have pursued the attack until all Americans were dead or captured to prevent contradictory witness reports. Since
Israel refrained from issuing a coup de grace and even participated in helicopter search and rescue missions shortly after the attack, this accusation seems pretty insubstantial.

Con asserts that Israel supplied false evidence of Saddam Hussein's capacity for waging war using weapons of mass destruction. Since the Bush administration had already publicly supplied its own false evidence of WMD in televised testimony before the United Nation, Netanyahu's claims could effectively be characterized as an effort to stand by it allies even knowing American intelligence was faulty. Not very compelling.

Con asserts that Israel corruptly influences American politics in pursuit of policies contrary to US interests.
Although not well supported, this voter finds Con's claim fairly evident and reasonably compelling. However,
since Germany, the UK, Japan, France, Canada, etc likewise engage in corrupt influence over US Foreign Policy, the argument suggests that the US has no good allies and so Israel is not shown to be better or worse than others.

Con asserts that Israel sells military technology to China which may in turn benefit Iran. Since Iranian missile capacity represents a more immediate threat to Israeli interests than US interests, this argument would probably prove less persuasive even if backed by some sort of documentation or testimony.

Con's best arguments are swallowed up in a final question to Pro: Israeli support is expensive, Israel spies on the US. Of course, the US also spies on Israel but there's little doubt that Israel benefits from US investment far more that the US benefits from Israeli investment.

Pro forfeits, flushing away a good opportunity to attack Con's vulnerable premises.

Con nicely points out that all of Pro's claims are unsubstantiated and wisely restates his best argument: support for Israel is expensive.

Pro counters that intelligence shared by Israel is useful without any evidence. Pro argues that Palestine is illegitimate without linking Palestine's interests to either Israel or US. Palestine is a monster, a villain without warrant that justifies (I infer) a US-Israeli alliance.

Arguments were weak all around. Arguments go to Con because Con's examples were specific and linked to the topic. Pro's arguments were entirely general, unsupported, and barely relevant to the topic. Conduct to Con for Pro's forfeiture, lazy engagement, and irrelevant self-promotion.

Pro does a good job here by defining terms up front. I would have liked to have seen Newtonian Physics defined as well. I buy that no objects are immovable in an ever-moving universe better than I do the argument against unstoppable forces. Equal reaction does not imply an equally unstoppable force is generated. Gravity is an unstoppable force.

Con might have called tautology and made a convincing case. Con might simply named one unstoppable force or immovable object. Certainly, Pro's summary of Newton's Third Law is vulnerable to critique. But Con forfeits in the first round and offers the flimsiest of efforts in the second: even if everything is movable or stoppable eventually not everything is moving or unstopped now. Of course, everything is unmovably immobilized when stripped of time but in Newtonian Physics, time is a constant.

Arguments to Pro

Conduct to Pro for Con's double forfeit.

Yeah, no
Sparrow's no arrow
no point, no bone marrow
use the Rat's throat to spit?
on your face?
is that it?

Bird, yer songs are generic
rhymes are less than chimeric
words a bit too barbaric
notions non-esoteric

RatMan's no sense of verse
worse his shit is perverse
like he's under some universal choleric curse
to only know the obverse
of coercive persuasion, discursive reversals
all adversely dispersed.
call a nurse
get a hearse
and the way RatMan adds one too many beats
til the rhythm's not verse.
Point for Pro: Con's concession
still I dont mind confessing I liked,
"Filler-syllables stallin' your killin' with your 'arbitrary hypothetical'

Give a conduct to Pro
because the Con concedes
but thats no reason to gloat
as Ratman's ego bleeds.
Wrick-it's just of the boat
already outta da weeds.
He may someday be goat
the way that Ralph proceeds.

Conduct for forfeits

Full Forfeit

Pro's arguments were entirely uncontested and mostly forfeited.

