I fail to follow this thread... the whole debate about downtuning is from the studio version and usually to attack Jon's lack of vocal ability, not the tuning of the guitars... standard tuning is pretty arbitrary - it's common for different styles of music to use different tuning from the barely different like drop d to different major, minor, modal, extended tunings - many of which are actually easier to play than standard tuning, depending on what you're doing...
If you're playing a few very basic songs in Eb or D it kinda makes sense to downtune your guitar for ease, but I'm unsure as to why this is a point to debate in quite this way? I can understand if you're just analysing the play but I don't see what the critical point is at all?