This seems bad.

If theists claim atheists have faith in science then they clearly do not think of faith as something tied to God.

Not necessarily. It could still be that when theists say something like that, they mean to say that the atheist directs that-which-originates-in-god onto something else (a false god, if you will), as a theist can claim that an atheist "has" faith (or at least is able of having it), due to gods existence, regardless of what the atheist thinks, believes or does. If it were so, then it wouldn't, indeed, be a statement of approval/acknowledgement of virtue.

To my mind, the greater problem is that it seems patently wrong. What is the evidence that whenever theists attest to an atheists' faith in science, they are not implying that this faith is a (veiled) acknowledgement of virtue. (Clearly, if only the GOP would make such utterances, his point would be much stronger. )

When I say "Vettel has real faith in his engineers" then I am (implicitely) making an approving statement about the virtuousness of that faith, imo.

Why would they? That religions depend on faith doesn't make religion the only context in which faith exhibits. Anytime you have a confidence that is not evidence based, you're engaging in faith.

That said, I'm not sure that it's possible, by definition, to have faith in anything scientific or that the virtuous status of faith is relevant in that context.

Hmm, just a question on tictacs - is it a good strategy to focus your entire attention on demolishing your opponents arguments? It seems that this could easily lead to a situation where

A says "X",
B says "Z",
A counters "Z sucks"
and the jury comes to the conclusion "yeah, but X sucks even worse!"

I've never attended debate clubs or w/e, so I really have no idea what's generally best here, but unless I'm missing something, gangsta is trying to justify the proposition "Faith is a Virtue" while zumby argues for (at least) "It is not true that 'Faith is a Virtue'". How does "In his opener, gansta fails to show that "Faith is a Virtue"" help his case here?

Well, it depends on his ability to follow through and demonstrate the flaws in gangstaman's position.

I used the analogy of "taking territory on a battlefield" before, but you can also think of it as a two rope tug of war. One rope is "Faith is a virtue" (affirmative) and the other is "Faith is not a virtue" (negative). In the opening statement, each person gets to pull on their rope (gangstaman pulling on the affirmative/Zumby pulling on the negative) and try to drag it as far to their side as possible. In the rebuttals, they switch ropes and try to pull each one back to the middle again.

What Zumby is saying in the opening statement is "ganstaman made no progress at all!" In other words, he's trying to negate the progress that gangstaman made (actually, he's claiming that no progress was made -- but it's functionally the same thing).

It can and basically does. In the end, the winner is the one who makes more overall progress. Not only have they pulled their rope to their side, but they've also prevented the other rope from getting pulled to their opponent's side. The judgment of the jury comes down to measuring the progress each one made in the individual ropes, and then combining that assessment to get an overall opinion on the result.

Ok, so the rebuttals are actually intended (more or less) to focus on what the other guy said and try to disprove/discredit it? Rather than taking his opener and try to hammer even harder on your own case (obv. those two overlap to a degree)? And the virtuosos would combine the two by going "He is wrong because XY, that's why I brilliantly argued in my opener that Z" etc.?

Yeah. In fact, that's where the word comes from:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rebut

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rebut

When I did a few debates in school they usually took the form of a "This house proposes that..." as two on two, with a first proposer, first opposer, second proposer, second opposer.

Second opposition was always the best spot because you had the benefit of a) as opposition, simply disregard all arguments without having to offer any better explanations b) being able to horribly misrepresent anything said before, knowing that they didn't get a comeback spot.

Then there'd usually be a few outside questions from judges/audience, with an improv answer.

But it really depended on whether you wanted to win the debate or be intellectually honest. And usually that came down to my mood and who I was up against.

I don't know, it was Zumby's contention.

Although Fretelöo gave a reasonable response.

It has to be said : gangstaman is not doing much of a job on this. He was a poor choice as he appears to attack his own faith on here all the time by siding with the atheists. It is obvious that faith is a virtue. People even name their children Faith, Hope and Chastity. No-one calls their kids Cynic, Despair or Trollop. That tells its own story.

