BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Torture should be utilized by the United States of America

For this debate, I contend that torture is, On whole, Beneficial to the United States of America. Before I begin, I would like to offer the following definition of torture (as provided by the UN)- the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, Whether physical or mental, Is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, Or a third person, Information or a confession, Punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, Or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, Or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, When such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, Inherent in, Or incidental to, Lawful sanctions. Tl;dr- intentionally inflicting pain or suffering on a person for information, Punishment, Or other reasons Now, Onto the argument itself. Machiavelli stated in his famous political treaty "The Prince" that "the ends justify the means. " While I"m not arguing here today this is always the case, It's certainly an interesting thought in today"s debate. If there"s a ticking time bomb, A dangerous threat, Does the end result of potentially saving scores of human lives outweigh torturing one madman? War cannot exist without collateral damage. It will happen inevitably, No matter how "smart" our weapon systems become. Every time the United States orders a drone strike on another country, We accept the fact that innocent civilians will die in the process. It"s not and if, And, Or but. And it isn"t like we simply agree that killing innocents is a benefit. Rather, We decide that the costs of collateral damage are less than the benefits of that drone strike. So, If we were to kill thousands of innocent men, Women, And children in these attacks, Why is the idea of torturing a known and dangerous terrorist suddenly so reprehensible? Especially in this case, Where the United States is using the information ascertained from torture to save lives. . Former CIA director George Tenet said that the CIA"s "enhanced interrogation" program (in essence, Torture, But watered down) had saved lives, Disrupted plots and provided 'invaluable' information in the war against terrorism [1]. Trusting ex-director Tenet"s words, We can assume that our use of what is basically torture has already saved many lives and has helped us defeat the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and further. I urge you to consider this. How is it even remotely sound to say that instantaneously murdering women and children with bombs and drones is OK but briefly harming terrorists for information is terrible? I assure you that 0 children and infants are held at Guantanamo Bay and are being tortured, But many are dying from our attacks. Thank you for your time, And I look forward to your response. SOURCES My brain [1]- https://www. Economist. Com/leaders/2007/09/20/the-real-price-of-freedom
Torture should be utilized by the United States of America

This debate will center on whether or not torture should be utilized in Western countries (specifically in the United States of America, Arguably the strongest Western country militarily and one that has been seen using torture moreso than others in the past). I will be taking the pro side that torture should be used, And you (whoever you may be) will be taking the con that torture should not be used. Round 1 should simply be acceptance and any information you're willing to add. Round 2 will be your argumentsRound 3 will be rebuttalsAnd the final round will be your summary and any remaining rebuttals you may have. My only rule is that you remain respectful. I will most certainly remain respectful for you, So I expect recirprocation. But whatever style you want to use is fine by me. I look forward to your response. :)
Creationistism is true and evolutionistismists are dumb

Your arguments are not upheld at all. I shall adress them one by one. 1 'Racism is false' I have no idea what this even means. I will assume that you mean that it is incorrect or wrong. Yes it is wrong according to some point of views but it very much exists. 2. Evolution is in a sense racist because it believes some life forms are superior to others but it is not discriminating against them. 3. Evolution could technically be false but it is the most proven theory that upholds to date. 4. Creationism could be true but no proper arguments support it. And to adress your last statement. I as an religious person & believer in evolution believe that your last statement is just an act of trying to in some form make fun of religious people that sadly believe in Creationism.
Creationistism is true and evolutionistismists are dumb

Hello! This will be one of my first arguments and I take up the challenge. Your current argument only states that the people that believe in evolution are dumb. Dumb: 'mute, unable to speak'. In this case I assume dumb as stupid. As an opinion of how the world is built cannot be stupid but pure personal preference. And again dumb is also quite subjective. References: http://en.wiktionary.org...
9/11 Never Happened At All

Circular reasoning. The logic of it is, we can't tell who did it, so nobody did it, meaning it never happened? Just because we can't tell who did it doesn't mean it never happened. It just means we don't know who did it. It wasn't the weather, it was the fire from the plane crash. The planes weren't self-driving, terrorists hijacked them! If Bobby's block tower gets destroyed by someone, and he didn't see who did it, should he use your logic to deny it ever happened? Sources in comments section.
9/11 Never Happened At All

