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Now, why does this weigh against a lot of what everyone else says, right? The first thing is opening opposition talks about God; it's a bit irrelevant. You can just pray at home. I don't know why you need a church. But if, like, Allah is real and then you go to church, then you also go to hell, so I don't know why this matters. But the stuff about your family is in the extent of harm; it doesn't Compare to the immense amount of future victims that we're going to protect from being murdered or robbed. If you think the life of a church person is portable and they deserve God to save them, then presumably, we want less people in these gangs in the first place. On that closing the argument.
</mg>

<mo>
OO spends a lot of their time talking about how this impacts individual gang members, and unfortunately, they spend far too little time talking about how this impacts the church as a whole and the resources that it has at its command. That is where closing opposition is going to come in. The main extension that we're going to bring you from CO is that this basically over the church irreparably in the majority of instances.

There are two prongs to this argument. The first is that the gang will retaliate violently, and then secondly, the second one is that the gang is important in maintaining that church in many of these communities.

Prong number one: Why the gang will retaliate in in bad ways. There are three reasons why: firstly, in many instances, the gang will just try and forcefully take back control of the church and its apparatus because of the fact that it is a source of alternate power, a source of alternate social capital, and a source of alternate organization and meaning in these communities. That is to say, it is an extraordinarily powerful and influential alternate pool of authority in communities where these gangs want to maintain a monopoly on that kind of capital or on that kind of influence, which means that they aren't going to back down without a fight.

Right, CG is like, "What if the gang members take over, like, you know, sneakily take over parts of the church?" Now, they do it forcefully because you do not give them a choice; because you have kicked them out, now they have to do it violently. They have to do things like attack or kill higher-up members of the church or just seize the church literally—like physically seize the church and its property. That seems very, very bad.

Secondly, it is because these gang members are angry and will become extraordinarily aggressive towards specific members of that congregation. OO's mechanism here is about, like, a lot—you feel like a lost cause, and so like you'll just throw haywire and kill a bunch of people. This is what we tell you: it's more direct that if you feel betrayed by your friends, you feel betrayed by your family, you feel betrayed by the people who you thought you could trust—your shepherd, people who you confessed to, the people who you trusted with your spirit—and all of those psychological mechanisms mean that you feel like you have been stabbed in the back.

So what happens is that now you're far more likely to be violent; you're far more likely to be aggressive to specific members of that community because you think that each and every one of them is complicit in this act of real rejection, which means that you are likely to be violent then.

And thirdly, why the gang will retaliate is that at the very least, they won't refrain from doing the bad things that they do to everyone else. Right? For example, they will stop not extorting you because, right, like they extort everyone else. They don't extort you, and the reason why is because in the status quo, they have an incentive to play nice because their own members are part of that church. They are obviously not going to extort the church if they're attending the church.

Now, when you take away that incentive, they're just going to extort you like they extort everyone else, which means that at the very least, they stop not doing the bad things. That seems extraordinarily bad because what that does is it drains the church of its power; it drains the church of its funds and its resources that everyone agreed was very important.

Second prong of this argument: the gang is important in maintaining the church. Um, DLO has a stab at this and spends about 30 seconds being like, "Well, they have a lot of money, and so this is important." We're going to prove to you why they have the incentive to do this and why they have the capacity to do this.

On incentive, three reasons: firstly is the pr mechanism that OG gives you, which is I guess fine, but there are two better ones. Firstly, a lot of these people are just genuinely religious. For example, like they see this place, like they see the church as a source of genuine solace. They do believe in heaven and hell and God, and most crucially, they see this as a source of hope down the line. They see this as a way of, um, like getting forgiven for their sins and stuff like that because they feel so guilty about the things that they have done.


But secondly, because their friends and family are in this church, because it's a source of community, that's extraordinarily important to them, which means that they are likely to support doing things like funneling gang funds into supporting the church.

Why do they have the capacity then? Because note, OG is fairly lazy with this, and they're just like, "Well, they have a lot of money." But why do they necessarily have the capacity to maintain the church? Firstly, it is because they protect the church from other criminals. Note, this gang is not the only source of crime in this area. Right? There are other criminals—petty criminals—but there are obviously also other gangs.

But you know gang rivalries and like that are likely to pop up as a source of competition, which means that if you have one gang that is deeply enmeshed with the church, it means that they have an incentive to protect their own, and it means they have an incentive to protect their church from other sources of violence. At the point in which you remove that incentive, it means that the gang now no longer has any self-interested reason to protect their church, which means all of that crime is likely to sweep over their church.