Not very convincing arguments on either side. Should children refuse mathematics because they lack passion for the subject? Pro correctly points out that music study is good for human development but doesn't engage with Con and concedes half his time. Conduct point for concession.

Both sides seemed pretty solidly Pro. Con wanted to up law to a requirement and Pro was fine with that.

A mostly incoherent debate that is not much fun to read.

Round 1- Arguments to Con

Pro opens with "here is a (very long) list of things god created and also man created. No discernible thesis developed.

RatMan Ks around for a while K1=misspelled title, K2= let's define ID, K3=off definition.

Round 2- Nothing and Everything

As a kind of found poem, Pro's R2 works to a surprisingly moving degree:
(with a little editing)

The houses were getting all flooded
and so they house-evolved and over
millions of years they moved
away from the ocean
so they would not get flooded.

the house evolution
people then moved
to metal houses and how
they house-evolved.

For language a serial killer might write I think Pro's fourth graph serves excellent material:

"firstly if evolution is true were are all the meat eaters who died because they have small teeth. we should have bones of small teeth meat eaters because they when extinct according to evolution. there is none because god created the meat eaters with big teeth because he intends for them to hunt. same reason why a murder uses a sharp knife and not a dull one. do you believe that over millions of years the murder persons knife became sharp because all the dull knifes could not penetrate the killers victim so the dull knife over a million years turned sharp so that it can kill no that is silly"

But I don't think it can be fairly said any thesis is discernible or inferable, Pro's argument is best described as a long list of things in poetic juxtaposition. I'm pretty sure Pro's trying to sell us some turmeric there at the end of R2. I'm honestly beginning to wonder if this debate isn't only about whether or not I would like some turmeric.

RatMan Ks, Ks, Ks,

I think RatMan's

"Turmeric having healing powers and even antibacterial properties is not proof of ID."

is probably sufficient to to refute whatever Pro's offered so far.

Round 3 Thesis, at last

Pro asks:

"is not turmeric traversing the brain via 270 pathways showing high intelligence?
if not what is?'

One of several obvious answers would be blood. Blood is traversing the brain pathways, not turmeric....not necessarily turmeric at any rate and certainly not turmeric only.

Pro posts a link to something called "free, printable mazes for kids." I would not advise people to click on that link or any other. I smell a minotaur. DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINKS, PEOPLE ! in fact, I'm not sure I still want to be voting on some potentially underpoliced debate.

Fine poetry re-commences:

Can a rock put together a twenty piece puzzle?
Can the rat traverse a rock maze?

Can a god put together a twenty piece puzzle
shall the twenty piece puzzled be praised?

RatMan Ks....Ks, Ks, Ks.

Round 4 Horrible Stupid Stuff

Horrible stupid stuff totally unrelated to this debate.

Highlights?

"here is i pet goat 2 the satanic video. its a bit brain washy so be careful!"

(I prefer to read this part out loud in a high, nasal voice. Try it now. See?)

RatMan Ks horrible stupid stuff cuz wtf, right?

Round 5 Grand Guignol

We've entered a sort of end of the river, Heart of Darkness scenario now.

Pro admits spelling intelligence wrong and is now probably going to prepare for the end of humanity.
Pro blames Satan and wishes he'd talked more about turmeric.

[In my mind, I am Marlon Brando, self-tattooing my bald pate as I recite:]

God
Being Aware
That non-white
bears would not
survive well in the snow

God making
them white
in the snow white world
would fit perfectly
with intelegence [sic]

Con Ks his ways to victory. Mistah Kurtz? -he dead.

Sources to Con because Pro posted weird links to irrelevancies like homeopathic pharmaceuticals and brain washy mazes. I'd award points if I could.

Conduct to Con because Pro creeped me out with weird links to irrelevancies like homeopathic pharmaceuticals and brain washy mazes, interfering with this debate's readability. I'd award points if I could.