I agree, Cwoc would've done a much better job.

I would make mincemeat out of Zomby. I'll destroy his arguments on here instead when I get time.

I just finished reading their responses and I've already forgotten everything they said. I'm not sure if typing in monotone is possible, but that's how their posts read.

Ok, some points on content:

Zumby:

The counter with the most potential seems to be this: "We could say that the intention behind greed is a selfish desire to gain, which is not plausibly an inherently moral trait. Likewise, the intention of kindness is to benefit another, which is a moral good even if the consequences in a particular situation turn out to be morally bad. But this does not hold up when considering my opponents definition of faith as an epistemic bridge." - It hinges on gangstas own definition of faith: "Having faith in someone or something is more than simply trusting or believing; it is doing so without first requiring evidence of veracity." If it were meant to be understood as an epistemic bridge - faith is the "glue" we use when facts and evidence don't support the level of trust we exert -, then zumby would be right that none of the examples of gangsta show what he intents to show.
What is not clear to me, however, is that gangsta takes his definition of faith to imply that faith is indeed an epistemic bridge. I don't see a reason, for example, not to conclude that the virtuous quality of faith lies in its community-strenghtening effects of ostensibly extending trust in situation where both agents are aware that the evidence does not justify that trust. If so, the example of the community-strenghtening effects of faith in a deity, for example, would not be discredited, as the faith in a deity is socially handled as faith in the testimony of those who tell me about a deity; the wikipedia example -- while remaining a bad example -- would equally be salvageable by positing that the (ultimately unjustified) extension of trust in the veracity/accuracy of it (that cartoon above demonstrated that very well) is what makes WP largely correct and growing.

Gangsta:

- Well he does win on humor.
- Zumbys point about gangsta not sourcing his claims becomes an issue in his rebuttal: "In fact, those that hold faith to be a virtue hold it to be so even for those of other religions, even when the faith is being held in a God they believe to be untrue. This can be seen in polls that show atheists are less trusted than members of other religions." If sourced, this section would be a pretty convincing rebuttal of zumbys def. of faith and his claim that gods existence is necessary for it to be virtuous.
- Other than that, I think he made a pretty thorough case.

So far, tbh. I'm somewhat surprised by zumby. I expected a much tougher fight.

Wow. Logic!

In 2012 there were 5 kids named notorious. It is obvious that Notoriety must be a virtue.

There are children named after boozes - Tequila, Hennessey, Chardonney... obvoius booze is a virtue.

According to Freakonomics, a man by the name of Robert Lane named one of his children "Loser". I guess since that's a child's name it must be virtue.

Good stuff.

Just so everyone knows, I'll be moderating this thread fairly tightly, so trolling, responding to trolling, derailments, etc. will be deleted.

For instance, more discussion about children's names unless very funny or actually pertinent to the issue will be deleted.

Zumby cited a bunch of studies in his post that seemed to indicate a correlation between faith and divorce, and such like that.

I don't buy them for a second.

My initial impression is based on personal experience. I have long believed that the numbers of people who '[x]-Christian' on surveys, though they have not practiced, said prayers, talked about Christ, or attended church in years is substantial. I cannot explain this phenomena, but I think of the people I know around me, and see evidence of this all of the time.

As an evangelizing christian who is open with his faith and actively proselytizes, I think I am in a good position to note certain trends. In fact, you might even say that I've done my own large-sample survey over my lifetime, and what I've found is that the designation "I am a x-Christian" means very little. Most people who say this have not attended church in years. Many are backslidden. The women have gone and had abortions without even praying about it or consulting a church authority. The men openly boast of adultery outside of the marriage to coworkers and friends and then, when I start a conversation with them about Christ or Christianity, they say: "Yeah, I'm a Christian," and I am often startled by this identification. Imo, the latter state of a backslider is often worse than the initial state, as Christ pointed out.

