Debating debate techniques

Great Debates
1

Perhaps a mod will decide to move this but since the thread that brought up the issue is here …

In this thread about the value of faith begbert2 in post 181 on page 4 brought something up and I responded in post # 181. This went on to be a lengthy confusing discussion.

I don’t want to rehash the actual argument but rather the ways to approach the argument and the logical points brought up for the sake of my own education about debate and logic.

For myself the point was to dispel the somewhat popular meme that religion and faith based beliefs have had a cumulative negative effect on mankind in general.Personally I don’t believe there is a realistic way to measure while begbert2 maintained that it was fairly obvious with even a cursory look that faith had a cumulative negative effect.

One point of contention;

IMO in order to try and measure the positive or negative effect of faith we should only consider the real world actions of real people.

Acknowledging no scientific method here’s my theory. Keep in mind my questions here are about the application of the rules of logic not the argument itself.

Since recorded history it’s reasonable to say that 90% of the human population has been believers with some form of religious faith.
Since that time the human race has made progress toward the positive side. We have less slavery. More human rights. More people are educated etc.
It seems reasonable that the 90% of the population consisting of believers has had the more profound effect of human progress, and since the human race has advanced , the cumulative contribution of faith based beliefs has been to the positive rather than the negative, acknowledging that this 90% also would be responsible for most of the negative. However, for humanity to advance it seems to me that this 90% would have to contribute more good than bad.

Question 1
Is this a reasonable and logical theory? If not then why?

Other points
The discussion of this started in post #234 and I tried to clarify in #247

begbert2 makes this comment in #264

which makes no sense to me. Anyone?

My point restated in #277

begbert2 in #289

IMO to evaluate the positive or negative value of faith we must limit it to actual actions rather than speculation. If you speculate other motivations for faith based positive acts to negate or minimize their positive value then you must apply that same speculation to the negative actions and the whole argument becomes pointless speculation.
**
begbert2**

Question 2 I call that useless speculation. Agree? Disagree?
Also on the point begbert2 makes in the last sentence about
you’d have to assume bad stuff about atheists
Question 3
I saw as a false dichotomy. Is it?

In post #306
begbert2 comments

which I called a false dilemma
Question 4
** Was begbert2** creating a false dilemma or was I indeed caught by the law of excluded middle?

Sorry this is so lengthy but it will help me understand some of the formal rules of logic and debate.

2

I do not think this is a reasonable supposition, because you are implying a connection between two events that has not been demonstrated. For example, we know that after it rains, the streets will be wet. But simply because the streets are wet, is not proof that it rained. Maybe a fire hydrant broke, or it snowed and melted.

Similarly, while we can agree that humanity is advancing, we don’t know that it is because of people of faith. It could be because more people are not taking religious texts so literally, or more reliance on science, or heck, even because of Scientology or the decreasing number of natural redheads as a percent of the world’s population. You need to demonstrate that one fact (adherence to religion) has an actual causative effect on another (humanity getting better) to score any points with this argument.

3

I realize it is generalized to the extreme. There are lots of variables to consider. I originally thought of this in response to what seems to be a popular meme here sometimes when things like the crusades, the inquisition or are mentioned to point out how awful religious faith is. Since the percentage of believers is and has been so much greater we can even introduce some variables that reduce their overall positive effect somewhat and still be on the plus side. It seems unreasonable to think that humanity could have advanced with a huge percentage of the population holding what some present as negative values.

Sure religion and faith based beliefs have had their problems but it has also been religion and faith based beliefs that have made strides to correct these issues.

I’m not presenting it as a definitive example or proof in any way, but merely a viable theory.

In your own example, although there may be variables, in general which would be more likely to be true? Coming outside and finding the street wet what would be your first thought barring other information. Rain right? And although other factors may relate it is at least a* reasonable* assumption isn’t it?

Also to clarify, I’m not talking about adherence to religion in any doctrinal or dogmatic way. I’m speaking of actions of people with religious based faith.

Any thoughts on the other questions in the OP?

4

Disagree. If you are arguing that faith is better than no-faith, then it is perfectly legitimate - indeed, almost inescapable - to consider what infidels do and compare it to what believers do. But you do need evidence, no speculation.

In my experience, the common dodge of this comparision consists of saying bad things that non-believers do don’t count, because they didn’t do it because of their lack of faith. The Crusades count, but the murders of Stalin and Pol Pot and Lenin and so forth don’t.

