Islam is evil:

Judge: lannan13    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: condeelmaster
Reasoning:
There isn't much here to say. I have viewed the document and the key issue is that Google Docs can be edited at anytime to change the path of the debate. This is normally why I like it for people to go and have their argument in the debate so that it is in bold, engraved, thus cannot be changed. The second issue I see here is that Pro violates the character limit as there's no way that fits within the rules. This is an automatic forfeiture in my eyes and this is a violation of conduct in the debate. Though, I am certain that if Pro would've posted his arguments in the debate that he would have won the debate, that's not the case. For the above reasons I have no choice, but to vote Con.

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1 user rated this judgement as biased
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2 users rated this judgement as exceptional
1 user rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: fire_wings
Win awarded to: Ketuvim
Reasoning:
Not much to say. Giving the debate to Ketuvim because she has the only arguments, meaning that she wins the debate. If there was conduct, I will give it to Con, but because there isn't, vote Pro.

Feedback:
No googledocs, please!

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2 users rated this judgement as a vote bomb
1 user rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: Anthony Tai
Win awarded to: condeelmaster

Judge: Lord Farny
Win awarded to: condeelmaster
Reasoning:
He's right, Ketuvim broke the rules. Sorry bud.

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1 user rated this judgement as biased

Judge: IncorrigiblePerspective
Win awarded to: condeelmaster

Judge: admin    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: condeelmaster
Reasoning:
I'm sure this has been pointed out enough both in the debate and outside of it, but you really should be making your arguments in the debate, not inside Google Docs. Even if you copy-paste from GDocs into the debate, then that's fine. Using it to get around character limits, however, is especially manipulative.

It is not, however, in my view, a forfeiture. It is a source. A poorly cited one with little substantive argument behind it, but not a concession, either. Just because you (allegedly) yourself wrote a source doesn't mean it isn't valid, and I think I may differ from some of the others on this point.

The argument espoused in the document can be summed up like this: Christianity is true (premise), Islam fails to meet the Christian standard of good (various citations and interpretations), therefore Islam is bad. Pro extended this argument in the final round with an appeal to objective morality. It must be stressed, however, that while sourced, much of this material was more introduced to the debate by con than pro. Pro never substantiated their claims in the debate, making their argument inherently indefensible. This was a very unfortunate oversight, as the GDoc proves pro has done a substantial amount of research into this topic.

Con had two arguments. The first was not much better than pro's, which was that the bible commits the same errors that the qu'ran does. The reason this was not much better was that it was only introduced in the final round when pro had no chance to rebut it. Introducing entirely new arguments so late is hardly fair as it means you cannot really have a debate about those points. It would have been valid to raise the exact same point as early as round 1. I therefore didn't really buy into this argument much. Moreover, I'm not sure it even negates. Isn't it possible Christianity and Islam are both evil?

The second argument was the assertion that holy texts were non-credible sources, because apparently Google Scholar is. I needed some explanation as to why. If I accepted that pro's sources were non-credible, con wins the debate on the grounds of argument. However, just saying that they are not is not enough to convince me. Analysis or evidence would have done just fine. Heck, give me a narrative, show me a picture of Noah's ark and explain that "this is also in the bible. It is now known to be scientifically impossible. Can we therefore trust the bible?" Not the strongest argument, but better than nothing, and totally not hard to do. In fact con did it very well with their first argument!

I'm awarding this debate on burden of proof. Both pro and con had poor arguments, and its not because of their skills as debaters but because of HOW they presented their arguments: poor conduct by both sides, and both sides were guilty of shallow argumentation on a few points. But it is pro who had the burden to convince me of their case, not con. Con wins this debate by default.

Feedback:
I want to say a word about conduct. Both debaters will probably hate me for this but in my good conscience as a judge I don't really want to let it slide, either.

If one side really sucks in a debate, that doesn't mean they've given up, that just means they're not that good. Sometimes it's good sportsmanship to even kind of "make the argument for them", such as "even if (thing they didn't think to say), then (counterargument)". Debate is inherently adversarial, things can become heated, and those little shows of respect go a long way towards establishing the class of both sides.

It follows, then, that if one side has poor conduct in a debate, that doesn't mean they've given up either. It's also poor conduct to follow poor conduct by not debating the topic at hand. It's poor conduct to turn the debate into a mudslinging ad hom. war over who has the worse conduct.

This was such a shame because both sides clearly have the ability to write good points. Pro's argument would have easily fitted had they simply hotlinked their source citations (edeb8 lets you do that, unlike other debate sites). While con's last round argument was exceptionally good.

While there was a certain degree of skill shown by both sides in making arguments, I'd also like to just suggest that this topic usually concerns less theology and more morality. What do we mean by "good" or "evil"? If a religion contains bad commands, for example, but most adherants to that religion are good people, can the religion claim some credit for that? One side should present mosques as radical extremist centers of hate speech, the other, as community centers full of peace and goodwill. Of course the tenets of the religion are important, but what's more important is usually how it impacts on the everyday believers of the religion, and those around them.

I hope that helps and I invite any questions on this judgement if anyone would like more help or feedback.

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1 user rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: ButterCatx    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: condeelmaster