BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
miracles occur, but almost never to atheists

"the burden in this debate is on con to show something that would be a miracle had it happened to a theist. he still has not shown it. just two or three examples would be sufficient. as of now he's not even shown one. I don't see how it's my burden to show how often miracles occur, and don't see why this really even matters. all we need is a copule examples about apparent miracles happeneing to atheists. don't see it." Pro misunderstands how the BOP in this argument works. Pro made an affirmative statement that miracles occur, but almost never to atheists. My counter argument is that divine miracles may or may not occur (and pro cannot demonstrate this either way) and that the frequency of divine miracles, should they occur, cannot be demonstrated by pro. At no point did I make an absolute statement on whether divine miracles occurred or not, or the frequency of such miracles. "I wouldn't define it as extaordinaily unlikely as that's just a matter of statistics and probability, as far as we can tell what are called miracles defy scientific explanation." Then it is on you do demonstrate that they happen, that said events are divinely inspired and defy scientific explanation. "better explanation, scientifically inexplicable, appearing supernatural." Whether something "appears supernatural" or not is irrelevant to whether it is supernatural or not. A modern car would "be without a natural explanation" and "appear supernatural" to a medieval knight, even though the physics of cars are well understood nowadays. "perhaps a plausible explanation exists for most miracles but we still don't see the same types of thing happening to atheists." Again, the onus is on you to show that this happens. I am not making a statement as to whether miracles occur or not, I simply stated that for anything you will bring up as a miracle there is a plausible naturalistic explanation for, and that you will be unable to credibly demonstrate that such a supposed miracle is supernatural rather than natural. "also when it's something like seeing without retinas, youd be stretching plausibility, it basically defies natural laws etc." There are many different models of eyes in the natural world, from simple light-sensitive patches to the complex camera like eyes of an eagle. There are a great many species who do not have a complex camera like eye with an Iris Lens, and Retina. The nautilus, for example, has an eye that functions much like the most simple of cameras.[1] Planarians (Family Planariidae, non parasitic flatworms) have simple eye cups.[2] Some microscopic organisms, such as Euglenas, have simple light sensitive patches with no retina called "Stigma".[3] The evolution of the eye has been extensively documented[4][5][6]; to say that an organism being able to see without a retina is a "divine miracle" would require a profound lack of knowledge about modern science. [1] http://bit.ly... [2] http://bit.ly... [3] http://bit.ly... [4] http://bit.ly... [5] http://bit.ly... [6] http://to.pbs.org...
miracles occur, but almost never to atheists

the burden in this debate is on con to show something that would be a miracle had it happened to a theist. he still has not shown it. just two or three examples would be sufficient. as of now he's not even shown one. I don't see how it's my burden to show how often miracles occur, and don't see why this really even matters. all we need is a copule examples about apparent miracles happeneing to atheists. don't see it. I wouldn't define it as extaordinaily unlikely as that's just a matter of statistics and probability, as far as we can tell what are called miracles defy scientific explanation. better explanation, scientifically inexplicable, appearing supernatural. perhaps a plausible explanation exists for most miracles but we still don't see the same types of thing happening to atheists. also when it's something like seeing without retinas, youd be stretching plausibility, it basically defies natural laws etc.
miracles occur, but almost never to atheists

I accept Pro's challenge, and take the position that A) If miracles are defined simply as an extraordinarily unlikely event, that they do indeed happen to atheists; B) If a supposed incident is claimed to be a divine act of god, there will also be a plausible, non-divine explanation, and that Pro will not be able to credibly demonstrate that it is an act of god; C) In either case, Pro cannot credibly demonstrate how often miracles occur.
Lab rats shouldn't be experimented on

yes i have heard of the black plague and while it's true that it was the fleas had the rat population been kept down it wouldn't have nearly gotten so bad as it did. i also agree that some experiments are irrelevant but many are not mice may be cute but they are not worthy to people's lives i'm sorry but this is the sad reality that's been going on for years. Because rats and mice breed year round weather in captivity or the wild there populations won't suffer too badly if some are killed there will be new ones to take their place rats are by no means an endangered species. The many cancer patients and others including children and babies simply cannot be ignored the vaccines ans medicine these experiments have created have been a savior to mankind it's why today me and you and thousands of people on this earth are healthy and human populations have grown and there are still mice and rats today who are living good lives and are probably benefiting from these experiments. So in conclusion rats and mice are an essential part of medicine and science and we should honor them they've done a lot of good
Lab rats shouldn't be experimented on

