The Atheist Cage Match Challenge
by Brian Holtz
Posted 2003-02
To any Christian apologist reading this:
My best arguments
against Christianity are better than your best arguments for it.
If you disagree, I challenge you as follows. Let us each compose a
single
document of a fixed size that gives our best arguments, and then
successively
revise it (if we choose) to address the other's arguments, until we
each
think that our document adequately answers the other's. Once we have
achieved
this reflective equilibrium, we can leave it to any readers to decide
whose
arguments are in fact better.
The Rules
- Each document must be a single html file no greater than 50Kb.
- Each document's first paragraph must be worded precisely as
specified
in
the next rule, and must contain
- an href link to the opponent's document;
- an href link to a page containing all and only these rules; and
- a "more materials" link, that is not mentioned or referenced in
any way
anywhere else in the document.
- After an optional title and author credit, the first paragraph of
each
document must be:
These are currently my best arguments {for|against} Christianity,
chosen
specifically against the contrary arguments here,
and in accordance with these
debating rules.
Here are more materials that
support
my thesis but that are not as important as the material I present
here.
I believe the arguments in this document alone make a better case for
my
thesis than the opposing document makes for the contrary thesis. I
believe
that an educated and reasonable non-specialist who reads just these
opposing
documents should recognize the superiority of my thesis without having
to also read any other material that either side makes available or
reference
to. If anything in this document or my supporting materials violate the
rules of this challenge, it constitutes an admission by me that the
contrary arguments are superior to mine.
- No other external links are allowed, except to source materials
listed
at earlychristianwritings.com
and hosted on pages consisting primarily of original source material
and
containing no polemical content or links. (e.g. Bible Gateway, but not
the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.) In these rules, "link" means any way
of
facilitating or suggesting navigation by the reader or her browser to
any
web page.
- Each author may modify his document at any time.
- The rules are always open to modification, but only at the
agreement of
both authors.
Justifying The Rules
Why limit the size? For several reasons:
- An argument should be edited for the convenience of its readers,
not
its
author. Readers should not have to search endless and repetitive
debate transcripts trying to find an author's core evidence and central
arguments. The size constraint forces an author to reveal (by a metric
of space allotted) what he thinks are his best arguments.
- The evidence and arguments on this issue are almost unchanged in
almost
two millennia. Any polemicist should by now be able to summarize his
best
arguments and his answers to the best counterarguments.
- The size constraint makes the opposing arguments similar to an
evening's
debate in an auditorium, where strict time limits prevent filibuster.
- The size constraint provides a disincentive (but not a guarantee)
against
dilatoriness, irrelevancy, obfuscation, ad hominem, and general
childishness.
- Some polemicists are unemployed with arbitrary amounts of free
time,
while
others have full-time professional careers, other interests, and young
families to raise. Unemployed polemicists (and their loyal readers) run
the risk of overestimating the strength of their position just because
the polemicist has the free time to spew new regurgitations of his
material
in response to every criticism of his position. This austere debate
format
gives such a polemicist a way to prove that his position is strong and
not just corpulent.
Why not a larger size? This is a challenge to debate, not
a call for dueling monographs. If an author has a book or well-organized
and well-edited online
text whose entire contents
he is confident potential debate readers would actually scrutinize,
then
he might feel no need to answer my arguments except by reference to
this
discrete magnum opus. However, if the author simply presides over an
ever-increasing
spaghetti pile of regurgitated self-citations, skeptical readers could
justifiably suspect that the author is hoping to achieve by quantity of
argument what he cannot achieve by quality.
Why not a smaller size? I'm willing to work within any
smaller size limit, provided my opponent is the first to post a draft
that
comes in under that limit.
Isn't disallowing external links unscholarly? Of
course
it is. But in self-published polemics, there is no peer review and no
editorial
oversight, and thus no way to enforce the space constraints recommended
above. Any polemicist who thinks this format is beneath his high
standards
of scholarship is free to exhibit his scholarly citation
practices
on his "more materials" page or elsewhere in his oeuvre. What he is not
free to do is pretend that he has abstracted his best arguments and
then
present a hollow shell adorned with trapdoors into a labyrinth of
dilatoriness
and obfuscation. If he has some research he wants to reference, he
should
describe it and cite it. If he has a powerful argument he wants to
employ,
he should state it (or even copy and paste it). If he does not
think
his readers deserve a well-edited summary of his best arguments, then
his
readers might justifiably question how good his arguments really are.
Why iterate? An argument cannot be properly evaluated
until
one has considered something approximating the best available
counter-argument
to it. If the opposing documents do not address each other's arguments,
readers will find it harder to judge which side is right. If the
documents
approach reflective equilibrium, in which each author is satisfied with
his answers to the other's arguments, then neither side has the
asymmetric
advantage of the last word. If the strength of a polemicist's
position
depends on his always having the last word, that's a clue that his
position
is in fact weak.
Why not other forms of polemic? There is already a
mountain
of books, web sites, online debates, archived newsgroups, etc. related
to the topic at hand, but there are (AFAIK) no examples of contrary
discourses
that have been continually revised until reaching reflective
equilibrium.
Such an exercise might prove illuminating, and I'm curious how it would
turn out. Who knows, I might find my arguments succinctly
demolished,
and convert to Christianity.
Why Should You Do It?
To demonstrate that your best arguments are better than mine. Or
at least, to demonstrate your confidence that your best arguments are
better
than mine.
It's surprisingly hard to find comprehensive self-contained essays
surveying
the evidence for Christianity. Here are some of the places I've looked
and
the closest candidates I've found:
Surely somewhere in your writings there is material that could readily
be assembled into a relatively comprehensive summary of your arguments.
Indeed, if any extant text of yours smaller than 50Kb makes a better
argument
than my document does, then you're already done!
What If You Don't Do It?
I (and probably others) will consider it likely that
- my best arguments are better than yours;
- you realize my best arguments are better than yousr;
- you are afraid for readers to compare our arguments side-by-side
in a
concise
format;
- if we were making competing speeches at an auditorium debate,
you're
afraid
you'd lose;
- you rely on the irrelevancies, dilatoriness, minutiae,
obfuscations,
and sheer corpulence of the apologetic oeuvre to delude yourself and
your
readers that your position is stronger than it is.
Of course, we'll also consider it remotely possible that the truth of
your
position is only evident to people who have mastered all the alleged
biblical
scholarship that you probably claim supports your position. However, we
would then question the morality and competence of the god(s) whose
revelation
is so difficult to appreciate.
So: what Christian apologist dares lock his arguments in a cage with
my
arguments?