It should also be noted that the divorce study is a controversial one-off that is not backed by other studies on the same question. All previous studies related to religious identification and divorce showed that religious people had lower rates of divorce.


And, in fact, the latest data (source) shows that born-again christians divorce at lower rates than those of a non-christian faith (38%). It also shows that those people people who consider themselves to be liberal on social and political matters divorce at an extremely high rate of 37% -- Therein is the heart of the matter. It just confirms my own personal study, you might say, as someone has been on the street witnessing Christ and his message.

The latest data also showed that 30% of atheist/agnostics have been divorced, but that they marry much less often then the general population. They often cohabitate outside of marriage-- which is extremely relevant. They may in fact have more failed relationships overall, which the data would not demonstrate.

I'm not sure why zumby chose the study he did, instead of more recent data, but -- imo-- it doesn't matter anyway.

There are serious questions about some of his other sources here also, but I don't have the time right now, but will get to it later.

zumby's falling into a fallacy here. He seems to be claiming that given choices A and B, if A is virtuous, then B must therefore not be virtuous. This is false, and that of course its possible to have decisions where both choices are virtuous, in the same or different ways.

curiosity and patience are both likely considered virtues, however one often comes at the expense of the other. Similarly frugality and generosity can both be considered virtuous and sometimes excercising one will naturally reduce the other.

Lessening one virtuous behavior does necessarily mean your actions become less virtuous in total, because the difference could be made up through actions of a different virtue, not necessarily a vice as zumby is claiming.

ganstaman's second rebuttal is unremarkable, but he didn't need anything remarkable, just to not mess up, and imo he didn't, so that's about that.

This might have been a decent opening gag or something. As a late-stage argument(?) it's pretty risible tbh. Movie review is beyond irrelevant.

The veracity of a statement has no necessary bearing on the moral standing of belief in it. And seeking evidence reduces the potential virtuousness of belief in it only if a bum getting a job reduces the virtuousness of having given him some spare change at some point in the past.

In summary, I don't think zumby has closed the gap that developed in the opening statements. I think there's only the closing left and I can't see him pulling it out on that.

+1 I can't really understand why zumby is still going on about religious faith. All of that is a tangent.

Gansta finally doubled down on the social element of extending faith: "When one puts faith in the word of another person, such as a stranger providing directions, they are extending their respect and demonstrating their trust in the good of this individual and all of humanity. ...In this way, faith promotes trust, love, kindness, and other moral characteristics." That basically shuts the door.

I'm surprised that zumby didn't chose the epistemic route he appeared to try in his first rebuttal. Seems like this would give him at least a fighting chance of construing the positive factors of extending faith as being little more than just relabellings of "unwarranted trust having worked out by accident".

I think the clearest mistake thus far has been Zumby claiming that things like kindness are different than faith in the sense that faith can lead to bad things like 9/11. I don't even think he meant much by this, but gangsta did a pretty good job in rebuttal of making it seem like this silly point was half the argument. That Zumby started with the assumption that gangsta would defend religous faith sort of wasted the opening statement, which wasn't really a problem. But the slip up with the kindness thingy took it from simply repositioning after understanding the terms to fighting for air. He recovered a but in the second rebuttal, IMO, but unless closing changes things I feel that it is likely to be a wash except for the 1-0 in gangstas favor due to the error. For instance, there was a bit of back and forth on the distinction between whether consequences good or bad speak to the virtuosity of faith which both sides flirted with and end up agreeing on so is a wash.

9/11 had nothing to do with faith.

They seem to be arguing past each other. Zumby is attacking faith as shown to God and gangstaman is defending as faith as shown to people. These are quite different things.

cwoc gunna cwoc imo

I recommend this as the second debate topic for Cwoc vs {anyone half reasonable}. Go!

Also - If Zumby had made the debate title: Is religious faith a virtue, wouldn't that have been a better fit for his arguments?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSJ8XPnJK1o