BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Evolution is supported by scientific evidence

I would like to ask my opponent if the evolution this debate is about is implied to be Darwinian evolution (the physical change of organisms over time guided by natural selection)? In any case, my following arguments rely on that point.1. The source my opponent has provided lists a number of examples of speciation, which is indeed evidence of evolution. It is not, however, evidence of Darwinian evolution. I would request that my opponent provide clear evidence of Darwinian macroevolution.2. The points my opponent has made regarding the existence of transitional fossils stand. So does the point that gaps in the fossil record do not disprove evolutionary theories. However, so does my original point that a continuous, complete change from one species to another has not been found in the fossil record. Furthermore, even if it had, it would not be evidence of Darwinian evolution.3. All my opponents points regarding the Cambrian explosion stand, except for the final one, that being that the length of time that the "explosion" took place over is evidence of (Darwinian) evolution.4. My opponent seems to suppose evolutionary theory is correct in the writing of this section. In any case, as they don't seem to intend to use vestigial organs as a point of argument, I see no reason in debating that point.A. My opponent argues that inactive genetic material in humans that, were it active, would produce a tail is evidence that humans are descended from something with tails, and this point stands. However, they then go on to explain this change in terms of Darwinian evolution, without providing evidence that this was indeed the reason for this change. I would ask my opponent to provide such evidence, if possible.B. All my opponent's arguments regarding observed speciation as evidence of evolution in general stand. However, no evidence is provided for Darwinian evolution.
Higher Education ought to be private and indiviuals ought to pay for it themselves.

private - Not owned by the state or government. This this not exempt them from regulations. individuals ought to pay for it themselves - This definition also includes family members or those willing enough to pay for your eduction (e. g charity, employees, or friends) or banks giving out loans. However, this does not include the government or those forced to pay for higher education (e. g taxpayers). higher education - Education after high school dedicated to teaching others.
Higher Education ought to be private and indiviuals ought to pay for it themselves.

1. Every country needs experts Every society must invest in its own potentials in order to avoid the collapse that happened in Germany when they realised that they have no experts and that they have to accept that they must import foreign professionals from India and around the world. Interest of every society is to educate everyone for something that will benefit the whole community. If education is not free that means that it is available only to those who can pay. Thus society is losing many talented people who came from poor families and are not able to finance themselves. All men are born equal and everyone should have the same opportunity! 2. Knowledge is not a commodity! Education is not for sale! Even education is free it's not everything free. Student still have to pay accommodations, food, transport, etc. Every university which is free for students have regulations which prevent 'ever study'. This means that there is a norm that every student must meet if he/she wants to continue education. If he/she doesn't meet norm education is not free anymore (except in cases of serious illness or another strong valid reason). This prevents problems such as 'bad students', 'dissatisfied teachers' and many others. 3. Possibility of choice Possibility of choice should always exist. If you're not satisfied with free University and you have money and you don't want to someone else pays for you you can always go to Private University. It is important that you had a chance choose the best way for yourself. Everyone should be allowed the opportunity of free education and each individual should choose its own way. As a good example of the state with free education we have Denmark. In Denmark education (primary and secondary but also higher education) is absolutely free. After High school when you start University, if you're moved from parents you have right to the scholarship which is approximately 500 EUR per month. If you still live with parents you also get the scholarship (little less than 500 EUR). In both cases state is paying you! You can get scholarship as many years as it is standardized length of study + one extra year. If you are a female and become pregnant, then for each child you get double scholarship one year after the birth of a child + extend your right to a scholarship for a year for each child. This scholarship is a gift from the state because it is something that you get and you should never return. It's true that tax is bigger than usual but system works very good because no one is depend on parents and their salary and absolutely everyone has the same right to higher education. So, if the entire life your parents were unemployed and social cases for any reason, you have absolutely the same opportunities for education as well as anyone else. Here you can see students protests worldwide against commercialisation of education: http://fading-hope.blog-city.com... Sources: http://www.emancipating-education-for-all.org... http://www.eng.uvm.dk...
Banning abortion violates self-ownership.