No experimenting does not keep their numbers down at all. The mice are bred in captivity and have no impact on wild mice populations. Rats also have been blamed for many sicknesses throughout history but are not always the cause. I'm sure you heard of the Black Plague? Well, it wasn't rats it was fleas. Even though rats carry fleas, they were not the only ones. Dogs and cats were also carriers of the disease; although fleas were the initial vector. Mice cannot be called dirty little creatures, even though they seem so to you, they are living the only way they know how, they live as scavengers. Just because they will eat things and do things that we won't, doesn't make them dirty. It actually qualifies them as more willing and resourceful. Can you imagine the things they go through to save our butts? Millions of rats die for US. Clearly you feel a humans life is worth more than a rats. I understand that, it's only natural. However, they deserve more respect than is given. Cancer survivors would do good to think about how many rats have died to save them. I know that people have been saved due to these studies. But it makes us look disgusting sometimes to think about what we do to these creatures. Experimentation for disease is not the whole picture. You must realize that they are experimented on for obsurdities more than not. That is why it should be stopped. Abuse and irrelevant experiments.
Lab rats shouldn't be experimented on

i understand that sometimes mice do get experimented on for silly things such as cosmetics however we simply can't stop using them to fund things like cancer research because this is a very important issue and the reason we don't use animals such as cats and dogs isn't because there just our cute cuddly pets. It's because mice and rats have very similar brains to ours and are better understand human functioning pigs for example are also very similar to us in brain and organ function and actually pig hearts have been implanted into people. So should we stop using pigs? no of course not because people's lives have been saved with them the fact of the matter is mice while being cute and everything are also very dirty creatures and have caused many diseases and over a million human deaths throughout history. Now i don't hate mice but having them around in overpopulated numbers is very bad for human beings so experimentation actually helps them in some way by keeping their numbers down and while i am sorry some of them suffer so badly they are doing humanity a service sacrificing themselves for the greater good to help save humans.
Lab rats shouldn't be experimented on

Although some experiments may cure diseases and save human lives, most experiments are just for the sake of experimenting. Needles and and knives puncture their skin without pain relief. Most experiments are cruel and all experiments are not humane. There is only brutality towards these mice. Experiments are conducted to figure out things like can we put machines in their brains or put an ear on its back. Oh! I know! Let's see how it acts without a leg, because that's totally useful! Maybe we'll do this to a dog, honestly there's barely a difference between the species. If we did this to cats, there would be a revolution. Because cats are cute and beloved. But mice will always be that annoying disease carrying pest that we poison and trap. There is no denying that it's cruel. There is no denying that it's saved lives. There's no denying that it's ignored. So, are you going to let them suffer like this? All these aimless experiments hurt them. There should be regulations, there should be anesthetic, but there's not. This cannot be ignored any longer stand up for these poor creatures. It's time to realize that they are being abused. Don't dismiss it as "oh it's helping diseases" or "oh they don't matter". They aren't just small and they aren't just being experimented on diseases. They need to stop experimenting on mice, once and for all.
Lab rats shouldn't be experimented on

while that is indeed very sad let me also remind you how many countless lives mice and rats have saved due to experimentation's. in 1940 eight mice were injected with a deadly dose of 110 million streptococci bacteria one hour later four of them were injected with penicillin they survived and the ones who were left untreated did not thus proving that penicillin would help cure infections. Take another example for instance Meningitis which is a feared disease especially among est children The Hib vaccine was technically very difficult to develop because of a shortlived antibody response, especially in children, to the main Hib antigen, a sugar. Coupling it with a protein, a technique previously shown to protect mice against pneumonia, was shown to produce a more powerful response in mice. When the UK vaccination program began in 1992, there were approximately 1,500 cases of Hib meningitis, mostly in babies, with 65 deaths and 150 children surviving with major handicap. Introduction of the vaccine has reduced the number of cases by 90%. breat cancer wouldn't have gotten as far as it has come either without these experiments Animal studies in the 1950s showed that hormone changes can induce breast tumors in rats. This led to the development of Tamoxifen which blocks the growth of hormone dependent breast cancers. Further research with mice showed its possible preventive role. Breast cancer is now the second most survivable female cancer, with a 77% five-year survival rate. Following tamoxifen"s introduction in the 90s, there was a 30% fall in death rates. It has now been proved that tamoxifen can also prevent breast cancer in high-risk women. So in conclusion look at all the wonderful things that mice have done to improve our understanding of disease surely that can't be forgotten and overlooked because it probably wouldn't have happened without mice.
People in the United States aren't paid less solely because they are women.