9/11 never happened at all, if nobody did it, nothing or any weather made it happen either. Even though the blame game confusion cycle only says that if we can't blame anybody either because its a conspiracy or it is confusing to tell without bias. the weather never made the towers melt, it was a sunny but cool day. no self-driving planes, no confusion blame, no nothing. if he said it happen, 9/11 is a lie, look it up:
Who can be a smarter

No offense but this debate is completely useless. It's not a debate when the subject is anything that we want to talk about. I can't refute your facts especially when I'm not well versed in astronomy. Conversely if I were to list any other subject, you could not refute my points. Either way, this "debate" is more about listing random facts. If I were any more serious about this debate I would've just googled "fun facts" and copy and pasted all 26 pages of results into this debate (assuming within character limits). So I'm gonna do you a favor. I'm going to say that I won this debate due to the fact that even though you might know a lot about stars and planets, you have shown me that you lack the capacity to reason. Your title says it all. It's not even a complete sentence. I originally took this topic thinking that it was a troll debate, but now I am utterly confused as to why we are even having this conversation. I hope that you are trolling for then I can at least say that I fed the troll. If you're not joking about this debate then all I have to say is thank you for wasting my time.
Who can be a smarter

I still don't know what we are debating about. Are we listing random facts that we can find on the internet? If so, you can at least learn to copy and paste your information correctly. 1) "Let me star of small the universe is about 18 billion years the earth 4 billion the planet ." yes. 2) "Hers some facts about the sun" Who the hell is "her" referring to? (non-sequitor) "Did you know that if you put Saturn in. A bath tub it will float that's how light it is." I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that the large pressure exerted on saturn when placed into a bathtub would cause Saturn's gas composition to dissolve into water. Just by the fact that you can't title your debates properly demonstrates that your cognitive abilities are equivalent to that of a 12 year old. Now I turn the argument back to you. Please list more information for me to criticize but this time make sure to copy and paste better.
Who can be a smarter

Let me star of small the universe is about 18 billion years the earth 4 billion the planet . Hers some facts about the sun The Sun or Sol, is the star at the centre of our solar system and is responsible for the Earth"s climate and weather. The Sun is an almost perfect sphere with a difference of just 10km in diameter between the poles and the equator. The average radius of the Sun is 695,508 km (109.2 x that of the Earth) of which 20"25% is the core. Age: 4.6 Billion Years Type: Yellow Dwarf (G2V) Diameter: 1,392,684 km Circumference at Equator: 4,370,005.6 km Mass: 1,989,100,000,000,000,000,000 billion kg (333,060 x Earth) Surface Temperature: 5500 "C Did you know that if you put Saturn in. A bath tub it will float that's how light it is I like to add some random fun facts to keep things fun Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module. The brightest quasar is 3C 273, 2 billion light years away. Jupiter"s moon Europa may have oceans of water beneath its dry surface and it is a major target in the search for life in the Solar System. Dried up riverbeds show that Mars probably once had water in its surface. There is sometimes ice at the poles and maybe water underground The future of the Universe may depend on how much dark matter there is. If there is too much, its gravity will eventually stop the Universe"s expansion " and make it shrink again.
Self Debate

I brought up Lucid dreaming not to suggest that a Self-debate would cause lucid dreaming, that is ridiculous. I brought it up to show how certain thoughts can be made an unstoppable compulsive habit. in the case of Lucid dreaming the thought people train themselves to think is 'is this a dream' so that they will ask that in there sleep. In the case of self debate I was suggesting a similar phenomena that it would become compulsive to debate ones self and you could not make yourself stop because you are trained to do so on impulse. That is the only connection I intended between Lucid dreams and Self-debates. From my opponents response I believe her response to my last point about reputation this round is that Self-Debates are for private preparation. I concede that negates any worry of about reputation, as long as you understand your not insane then everything about this practice is okay right? Wrong The Great Purpose behind the fine art of debating is the pursuit of truth, either to share or gather new truth that you don't know, and you don't know witch of the two you are doing before entering the debate. Some misuse debates by only entering them under the attitude that they can only share there truth, they cant accept by their arrogance that it may in fact be their opponent who holds the true truth this very debate. I am speaking of the paramount important role of keeping an objective mind when entering a debate. Now perhaps if you never self-debate in front of others you can keep the inevitable 'mocking' style of debating for the side you don't support I spoke of in round one from being propaganda to others, but what about yourself? A Self-debate can only further close your previously objective mind to whatever your debate topic is. Look at Stephen Colbert . http://www.colbertnation.com... He pretends to take the side of Republicans in his show even though he can make sure he remembers his real stance outside of his character role. But by trying to portray the stance he doesn't truly take the 'mocking' of republicans is really what is portrayed. Now this result is still funny and this is why his show is good. But when preparing to enter a real debate if you set your mind to thinking it already knows how your opponent thinks then you will only mock them in your self-debate, hardening your resolve in your own position in the sense of being closed minded. So in conclusion even if you manage to self debate by yourself in such a way that you do not make it compulsive to debate your every thought when not choosing too; the self debate remains detrimental to your ability to keep an objective and open mind, a needed quality in the pursuit of truth in the debate to come.
Self Debate