I don’t know what you mean.

No, it isn’t a false dilemma. But we are talking about a tendency, or an average. You can’t say that any one individual is better or worse based on faith or its lack, but that it is more probable that he or she is better or worse, once you have established a link between a tendency towards good acts for one group or the other.

But it doesn’t take much to establish a tendency. One virtuous atheist among a horde of average atheists compared to a equal horde of average believers will skew your results, unless you can isolate the other factors involved.

Your mention of the abolition of slavery is an example of this. In England and the US, the drivers for abolition were Christians (William Wilberforce, Frederick Douglass, et al.), who acted specifically based on their faith-based motives. If you assume that the other believers of the time were evenly divided on the subject, and that there were no atheists of equivalent moral merit, then, on average, the believers come out ahead on the comparision.

You can speculate that, if the society of the time were as overwhelmingly atheist instead of fairly devout, at least publicly, then maybe you can say that slavery would have been abolished no matter what, but that is speculation. You would then need to find some atheist society that eliminated an equal social ill. Maybe the USSR eliminating serfdom, but then you need to explain away the slaughter of the kulaks.

Is that what you are asking?

Regards,
Shodan

5

I would like to note that when I made the comment in #264

it was prior to cosmosdan actually laying out the argument in the clear fashion he does in the OP here. All I’d understood about his “90/10” argument is that he was asserting that most people had had faith (well, been relgious actually), and so faith/religion must be good. Honestly I didn’t have a clue what he was trying to prove and so put forth a disputation of the ‘argument from popularity’ that he seemed to be making.

The answer to his more expanded version is that just because religious people probably contributed more good than bad, it doesn’t stand to reason that they did it because of faith or religion. Perhaps there were other causes, like their muted voice of reason, the faithless advance of science, or even some naturally productive element of human nature, acting in spite of religion/faith to advance humanity.

Absent other data we don’t know, and certainly his argument does not exclude the ‘other causes for advancement’ possibility.

Which is my answer to question 1.
Regarding Question 2 I do maintain that it is reasonable-if-not-necessary, when considering the value of a thing, to assess the things prevented by it in addition to the things that’re done because of it, which is equivalent to trying to deduce what would have happened had the thing not occurred or been present at all, and comparing the two cases.
As for question 3, I maintain that it is a tautology that if a thing tends to make a person more likely to do good things or be a good person than otherwise, then it it also the case that persons without that thing tend to be worse than persons with it. The only way this would not hold is if you had some reason to believe that the thing tended to be associated with naturally evil people, so that in being improved by the thing they do not exceed the level of good of those who never had it.

As this is about tendencies it certainly may vary or simply not be true for specific individual cases.

It’s not so much as an excluded middle as a “from A, immidiately deduce B.” It’s certainly not a false dillemma.

6

You should have checked Begbert’s assertion (after stripping of its hyperbole about evil and selfishness). The fact is that people who donate to both religious and secular charities far outstrip those who give to secular charities alone, both in terms of money and volunteer time.

http://www.independentsector.org/PDFs/faithphil.pdf

Warning: large PDF.

7

Perhaps that was the hurdle **begbert2 **and I couldn’t overcome. IMHO it’s not faith vs. no faith so non believers don’t factor in at this point. If the argument is that faith has a more positive or negative cumulative effect then you would look at the actions of those with faith based beliefs as a separate group from non believers. Isn’t that right?

begbert2 said

I call this a false dichotomy, because thinking one thing does not automatically assume the other. He claims you’d have to assume something negative about non believers. I think you can credit faith based beliefs for moving believers to give of their time and money without assuming anything negative about another group. So, isn’t that a false dichotomy?

What I’m calling a false dilemma is his specific charge of the law of excluded middle.

It is false because it is possible for different things to move different people toward good or bad acts. People are individuals. While faith based beliefs may the thing that moves one group to acts of kindness it may be non religious philosophy that moves a non believer to similar acts. It is not necessary to believe faith is always positive for all people ergo a lack of faith is always bad. I can easily believe my sisters faith helps make her a kinder person and my other sisters non belief is what is right for her to be just as charitable. It do not have to believe my atheist sister has to be less inclined to be charitable because of a lack of religious faith.
In fact I’m very sure I don’t believe that. So I find his statement concerning the law of excluded middle to be a false dilemma in that one does not necessarily mean the other.

