Affirmative: Blondie vs Negative: Metacrock

Metacrock vs All comers; other can also reserve. this is for 1x1 debate, please do not respond if you are not specifically demarcated as part of the debate.

Moderator:Metacrock

doxaws
Site Admin
Posts:64
Joined:Sun Jan 20, 2008 3:07 am
Re: Affirmative: Blondie vs Negative: Metacrock

Post by doxaws » Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:19 am

The debate is called. The judgement is meaningless becasue the judge was never ask to say who won. Blondie clearly violated the no insult agreement.

doxaws
Site Admin
Posts:64
Joined:Sun Jan 20, 2008 3:07 am

Re: Affirmative: Blondie vs Negative: Metacrock

Post by doxaws » Thu Nov 03, 2011 7:10 pm

I'm going to show point for point why QT is wrong in his assessment.

he totally sherked the thing he was asked to do which was to monitor insults. He totally let down on that becuase it's obvious that Blondie began the insulting first.

QT defines the topic:
1. Blondie argued that weak atheism (i.e. a lack of belief in an established religion or faith) is more intellectually honest than any belief in an established religion because such a belief requires a leap of faith. Leaps of faith are not quite intellectually honest and should be minimized.
he actually said:blondie wrote:
"Atheism, the lack of belief in any orthodox understanding of God or gods, is the most intellectually honest position a person can have in the 21st century."

meaning QT is adding to it and arguing form his own opinion.


2. Metacrock's counterpoints centered around two main elements.
a. Orthodox religions can be considered in a more liberal light than Blondie admits.
b. Phenomena like peak experiences and unexplained miracles (e.g. at Lourdes) are indications of some sort of spirituality.
Taken together, these counterpoints mean that the leap of faith required for theists aren't as large, and perhaps that a leap of faith is required even for atheists [I don't recall actually seeing this last conclusion, but it was at least implied].
he's interpreting my argument his own way and ignoring that I actually argued. He not going by how the debaters did, he's debating me himself according to his beliefs.

my argument:
Let's remember he's the affirmative. His duty is to prove that the resolution is true. That's the duty of being affirmative.

Atheism, the lack of belief in any orthodox understanding of God or gods, is the most intellectually honest position a person can have in the 21st century.

That means he must prove that belief in God is intellectually dishonest. Not enough to cast doubt on God being real, he must show that belief in God is held even though the believer knows there is no God. That would be dishonest belief. Not enough to just show that there’s no proof of God. He must show that believers willfully hold out for belief even though they know the evidence isn’t good enough to warrant belief. He has to show that' it's dishonest. he can't even show that it's wrong.

I don’t have to prove him wrong. Negative is presumed right until proved wrong (presumption). I only have to prove that he doesn’t prove that we should believe the resolution. The affirmative affirms the resolution, the negative negates it. I don’t have to prove it’s wrong. I just have proved he didn’t prove it right.
OT totally ignores it.

Did I get this about right? I know I'm skipping a lot of stuff, but this seems to me to be the core of your positions.


QT doesn't even mention the issue about definition of terms which should lose the debate for Blondie there.
II. He has not defined his terms:

A. Intellectually honest

Since he has not defined his terms he hasn’t told us what he means by “dishonest” I will define it. Webster’s tells us it’s a “lack of truth, honesty or trust worthiness.” He must show that believer’s beliefs are based upon a lack of honesty rather than just improbable. (webseters on line:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dishonest)

B. Orthodox

He doesn’t establish what orthodoxy means. That’s important because in the context of all religious faith there is no orthodox. Orthodox means the established teaching; it doesn’t mean stereotypical or popular conception. It only applies to a tradition it doesn’t apply to all traditions as one.

Near the end he gives a sort of definition of Orthodox:

What is an orthodox religion?

Blondie's answer:
Religions are organizations that often include a creation myth, moral codes, rituals and methods for communicating with the “divine,” some sort of holy text or “revealed truth,” and a cultural legend or epic.



That’s inadequate. First of all any religion is orthodox to itself, all religions have Orthodox branches. He has to show there’s one world Orthodoxy if he’s going to argue that different views of God contradict. Otherwise he’s just confusing differences in view with real contradictions. They are not all speaking the same langue so saying things differently is to be expected. I mean that metaphorically as well as literally.

That’s going to be important because he has one major point that he’s making, the contradiction of many religious traditions preludes the truth of any. Divide and conquer. If he can’t establish a standard concept of God then he can’t really argue that the various views of God are not different aspects of the same reality. In order to negate that idea he must show that there is a standard and that none of them live up to it. He can’t show that because there is no standard between faiths. The standard is only within a particular faith.