But secondly, they are extraordinarily rich. Here are some structural reasons why OO just says that they are. Um, here are some structural reasons: they are likely to be rich, firstly because they are deeply enmeshed with the networks of political corruption and nepotism. For example, in Colombia, AUC controls like 50% of departmental infrastructure budgets and stuff like that because they've been paid off by officials, which means that they have enormous amounts of capital versus democratic incentives, which are comparatively weak.

Secondly, because they have funds gained illegally, when there's not much industry in the area, which is the very reason why people join in the first place. Right? Because you make money off of extortion, you make money off of drugs and prostitution and gambling and things like that.

And thirdly, oftentimes these gangs tend to be wings of some more centralized organizations. Right? Like the gang is very big; it has a central body, and then it radiates outwards, and in local areas, there are local wings of that gang, which means that they are able to call upon the resources of that central pool, which means why they have a lot of money. Before i go on I'll take OG.

<poi>
I don't know if the mob is more likely to have family within the church or care about it or completely not care. What I am certain of is if they attack the church, the people have nothing left to lose. If you even take God away from them, thus they will fight against them all.
</poi>

Like they'll fight against the mob. What the fuck are they going to do? Right? Like they're just going to get owned. Like I have no idea what their POI was.

Okay, some observations then in terms of weighing on OG. OG just seems to be like, "Yeah, they kick everyone out," and the gang is like, "Okay, cool, fair enough." Obviously, that is not going to happen. They're going to retaliate in the ways that I told you. But note that this argument doesn't require buying that no one is going to leave or that no one is determined. Like, you can buy their benefit to a certain extent. Like some people leave, some people stay, but the point is that even if like half of the gang stays, that is still extraordinarily bad because you've gone from, like, you know, 10,000 people to 5,000 people. 5,000 people coming up with you with guns is still pretty bad.

On OO, we beat them in terms of scale. We actually prove the incentive and capacity analysis, which is missing from OO, and we give you a whole other section of the argument as well, which is why on balance we prove to you more strongly and more directly than OO why this is necessary for the maintenance and protection of the church.

Which means that we imply by the benefits they prove on individuals for everyone. If you believe that the church is important because it gives people, for example, sorts of meaning or, for example, services like literacy and food and all infrastructure and protection from other bad social ills, we magnify that to everyone. Which means, uh, we probably meet Tim's challenge of weighing the hell out of the debate. Uh, you know, see you.
</mo>

<gw>
All right. Three, two, one. I'm first gonna do some rebuttal, then some framing, because I think it says to a larger extent a framing debate and why sure is framing properly. One, then some weighing and more rebuttal.

First, I want to like just deal with CO, because what they say is basically going to have retaliation, which also fits into our framing point very well. I think the first thing of retaliation is that it's probably then kind of a symmetric debate in the sense of like if the church is going to just them be erased by the mafia, then there's probably no point in doing so and probably then you haven't successfully done it. Meaning that what we probably, um, debate the most here is in the cases where you can actually reasonably expect to be able to do that, because the supporting of the act means that the act can be done or can be aspired to. Um, meaning that you probably must have some capacity to do that.

The second thing I think is that you're probably, like, in the framework of what we set up, is that you probably have areas where you have high organized crime rates, but that doesn't mean that the literal local mayor is a criminal and also that the rest of the country are all criminals running the whole country. I don't think this is the case. But secondly, I think in those countries or like in those places, we don't have a margin on either side of Dallas, because it is not that anyone can choose or anyone can really opt out of crime. If this is like everything in your life, I think that then what happens is, um, like if, like with the retaliation point, is that probably if one of them retaliates or tries to retaliate that the local people are going to be pissed off to such an extent that they're actually going to, um, especially because all opening health concedes the God in the church is so important in your life that you're going to actually try to push against it.

You're going to much more forcibly want, like, demand police force. This is probably going to be super running material for politicians who are going to be tough on crime or tough on gangs, because it's pictures. Imagine like mobs like storming a church or what are they going to do? Like storm into the church, kill a godly man? I don't understand like how exactly this retaliation will work, but these are pictures can sell very well. But tell me, I think that retaliation is just also very unlikely because of OO's analysis on how important church is to those people, because you're going to be violent to like third parties. You're not going to be violent to the church; you're just going to be angry at the people but then like let it out somewhere else. You're going to have that moderating effect.