Once again, It’s a question of judging the negative or positive cumulative effect of faith based beliefs. It’s not faith vs non faith. Since the human race is overwhelmingly made up of believers we should be able to look at that group alone to determine some reasonable theoretic answer without considering the actions of non believers or the speculative actions of how believers might act if they lacked belief. Shouldn’t we?

Since slavery was eventually abolished right? Some used their faith to justify and support slavery, while other believers fought against slavery. In the end slavery was abolished.

No I don’t believe any comparison is necessary at all between believer and non believer. Since the percentage of believers is so overwhelming, if more believers supported slavery then slavery would still be here. Thats my point. For the humans race , made up of 90% believers, to advance is it more or less likely that their faith based beliefs contributed toward that advance?

There’s no need to speculate about how they might have acted without belief. There’s no need to compare them to non believers.

Not quite but I appreciate the input

8

I welcome your clarification of your own point of view.
I repeat for our readers, I agree we can’t know what other motives believers may have had for their positive actions. My request was that we apply the argument evenly to both sides and admit that we also can’t know what other motives believers had for their negative actions as well. If you’re going to speculate on their motives to deny them credit for positive actions then we’ll aslo deny them blame and the argument is inert.
Thats why my suggestion is to not speculate either way and judge only the real actions either positive or negative. This seems like a more realistic way to judge the matter. My questions to those reading this thread, is it indeed a more realistic way? Isn’t the speculation counterproductive to any reasonably logical conclusion?

Once again I disagree. We can’t reasonably deduce what would have happened without faith based beliefs so it becomes counterproductive speculation. However I’m interested in other opinions.

A step back from the excluded middle argument then? Still, it’s a false dilemma IMO because people are individuals so saying faith had a positive effect on person A doesn’t mean a lack of faith is negative for person B. This principle applies to groups as well.

You cannot immediately deduce B from A, so it remains a false dilemma as I understand the term.

from Wikki

I’m willing to be corrected if given a good reason.

9

Thats interesting and I appreciate the info.

Could you comment on the logic and reasoning of the arguments? The other questions in my OP?

I have no formal training in debate or the rules of logic and I’m trying to improve and clarify my understanding of them

10

I don’t see it as a viable theory in either case. I see it as jumping to a conclusion that one might wish to be true, regardless of evidence. Frankly, it is a point that deserves to be challenged, and the proper response would either be to support it with evidence or to admit that it was just wishful thinking.

Should someone make an argument that society has advanced in spite of religion, the on-topic response would be to point out the advances attributable to religion (the charity of churches which serve the Third World jumps to mind), not point to the popularity of religion as counter-proof. I don’t see that you can argue a qualitative question (is religion a positive force?) by pointing to the quantitative (but there’s so many Christians and Muslims in the world!). If one were to flip the argument around, one could say that the small numbers of heretics like Copernicus would have advanced society further and faster had their numbers only been greater. It is just as weak an argument.

11

Fair enough.
Does that mean you find the meme that religious faith has obviously had a negative effect also not viable without serious evidence?

12

We speculate about their motives because it is strictly necessary to know that the cause of an action is faith before we include that action in a plus-minus assessment of faith’s value. We have to do that because we’re trying to assess the value of faith.

Generalizing to include all actions of those vaguely labeled “faithful” or “religious” changes the assessment so much that it is irrelevent to the original question. Put more simply: The specific effects of faith are one thing. The total effects of all things done by the faithful is a whole 'nother goalpost.

I dispute that all motives are equally uncertain, and that in some cases probable behaviors can be reasonably deduced, at least enough to conduct a coarse analysis. Others may disagree with me of course.

The wonderful thing about a discussion of trends and “in general” effects is that the individual cases get lapped up in the wash. If in general faith has a good effect on people, then it is in general a reasonable assumption that your atheist niece would be better than she currently is were she to have faith. This is indeed an excluded middle argument; either faith generally has a good effect on people or it don’t. Regardless of the occasional outlying exception.

Jumping from the “faith being good means that an atheist would be improved by having faith” truism to the statement “persons of faith are better than persons without faith” requires one additional assumption: that “there is not a significant positive correlation between a natural inclination to do good and a natural inclination to reject faith”. Absent evidence, we typically try and refrain from assuming that one group or another as being naturally better than the other, so one would typically accept this additional assumption, leading us to accept the antiatheistic conclusion if we accept that faith has a positive effect on people.