(don't click on any links, people)

opinion to Pro- specific critique trumps generic critique. Pro gets Con better than Con gets Pro.
"philosophy's only as deep as his google search" strategists, pagan gods, defeatist, subjective.

wordplay to Con- more complex wordplay "omnip-o-tence" more evocative imagery "this opiate the masses deep throatin," elephant, etc.

rhyme- Pro's degree of difficulty far outweighed Cons, at moments close to actual verse

"I'm talking down to you because that's the only language that defeatists speak.
Your potential's limitless, but you'll never get past your subjective peak.
I've tamed the beast, you could be this good consider this a leak.
But I keep on climbing, so you'll never reach me so your outlook's bleak."

You've been in my trap all along, you're a dangling rat.
I actually got you to change your entire rap format.
You gave up ground like you were a contentious doormat.
I logically reduced you by simply projecting your poor stats.

You're young dumb, under my thumb, and now under control
I numb this bum, as I hum, drum, and now I'm on a roll.
You're just my chum, and I say Yum, to eating this blundering troll
The ballets I done I won, I'm the one who stomped, lets take another poll.

pretty solid stanzas.

reference- Pro was more specific and insightful regarding Con's character, while Con just riffed on elements offered by Pro

https://imgflip.com/i/2yv8mu

Full Forfeit

Full Forfeit

Full Forfeit

Full Forfeit

Full Forfeit

Con begins

"I am arguing that science does prove Christianity, or at least supports it more than Atheism."

Well, atheism refutes Christianity so that's a pretty low bar. Science could entirely disprove Christianity and still support Christianity (say, as a psychological outlet) more than Atheism does.

C-14 (R1) Con

C-14 Con argues that the amount of C14 absorbed by living beings may have been dramatically increased in the past due to fluctuations in the magnetic field. Pro acknowledges some change in the magnetic field have been documented and accounted for and tested against a variety of alternate dating methods. Pro asks for evidence supporting C14 ratios that might support YE, Con does not offer any. Con questions the validity of counting tree rings, Pro offers evidence that dendrochronolgy is a well established scientific dating method.

Con's offense amounts to: C-14 levels vary, therefore the dramatic increases necessary to make C-14 is at least possible though Con does not suggest how. Pro argument that C-14 variations are calibrated by a number of alternate measures is far more compelling.

Blue Stars (R1) Con

Con argues:

Blue stars only live for a few millions of years.
The Universe is 14.6 billion years old.
Therefore, the maximum age of the universe is a few million years.

Pro argues that present blue stars were created long after the big bang. Con argues that there is no proof that new stars are ever created. Pro calls Con's bluff with some fairly commonplace recent astronomical observations.

Red Shift (R1) Pro

Pro uses the constancy of the speed of light and the principle of redshift as measurements in evidence that the universe has been expanding for 13.8 billion years. Con argues that the speed of light might not be constant but admits this argument is weak. Con argues that the writers of the Bible might have been referring to Cosmological Local Time but in spite of the analogy I cannot fathom what Pro intends by this nor how it supports YE.
Con argues that as yet undetermined variables might distort red shift measurements. I suppose that's likely but the scale itself precludes YE time scales. (Say the universe is only half as old as we thought, that is still 8 orders of magnitude longer that YE theory supposes).

Religious Dogmatism (R2) Pro

Pro questions the scientific credentials of Con sources. Con call this ad-hominem. Certainly, there's not much on these sites that might withstand scientific peer review but peer-reviewed journals aren't going to hold up Con's case so where else is Con to go? I think I have to agree that Pro's sources are more consistent with the scientific method while Con's sources are more consistent with religious doctrine. Con hurts his case by limiting most of his research to a few sites primarily devoted to the promotion of religion. Sources to Pro.

Mainstream (R2) Pro

Pro appeal to scientific consensus in general. For some of the phenomenon Con suggests- hanging light speeds, increased carbon, no new stars- huge sectors of the scientific community would need to be very wrong. Con calls this circular reasoning but Con is wrong.