I think that OO's analysis also harms CO, because what they, um, would have to prove is that you get so angry that you're literally going to try to like kill the people that you've thought just like yesterday can be the path to salvation, which I don't think is true. Then, on framing, I think an important piece of framing is that there's a trade-off of who is your flock, i.e., in mixed populations, which probably is where both sides claim the biggest impact, because you don't have like all supporters of gangs. Because if everyone is a supporter, then like no one will be the moderator, but also no one will have any impact. It means that you have some mixed population, which means that often people, um, mix and also like they go to either church or they've been gone to when they're young or that they go to like where they like the priest, etc.

At the moment where people who have joined a gang or high crime while organized crime join the church, it means that it's mutually exclusive with other people joining, either victims or like family of victims, friends of victims from organized crime, or people who are just afraid of the idea or like think that it's immoral to go with this person to church. This means that you have to choose at this point who you give all those benefits to that OO claims, like resources, salvation, etc. Do you give it to people who are not part of it, or do you give it to people who are part of, um, organized crime?

The second thing on weighing on framing I think, which is really important, it comes out in speech, that is that this is probably not about all areas equally, i.e., if we want to claim a certain impact, we have to actually show where the impact is that impact is the highest. So what, um, OO is trying to say is like for the women not assaulted because they have a moderating effect, it's the like biggest impact, or that you like, um, these people didn't choose and they might have a path to salvation, but we think is more important is something very concrete in areas where there is high organized crime but not the whole country is overtaken, use of police and somewhat functional democracy or like flawed democracies.

Probably this is where you have the most impact because they're usually, and most crucially what the stronger characterizes it to you is that you try to infiltrate churches to actually become a leadership position, to actually gain the trust to then expand your organization or actually to like raise the rise to power within that area. Before I continue. OO,

<poi>
Even if we neglected to never explain why we actually care if they infiltrate the church, it's still true that you cut these people off into their families from services, which are often the only alternative, leaving them with no choice, especially as it's quite hard to take them back in after constructing a narrative that they're so far gone that even God has turned his back on them.
</poi>

Yeah, I'll deal with that, um, but I think the problem if you infiltrate the church is that you literally use it to recruit people. Not only that, but the people you give all those resources, but I'm actually going into that rebuttal and like weighing off like who do you give services to, who like, um, like gets the benefits of the network? I think at the point where you told you that there is a trade-off between who you can give it to, I think that there are people who are more deserving of it and that you don't report this. Because what you often do is you incentivize crime for giving goodies, and at the point where all of opening health actually concedes that probably the people in with the most resources or like hospital networks, giving your job, etc., is the church. At that point, we think that those should not go to members of criminal gangs, because this will incentivize them to do more crime overall, beating their like "Oh, God has forsaken you," so you do more crime thing, which is like we would prefer that you trade off going to church and maybe getting, I don't know, a job in a low level if that means that you're not going to do any crime at all.

But then, and the second thing is I think overall people who have been done crime to or who have not, who have even in like those hardships chosen not to be part of the gang deserve is more than than like a criminal gang members. I think that then on like you're going to be less violent. I think first of all, I think it's a rise on proximity. I either the thing that the mechanism that they have is like you saw this woman, therefore you empathize with her. I think most people like start going to church at a very young age with their family. It's unclear why you wouldn't sympathize with that woman otherwise, like, and it's unclear why you're going to target that specific woman and like assault her.

But secondly, I think that like God loves you. I think that against the dogma of church, for the priest to tell you it's okay to do crime because you really need to do it, but just don't be as bad, literally some like the, I mean, the like rules of religion are you should not do crime, so I don't think that the priest is actually going to say that. I think that the priest is going to try to push an ultimatum or say no thing, which is even worse because we actually explained to you how infiltration happens. Vote CG.
</gw>

<ow>
CG, OG, and then OO.
Three things on CG. The first is just like their extension about how gangs recruit from the church benches. I have a few responses here. Number one, guys, their only mechanism for this is that gangs recruit from there because a lot of people go there, and so it's like a focal point for the people in the community. Guys, a lot of people are everywhere, like literally in the local market, in the local bar. Presumably, because you tend to recruit like men who also tend to tend to drink in a lot of these places, right? Like there's a lot of places where you're gonna find the same load of people, your target audience to recruit from. I just don't think you need to.