However, there is an out; not due to to false dillemma, but due to the fact that an additional premise was admitted to reach the conclusion, and that additional premise would have to be accepted before the conclusion could be reached. It’s a question of soundness, not logical correctness.

To avoid this, we can incorporate the extra premise into the conclusion, like so:

“Unless persons who accept faith/religion tend to be more naturally evil than those who refrain from accepting faith/religion, then if faith/religion has a positive effect of on people’s behavior then atheists must be in general worse than theists.”

This statement is unavoidably true. So, do you think that persons who take to religion tend to be the evil type?

13

Well, it looks like he didn’t answer your point directly with the 90/10 thing. You were, I think, basically saying that since the overwhelming majority of people have been religious over the course of human history, it stands to reason that the accomplishments of history are in some part due to religious faith. And I think that Begbert was trying to say that there is no causal relation between the two. Formally, that would mean you committed a cum hoc propter hoc fallacy; i.e., just because two things are co-temporal, that does not mean that they are related.

I would have worded his protest differently, but still. The problem is that, without further connecting the dots, we could attribute humanity’s achievements to any arbitrary thing. For example, the overwhelming majority of people throughout history have had two ears. Can we attribute humanity’s achievements to bilobiality? You need to connect religious faith directly to particular achievements and show that those achievements are significant. And that’s pretty easy to do.

As to your second question, the gist of Begbert’s argument seems to be similar to an argument I’ve often made in discussions of libertarianism. When people fret over how backward society would be if it were infested with peace and honesty, I argue that for all we know, a libertarian society might be far further along than our present society with things like conquering hunger, disease, and illiteracy. And that’s true; however, it is a hypothetical response to a hypothetical assertion. In other words, it speaks only to a comparison between two hypothetical libertarian societies — one bad and one good. It does not speak to a comparison between the actual society and a hypothetical one.

Same same for Begbert’s argument. While it speaks to any hypothetical statement you might make about philanthropy and achievement, it does not speak to any actual philanthropy or achievement. That is to say, logically, he is not entitled to counter actual facts with speculation.

The answer to your third question is no. It’s not a false dichotomy. But it’s a hypostatization, meaning that it treats an abstract thing as an actual thing. It treats his speculations about an altnerate history of philanthropic atheism as though it had any merit in reality. It does not.

Finally, as to Question 4, the law of excluded middle states that we can deduce (A or Not A) from a first-order propositional calculus. In other words, for any proposition A, either A is true or Not A is true but both cannot be true nor can both be false. But that law does not apply to your statements because your statements were implications rather than declarations. Whatever is applied must examine the truth of the implication, not the truth of the terms. That is not to say that the terms cannot be examined for truth, but LEM won’t do that either.

Begbert cited the wrong rule if I understand what he was saying correctly. If A -> B is a true implication, then it is true that Not B -> Not A. That’s a rule called “modus tolens”. And I think that that’s the rule that Begbert meant to cite. And it’s the rule that makes him correct when he says that if you’re saying that greater faith implies greater charity, then less charity would imply less faith. I don’t think that’s exactly what he said, but I think it might be what he tried to say.

14

Well, I did try to explain that it wasn’t excluded middle on account of there being only one consistent position, not two exclusive ones, but he didn’t buy that one. So then I proceeded to confuse myself. There are still grains of correctness scattered about in there though.

15

It is the proper one IMO if the discussion isn’t going to degenerate into a meaningless pile of unsubstantiated speculation. If you’re going to try and assess the value of faith by claiming certain negative actions of the faithful are obviously in the minus column {insert typical examples here} then to be reasonably fair we assume that their positive actions are also influenced by their faith based beliefs. Their faith instructs them to love thy neighbor or some similar tenet, so their acts of kindness are built upon their foundational belief, and go in the plus column.

keep in mind that my original point was that it is impossible to fairly assess the value because of the many variables involved. I still think that’s the case. You and others herebouts seem to claim that the value is “obviously” in the negative. I’m using this argument to demonstrate that is not so, if you apply all points equally to both sides of the argument.

I think thats possible but it would take an in depth study. Perhaps similar to the one Liberal linked to. Pointless speculation in a thread about possible motives hardly qualifies as reasonable deduction. You criticized me for having no data to support my theory yet provided none to support yours.

