THE OFFICIAL IZBO TRIAL; Resolved: Izbo10 should be permanently banned

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, izbo seems to merely want to rehash old debates rather than answer the charges against him. Nothing he has cited justifies his continual harassment, vote bombing, and hate speech. I'll briefly answer his contentions, but all the charges against him still stand - unrefuted. == Rebuttal == R1) Izbo's debate with ReformedArsenal on the topic, "God is guilty of collusion to sacrifice a child in the case of Jepthah" The main reason that izbo lost this debate so resoundingly is due to the word "collusion." ReformedArsenal points out that in Judges 11:9, the Lord never asks Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter; Jephthah, in fact, unnecessarily makes this promise because as RA points out, the Lord's spirit came to *all* the generals of the Israelite's armies and promised them victory. God clearly did not ask for anything in return in this passage. All of the RFD's against izbo mention his inability to prove "collusion," which would require God to *ask* for a sacrifice, as he did in the case of Abraham, but *not* in the case of Jepthah. R2) Izbo's forum post asking Christians why they think murder is wrong If someone asks you "how would a Christian prove murder is wrong?" a legitimate response is, "how would an atheist prove murder is wrong?" The answer to both questions can be the same. Secondly, Man-is-good and others started questioning izbo's ability to prove that murder is wrong. In high school Lincoln-Douglas style debate, this morality debate is common. One topic was, "It is morally permissible to kill one person to save one or more people." Value systems like utilitarianism do not expressly forbid murder. Conclusion: the people izbo is complaining about were asking legitimate questions. R3) People can't grasp logic? It is worth noting that the thread izbo posts here is yet another "teaching" thread, where izbo purports to teach people about basic logic. Kleptin, a well-respected member of DDO, actually tried to engage with izbo in this thread: "Izbo, I want you to answer me honestly. Do you care more about teaching people what you want to teach them, or do you care more about the ego-boost of pretending to be an authority? Because it seems to be the latter. You're going to be met with resistance not because your ‘students' are ignorant or ill-educated, but because you come across as patronizing and arrogant. The best way to have others receive your ideas is to try to come across as an equal, not as a superior." Izbo's response was that people were too stupid to be considered his peers, so he'd like to continue patronizing and mocking them. This merely proves, yet again, that izbo is beyond help. R4) What is a zombie? A zombie is re-animated dead flesh; however, the flesh is still considered dead. Izbo asserts that the body is always re-animated by supernatural forces, but many zombie movies, such as Resident Evil and I Am Legend, employ a virus as the agent which re-animates the flesh of the zombies. A virus explains why people who are bitten by the zombies become zombies themselves. In this forum discussion, Izbo was arguing that if Jesus was brought back to life by supernatural forces, then Jesus was a zombie. The people who responded to izbo (all of them atheists) pointed out that zombies have additional characteristics, such as mindlessness or soullessness. Random House defines a zombie as, "the body of a dead person supernaturally imbued with the semblance of life and set to perform tasks as a mute, will-less slave OR a living person enslaved in the same manner after the soul has been magically removed." [1] Since the Jesus story asserts that he was restored to life with no defects, he would not be considered a zombie by most people. Izbo asserts fallaciously that anyone brought back to life is a zombie, but ignores the additional requirements for a zombie. Not all undead are zombies. In many shows that employ witchcraft (Buffy, Charmed, etc) a zombie only results from a resurrection spell *gone wrong.* This normal resurrection/zombie resurrection distinction clearly demonstrates that it is not the case that all formerly dead people are considered zombies. In addition, in everyday life we call people who look utterly exhausted "zombies," which demonstrates that the most important trait of a zombie is seeming mindlessness. Izbo never asserts that the resurrected Jesus was mindless. However, this point most perfectly exemplifies how izbo is trying to force this debate to devolve into silliness. R5) Izbo asserts that JustCallMeTarzan is too stupid to understand what an atheist is I'll merely show you JCMT's post and you can decide if he is too stupid to grasp the meaning of this word. JCMT wrote: "A pretty simple thought experiment shows that ‘non-theist' and ‘atheist' are not the same thing. First of all, Izbo only presents half the etymology. Atheist derives from Greek - A + Theos. In Greek, the prefix A- can mean ‘lacking' or ‘against.' So right off the bat, there is a semantic distinction to be made between one who lacks a belief in god and one who is against a belief in god. Second, in colloquial English, there are positions like Ignostic and Apatheist. This indicates that there is certainly not the false dichotomy that Izbo presents where Theist and Atheist are the only options. The case of Ignostic proves this to be the case - an Ignostic doesn't address the merits of belief, but first professes uncertainty for lack of a definition of god. But one cannot be ignostic with respect to a particular god. One can, however, be apatheistic with respect to a particular god, indicating that no matter what else, there is indeed a third position. To recap: Izbo's argument impermissibly generalizes all subsets of ‘non-theist' and calls them ‘atheist.'" Is JCMT too stupid to grasp the meaning of this word? You decide. R6) izbo contends he is being silenced by all the theists on DDO I think izbo is the first person to accuse DDO of being rife with theists. Most people on DDO are atheists. In fact, most of the people izbo calls "idiot theists" are actually atheists. Man-is-good is an atheist. JustCallMeTarzan is an atheist. Cerebral_Narcissist is an atheist. The reason izbo has so many problems with these users it *not* because they are theists and he is an atheist, it is because izbo approaches them in an unfriendly manner and is unwilling to calmly defend his arguments against devil's advocates. I demand that izbo produce evidence that he has been "attacked from all fronts" by massive groups of theists. I further demand evidence that Diagoras left because of the theist harassment that izbo claims is inherent to DDO. R7) Cerebral is a moral nihilist Izbo can attack this straw man all day. I never endorsed moral nihilism in this debate. This is irrelevant. This is not a morality debate. We all agree that this trial is about whether izbo's ban will make DDO a better place. 1 in 3 DDO users say that his ban will make them significantly happier to visit this site. R8) Izbo generates activity in the forums Remember, not all activity is good activity. Reviewing the threads izbo posted here, most of the "activity" he generated was counter-trolling. Izbo starts a thread and people started discussing their favorite foods and Shakespeare in an attempt to annoy izbo. This hardly adds anything to the Religion forum. Second, if we accept izbo's logic here, then we would have to allow all trolls to stay because they all generate lots of forum activity. However, a forum filled almost entirely with troll topics and counter-trolling responses quickly becomes an unreadable forum that no serious members would frequent. At the end of the day, izbo offers no real defense for his harassment and vote bombing. He merely tries to prove that his actions were all justified, which they clearly are not. [1] http://www.definitions.net...