Appeal: distinguo
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #129325:01upheld Jay Dyer against Pastor P agonisma: distinguo (+2)
The council upheld the call: Jay Dyer earned 2.4 points.
“Do you think oversight change do you think oversight and change mean the same thing?... In fact, the word oversight does not mean the same thing as change.”
Diogenes: Pastor P had slid from the church's oversight of the canon to the church changing God's word; Dyer splits the two senses and the objection collapses, leaving his opponent with only "well, maybe not to you" before switching topics.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Jay Dyer's opening and consistent method is internal critique that presses for precise distinctions rather than loose conflations, and this line is a direct exercise of that method against Pastor P's slide from "the church has oversight" to "the church can change the word of God.". The exchange shows a genuine dialectical move: Pastor P had recast Jay's "oversight" claim as equivalent to a priest's boast that "we can add the apocrypha... make changes wherever we feel like," and Jay explicitly splits the equivocal term ("oversight does not mean the same thing as change"), leaving Pastor P with only the non-answer "well, maybe not to you" before pivoting to a new question about the apocrypha rather than defending the conflation — this is a clean distinguo that dissolves the specific point in dispute.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "clarification", on the same ledger as the callout. Rather than letting Pastor P's conflation stand, Jay immediately presses him on whether "oversight" and "change" are synonymous and states plainly that they are not, refusing to let the debate proceed on an assumed equivalence between his actual claim (church oversight of transmission) and the different claim Pastor P had just attributed to him (the church can change/add to scripture). This is a precise demand for definitional accuracy that heads off the misrepresentation rather than assuming the terms interchangeable.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Jay Dyer's standing position since the opening is that church tradition/oversight (recognition of canon and apostolic authorship) is distinct from any claim that the church may alter scripture's contents; this move is a direct, on-topic application of that standing distinction, not a new departure. Pastor P conflated "oversight" (what Jay actually argued: the church's historical role in recognizing/transmitting the canon) with "change" (adding/removing books at will, per his priest anecdote). Jay directly splits the two senses ("oversight does not mean the same thing as change"), and Pastor P's only reply is the deflationary "well, maybe not to you" before abandoning the point entirely and pivoting to the Diet of Worms/apocrypha tangent. This is a clean distinguo: the equivocal term is named, split, and the objection built on the conflation dissolves without further defense.
Appeal this callout
Appeals come only from the debaters themselves. Sign in with Google to start; you'll then prove which debater you are, once.