2020-06-21 00:26:31
Judge: nzlockie TOP JUDGEWin awarded to: Kush
Reasoning: Temsu forfeited, so Kush wins.
PRO posted his round in the comments along with an apology and an excuse that he was having problems posting in round. It's unorthodox, and better practice would have been to just ask Admin to fix it, but there's no way that CON wouldn't have seen the comment notification, so therefore I'm considering the post as valid.
Therefore, since PRO's goes unchallenged, PRO wins by forfeit.
Feedback: PRO - I listened to your case and while you don't need it, I give you some feedback anyway.
Firstly I liked how you defined the terms. I especially liked how you broke down the objections as being Medical, Spiritual and Ethical - after doing this you focused on the ethical objections. This was really well done as you made it clear that there were more aspects to the issue, but only focused ont he one that was relevant to this debate. It was really well phrased.
Unfortunately that's also where you lost me. After making this point you basically just said that it was morally bad because... it just was. You claimed Animal Rights but you didn't give me a source for this. Since you yourself said that it was contentious, I really needed a bit more elaboration.
The reason this is important is that if you can't convince me that these rights actually exist, or show me what they say, I don't know what credence to give them.
The rest of your argument was essentially just claiming that it was barbaric, and asking me to imagine how I would feel. In a formal debate context, these appeals to emotion are useless and could actually hurt your case. For example, you seem to be assigning human emotions and cognitive reasoning to animals that science simply doesn't support. It's a risky strategy.
A more effective strategy may have been to define those characteristics that Humans have valued in themselves which could be argued to be compromised when they decide to raise or kill animals for food. In other words, focus on the Humans - not the animals. Not only would this approach be more directly in line with the resolution, it would mitigate any attacks claiming that you were some crazy hippy.
One of the corners you paint yourself into when you argue the way you did, is that you're running the risk of making animals out to have some sort of a moral high ground when it comes to killing living creatures. Which is obviously wrong when you observe nature for even a few minutes. I realise that this is probably not your position, but it's an easy trap to fall into, and one I think you'd be smart to anticipate and avoid before it's made.
Hope to see you get this debate again, maybe with someone that will actually contest it!
0 comments on this judgement
Kush (PRO)
Temsu (CON)
Judge: dpowell3543
@admin this is the debate that Kush had a problem posting the video. My memory was wrong, he only posted a link in the comments.
Posted 2020-06-23 08:13:54
There is some problem with posting videos on this website and I encountered the same problem. So I am posting my link here. Judge/s, I sincerely offer my apologies for this inconvenience and I offer my opponent the chance to also post his video here. But if we are to complete the two round within the time that is left for judging which is approximately 2 weeks, I have to urge my opponent to post his videos as quickly as possible so that the judge/s may have time to watch the videos as well as offer their vote. I assure everyone that if my opponent's video comes in, I will be posting mine within 24 hours of time.
This is the youtube link to my first argument:
https://youtu.be/2pTAbYYcukIPosted 2020-06-20 01:18:58