Existence of God debate? Drange vs. McHugh

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Ted Drange and Chris McHugh have been considering a formal debate dealing with a topic associated with the existence of God(s). I'm opening this thread to start a discussion on a potential debate proposal.

Chris and Ted, feel free to post here and we can finalize the parameters of your debate. Otherwise, if you both wish to communicate privately about the parameters, then that's okay too.

Here are the parameters to consider:

(a) The topic of the debate.

(b) The participants of the debate, and what positions they will argue.

(c) The scope of the debate.

(d) The length of the debate, in number of rounds (no more than 10 rounds per debate).

(e) Whether statements will be made concurrently or in turns, and if the latter, who goes first.

(f) The maximum length of each statement (no more than 5,000 words per statement).

(g) The maximum duration between statements.

(h) The extent to which quotes from outside sources will be permitted (absolutely no copyright violation or outright plagiarism will be allowed).

(i) The starting date of the debate.

(j) Any additional rules or a debate format that debate participants must observe (subject to moderator approval).


- Nightshade, FD Moderator

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

Ted Drange and Chris McHugh have agreed privately on the debate parameters for the formal debate. They are summarized here:


The debate would have two components, as follows:

(1) Ted Drange (TD) tries to show that the Argument from Nonbelief provides
good objective evidence for the nonexistence of the God of evangelical
Christianity and Chris McHugh (CM) tries to show that it doesn't.

(2) CM tries to make a case for the existence of the God of Christianity
and TD tries to show that it doesn't work.

These components would be dealt with concurrently.

The schedule of deadlines for the concurrent posts would be as follows:

Oct. 31: the opening statements
Nov. 30: the first rebuttals (i.e., rebuttals to the other's opening
statement, attacking the other's arguments)
Dec. 31: the second rebuttals (i.e., rebuttals to the other's first
rebuttal, each debater defending his own arguments)
Jan. 31: the third rebuttals (i.e., rebuttals to the other's second
rebuttal, again attacking the other's arguments)
Feb. 29: the fourth rebuttals (i.e., rebuttals to the other's third
rebuttal, each debater again defending his own arguments).

At this point a decision is made whether or not to go to fifth + sixth
rebuttals. If so, then the continuing format would be:

March 31: the fifth rebuttals (i.e., rebuttals to the other's fourth
rebuttal, again attacking the other's arguments)
April 30: the sixth rebuttals (i.e., rebuttals to the other's fifth
rebuttal, each debater again defending his own arguments)
May 31: deadline for the closing statements (which combines attack and
defense).

If it is decided not to have the fifth & sixth rebuttals, then the deadline
for the closing statements would be March 31.

Each monthly statement would be limited to 20 KB of text, which is around
3000-3100 words, except for the opening statements (due Oct. 31) which would have a limit of 5000 words.


A thread will be started in the FD forum to begin the debate.

- Jason