Appeal: misrepresentation
From DEBATE: TRENT HORN VS. JAY DYER: SHOULD CHRISTIANS ACCEPT NATURAL THEOLOGY?.
- #8851:56:37upheld Trent Horn psogos: misrepresentation (+1)
The council upheld the call: Trent Horn gave away 1 point.
“My opponent agreed that no ecumenical council has condemned natural theology.”
Diogenes: Jay had answered that the seventh council's iconographic teaching implies a condemnation and only conceded there was no explicit anachronistic condemnation, and he interjects "Of the seventh council" to correct the summary on the spot.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Trent's declared method throughout is evidentialist natural theology answering objections point by point with citations he expects to hold up under scrutiny; this line departs from that pattern by flattening Jay's qualified answer (implicit condemnation via the seventh council) into a bare concession that no council condemned natural theology at all. The transcript at 68:24 shows Jay did not agree that no council condemned natural theology; he explicitly said "if you get to the seventh ecumenical council, the implications of their iconographic teaching... I would say it's implied there, but it's not explicitly" condemned. Trent's closing line drops the qualification and states flatly that Jay "agreed" no council condemned it, which the transcript contradicts, and Jay immediately corrects this ("Of the seventh council") and again at the very end of the debate ("I did explicitly say that I think that the seventh council implicitly does condemn"). This meets the definition of misrepresentation.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "misrepresentation". In cross-examination Jay did not simply agree no council condemned natural theology: he answered "if you get to the seventh ecumenical council... I would say it's implied there" that it condemns the Thomist scheme, only conceding no council explicitly names it. Trent's closing claim "My opponent agreed that no ecumenical council has condemned natural theology" erases that qualification, and Jay immediately flags the error afterward ("I did explicitly say that I think that the seventh council implicitly does condemn the natural theology that he's advocating"), confirming the transcript shows Trent stated something Jay did not say.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Trent's declared position was that no council has explicitly condemned natural theology; in cross-ex Jay had actually answered that the seventh council implies such a condemnation via its iconographic/logoi teaching, while conceding there is no explicit anachronistic condemnation — a real qualification the closing-statement line drops entirely, and Jay corrects it on the spot in the transcript. The transcript at 67:22-68:01 shows Jay's answer was qualified ("I would say it's implied there, but it's not explicitly..."), not a flat agreement that no council condemned it; Trent's closing collapses this into unqualified agreement, and Jay's immediate on-record correction confirms the gap between what was said and how it was summarized.
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