This includes counter-arguments, but you can back up ones you have made with new sources and statistics. Provide sources for arguments and statistics that are not common knowledge. Burdens: The Pro has to prove that women are not paid less for the same work as men. The Con has to prove the opposite. Argument 1: The pay gap doesn't take into account life choices. According to Forbes (. https://www.forbes.com...), the gender pay gap doesn't factor in years of experience and education or hours worked. In fact, men generally work more hours than women on average. Argument 2: The wage gap isn't "enforced". There are three prongs to this argument. First, according to the Washington Examiner (. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com...), there is no smoking gun. No businesses advertise "we do not hire women" or "we pay women less". Second, according to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (. https://www.eeoc.gov...) the Equal Pay Act of 1963 already makes wage discrimination based on gender illegal. If the only reason a company has for paying a woman less is gender, they are breaking an existing law. The third prong is based on logic. If businesses could pay women less because they are women, they would only hire women. They obviously don't. Argument 3: There are far fewer women in STEM fields. (That's common knowledge, I can provide a link in the next round if you dispute it. ) STEM fields are VERY lucrative and high-paying. They can probably get you a tenured professorship or at least a very steady salary in the top 10%. Since wage gap statistics don't take different jobs into account, this contributes heavily to the "wage gap". Conclusion: The "wage gap" is actually because of factors other than women being paid less simply for being women.
People in the United States aren't paid less solely because they are women.

Let's take Con's case line by line. "The bigotry of men who seek to control women and disempower them are the root of this problem. " Well, I find this notion absurd. Not just because Con provides no evidence of this "brotherhood", but because this never happens. It is ILLEGAL to force someone to do something, especially work sans pay (13th Amendment), and this includes housework (referred to later by Con). Someone must do it of their own free will. "They seek to control women by forcing to accept a lower standard of pay. " Again, there's no evidence here. And, if you look to my evidence, which Con didn't refute, there is no lower standard. This lower standard is banned thanks to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and 14th Amendment. "Women are often much better at their jobs than men. .. " There's no proof here, and if Con claims common knowledge, he can't, men are OFTEN better at very physical jobs, but at the end of the day, it's up to the individual. ". .. and as a man I think many men are lazy pigs who only want their wife to cook and clean for them. " Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and Con hasn't provided an ounce. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. "Male bosses give them a lower pay to force them to be able to do nothing but cook, clean, and care. " Well, I see no evidence of this worldwide conspiracy proposed by Con, have never been benefited from it, and cannot possibly think of a good motive. Bosses want to make their company money. If they could pay women less, they'd only hire women. "Look at the facts THE WAGE GAP IS REAL. " Con has presented no evidence to this point, and I have presented immense evidence to the contrary. Con's assertions about male bigotry do nothing to change the fact that men work more hours on average, gender discrimination is illegal, and there are far fewer women who apply for jobs in STEM fields.
People in the United States aren't paid less solely because they are women.

The bigotry of men who seek to control women and disempower them are the root of this problem. They seek to control women by forcing them to accept a lower standard of pay. Women are often much better at their jobs than men and as a man I think many men are lazy pigs who only want their wife to cook and clean for them. Male bosses give them a lower pay to force them to be ale to do nothing but cook, clean and care. Look at the facts THE WAGE GAP IS REAL.
God

Pro doesn't provide a resolution for the debate. I assume the resolution is "God exists because there is no other explanation for the creation of the world." I don't how the world (universe) was created. My contention is that there are a number of possible explanations that are as plausible as having a God. Positing a god does not help, because then we must ask what created God. Moreover, there is no need to have any explanation at all, so we can just leave the question unanswered rather than posit a god. 1. One theory for the existence of the universe is quantum fluctuation. Roughly speaking, nothingness is unstable, so that things can pop into existence randomly. Once something exists, the something suppresses further quantum fluctuations. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. Buddhism claims that the universe is recreated cyclically. http://www.geocities.com... 3. The Steady State Theory http://en.wikipedia.org... postulates that the universe always existed. 4. A current theory derives from M Theory. http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk... In this theory, the Big Bang was a consequence of a worm hole between two closely approaching membranes. The events occurred in higher dimensions spawning our four-dimensional universe. This happens all the time, creating new universes, but we can only see the universe in which we reside. M Theory is another theory in which something always existed http://wiki.answers.com... 5. God is more complex than the universe. He must know and be able to control the position of every particle in the universe. God either always existed or was created spontaneously. It is more plausible to suppose that the universe either always existed or was spontaneously created, because the universe is less complex than God. 6. Pro seems to believe that humans *must* be capable of understanding how the universe was created, and that we *need* to postulate an answer now. Neither is true. The concept of God is in this regard no more than a metaphor for that which explains something we cannot explain. Before people understood what caused the weather or volcano eruptions or various misfortunes, all were "explained" by attributing them to actions of a God or gods. Over time, gods were dropped as explanations for natural events. In retrospect, it would have been better to assert "we don't understand why weather (etc.) happens" rather than posit a god explanation. The same is now true of the explanation of the creation of the universe. Maybe we'll never understand it, or maybe one of the scientific explanations, like M Theory, will turn out to be provable. Now we shouldn't claim to know. ---------------- The existence of the universe does not prove the existence of a god. Perhaps God may be proved by other means, but not by existence of the world. The resolution is negated.
God