First, the killing versus letting die distinction is apparent. Abortion or the termination of the pregnancy is a direct killing of the child. This is much different than the landlord because the lives aren't directly correlated to him from a rights perspective. While he did potentially save those men from dying in the cold, the mother initiated the situation out of her own choice and in terminating it or exercising her rights is directly responsible for the death. The landowner was not initially responsible and does not face the burden of killing the impromptu tenants. Think of it in this light. The landlord sees a child drowning. He doesn't HAVE to swim out and save the child, but can if he so desires. The mother on the other hand, sees a perfectly healthy child on the bank of a river and pushes him in. This is the distinction. While the landlord faces no burden in saving the men, he can choose to 'unsave' them and exercise his rights. The mother, on the other hand, is not in this situation. She is taking an otherwise functional and existing life and ending it as a result of exercising her rights. More importantly, your argument hinges on property rights outweighing those of life. The mother is only just in taking the life (exercising her rights) if those rights trump the right to life that the child has. This is to value self-ownership over the right to be alive. This is like arguing that I can exercise free speech even if it takes someone's life. While I do agree that everyone should have the right to own themselves and have the right to exercise their rights, these rights shouldn't be accessible when they directly interfere with the rights of another, specifically and especially a more superior right, like being alive. 'Eviction' as you have presented abortion, therefore, is only justified in a scenario where an equal right of the mother is being withheld. In other words, if the child threatens the life of the mother, she has every right to 'evict' the child. Assimilating a child in the womb to a tenant-landlord relationship simply doesn't work out. While I agree that the mother should have rights over her own body, these rights cannot be exercised when they strip rights from others, as is one of our country's fundamental constitutional principles.
Banning abortion violates self-ownership.

Abortion is not necessarily an act of killing any more than the example with the apartment owner. In the case that the procedure kills the child in itself and unnecessarily (as in partial birth abortion), then it should be prohibited and certainly does violate the rights of the child. But, abortions are not that way in general. We already have the ability to keep a very prematurely removed child alive. As medicine advances, a child may one day be viable outside the womb from day one. But, in any case, the mother is just as much "letting die" as the apartment owner. She is merely removing the child from her property, not killing him/her. The certainty of the child dying outside the womb is not of consequence, from a property rights perspective. Furthermore, the moment the mother no longer wants the child in her body, the child becomes a trespasser. As such, if the only way to evict is to kill, then that is still legitimate. Other methods of removal should be used, if possible and available, but if none exist, then the killing is still legitimate. Take the following example of this: Let us assume that there is a property which exists on the top of a high plateau, with cliffs which drop hundreds of feet to a valley surrounding it. There is no transportation to the bottom. Now, a plane above malfunctions and the pilot is forced to eject, landing on this property. Does not the property owner still have a right to demand that the trespasser leave his property immediately? If the pilot does not, would not the property owner be justified in physically removing him from the property by force? This is the situation at hand. Yes, it would be grossly immoral to do such a thing, but the property owner has the right to do so. Taking of life in abortion is not necessarily unjust. It is only so when viable alternatives exist and the taking of life is unnecessary for eviction.
Banning abortion violates self-ownership.

Your right to life argument ignores the distinction between killing and letting die. Surely, abortion is an instance of killing, a direct and decisive violation of the right, as the mother is choosing to terminate the life. The right to life is not the right to never die, but rather to never have our life unjustly taken from us. Abortion is a grave instance of this. The obligation to sacrifice something to save another person is certainly contentious, but that doesn't apply to this argument. The child doesn't need to be saved, he/she just needs to not be killed. There is a major distinction. My notion of superior rights was simply to imply that some rights are preconditioned on others. Certainly, have the right to self-ownership is preconditioned on being alive. Your analogy isn't analogous. Again, the difference between killing and letting die. 'Eviction' in the abortion scenario, kills the child. In the landlord scenario, the obligation isn't one of killing.
Banning abortion violates self-ownership.