YE (R2) Pro

Pro argues that YE theory does not follow scientific process- the Earth's age was derived by adding up the ages of characters in literature written before the advent of astronomy, geology, chemistry, physics, etc. Con does not refute this.

In R3, Con throws 4 new arguments with little support or explanation or detail.

Lack of Salt
Soft Tissues in Fossils
Faint Sun Paradox
Equilibrium

Neither side ever mentions these again, so I'll ignore them as well.

Con never nailed a single offensive argument. Pro sums it up by asking for a single testable, objectively verifiable prediction from YE which does not come. Going by this debate at least, Science disproves a Young Earth.

Con was generally about as dismissive of atheists and scientists as Pro was of christian doctrine. I didn't find that conduct impaired the debate's readability.

This voter is bewildered by the popularity of debating questions of faith in any forum of reason. Faith is defined by the absence of reason: if one could prove it logically it would not be faith. Logic is defined by the absence of faith, if it can't be proved it is not true.

Here, we are so far from reasoned discourse that neither participant bothers to state thesis or definition, precept or assumption. Neither side, for example, bothers to identify the Bible as their exclusive source, neither bothers to define Calvinism for readers. By R3, both sides essentially admit that they aren't interested in debating Calvinism but rather the notion of predestination as evidenced by the Bible.

Con's arguments are

Calvinism states that a pre-selected few achieve salvation
The Bible states that all men can be saved
Calvinism contradicts the Bible

Preselection refutes the value of conversion.
The Bible endorses evangelism.
Calvinism contradicts the Bible.

Predestination implies the incorruptibility of salvation.
The Bible says salvation can be forsaken
Calvinism contradicts the Bible.

Pro's R1 asserts that predestination is manifestly true.

"The scriptures show heavy evidence of God who predetermines...'
To accept predestination gives glory to God and makes humans afraid of their own humanity.
One can tell the people who are predestined to be saved by their claims of salvation, everyone else is unpredestined & therefore unsaved.

In R2, Con continues to support "all men can be saved" with biblical passages. Pro refutes by saying "some men can't be saved but its all up to God and essentially unknowable, even to the saved." Pro end R2 by stating that Pro is not a defender of Calvinism only predestination.

R3-R5 continues in much the same way.
Con has faith that a loving God includes any who choose him as the path to salvation. Pro has faith that God determines how men choose salvation and worship and deprives some of salvation for doing as forced. Pro denies any injustice to this: In the puppet box, we are all puppets alike, it's just that Geppetto has foreordained the fire for some puppets.

Both sides toss in many citations. The Bible both states and contradicts that all men can be saved. The Bible endorses and contradicts evangelism. The Bible both implies and contradicts the incorruptibility of salvation.
The problem with this increases as rounds progress: it is clear that this work's strange discontinuities, anachronistic morals and ambiguous language make the Bible pretty weak as a rational source of evidence. That this single source is continually shown to offer contradictory evidence regarding predestination gradually increases the proof that this source is at least sometimes, perhaps oftentimes, unreliable, certainly never published with the intention of representing a single point of view. So neither side is awarded sources because both sides relied exclusively on the same single and unreliable source. Likewise, because both sides' arguments relied exclusively on the same single and unreliable source I don't think it can be fairly said one side achieved any persuasive advantage over the other. If asked which cosmology sounds more appealing, this voter would fall into Con's camp. But my job is to assess who made a more convincing case regarding Calvinism, or really predestination as it turns out, and neither side achieved any warranted claim.

Tied all around.

Opinion did not credibly favor either side- tie.

Wordplay to Pro. dog/ frog cricket, pole
position

Rhymes to Pro. slightly cleaner meter would have a few stanzas excellent:

When you step up to Wrick It, I'll silence you like a cricket.
Underfoot, like you're Jiminy, with a bad case of rickets.
Put you out of your misery, find your neck and just split it.
Cause I'm a dog and you're a frog, I'll bite you down while you ribbit.