I agree with some of that, but 3 says that "someone who believes in God must have some concept of "always exists" because God is usually thought to always exist," but I said how could the universe have always existed. God didn't have to create the universe, but he chose to (in my belief), to make life and joy and make a creation for organisms to learn. But if he hadn't have made the universe, it would be blank and life as we know it would not exist at all, which is impossible to feel that kind of nothingness until the end of life for each of us. In 4, I understand how worm holes were made it's just that how or where do the materials/organisms needed to make a worm hole come from? It's unexplainable...but in my opinion only God would make sense. So where do we come from? If there was or is evolution going on where did the first organisms come from? If there were membranes and meteorites and so on to make the big bang, where did those come from? Where did the first spark of light come from? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I am a Christian and I do believe God has existed forever though.
God

If you don't disagree with anything I have argued, then we agree that the resolution is negated. hence we are now chatting. 3. Pro asks, "how could the universe always exist?" It seems to me that someone who believes in God must have some concept of "always exists" because God is usually thought to always exist. If God did not always always exist, then God must have been created, and presupposes a greater Creator. So the way the universe could always exist is then exactly the way God could always exist. 4. Pro asks, [with respect to M theory] "where, or how were the worm holes created?" I don't understand the theory, I just know that it is a scientific theory that explains the Big Bang in terms of higher dimensions. The picture I get is that there are objects (membranes) floating around in higher dimensional space and when two of them get close enough together, zap, a wormhole sparks over and spawns a new universe. I'm sure a physicist who understands the theory would laugh at my conception of it, but, hey, it's tough stuff. A problem in trying to understand modern physics is that many of the concepts don't have parallels in our ordinary lives. For example, we know that light is simultaneously both a wave and a particle. When we look around in our everyday work, there is nothing like that. Since there is nothing like it, we can only understand it in a very abstract way. We understand it mathematically, but not in terms of common sense. It gets worse with modern theories of cosmology. For example, it now seems that 70% of the universe is dark energy, which is the energy contained in a vacuum. A vacuum has nothing in it, but it nonetheless has energy. Vacuum energy can be detected only by it's gravitational pull. The universe is expanding, creating more vacuum, and with it more vacuum energy. Or so it seems. My point is that "God created the universe" has the superficial charm of being understandable in terms analogous to a person creating something. However, we now know that all kinds of things happen that have no analogy to what we see or experience. The creation of the universe is likely to be one more of those things that if we can understand it at all, it will only be through the math. Pro points to traditional concepts of God. Some concepts of God can be disproved and others cannot. The concept of a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and good is disproved by the Argument from Evil and the Argument from Nonbelief. However, Christians sometimes fix that by relaxing omnipotence, such as by having a Devil that is uncontrollable. I don't see how the Deist God (of Jefferson, et al) can be disproved. I think belief in God per se does no harm, and religion as a cultural tradition is generally a good thing. The potential problem is allowing religious beliefs to trump reality, reality as reflected in science. Enough rambling. The resolution is negated.
God

Well I don't disagree with anything you have argued but, in number 4, it talks about the "Big Bang" theory but where, or how were the worm holes created? In number 3, how could the universe always have existed? God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism. God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence. God has also been conceived as being incorporeal, a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent". These attributes were all supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers, including Maimonides, Augustine of Hippo, and Al-Ghazali, respectively. Many notable medieval philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God, attempting to wrestle with the apparent contradictions implied by many of these attributes. I think there might be other gods out there, I think we may have gone through evelution, also i believe we may have past lives and go through cycles of our life but I think there is that one supreme God who made all of this happen.