Do we have a "right to life"? I do not believe so. If one person has a right, that implies a responsibility for the rest of the rational beings in the universe. If I have a right to not have my cellphone stolen (that is to say, I am the legitimate owner of the cellphone), then you and everyone else have a responsibility to not steal it from me. If I have a right to exclude from my property, then you have an obligation to stay off my property unless I permit your entrance. Now what would a "right to life" imply? That would mean that everyone has a responsibility, an obligation, to make sure I stay alive. If I die, my rights have been violated by every single person, regardless of the circumstances of my death. It would imply that every starving person must be fed, every dehydrated person given a drink, every freezing person given shelter - so as to prevent death. It would imply that if we had a machine which could transfer "life force" then any time someone died, everyone would have a responsibility to transfer some of their "life force" to ensure that person lived on. A right to life is untenable and, indeed, would violate the doctrine of self-ownership which has been accepted for the purposes of this debate. Most certainly being forced to transfer life force would be a violation of self-ownership on the basest of levels, no? The fact of the matter is that a "right to life" does not exist, and cannot exist. Also, I would like to dispel the notion of "superior rights," and thus "inferior rights." There is no such thing. Rights are absolutes, or they cannot be considered "rights." Rights do not ever conflict, or again they would lack the nature of "rights." Finally, it seems the main objection my opponent has is that as a result of evicting the child from the mother's property (her body), the child dies. But what if we were to extend this theory to property owners of other kinds? Let us assume that it is a particularly cold winter. In an act of charity, a local apartment owner allows a few homeless people to seek shelter inside his building because he has a few unused rooms. Would the apartment owner not be allowed to later evict these homeless people from his apartment building, for whatever reason, if he knew they would die in the cold? Did, by his act of allowing the homeless people to have shelter, the apartment owner create an obligation he did not previously have?
Banning abortion violates self-ownership.

While I agree, all of us have property rights over our bodies. However, these rights to ourselves are abandoned when exercising them infringes on the rights of others. ie. abortion is the exercise of the property rights you mentioned, but exercising those rights violates the superior right to life of another. This holds because you concede that life begins at conception. Therefore, a mother exercising her property rights is a rights violation in and of itself. This is a fundamental constitutional principle. We don't have the right to freedom of speech if it infringes on others rights. If we are to assume that we all have equal rights, acting to violate the right to life of another in the process of exercising property rights would forfeit your own right to life.
Banning abortion violates self-ownership.

This will be a four round debate. For the purposes of this debate, I would like to ask that my opponent begins with these three assumptions: 1) all persons are legitimate self-owners, 2) life begins at conception, and 3) all persons have the same rights. I would like to start by saying that I believe abortion is a tragedy and is completely immoral in all cases. In spite of this, it should not be prohibited by law. Women, as self-owners, have complete dominion over their bodies and, insofar as they do not violate the rights of anyone else, they may use their bodies as they please. That is, they have no positive obligations to anyone regarding the use of their bodies. The correct property-rights analysis is one of eviction. Just as a landlord may evict a tenant, a woman may evict her child from her property (in this case, from her body).
god exists

Whooo boy! Might I say, I think I should win this debate just for finishing it.As I said before, Pro has not provided evidence or reason to support the existence of God. In fact, Pro hasn't actually offered any argument. I'm not going to reiterate why this is: the information is available if you scroll up.Pro continues to quote circumstances in which she, someone she knew, or someone she just heard about through word of mouth, managed to overcome seemingly insurmountable circumstances. Instead of doing her research, however, she throws her hands up in the air and says, "God is the only explanation." But the reality of the matter is, with a global population of nearly 7 billion people, why should we be all that surprised when some random person overcomes harsh odds? Because meanwhile, there are over 150,000 people dying every single day, many of whom are praying to survive[1] and are not having their prayers answered. So instead of pointing to the handful of fortunate people in the world and asking, "How is it that you don't believe in God?" I'm pointing to the majority of scenarios and asking, "How is this supposed to support the existence of God?"Ultimately, the burden of proof was on Pro, and Pro has failed to offer sufficient reason. I believe this to be an open and shut case. Vote Con.Source: https://www.cia.gov...
god exists