That's good : cohesive, expressive, succinct, rythmic

Reference: good on both sides, to pro for superior plays
on name:

What's wrong, Speedrace? Did u not meet the pace?
Your pole position is lacking and there's egg on your face.

Full forfeit

I was tempted to consider the conduct here ( I don't want to debate you vs. you are a bad person, etc.) In truth, though, the tension between the opponents improved the readability of the debate. The standard is conduct that makes the debate less coherent and the opposite proved true. So equal conduct. Honestly, I'd like to see more debates between Brendo and Omar- I sense a lot of investment on both sides.

Sources were of good quality, efficient and relevant. Pro probably used more twitter examples then necessary to make Pro's case, but I think this was more of a stylistic choice- "hey, this guy has a real history of hating some groups of people- this is not a one off " sort of thing.

Clarity of argument was occasionally problematic on both sides. Much of the debate was irrelevant political side-taking.

Cons opener is pretty straightforward: Freedom of Speech is a Human Right. Will Connolly's violence vs. Fraser Anning during a public speech constitutes a violation of Anning's right to free speech and is therefore unjust.

Cons R1 supports were mixed:

1.Connolly admitted the wrong of his own action, (strong)
2. Connolly is of a responsible age, (unwarranted but sufficiently evident)
3. If Anning's violent reprisal was unjust, the provoking violence must also be unjust (weak)

Pro weakens his argument right off the bat by saying,"I wouldn't want society to be okay with...violent [sic] but..." and goes on to ask society to be okay with this act of violence because:

1. The victim has a history of hate speech and support for unjust legislation and scummy exploitation. (well supported)
2. The victim has no right to free speech "Remove people like Fraser from public discourse..." (unsupported)
3. The consciences of 17 year old are not fully developed. (supported)

The remaining rounds are fairly unfocused. Con improves his case a little by noting that the relevant justice system found Connolly's act unjust. Con correctly establishes that removing the politics and biography of the victim makes the injustice clear: most 17 years olds are held accountable for most unprovoked acts of violence against strangers.

Pro's argument desperately needed some higher cause to justify Connolly's violence: some argument that violent speech is sufficient provocation for violent acts (and a strong show that Anning's speech was violent), or that Connolly's choice of egg represented a nonviolent alternative in an essentially symbolic assassination. Some larger injustice that outweighs a minor injustice. What we are left with is Pro's suggestion that some speech or speakers ought not to be protected. Pro needed a plan for going forward with this idea- where is the dividing line, what makes some speech unprotectable, who decides? Pro's argument amounts to an appeal to political view: this guy is so politically wrong that some minor act of violence inhibiting speech is justified.

This voter believes no reaction to an act can reframe the justice of an act: each action must be evaluated in the context and intent of the moment. An excessive reprisal ought never improve an unjust provocation. The character of a victim never justifies an act of violence. Acts of violence do deny free speech in most cases and the exceptions must be explicit and generalized without political consideration, certainly not left to the underdeveloped consciences of 17 years olds. Pro failed to offer a compelling cause to violate the victim's rights.

Arguments to Con

Concession by Pro

Full Forfeit

Interesting topic but incomplete debate for which both participants share responsibility. Pro's opening is surprisingly weak. There's the case of the conjoined twins which is both recent and unique. It is hard to draw many conclusions from a phenomenon so difficult to measure or repeat. C2's syllogism is miswritten (conclusion should read dualism is true, I suspect) and soft. Philosophers have been debating free will since the Garden of Eden: Pro's argument amounts to we have free will because most of us believe we have free will. Con countered fairly effectively but did not read Pro's setup- Pro must offer evidence refuting dualism. Con never addressed shared burden and loses arguments. Pro barely responds and no-shows the rest of the debate. Con likewise forfeits and then ends with a personal epithet clearly meant to offend in the present context. Under most circumstances, Pro's double forfeit should have been insurmountable but Con snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by twice failing Pro's rules (dual burden + civil conduct) as well as violating DART's code of conduct. Both args and conduct go to Pro by default.

