Belief in an afterlife negatively impacts the world of practical affairs

1. Excellent. 2. "Faith results in both belief in the afterlife, and in negative consequences. However, this fails to show that belief in the afterlife has these negative impacts. " - So you concede that "belief in the afterlife is a function of faith," and that faith can have negative consequences, but hold that belief in the afterlife, though a *function of* faith, not only has good impacts on the temporal world, but that it has *no negative impacts* whatsoever. As I brought out in the last round, you are burdening yourself with two arguments: negating my resolution with " belief in the afterlife has a positive impact" is very different than negating it with "belief in the afterlife has no negative impact at all. " I refer again to my point on primacy, and that of the double-standard my opponent has introduced. 3. "I am not limiting the scope of the resolution. " - I beg to differ. "The resolution specifies 'impacts' not 'impacted' or 'has impacted. '" - I now refer you to my R1 disclaimer on semantics. Let me say that 1) my opponent should have made this argument at the beginning of the debate; and 2) if we are going to 'adhere to the tense of the resolution' then necessarily neither of us may present any evidence and everything said in this debate is for nought. This is because I have no evidence of the specific "present" (the exact moments that it took me to write this sentence), and that when my opponent reads this sentence what evidence I did present will be in the past, and when the debate is judged everything we both wrote will be in the past, thus making it irrelevant by his own standard. "I must restate that the behavior of religious tyrants and suicide bombers does not result from belief in an afterlife, but instead, from promoting the will of their God. My opponent has not demonstrated a link, and therefore, his impacts fall[sic]. " - I have given both theoretical and empirical data to support my resolution. To make the point again: if person [x] believes in an afterlife, and then accordingly acts on his subjective knowledge of what it takes to get to the afterlife, or the better part of it, and that action involves murder (for instance), then the belief in an afterlife has had a negative impact on the practical world. For the person who committed the murder (re: Inquisition) it was the appropriate thing to do, both for their own eternal future and that of their victim, in their mind. My opponent may accept or deny the Inquisition as evidence if he likes based on the "tense of the resolution," but he cannot deny that what I just wrote is a historical and logical fact. "I have made a distinct link between belief in the afterlife and positive societal impacts. " - I never denied that that belief in an afterlife may possibly have some positive impacts. So first, a straw man. However, all of the positive impacts he has so far listed would exist without said belief, just as war would. Some people are naturally generous and charitable, but as an unreligious person, if I had to choose between a religious person giving me a dollar out of charity or not killing me because we differ in our views, I would choose not being killed. Second, there are other systems of morality and ethics that provide reasons for being charitable or not committing murder that do not involve the afterlife at all - utilitarianism, for example. Third, I can simply redirect my opponent's own negation of my resolution back to him on this point: I hold that these so-called positive impacts were a result of faith, and not specifically belief in the afterlife. "Both act in order to fulfill Allah's will, not in order to achieve Heaven. They feel that God's will is just, and hence, attempt to promote 'justice. '" - By fulfilling Allah's fictional will they automatically go to Heaven, as you said. CON "Zakat, as one of the Five Pillars of Islam, is a requirement, under Islam, to enter Heaven. Hence, Zakat is performed with the explicit goal of entering Heaven. " - I dealt with this above. "The Ten Commandments outline a series of rules, the violation of any of which can result in eternal damnation. Adherence to the Commandments is, therefore, a result of belief in the afterlife. " - I dealt with this as well, but let me add that though adherence to the Ten Commandments *might* be a result of belief in the afterlife, it might just as easily be (for the "Commandments" pertinent to this debate) an incidental obedience to federal and state law. I also find it ironic that in the Bible the Hebrew god gave the the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" immediately before commanding his people to conquer the promised land, which according to Bible killed many. In closing, I bring the argument full-circle. My opponent has made much of "faith" and little of "belief in an afterlife," while trying to create a distance between the two things. It should be said, in keeping with my (and my opponent's) argument as it has been presented throughout the debate, that faith is a kind of belief - the kind that is not subject to questions, doubts, or empirical evidence. As he has said so brilliantly, "belief in the afterlife is a function of faith. " It is thus logical to say that the religionists who believe in the afterlife as if it were a real, physical place, have faith that the afterlife exists. They then act according to the criteria of whatever their particular, wholly incidental faith requires - *to get to the afterlife. * And the requirements - depending on what they are - can, do, and have had a disastrous impact on all of human society throughout history. My argument is that belief in the afterlife has, has had, and will continue to have a negative impact on the world of practical affairs. The most basic negative impact is that people are acting out of faith - a necessary component of belief in the afterlife - to achieve entry to an afterlife which there is again no good reason to suppose exists. That is, more simply put, all people that believe in an afterlife do to some extent neglect the world in which we live and know exists - because they are chasing ghosts, as it were. The supposed good impacts of belief in the afterlife can, do, have, and will continue to exist without belief in the afterlife. By applying Ockham's Razor, we see that belief in the afterlife is superfluous to its possible good impacts, but that its negative impacts are dependent on the belief itself. Thank you again for a most excellent debate. Britt