Wednesday, June 26, 2013

And The Winner Is.....?


Fresh off from debating my Evolutionary Argument Against God on debate.org, a site that I stumbled upon recently where you can debate virtually any issues with a network of other debate enthusiasts, it is still in the voting period and I am currently down 3 points. I wanted to see what kind of responses I'd get that could challenge this argument to see if others could point out any weaknesses in it, and one thing about debating that I hate became apparent. Sometimes a debater will try to latch onto one specific technical aspect of the argument and use that to try to win the debate.

For example, the title that I used to debate the EAAG was "Evolution And The Traditional Notion Of An All-Loving God Are Incompatible". My opponent tried to use this as saying that evolution as a process, might not require suffering and that I was under the burden of proof to show that it does. I wasn't expecting that as an objection to the argument since it is pretty self-evident to anyone who knows about evolution that it is necessarily pernicious.

My opponent accused me of not offering enough proof of this although in the last round I did offer an explanation of the evolutionary process and how it requires suffering. He totally skipped over my explanation and simply asserted that I had not proved that evolution requires suffering. His whole case was also made on the position that it's possible that evolution can occur without suffering, and that all animals have souls, and that god can't foresee the future and so he can't be held responsible for the suffering evolution produced - a preposterous claim, and one he made no arguments backing up.

So far no one has picked up on this and he has 1 vote and I have none. So as of now, I'm technically losing. But I made the voting period for the debate 6 months, the longest amount available, and so if any of my readers are interested in joining debate.org and reading a good debate over my EAAG. I urge you to check out the debate for yourself and vote for who you think made the better argument.

(Perhaps I should have titled the debate "Evolution (as it occurred) And The Traditional Notion Of An All-Loving God Are Incompatible" so that my opponent would've been forced to address evolution as we've observed it. And also when starting a debate it is best to stipulate some rules first, which I failed to do. I would have said that although I bare the initial burden of proof, my opponent bares the burden of proof of any counter-argument made.)

Live and learn.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Share

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...