Therefore I suggest that all we can do is draw out various themes that all touch upon to show that they are all aiming at the same thing. I’ll get to that in a minute.

I want to know why the word Orthodox is included at all. Does it mean that an atheist in his view can believe an unorthodox view of God? But he wont allow a Christian to do that.

I also suggest that he has not established what Orthodox means for Christianity. Without that his criticism of contradiction are meaningless.

now this is very crucial he never showed how belief is intellectually dishonest
I. he does not make an argument showing how belief is intellectually dishonest.

A. He makes a massive profusion of his misconceptions about realign but he never actually comes to terms with what religion is or way it exists.

B. He seems think that belief in God is a contest between various personality figures rather an attempt to get in touch with an all pervasive reality. He thinks each tradition has to be taken literally and understood as a rival to all the others. He’s not facing the fact of the nature of belief.
he never discussed my theory of religion
I.Meta’s theory of religion:

I’m going to present a crash course in my own view and argue that my view is rational, it is proven to be if not true at least historically and therefore honest, and universal I the sense that it bridges the gap between the various faiths.

(1) Religion is an attempt to answer the question about the nature of being human and to respond to being human with transformative power.
(2) All religions posit a human problematic, the problem at the heart of being human. These differ but that doesn’t matter, they are all aimed at understanding what to do about the human condition. They all posit a transformative experience as the answer. The actual nature of religion itself is to cultivate mediation between these two points.
(3) Belief in deity is a response to the need for transformative power. That power in some way is connected to the view of deity for those religions that embrace deity; for those that do not their sense of transformation is non less connected to some form of organizing principle that stands in the place of deity.
(4) It doesn’t matter that these differed, not only different names, but different ceremonies and different ideas about what the deity wants, or the lack of a deity implied, but that is all minutia. It’s all leveled out in the fact that there can be only one organizing principle that includes deity, that they all have the same basic concepts that motivate the organizing principle.
(5) I’m using the term “organizing principle in place of ‘transcendental signifier’ which it’s an off putting term and people baulk when they hear it because they don’t know it’s meaning so they assume it doesn’t have one. It means the thing at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy that bestows meaning on everything else.


All religions fit this mold. They are all a response to this need to understand the nature of being human and to meet the problematic of being human with transformative power that stems from an understating of the meta narrative, the organizing principle, the orall thing that bestows meaning.”

Belief is intellectualy honest because it’s a response to experience and to innate ideas that are given both in sense data and in the mind. I have presented evidence that the sense of a divine presence is an innate idea in that our brains are hard wired to respond to God talk.(see my argument on “God on the Brain” the evidence by New Berg http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/20 ... e-god.html (see also Newberg “How God Changes Your Brain,” same link)

Take note. I am not arguing that this proves God is real. I’m arguing it proves that belief is a valid response to a seemingly real experience or idea that is part of our brains. It’s a valid response because the need is real and the solution works. That it’s honest even if mistaken. There’s a difference between being wrong and being dishonest.

any one of those should be enough to vote against him.

Assuming my summary is correct, I'd say you both did well as debaters, but for what it's worth I'd call Blondie the winner of the debate. My motivation follows:
I accept Blondie's argument that belief in an orthodox religion requires a leap of faith.
he didn't really argue that. My argument about my theory of religion takes it out and the religious experience arguments that I make answer because they show that emphatically people do experience the numinous and that's the reason religion exists. It' it not so simple as just making snide comments about faith.

This argument was very well-supported, and you'll find few theists who will disagree.
that's total bull shit. I kicked his ass. I beat him very badly. he had no change. nothing he said made any sense.

By delimiting the debate topic to orthodox religions, we're no longer talking about Metacrock's personal faith or pantheism, panentheism, and similarly liberal beliefs. Metacrock's counterpoint (2a) is aimed directly at reframing the debate, allowing more liberal beliefs with less of a leap of faith into the discussion. I'm no expert, but I'm inclined to stick with Blondie's original intention and only consider more orthodox beliefs because they're huge and important schools of thought even in the 21st century.
atheists are so ignorant. I'm not a pantheist never have been said over and over again that I'm not this guy doesn't listen any better than that he's not fit to judge to anything.


Metacrock's other counterpoint about peak experiences, mysticism, and miracles would be a great point to bring up if the debate had been framed differently, but here it misses the mark. Whereas it might be natural and highly intellectually honest to believe that something fantastic lies behind these sorts phenomena, it's a substantial leap of faith to go all the way to specific tradition involving e.g. scriptures and holy trinities.
that's stuff he doesn't get and that he's not in favor of. So he's just arguing according to his beliefs not the way the debaters argued. He's not judging the debate he's debating me.

Locked