Go to the church in order to get there, but also second response here: like, when is that actually gonna happen? Like, notice how ludicrous that is for how the status quo actually works. People go to the church, hear the press talk, and then gather in the garden of the church at the end of it. If someone goes there with an ad of like, “Hey guys, Jordan is doing their organized crime gang,” they're gonna be spotted out, and they don't want to do that. Even in the status quo, because they don't want to get it brought out, like literally anyone else, or the police, or risk their privacy or security. Like, that's just not how it works.

But also, thirdly, just deal with this extension towards the end. I'm just gonna, I'm happy to like trade it off. Like, fine, they're gonna get one or two extra members like the church recruits that they're gonna join to their gang, like in every particular Sunday. I don't care that much, given all of the harms that it improves to you. I don't care, no thank you. If the gang has one or two extra tiny guys on the ground that do one or two extra crimes, like, it is irrelevant in as much as you open up this discourse. Let's go for so much violence that Aidan talks to you about.

The second thing they like, retaliation, which is literally local people will be pissed off and demand for the police force. I have two responses here. Number one, they can be pissed off; that does not show why they have the capacity to act on that. Being pissed off, they're likely gonna die being pissed off because they often don't have like the tactical expertise, the military weapons, and all of those stuff to actually fight the gangs. But suddenly, what politicians—like, what is this? These areas are like these because they're heavily disenfranchised, because politicians don't care about them, because most of the people in those areas tend not to vote or tend not to be engaged with the political system in the first place. These areas are not places where politicians go to trail their campaigns.

Any point on the church having the capacity to stand up to gangs needs solid mechanisms to prove it, and using like debating words like politically relevant for politicians or demanding salvation isn’t a mechanism to prove that they have capacity to act on this. Thirdly, then, on giving services to gang members, right, and how that is necessarily bad. The problem here is the comparative. Like, CG just says, “Oh, we should give the services and the money of the church to people who actually deserve this,” but this is not a comparative. Because the comparative is not giving the resources to the good guys, but not having the resources in the first place. If having resources and giving it to everyone is dependent on yes, giving them to gang members as well, I'm happy to take that if it means more people get those resources in the first place, including the very good people that they want to talk about.

At the end of the day, the extension is simply not sufficient enough to prove extra, extra violence. No, thank you. The responses to our extensions are flipped at best. That’s what CG both means. Then let's talk about indeed the main thing OG hints at is their ideas on, is like this idea of deterrence, right? Because it takes away the capacity to repair your scenes, the fear of being like unable to go to heaven, etc. Oh, physical security comes first, which is important. Here are four other responses that go over, OO, right.

Number one, notice that this isn't the first reaction when people hear that the church is going to expel them. The first reaction isn't to be, “Oh, I'm no longer going to join the gang.” The first reaction is to try to have them both, because recognize that we have the human limitations where when we're forced with trade-offs, we want to have our cake and eat it too. But crucially, they're going to get more violent and more secretive at the way they do crime, which is just going to make it worse. It's not going to mean that you’re going to have this massive exodus from gangs the way OG tries to portray this.

But also, secondly, I don't think you're going to be as in strength. I think what you're likely going to be in strength from is the very people that pushed you out, the very people of the church whom you're likely going to spread a lot of bad rhetoric against, and you're going to try to get other people on your side. But also, thirdly, and this is important, you can rationalize your position by seeing yourself as a martyr. If the church kicks you out of the church because you have to sustain a living, you don't think, “Oh, I'm being really bad for being part of a gang.” You think, “I'm being punished for trying to stay alive,” right? And that allows you to rationalize yourself from a religious perspective as someone who is a martyr.

But fourthly, they can create a spiritual connection with the gang leader, right? Because they can rationalize it by saying, “Actually, he's the one sent by God because he's the one that didn't turn his back on me,” right? Like, these church people are just like some crazy people that want to expel me. That's not actually God's reflection on Earth. Someone else says this means that they create far stronger vertical ties with the people that are the gang leaders themselves, which is potentially incredibly more dangerous than having these people not be radicalized or not fully radicalized to the extent that it’s going to happen on their side of the house.

What this does is, number one, notice that the supplies, like the agent we're talking about, like it's not about the religious fanatics who are going to stay in the church regardless. It's about the people who are now likely to come closer to the gang because now they look for the gang for the spiritual connections that the church has stripped them away of. But also, this washes out a lot of OD's impact, no thinking out now, which all hinge on deterrence in this debate.

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