EUDC 2022 ESL GF

Motion: THW take the pill

Info: You are an atheist living in a country with a significant (but not extreme) degree of religiosity. There exists a single pill that, if taken, will permanently make you genuinely and earnestly believe in the majority religion.

PM: Hadar Goldberg (Tel Aviv)

1. Set up/Framing/Meta debate

We want to clean debate. For this purpose, we're going to start by just clarifying a few things about how do we imagine this actor to be like because we can add things that are not in the info slide, and we don't want people to just push different assertions on it.

1. We have to imagine, for this to be a functional debate, that this is a relatively average person, not belonging to any particular minority. Also not part of any particular relief group, probably earning medium wage in the country relative to others, probably part of the majoritarian ethnicity, and so on. This is the most likely scenario. Absent other information in the info slide, teams cannot contradict and suggest something else radically.

2. Secondly, we imagine that we are in a country that has religion and something that is dominant in the population and some people who are religious or might be extreme, but as the flight suggests, most of them. And it means that most likely is when I started believing earnestly and holy, I will definitely not stop believing ever, and it will be a dominant part in my life. Like I will probably want to raise my kids religious, probably want to marry a religious wife, go to church on Sundays or whatever other alternative regions there are. But I will not be an extreme religious person myself, in all likelihood right? We do not need to defend under this debate, becoming some Amish person who completely isolated from society, going on extreme and avoiding all life's pleasures altogether. I probably go to church, but I probably also have premarital sex as most religious people do.

2. Signpost

Two main points in my speech.

1. Firstly, unmeaning. Why is the most important thing in the debate, why we like it direly now, and why we will probably only get it if we become religious.

2. Secondly on Community and why we are likely to get it on our side and is almost impossible to get if you are in a minority of being and I faced in a religious country.

3. Sub1

Firstly, meaning.

Why do we think I am very likely to not have meaning in my life as it is?

1. Firstly I have grown up in a society where most people are religious. What does it mean? That the main narratives I see in school, in art, in any other form of society, and what people talk about as driving meaning is from religion. I am not used to hearing many other people talk about alternative sources of meaning. Usually when I talk about feelings of emptiness, it is likely that adults in my life when I was a child or friends when I grew up suggests that you know this is a problem that you atheists have. We just have our connection to God, you know, you can maybe come to join us to church and you will find your meaning there. You know we find meaning in the simple things. It means that it is not easy for me to be exposed to other sources of meaning in my life.

2. Secondly, in general it is extremely hard to find meaning in a secular life. This is due to several things.

1. Firstly, the vast majority of people.Have a very menial job that is average enough to sustain them, but they're not going to be super achieved in it. Just on these statistics, most people aren't going to be the best in their field. Most of them are not going to be CEOs. Most of them will work nine to five and not achieve much more than that throughout their life.

2. Secondly, they have a significant feeling of lack of control and understanding of the reality around them. Terrible things happen all the time is make us miserable and we have nothing to do about it. I can get fired, I have relative of mine can die, I can get terribly ill and I don't know what to do with this. It feels sucks and I have no sense of this might be over. I have no source of hope because I know people sometimes die of this disease, I know that my dad died and he is not going to a better place. He's just down there rotting in Earth. Because I have nothing else to believe he's going to. It means that I don't have this alternative source to give me the faith that something will improve as part of the Gothic plan, and I don't have reasons to believe that there is a good side to it.

3. Thirdly, we think that people know everything is temporary, right? We're all dust in. We will die someday. And this means that even when we do make achievements or do things that make us feel proud, we know that they are not going to matter in the long scheme of things. We're going to be forgotten while going to die. And none of the things we earn, even if I'm going to win this final, it won't matter in the long run. Especially when we always aspire to more than we can achieve, because in the secular society we have the tendency to aspire to the greatness, right? Because our narratives of success are very often around things like, you know, capitalism, pursuing the greatest jobs, and we always sing like an Instagram on TV, the most successful stories and most people will never achieve them.

Why is it likely that when I'm religious I'll have a feeling that I do have this sense of meaning?

1. Firstly because in the strong times that I did have, most of the people around me probably have told me the ways in which it would have helped me. When I was sick, people told me I'll pray for you. When my dad died, people told me he would go to a better place and I wish I could believe them. I know I will believe them if I take the pill.

2. Secondly, I see around me how religious people find happiness in the simple things on the day today. How they don't need to aspire to follow the greatest things. Because all they need to do is to be good people. It is really easy to be successful in the metrics of religion. You don't need to be the greatest person ever. You just need to do God's will and be a good person on earth. And God is very often forgiving, and this means that it is accessible to anyone. I can be dumb and ugly and poor and still achieve all of this.

3. Thirdly, we think that it makes me feel a part of something in contemporary and bigger than me. Lastly and importantly, and I want to know this because I think opposition will say something to the contrast. The incentive of the religious community that will accept me is to make me feel proud of my decision. I am not likely to be guilt tripped over the life I've had as a secular person and having committed a lot of sins in my life. Because religious has already a narrative of conversion, and usually people who convert are considered better than those who are just born religion because they have overcome their inner demons and have seen the light and the incentive of religious leaders and religious community around these to tell me just that, not to make me feel like shit because they want me to be part of them. They're happy I joined them. Probably part of them are of my own family and so happy that I finally seen it so they will tell me. How great it is and how good of a person I am how I overcome it. This is why I will feel achieving meaningful under our side.

Before I move on, I'd like to hear an extension. No extension? You go.

(POI: If being religious is such a great thing, why did they not become religious before? It is not so hard to change your mind. )

Because it's not that easy to control if you don't have a pill. Maybe my parents were also not really just particularly I don't really care.

4. Sub2

Let's talk about community. Why do we think will get much more of a communal support under our side?

1. Firstly, as a very general point, the majority of the people in this Community are religious. Probably a lot of people in my family are too, and importantly, religious people tend to be less tolerant to people who are not religious than vice versa. That means if I’m becoming more religious, and even if my parents weren't, they are likely to still accept me because it's not a scene in their eyes to become religious, whereas it is assumed to be secular in the eyes of religious people. Some people will not marry out of their religion. Some people don't want their children to be friends, people who are not really just because they might drag them down to see it. So just down to statistics, I'll have much more people who are willing to be friendly and big part of my community and this will make me mean I have much more options.

2. Secondly, we think the religious communities are usually much more tightly knit together. This is because of the like commitment to community, the many ceremonies you do together like the Sunday is going to church, or the dinners that you have together in the holidays. This is opposed to secondary world, which usually surrounds much more around competition. And people do not want to help me so much because we have a lot of inner rivalry because the world is much more materialistic.

For all those reasons, Beg you propose.