On balance, the pen is mightier than the sword.

1)Con says the pen/sword have no intrinsic might. If I drop a sword and a pen from a set height, any height will do, the sword will hit the ground with more force(might) than the pen, because it weights much more. It doesn't matter if Yraelz's sixth grade sister is dropping it or a full-grown man. Therefore, there is an intrinsic sense of might to these inanimate objects indeed, and my opponents statement that "The pen and the sword have absolutely no intrinsic might what-so-ever" is false. He could have used this chance to prove that the sword DOES in fact have more might, but his contention clearly does not include this, and it is clearly false. 2)The title absolutely does NOT dictate that these two are "balanced". It says "on balance", which means that they can be compared ON a balance. "one cannot be greater than the other"... Actually, on a balance, there is always the chance that one can be greater than the other. 3)In this contention he weighs the number of skilled swordsmen in history versus the number of skilled pensmen in history. This doesn't negate the fact that the pen is mightier than the sword. Most armed citizens in the U.S. have simple handguns and rifles, but does that mean that simple handguns and rifles are mightier than a tank mortar? Even if you lump them together, a bunch of militia with handguns and rifles could not penetrate an army of tanks and airplanes. In almost every analogy that you can think of, the less mighty of the two will be more numerous. It doesn't logically follow that you lump up all the less mighty, and compare them as a whole against the more mighty, unless you have a logical reason to do so, like if they all fought for the same army. The fact that there has been many more swordsmen than pensmen only reinforces my point; since the pensman is so much more powerful, it logically follows that they would be less numerous. There are many more less mighty than there are more mighty. How many Michael Jordans, Brett Farves, Wayne Gretzkies, and Mickey Mantles are there compared to people who play these sports who are considerably less mighty? Does this mean all the crappy sports players should be lumped together and declared more mighty than these great men? 7)He states that the sword can be used "to carve and write anything", and that "It may double with the same function as that of the pen". Ok Yraelz, you go out and get a sword and carve me out a novel on the side of a board, and then go tell me how mighty you fell afterward! All of the great pensmen in history, from the writers of the Bible to the writers of the U.S. Constitution, would not have succeeded in carving out these great documents WITH A SWORD AND A PIECE OF WOOD. I am simply unable to accept how you can say that since I can carve out a few nicks out of a tree that the sword can capture the essence of the pen. 10)Con's point is that the words a pen writes have to be interpreted, thus making their effects only indirect, while a swordsman cutting off someone's head has a somewhat more direct effect on a person. While this is true, to say that the pen and the words the penman writes have no value, simply because the words themselves must first motivate people to act before its value is realized, is to miss the entire point of the maxim "the pen is mightier than the sword". The reason that this maxim was created was to enlighten humanity that an indirect action(writing pursuasively about an opponent) can carry more weight than a direct action(trying to take the matter into your own hands and attacking them directly). His point, that it is ultimately the swordsman who makes the true difference in any case, because the penman is not the one out there actually carrying out the killing, does not take into account WHY the swordsman is out there doing the killing. The penman CONTROLS the swordsman. A king controls an army, and you wouldn't say that just because it is each soldier doing the actual killing, that any soldier is mightier than the king. Furthermore, saying that there is no inherent value in the pen or the words it writes is simply making a metaphysical claim that carries no weight in the real world. Practically speaking, the words obviously do carry a lot of value, or else how could you explain the effects that they carry to influence the swordsman? 4)Con attempts to just stake his claim that it was the sword that caused our revolution. I will concede that there was a fair mix of the pen and the sword that caused it, as to avoid turning this into a debate on the Rev. War. To say that the sword cause the constitution however, rather than the pen, is a practice in absurdity. How can you possibly just conclude that the USC is a "byproduct" of the sword? It was great penmen who wrote the USC! It wasn't a bunch of warriors that wrote it... Just because the warriors were instrumental in fighting off the british doesn't mean that the warriors wrote the USC. The USC is clearly a creation of the pen and I fail to see how you can successfully argue to the contrary. Most of cons arguments in cont. 4,5,6 and 8 simply show how wars shaped our history, and then he attempts to claim that since wars shape history that every single instance of a man holding a pen(or doing anything else for that matter) is only because some war put him there in the first place. He is attempting to cloud the debate, and I must work here to clear it up. His arguments would imply that we are sitting here having these debates because the revolutionary war and civil war affected us, therefore our arguments in this debate's main cause is the wars that put us in the spot we are now, not the fact that we are actually writing it. He attempts to say that since Jesus was jewish, it is the wars involving jews that are the main cause of Jesus and the Bible. I would point out that just because a war occurs, it does not mean that the main cause of everything that happens afterward is the war itself. His arguments have merit only to the extent that every action has effects that are spread out through the world, but you can't just turn around and say that because a certain action affected something else, that it is the primary cause of that event. In round 2 I postulated that Christianity is propagated through the pen, because the Bible is written word and the wars fought because of it are after-effects. No war directly cause the writing of the Bible, and since the Bible has had a greater cumulative effect than most wars in history, the pen is therefore mightier than the sword. 5)Again, Jesus' impacts are mostly propagated through the pen. Some war has affected every person in history, and it is complete hogwash to just say that every cause of every thing is whatever war was most recent that occured in the region. The Bible was written with the pen, and is an example of the power of it. No instance of the sword approaches the influence that the pen had on the USC or the Bible, and these two documents work to show how powerful indeed the pen is. Jesus, the most powerful man in history(based on his influence in the Christian faith), had his influence propagated through the bible(pen). Your arguments cannot change this fact, and since the sheer magnitude of the influence of Jesus, the Bible, and the USC is so tremendous I can not see how you can compare any amount of warfare to them. "Had it not been for the sword sustaining the Jewish nation then Jesus could never have existed". I'm sure God wouldn't agree with you Yraelz... 6)the sword does NOT exist independently. Every war has a reason. Those reasons are mainly dependent on the pen. The pen shapes warfare, and the individual warriors are merely pawns in the general scheme. It is the kings that wield the greatest power; and the penmen that influence their decisions. 8)WW2 and civ. war are merely 2 instances in US hist. US is more than just these 2 events. pen's effects real and tangible. no more room aaaaaaaaaghhhh