you told me in ur last rnd,"you either have these very same attributes, or you're incredibly lucky" ok, con i may b lucky coz i m nt so intelligent. den tell me con, what exactly is luck? that's just what u prefer to call god. luck also, very like god, is nth u can prove, is it? can u show me evidence that i was lucky? o u can't similarly, god is nth we can prove.....ok here's another example: my sis was not born on time.......she was born 2 mths premature. of course she was put in a hospital, bt the doctors said she was a high risk patient n jst a the time my sis was inside,a strike on the hospital y parents of dead children started, the doctor fainted n there was only 1 nurse to take care of kids....she was also too angry to deal with them properly scared a special; prayer concerning the doctor and the babies was held in our church.... but the nurse didn't soften n all parents were forced to take away their babies. we did too. without medical help she would not have survived as she was unable even to suck mom's milk. wt saved her? u also said"the evidence cannot actually be shown to anyone else" of course not....can we see oxygen? no! yet we know it's there. we don't ask for evidence that there is oxygen in the air, do we? we just breathe. god's like that, u jst believe him, u don't need evidence. tell me, last time u sat on a chair, did u pick it up to see if it would hold u? no! u didn't, u jst trusted it to hold ur weight. god's like that. u don't need to check twice b4 trusting him. there is someone else i can use as my support, i hav an uncle, prakash, he is strongly interested politics. he took part in the big civil war, known as jana-andolan in nepal. he still has those scars. he had 2 bullets, 1 i forgot where n 1 in from his tummy n out from his back. the doctors had left him for dead. there were other patients with gr8r possibilities to live. among hundreds of people, he was one of only 4 who survived the night, after their operations, he was the only 1 to live he is still alive n u if u can come to nepal, he will show u the scars. there is evidence that there is god, coz he was prayed for n he lived! come on con, come to my country, i'll prove god to u! there is also another man i saw.... forgot his name...bt he had actually died! n prayer brought him back to life....tell me, if there is no god, how did he get his life back? now say con, do u believe? there is a bad criminal who used to be frustrated all the time. a stranger started visiting him n he came to believe in Christ. 1 night he asked god to forgive him as suggested by the stranger. overnight he was a change man he left his criminal ways, his drugs, everything and he was just happy, so happy. i knw the criminal t i m nt taking any names. tell me, if there is no god, what changed him so much? seeing that u have some knowledge regarding human health, u ought to know that a man heavily set on drugs can't leave it overnight.tell me now con, what enabled this man to totally leave drugs though he was a dreadful addict?
god exists

yes may the best of us win......but i'm debating this topic only to show what true belief is. well, as i said b4 i'm talking mainly from personal experience. i'll also use life stories of other people. my first point is: the reason for prayers being answered; what else if god was not real, would answer prayers? i was half-prepared for my exams. i was planning to learn the rest during exams....i fell ill just the day b4 exam. i prayed. even while giving exams, i gave it with trembling hands......i'd have been happy if i had even just passed. but on the result,however, i passed with a 1st division. tell me con, if there is no god how did i do so well with trembling fingers and a tired mind? second point: miracles are performed even today about a year ago, my little sister when she was 2 fell from the top to the bottom of a five floor building, and my sister survived even without y professional help. my dad said if she was going to die, he'd rather have her die in his arms n among unknown doctors. and guess what? after 2 hrs of rest, she woke up, had a limp for a day, and then was as good as good can be. another miracle: this was performed in someone else's life. i read his life story in the book: taming the tiger. this is a part of it i'll never forget: tony was a world kung-fu champion. he was in jail for a case of stealing. Alcaponey, a huge man killed his friend, Shawn. both men were looking chance to fight each other. the chance came and tony could have easily killed him but something stopped him. instead he just said"in Jesus' name, leave me alone!" (or sth similar) and the huge brute ran away! if god was not real, what could have made alaponey run away in the name of jesus? this much for is round. and con, in the next round, please use easier words, i'm still at school, and the words u useare too big for me.
god exists

I accept.It seems that I did indeed win the last debate, but mostly because my opponent was a troll. For what it's worth to the readers, I would be very eager to try that debate again with someone else on another occasion.In this debate, however, I do not believe that I will be arguing with metaphysics or epistemology so much as I will be arguing from the standpoint of rhetoric. My primary claim is that anecdotal evidence is insufficient for effectively arguing any kind of point. I will also argue for the distinct difference between beliefs that fulfill the pragmatic concerns and those that fulfill doxastic concerns, and explain why doxastic concerns are the only ones worth debating over.In this game of chess, I declare myself the black player, and pro can make the first move.Cheers! And may the best debater win.