Con takes the unusual step of assuming BoP for an anti-claim. What we want is a discussion about whether an extraordinary claim (flat earth) can be proven and what we get is an offer to prove the validity of the ordinary. Pro reads this step as an opening for kritik- Con can't prove that every potential alternative, however unlikely, is certainly false and therefore must fail to fulfill warrant. Pro calls this an absolute burden of proof and carries on the debate as if this is some kind of established standard. Such a BoP is not described in ordinary definitions of BoP and wouldn't be sustainable if it were- requiring essentially infinite resources and perfect prescience to carry off. This voter refutes Pro's personal definition of BoP as contradictory to norms and indefensible in practice. Pro says, "It is always a fundamental and philosophical mistake to assign the Burden of Proof to one side in completeness, without limitations or the allowance of basic axioms." But that's not so. Debaters assert BoP all the time without laying down a bunch of limits and axioms. In this case, Con has given five good proofs that the Earth is likely round. Pro did not try to refute any of these. Pro offered no evidence that the Earth is flat. Pro's sole argument is that the world might be an illusion, which does not even contradict the Earth's apparent roundness within that illusion.

DDO's explanation of BoP includes this potential outcome: "IMPORTANT: If a debater with the sole BoP gives weak evidence that unicorns exist, but their opponent fails to negate that evidence entirely AND fails to offer evidence that it is unlikely that Unicorns exist, then the debater with the sole BoP would win the debate by default. "

Following this example, Con wins arguments on default.

First- it is nice to see some new people debating. Second- I admire the quick, concise, easy-to-digest nature of this debate- bullet-points, counters, done. I'd like to see more debates from both participants.

Con identifies a genuine benefit (less mass shootings) and argues that the suggested policy will not achieve that benefit because the policy focuses on one unremarkable type of rifle.

Pro takes two approaches to this argument that undermine each other: AR-15 are sufficiently unremarkable that their functionality may be easily replaced by other weapons but also AR-15s are more common to mass shootings and more lethal than handguns. In R1, Pro argues that AR-15s main harm is perception, in R2, lethality. At the end of R2, Pro concedes that other gun types are more are lethal and argues that perhaps more gun types should be banned- essentially conceding that AR-15s do not merit special legislation. In R3, Pro argues that Con's perception argument is unsubstantiated, undermining his opening argument ("Many experts have speculated that this is due to the perception....").

Con's slippery slope in R3 doesn't help the case, but Con essentially wins this argument by concession.

Con also argues that AR-15s are effective for legal purposes- sport, home defense. Pro counters that AR-15s are overpowered for such purposes and that the costs in lives outweigh the benefits of sport and home defense. Con makes no counter to this argument except to say effectiveness alone is no cause for ban. Pro wins this argument.

Neither side presented a particularly formidable case (it was a short debate, after all) but Con wins the edge on overall arguments because Con did not undermine his own argument. Much of the debate hinged on what singles out AR-15s for banning and Pro needed a more direct response. If Pro had set out a stronger argument for increased AR-15 lethality, I think Pro wins this debate.

Sources to Pro. Although Pro's sources were relatively weak (there are good govt. and scientific papers on this topic), Con desperately need some sources. Con had way better statistics but killed the effect by failure to source- AR-15 facts, Steven Crowder, 60% of mass shootings hand guns, etc. The lack of sources weakens readers confidence in those stats considerably: if handguns do 80% of killing but also kill 19 times more than rifles, what guns are killing the other 15%? Con seemed to have better research but failed to show the work.

Spelling & Conduct fine. I'm an American who curses the 2nd Amendment's impact on my society regularly so my bias would tend to Pro. Nevertheless, I think Con maintained the slight advantage in this debate.

