DBT01, Round One: cl

February 20, 2012

I’ve concluded that needless suffering exists. On my view, sin caused death, suffering and so-called “natural evil.” According to Genesis, God made the world good and humans had eternal life. Sin entailed a fall from the highest possible good. It was not necessary, God did not desire it. The suffering sin produced cannot possibly be logically required for the higher good to obtain because the highest possible good had already obtained. Criticisms that God “could have made a world without suffering” are nullified.

Even though suffering is needless, eliminating suffering doesn’t eliminate any higher good. Suffering isn’t necessary to produce goods. Obviously, Jesus didn’t believe that removing suffering eliminated higher good, else no sick would have been healed, nor would commands to heal be issued. In fact, we would have been commanded to ignore suffering. This defangs Peter’s “obstruction of divine justice” argument on the spot.

This might complicate judging, but that’s where the logic lead. I’ll counter as many of Peter’s arguments as I can, and see where the second round takes us.

Read More →





DBT01: Call For Judges, Scoring Suggestions

February 10, 2012

This post is an open discussion for the confirmed judges (Daniel Vecchio, Matt DeStefano and Andrés Ruiz) in next week’s debate between Peter Hurford and I. We also have a tentative fourth judge (Adamoriens), who I will be happy to implement should we be able to locate a willing fifth judge (to preserve an odd number of judges, with Peter’s consent of course). Feel free to volunteer yourself or suggest somebody else, but keep in mind the fifth judge must be a theist (since Adamoriens would effectively qualify as an atheist in this debate). I’ve got a few people in mind, we’ll see what happens. Regardless of whether we end up with three judges or five, this debate is scheduled to kickoff Wednesday February 15th, so we should all talk about scoring. Ultimately, it is up to the judges, but I want the thread open so we can get as much feedback as possible.

We talked a little about scoring debates a few posts back, everybody might want to read that first.





DBT01: Peter Hurford vs. cl On Needless Suffering

February 4, 2012

Our first debate of the year is officially scheduled as follows:

  • Opening Statement by Peter Hurford (2000 words), due February 15th.
  • My rebuttal (1500 words), due February 19th.
  • Peter’s rejoinder (1500 words), due February 23rd.
  • My second rebuttal (1500 words), due February 27th.
  • Peter’s closing statement (1000 words), due March 2nd.
  • My closing statement (500 words), due March 8th.

As explained on the debates page, Peter will argue that needless suffering exists, ergo belief in the traditional Abrahamic God is not justified (NOTE: in our email chain, Peter and I agreed—for whatever reason at that time—that we would not be debating the “ergo” part). The judges for this debate are Daniel Vecchio (Theist), Andrés Ruiz (Agnostic), and Matt DeStefano (Atheist).





Now Taking Suggestions For A Credible Debate Scoring System

September 25, 2011

Well this whole PZ Myers Memorial Debate sure sparked quite the fiasco, but it’s really got me thinking. A few commenters both here and at VoxWorld have tossed out some pretty decent ideas as far as judging debates are concerned. If you were to judge a debate, what would you look for? What sort of things would you award or penalize? Have you seen any successful debate scoring systems before? What sort of scoring do you think would be fair? Based on what we’ve seen in the recent judging, what sort of things would you advise for or against? Where did the judges do well? Where could we have done better? Was there anything you wanted to see, but didn’t? Let’s see what we can come up with.

← Newer Posts