That "God Exists" should be added to the "Big Issues" on DDO

Thanks again to 9spaceking. I will now offer some thoughts on our resolution and then advance my own case. I will respond to his case in the next round. FRAMEWORK Quoting from the DDO homepage, the purpose of the Big Issues is to encourage DDO members to "[i]nvestigate today’s most controversial debate topics covering society’s biggest issues in politics, religion, education and more. Gain balanced, non-biased insight into each issue and review the breakdown of pro-con stances within our community" [1]. According to Merriam-Webster, to investigate is to "to observe or study by close examination and systematic inquiry" [2]. A good example of an issue like this is the flat tax. Debaters are encouraged to explore the empirical and philosophical arguments for an against such a proposal and to weigh the relative benefits and harms in order to devise a terse case. You can take a position on an issue such as the flat tax based upon empirical inquiry. However, you cannot do the same with the question of "God." The Big Issues have one binding feature: they can be posed to members in the form of a question to the effect of "Do you support X?" Note that this isn't a question of whether a member believes in X, but whether he or she supports X. The Big Issues, by their very nature, are clear, concise and possess truth value--you can determine and investigate whether a flat tax will yield desirable outcomes, for instance. However, you cannot do the same for God, who is thoroughly beyond our reach and is, with our limited information, nothing more than a theoretical construct. In order to win this debate, Pro has accepted the full burden of proof in demonstrating normatively that the question of God's existence ought to be featured in the Big Issues. CON'S CASECONTENTION ONE: AMBIGUITY Going back to the flat tax example, we have a very simple definition widely known by the populace: "A system that applies the same tax rate to every taxpayer regardless of income bracket" [3]. With respect to the question of "God exists," however, I see two potential problems with this. First, about which God are we speaking? There are about 4,200 religions [4], neither of which is necessariy more right or wrong than another since one's religious affiliation is based largely on factors such as geographic location and upbringing [5], and some people tend to subscribe to amalgamations of these, such as unitarian universalism [6] and deism [7]. Just looking at DDO statistics at this present moment, 188 members self-identify as Deist [8], 3,217 self-identify as agnostic [9], 272 identify as Sunni Muslim [10], 4,813 identify as Christian [11], etc. Note, also, that there are various sects of Christianity, and both Shitte and Sunni Islam, so there are even distinctions among very similar elements of one religion. When my adversary adds "Does God exist?" to the Big Issues, to which God will he appeal to and which one will he leave out? Why is he only posing the question with respect to one god, and thus disenfranchising people who believe in multiplie gods? Why is he using "God" with a capital "g," to imply a personal as opposed to deistic god? Why is his policy imposing one rigid worldview on others with starkly different opinions? There may be scenarios, as I will discuss later, where there is no simple "yes" or "no" answer to this questionSecond, we move to the ambiguity with respect to the word "exists." "Exists," according to Merriam Webster, means "to have actual being: to be real" [12]. However, from the same source, it may also mean "to have being in a specified place or with respect to understood limitations or conditions" [12]. The first definition refers to objective existence, whereas the second refers to subjective existence. In other words, God may exist either objectively, as in he is the same for all of us, or subjectively, as a concept within our minds where we all have different conceptions of what he--or she--may in fact be. If God only exists subjectively, and may I remind PRO and our audience that we have no way of verifying whether God does, then this question becomes utterly meaningless. Any statistic would be irrelevant, because people would not be responding to the same question. If you were to make the question as objective as you could--e.g., in the form of "Does the Christian God as described in the Bible exist?"--you disenfranchise people of different beliefs, so there is necessarily a trade-off between tolerance and objectivity. Either way, the topic itself is far too touchy and ambiguous to be properly molded into the Big Issues. CONTENTION TWO: NO TRUTH VALUE I alluded to his argument earlier, and will briefly reiterate it now. Whereas you can investigate a subject such as a flat tax or national healthcare and come up with empirical arguments, you cannot do the same for God. God, by definition, is beyond human comprehension and beyond logic, and we have no conception of what God is or isn't and no way to understand God. Debating existence, therefore, is nothing more than opinion, as God is not an empirical question. This is in stark contrast with other other Big Issues. Even questions such as same-sex marriage, which boil down to an opinion, can involve appeals to moral questions, legal precedent, and empirical studies with respect to child rearing and adoption. The question of God, however, cannot. CONTENTION THREE: SCHRODINGER'S CAT The crux of this thought experiment conducted in 1935 by Erwin Schrodinger is that a binary to the effect of "either X or Y" isn't sufficient. Via his experiment, we cannot know whether the cat is dead or alive, so it is both dead and alive. "The observer cannot know whether or not an atom of the substance has decayed, and consequently, cannot know whether the vial has been broken, the hydrocyanic acid released, and the cat killed. Since we cannot know, according to quantum law, the cat is both dead and alive, in what is called a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive). This situation is sometimes called quantum indeterminacy or the observer's paradox: the observation or measurement itself affects an outcome, so that the outcome as such does not exist unless the measurement is made. (That is, there is no single outcome unless it is observed.)" [13].The point I'm trying to convey is that binary assessments are often inadequate. The question "Does God exist," we would expect, would be answered with either a "yes" or a "no." However, many who describe themselves as agnostic would not answer in either direction, but would retort that they simply don't know. Not only, then, would including this as a big issue would discriminatory to these people and disparaging towards a valid point of point, but wholly inefficient and short-sighted, which would necessarily erode DDO's credibility. CONCLUSIONI have offered my case against this resolution, and will rebut PRO's arguments in the next round. I thank him again for engaging in this debate with me, and would like to pass this debate over to him once more for his next round. Thank you for reading. SOURCES [1]: http://www.debate.org...;[2]: http://www.merriam-webster.com...;[3]: http://www.investopedia.com...;[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org...;[5]: http://www.apologeticspress.org...;[6]: http://en.wikipedia.org...; [7]: http://altreligion.about.com...;[8]: http://www.debate.org...;[9]: http://www.debate.org...;[10]: http://www.debate.org...;[11]: http://www.debate.org...;[12]: http://www.merriam-webster.com...;[13]: http://whatis.techtarget.com...;