Rap battle?
I don’t like rap, nor can I rap.
I’m sorry to disappoint you.
Do you think a serious contributor to me not getting in any heated debates with anyone might be my reluctance to take an absolute stance on things?
Need to work on that man. I routinely try and impress on people in the religion section that it is better to take a position, stick with it, and see where it takes you. Sometimes it will be wrong, yes. It does run that risk. I’ve been wrong plenty of times. Ucci, a paragon of Christian intransigence, found himself wrong often enough that he switched from Protestantism to Orthodox. That sort of thing happens when you actually have a position to examine and be found wrong on. May as well lay it all out and see where it takes you – agnosticism, on any issue, cannot be proven wrong so it prevents development. Better a sincere position that is open to change.
But that is just one man’s opinion.
I have problems with the way Xunzian used the distinction between motivation and justification, too - if a person has a ready-at-hand justification to do something, that fact alone will figure into their motivation for doing it - i don’t think the line is all that clear, particularly in the case of religious violence - sure a person may be inclined to kill anyway, but if they have a religious mandate to do so, then that’s all the more motivation to follow through, in which case religion is still playing a causal role . . .
i hope it’s not out of line for me to say so, it not being my debate - but it was alluded to above . . .
It seems as though D0rky has already written his conclusion. I’ll be following with mine shortly (probably later today) but Dorky wants to post his conclusion and finish up the debate. I don’t see anything wrong with this, so I’ll be creating a blank dummy post so he can reply with his conclusion. That allows for more natural reading order, so the final debate will look like:
Xunzian
Dorky
Xunzian
Dorky
Xunzian
Dorky
As opposed to
Xunzian
Dorky
Xunzian
Dorky
Dorky
Xunzian
Especially since the most memorable parts of any argument are the beginning and end, I feel it would be unfair to Dorky for me to both lead and finish the debate.
So don’t be confused when you see a blank post with my name on it. I’ll edit it for my conclusion later.
If Dorky’s argument of 03/07/2009 is his last, then he has lost the debate. Dorky’s side of the issue was easily winnable. There is no doubt in my mind that religion plays a role in the Middle East’s trouble. But Dorky tried to prove that it is the central or primary role. By trying to prove too much he lost the argument.
Religion ultimately boils down to what is believed by individuals. What is written in the Koran is always subject to the interpretation of a someone. If anyone in the Middle East believes that the Koran teaches them to kill innocent people and acts on that belief, then religion has played a role in the troubles of the Middle East. It’s that simple.
But by trying to prove that Islam is ultimately evil or that religion is ultimately evil or is the root cause of terrorism, etc. Dorky took on too much. He is saying that all the Muslims who don’t believe that the Koran teaches suicide bombing are wrong about Islam. He is saying they are not true Islamists. He, Dorky must know what Islam really means and stands for in contradistinction to their millions of professing Muslims who believe it teaches otherwise.
Dorky’s arguments follow Sam Harris’. Harris is already retreating from the extreme positions that he took in the aftermath of 911 when hysterical religion bashing appeared to be more rational than it does now.
Felix,
I will wait until the debate has concluded before I toss your salad.
Hey man, lemme fall on my sword before we post judgment 
Should be out soon, sorry, life getting in the way. You all know how it is.
<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/8/89d727cf0228785190106846052e47066fca0824.gif" width="32" height="32" alt=":character-kermit:" title="Kermit the Frog"/>
I just hope there is a judge in my corner that is as blatantly and disturbingly biased toward my argument as felix is towards Xunzian’s.
Dorky
Hey I was drafted after all. I give you points for sincerity. You could have won me over with an argument like I presented above. Instead, you stuck to your true beliefs even though it meant losing my vote. I applaud you sir. =D>
Felix,
Don’t be nice and make me regret my fiestiness. 
NO EXCUSES.
OK. Here ya go: 
My conclusion is up. Good job, Dorky. It was a fun debate.
I hope we can continue the discussion after the debate is over and the judging is finished. I am wondering if I should start a new thread in the religion forums for it, though, because I’d prefer the opportunity for higher traffic and more input.
Yeah, I’d love to continue the discussion. I know Cyrene would like that too. He’s already told me I’m wrong 
I imagine most people are on his (your) side too.
I think Xunzian is the clear winner of the debate, though he overextends himself the same way Dorky did, just in the opposite direction by removing religion entirely from the list of causal factors, attempting to argue that it’s entirely immaterial . . . Even as Xun portrays it, there’s still plenty of room for religion to serve a causal role - but on a point-by point basis, he takes the trophy.
i must say, i really prefer formal debates like this one where both sides are arguing what they actually believe as opposed to the ILO-ILP style debates with arbitrary topics.
I agree the materialist stance is not without difficulties and inconsistencies. But that is generally how models operate – they work for a while but upon close enough scrutiny, they break down. However, I do think the materialist model is substantially better than the model proposed by the religion hypothesis. I think that the graph shown on page 13 of this powerpoint presentation offers a good model for the situation. Religious extremism is a factor, but you’ll note it is a derived factor as opposed to a causative agent. An indicator, if you will. Naturally, I wasn’t going to even cede that within the debate (though I came close in the closing argument) but I wanted to argue an extreme interpretation to show that religion doesn’t need to even be factored in to have a coherent model of the situation in the ME.
Dorky–
Conflating religion and nationalism and religion and land issues didn’t help your case as far as I am concerned. Once these elements are merged how can we evaluate the relative contribution of religion to the problem? The purpose of analysis is to isolate factors not mix them. How do we know that Islam is no more than a big loud toothless handless passenger on a Middle Eastern Bus driven by someone else?
Xunxian – You almost had me believing that religion is neutral in the whole middle eastern deal. The powerpoint presentation is the coup de grace in your case against the role of religion in the Middle Eastern conflict.
All–As far as continuing the discussion, I could get on board if we focus on trying to define what religion is. Unless we can do that we will never agree about religion’s part to the human condition.