Well, since you believe I am just repeating what you say, I shall make some valid points of own. Firstly, I highly doubt you would begin lucid dreaming, considering how many people talk to themselves and are perfectly normal. Secondly, even if it is a dream, and said person believes it is a dream, you can still technically debate. Thirdly, I'm 99.99% positive you would keep your personality, considering all you are technically doing is researching your topic, writing your points and rebuttals, and saying them almost like a speech. And since you are your own opponent, you know exactly what your opponent is going to say, so you don't have to worry about what you are going to say in the form of rebuttals. And you wont have any questions. Oh, and by the way, I'm a girl. I'd like to thank my opponent for recognizing that fact. :~3
Self Debate

Evedently there are some out there who have this annoying habit of reading my sources and requiring my fact be correct concerning schizo. That I be more pecefice so that you people can have no doubt about what I attempt to mean would happen when you practice self debate; Dissociatie Identity Disorder. http://en.wikipedia.org... It still shoul count as Schizo as it is a bizarre delusion and a very chaotic thinking pattern. When you practice self debates you will start suffering from a series of symtioms leading you to what I call 'Bi-thought' or 'dual thought'. Because you trained yourself to come up with negetive to a reselution on impulse and defend it as passionately as if you were another person, this impulse will stick with you even if you are not debating yourself on purpose at the moment, just like if you train yourself to frequently ask 'is this a dream' mentally you will eventally start asking it will you really are dreaming, a method used to induce Lucid Dreams. similar techniques for doing so are included in this article on Lucid dreaming http://en.wikipedia.org... If you start arguing on impulse you essentially get this constant condisending voice, in essence you second guess you every thought, decision, ect... the habit of second guessing oneself in such a constant always ready to cut yourself down kind of way will reduce your confidence. confidence is essential to success http://digitaljournalist.org... My opponents whole argument last round though seems to reserve to defending only the senario of retained sanity, and relitive honesty with the audience. But he does not adress my last remaining argument for just such a senario concerning your loss of reputaition when people begin to think you have 'mutiple personality' disorder. So I can do nothing hear exept extend my original argument with one edit to it changing Schizophernic to 'Split personality'
Self Debate

you can not debate with yourself without it being unhealthy. if you do succefully manage to establish a dialouge between opponent A and B both voiced and argued by you, you are making yourself come down with Schizophrenia http://en.wikipedia.org... That is not healthy. In the event that you completely retain your sanity you are in essence not debating yourself, you are debating your real posisition and mocking the other. if you do this in public and change outfits between arguments not letting anyone see you and claim the opponent to have a different name this is propaganda and bad for our country. If you do not change outfits our give fake names the people will think you Schizophernic and that is bad for your reputation.
religions are atheists to each other

I don't think you are quite understanding how this English is being used. "Dis", "non", "a", and "un" all only say what something isn't. For example: if your hat is to appear on your head, that gives you a clear image of it being there in any variety of ways. Now if your hat disappears, it is now not to appear on your head, so it would no longer be there, and means nothing else. Please counter the claim that atheism can exist contrary to theism, without becoming in itself theism.
religions are atheists to each other

Let me start out by saying thank you for posting this, it does raise a good point about the reasons for being as things claim to be, and more pointedly - the concept of disbelief as a form of belief. You're claiming that an atheist would not be able to identify themselves with atheism, if and only if they had no recollection of the existence of theism. This seems perfectly valid if were under the impression that atheism was a religion, it however is not. Atheism is only called such to mean more literally, counter of theism, or non-theism. While arguing that a theistic viewpoint is the original keep prospective as to who begot whom. For example: Before Christ were there any non-Christians? Of course there were, in fact, every person alive was a non-Christian. So can we not broaden this to say that in the absence of theism there would still be atheism? We can.
Con's choice