I’m sure some people might look at it that way. My objection was you insisting that I had to look at it that way too, or I was implying it by some rule of logic. Thats false! plain and simple. The reason is that I was considering faith to have, in general, a more positive effect on* people who hold faith based beliefs. * People who do not hold religious beliefs are a totally separate group. There is no need for any speculation about how faith might affect them.There was no implication about them at all. Thats something you inserted as if I were implying that and then insisted I had no other choice. Hence the false dilemma. I already know what you think about it. I’m looking for other input by folks who know more about the rules of logic and debate than I do.

This is quite meaningless to me. It doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t accept your law of excluded middle as inescapable {in fact you seem to be backtracking on your own inescapable point} I certainly don’t see anything here that is unavoidably true.

16

Shit, I’m sorry. It’s a contrapositive.

17

No need to apologize, Liberal; modus tollens is basically the fusion of modus ponens with the move from a statement to its contrapositive. Both terms are accurate descriptions of the reasoning you were applying them to, depending on how you choose to break it down.

(I should note that I haven’t yet read most of this thread; I’m just commenting on the terminology issue in Liberal’s last post and the end of his post before that to which it apparently refers.)

18

I understand. As I stated in that thread and just restated here. My goal wasn’t to prove anything but merely to counter the meme the keeps rearing it’s ugly inaccurate head and that begbert2 repeated in that thread. Namely that faith has obviously had a cumulative negative effect on mankind and we’d be better off without it. It gets tossed about here and there as if it were fact. It seems obvious to me that with even a little thought and imagination, a little consideration of a fair argument, it is not at all an obvious fact at all and should not be casually tossed out as such by those who claim to value logic and reason above faith.

Thats why it seemed logical to me to limit the argument to a discussion of actual deeds done without any speculation . Are you saying that is indeed the more proper method?

I understand. I’m afraid I worded my OP carelessly. The specific item I referred to as as a false dichotomy was this comment by** bert**

bolding mine. Which seemed to fit the definition I quoted from Wikki of a false dichotomy. Are you saying it doesn’t?

I appreciate the input. It’s a bit over my head but that’s how I learn.

IMO he seemed to be saying that since I thought faith = greater charity then I must also think lack of faith = less charity. He seemed to imply that I had to think that since one must mean the other.

Again it seemed to me he was saying there were only two options when that was not the case. That seems to fit false dilemma.

He was including all both groups, believers and non believers in the equation while I was not. That seemed to be the option he was missing. That it was possible to consider faith to have a positive effect among the faithful without drawing any conclusion or implying anything about non believers.

Does that make sense?

19

Riiiight. I still maintain that it’s garbage to assert that if we’re sure that the inquisition was caused by faith, that any nominally theistic person must be donating because of faith.

Ah, yes, the argument of “it’s impossible to draw any conclusions whatsoever from incomplete data”. I admit I risk being wrong. I deny that assessment is impossible.

I have to support that the inquisition was caused by faith? :dubious:

A+F > A = A < A+F. This is not particularly debatable.

(And incidentally I’ve taken a few years of logic, even though that’s not shown well by my ability to get derailed by people accusing me of fallacies entirely unrelated to my position. I haven’t taken any debate, though. Perhaps that’s my problem?)

20

May I suggest that the best way to defeat that point is simply to point out the fallacies inherent in it without trying to battle it with a counter-example?
Plain fact is that the people who insist that faith has been horrible for humanity don’t have evidence to prove it. They’ll haul out anecdotes and try to pretend they serve as proper evidence but they don’t. Then they’ll drag out the same old sameolds but you have (IMHO) to resist debating the anecdotes point by point because it’s like a game of whack-a-mole; every time you smack one down, another one will pop up and the discussion will be endless.

There are several sites that list logical and debating fallacies; it’s easy to teach yourself about them. And avoid them where possible :wink: For instance, I doubt that you can ever really win a point by saying something is ‘reasonable’ to conclude, because that which constitutes ‘reasonable’ is really ‘according to you’. Fred Phelps thinks he’s reasonable. So does GeeDubya. See how that’s a problem?

BTW, begbert2, I’m not buying the

equation. This isn’t math, it’s social science and people don’t behave according to mathematical rules. It works as a debating proposition only in theory but I believe cosmosdan is talking about actual humans, not theoretical ones.

Theoretical models are great except when they have no application in the real world.