Full forfeit

full forfeit

The lack of organization makes this a difficult debate to evaluate. I'll fault Pro as instigator for lack of framework or overarching thesis: more of a collage of climate change critique then a structured argument. I'll read " the above data shows that CO2 has zero effect on the climate and that if there was any change, then cloud cover would compensate for this change and reduce temperatures back to normal," to be as close to topic as we get. Problem is that there is no data above, just a quote from a blog by some Australian TV personality and even her blog undermines Pro's absolutism. Pro's one source says, "Here’s why it’s possible that doubling CO2 won’t make much difference" AND "It’s true that carbon has some warming effect, but it’s also true that extra carbon doesn’t have the same effect" AND " each extra molecule of carbon makes a little difference, but it becomes less and less so, and there’s a point where it’s irrelevant." Pro's one source confirms that CO2 causes some climate change, which burns down Pro's single argument. In the absence of any framework and because Pro is making claim contrary to popular, conventional understanding, BOP is Pro's. However, Con proceeds as though BOP is shared and gives us a short, dull walk thru. Pro's R2 arguments are in no way relevant to CO2 or Con's R1. Con correctly calls foul. Pro's R3 still has no CO2- just a critique of weather forecasting in general and some tangential conspiracy theories. Con works up some counter-arguments but we are so far afield from topic that there's little point to discussion. By R4, Pro is at least making an effort to refute Con but there's still not much CO2- essentially Pro seems to imply that if cloud cover or solar cycles might contribute to temperature increase, then carbon dioxide must not contribute. Pro vacillates between denying climate impacts and denying carbon's role. Refuting Con's citation of the IPCC 4th report, Pro states there is no such document....astonishing. By R5, Pro seems to be developing several reasonable counters against IPCC Climate Change forecasting but the original assertion regarding carbon is blurred. Arguing that carbon's contribution to warming diminishes after saturation is in effect arguing that carbon makes some contribution, disproving Pro's apparent thesis. Arguments to Con- he did an adequate job of parrying Pro's unfocused jabs. Sources to con as well- Pro's sources were more blog than peer-reviewed science, several sources contradicted Pro's thesis, and Pro couldn't find the IPCC 4 report in a climate change debate.

free vote- trying to get that bronze medal. RFD=counterpoising full forfeits argue against any advantage to either non-particpant, however much conduct leans con for Pro's wasteful instigation.

Double-forfeiture results in an absence of rebuttal.

full forfeit

forfeiture

Full forfeit

full forfeit.

full forfeit. conduct unbecoming. blew every rule but #3.

enjoyable debate, interesting subject. Essentially, a semantic debate pitting genus vs species, generic vs specific. Analogously, the genus populus is commonly called poplar- even though aspen trees and cottonwoods are conspicuously different from what English speakers call poplar trees, they are all correctly termed poplar trees as a genus. One can generically refer to a grove of aspen and cottonwood as a poplar grove, even in the absence of any specific species popularly called poplar. Likewise, any group of pinnipeds may be referred to generically as seals, even if no species named seal is present. Pro could have been more explicit in the first round, but leaves Con little room to run from a well established syllogism. Con makes a valiant effort but never addresses the central contention: seal applies to genus as well as species. Arguing that sea lions are a different species from any other species called seal has no impact on genus nomenclature. Con is arguing "it should not be so" which does not contradict "it is true today." I'll fault Con somewhat for bringing Wikipedia in for examination, since that source confirms Pro's sources and reminds the reader that Con is arguing against ordinary linguistic and taxonomic convention. Con also cited Oxford to define "true" which strengthens Pro's Oxford definitions for seal and sea lion. Does Con suggest that Oxford can be trusted to define his word but not Pro's? Still, I won't give a source point to Pro since Con had all the heavy lifting research-wise and I disagree with Pro that Con's sources were less than reliable. I admire Con's argument but ultimately he only attacked the central premise at the species level and ignored the genus application.