Fortunately I choose the definition of murder wich is: Murder- To kill something illegally, or with no need. This is a very commonly accepted definition: http://en.wikipedia.org... (it is locked so no one can change it, it is relible, but there is another deffinition similar) http://dictionary.reference.com... http://www.merriam-webster.com... since ripping a baby limb for limb is inhumane, it is murder, babies are human. 1 A member of the species Homo sapiens; a human being. 2 A member of any of the extinct species of the genus Homo, such as Homo erectus or Homo habilis, that are considered ancestral or closely related to modern humans. Neither require you to "Look human". Is somebody with 8 limbs not human, because she doesn't look human? Is that what my opponent is saying? Babies can feel pain. When giving birth is the child crying not in pain? Late term abortion delievers the normal pain to both parties and kills the child very brutelly. Same with normal abortion, but everyone can agree that a child can be born in between 6-10 months, even sooner in some cases. I never said the mother's life wasn't an issue....if by keeping the child, the mother gets cancer and dies, they will both die, better 1 than 2, but also better none than 1. A fetus DOES have conciesness, and can feel. when Xera was pregnant with the twins the girl kept beating up on her brother. As you can see on my avatar, she was sucking her thumb, at about 12 weeks (3 months, which is a lot sooner than 6 months and a whole lot sooner than 10), she is the only one that EVER sucked her thumb and she does to this day. However, the mother, (if she had the child), produced young offspring, (most likely) capable of producing more offspring in years to come. It is important for the circle of birth, raisng, conception, birth.... to go for ALL generations not just one. If every woman got an abortion, then there would be no children to continue the process. If you don't know whether the child is alive yet or not, then don't risk it actually being alive and being ripped apart limb by limb, and having the brains sucked out. Think of it like this: If you wouldn't be able to do it to an animal, without charges of animal cruelity, than why would you do it to a baby, and why should it be legal? It is not an opinion it is a fact. If you know what sex is then you know you (if you are a woman) CAN get pregnant, no amount of birth control, can change that FACT. I was pretty sure I excluded cases of rape. of course if she's raped she can't help it, if she can't help it then it's not her fault. If it's not her fault and her life would be in danger, or there is no way the child could be adopted, then yes abortion may be acceptable. I think my opponent misunderstood me. I believe it is wrong under normal surcumstances, which exclude: Rape Mother's life in danger. Please wait as long as you can to respond, I will be gone for about a week and unable to post a reply.
Con's choice

First, I'll attack your murder contention. You say that abortion is murder. first- murder-Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. dictionary.com so, you must kill a human being for it to qualify as murder. This you have not done. My definition of human is essentially that a human must be human in appearance, or at least recognizably human, must have conciousness, and must be able to feel pain and be able to react to stimuli. An embryo or fetus before the start of the third trimester can react to certain stimuli, but cannot be proven to have conciousness, therefore, by definition, it is not human. I'll also provide another definition, not one i personally feel applies. human-Having or showing those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from other animals. A human embryo especially cannot be distinguished from an animal embryo by the layperson. In fact, in a biology class i took one time, four diagrams of embryos were shown, and the students wer asked to pick the one they thought was human. I believe that about 90 percent of the class thought that the dog embryo was the human one. I agree with you absolutely on late term abortions, except that i think they should be allowed if the health of the mother is in danger. Here's my argument for that. A fetus has no conciousness or awareness until very late, and cannot produce children until many years after it is born. a mother is a concious person who can produce more offspring in a much shorter period. Her actual value to society is worth more than the potential value of the fetus to society, therefore mother wins. "If te woman slept with a guy, (not in cases of rape of coarse) then she knows ther is a chance of getting STDs or pregnant. People should not have sex, unless they are willing to devote 18+ years with the child." This is your opinion. It is not a fact. "If their is no one willing to help raise the child then she shouldn't be getting pregnant should she? She can help it, the only virgin pregnancy I have ever heard of, your profile suggests you wouldn't even believe it happened." What about in cases of rape? When you say that she can help it, do you mean that she could use a contraceptive? This too appears to be an opinion. And no, i don't. already adressed your late term abortion points. Right now i have refuted all of your points, and since opinions don't count as facts here, you have no argument at this point. there is no choice but to vote my side at this point.