BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
No true Christian can support the death penalty

You are right I did make a grounded assertion (it was not unfounded), it was based on simple definitions which I mentioned in round 2 and your definitions in round 3. Thats is it is killing. Now I believe I understand your concept of the difference between murder and killing now. Although It still does not help you case. As when your source cited states "Since man is made in the image of God, his life is infinitely precious — only God Himself has the right to give and take life. " That means only God has the right to apply the death penalty or kill or murder. All of these involve the simple concept of taking a life, which according to your source only God should be able to do. As such your argument stands defeated using your own source. This means all my arguments remain uncontested yet again. Further I do not think my opponent understand my arguments, as large swaths of it have been dropped. I have stated this before and I will reiterate it here my arguments do not require omnipotence. Additionally, I have shown God can be fallible using verses from the Bible. Additionally, my opponent makes the following false statements. My opponent says "There is biblical evidence that God=/=Jesus. " This disregards the biblical evidence of the trinity in Matthew 28:19 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”, which is a central tenant of Christianity. Additionally, it disregards Jesus own words in John 8:58 ““Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am! ”” which show Jesus is equal to God. Another fallacious statement my opponent made was that "You then go on to state that because God made a contradiction he is flawed. Once again, you have to realise that an omnipotent God is nto bound by the laws of logic. " What? If God is not bound by logic, then God is bound by the fact that god is not bound by logic and you have a paradox. So your assumption is fallacious as it is a paradox and is unable to help you argument. Remember, as I have stated before in my arguments I do not require a omnipotent God and have shown that a fallible God is rational according to the Bible. This remember is an argument you have failed to negate. In this debate I have shown that my opponent has to disregard Christianity for his arguments to work in so much that he has to ignore the trinity and that god and Jesus are one and the same. Additionally, my opponents sources actually prove my case and as such all my arguments stand unscathed. Lastly, my opponent says my arguments rest on assertions that are baseless. If you read through the debate you will see all my so called “baseless” assertions are backed by Biblical evidence. As such I am not sure why opponent is saying this when clearly these are very well grounded assertions.
harry potter is the best!!!!!!!!!!!!

I shall accept this challenge. I will want to see how this works. First i will say that actually I believe the best book character in that series is Sirius Black. He is Harry's god father if anyone wants to know. He is much more willing to die for his friends. as he did in the 5th book. He also is not afraid to take a life. he knows this. I am not killing anyone who did not deserve to die, it is either his life or theirs. those are some of the reasons why he is better than harry potter.
Is This life what you think it is? Hell if you see life wrong maybe the place you end up.

I' m debating to prove hell so this life is not worth doing what you want. (Devils wants) And I did, If I do not want to refer to any of your points I do not have to. And by not refering to your points, does that mean you are right? Yet you want me to. You make no sense again. There is no blind faith as Jesus is not blind. But you are. The Devil has blinded you. Why does Richard Dawkins written a book on the "Devil Delutsion"? The reason is because it would prove God therefore hell exists. As the Devil hides out of sight, when really you think God does. God does not hide. If God did then the devil would snatch us away. As we remmind the Devil of God the Devil will bring us to hell and kill us over and over for ever. Whats stopping That. God must exist. God does exist. That is the truth. Heaven exists therefore as a closing comment hell exists, proving my point to begin with. Night xx Get saved, Repent or perish.
Is This life what you think it is? Hell if you see life wrong maybe the place you end up.

Extend all of my arguments. Pro has chosen not to debate the actual points, but rather cites blind faith as the basis for his claims. He is calling for voters to make their decision based upon his insistence of what is "right" instead of via the actual process and skill that actual debate entails. For this reason, you must consider me victorious as far as this debate is concerned. Being as though I'm an atheist (and Pro has not made one original or compelling argument), I'm not scared about winning elsewhere (i.e. in the eyes of god :P ). We'll see where this goes form here. For now, I'm confident just summing everything up in my closing argument.
Friday should be part of the weekend when school is out.

Basic Rules and Agreements: 1. No vulgar, slang, or racist language is allowed. 2. Intentional spelling or grammar errors are not allowed. 3. The first round is for introduction and agreement purposes. 4. If sources are used, they must be cited with URLs or titles of books and authors. 5. Debaters cannot vote for themselves. 6. To support the brevity of this debate, the character limit of each round is set to 4,000 characters. This debate is on the topic of school's being out on Friday. By convention in the United States, school is closed on weekends (currently Saturday and Sunday). I am taking the Pro/For side of this debate: I think that Friday should be included on the weekend. I pledge that I will try to make my arguments non-biased. I am a student in junior high, and I enjoy going to school. This debate is simply for the fun and enjoyment of debating. I wish good luck to my opponent in this debate.
Friday should be part of the weekend when school is out.

I will have to give my contender credit for sending me information I was unaware of before the debate. The issue of time will definitely be difficult to overcome. However, schools and business may also find shortened weeks to be beneficial to their budgets. My opponent gives the possibility that teenagers with after-school jobs will be unable to keep to the new schedule. That's what weekend jobs are for. I'm not sure whether this applies to everybody or not, but my homework takes me to 9:00 PM every night, assuming I go to athletic practices that afternoon. Many teenagers are already over-scheduled, so a longer school day wouldn't be too surprising for them. An alternative to this system is for only elementary school and middle school students to skip Friday. Too young for jobs or many other extracurricular activities, the youth may find benefits in skipping the final day of the week without running into its drawbacks. Second, my opponent suggests that teenagers have the tendency to sleep late and wake late. Though this is true presently, this fact does not mean that this teenage force of habit cannot be changed. As humans, our natural "programming" is to adapt to changing conditions. As school either starts earlier or ends later, many people can change their sleeping habits to mold to the new schedule. "Districts may save 20% on bus fuel costs by cutting one day out of the week. In addition to this, the school building temperature may be lowered three days instead of just two. And, the free day can be used for appointments and other necessities." (Source #1) Daily bills schools usually pay - lighting, heating, transportation, electricity, etc. - are cut by nearly one-fifth. Also, according to the same source, 90% of parents and teachers approve of this new schedule. Students, who finally find time for appointments, attend school more with this new system. In fact, the Utah State government has already started using this system. (Source #2) Through money-saving strategies, schools can focus more on their quality of education. (1) http://www.suite101.com... (2) http://en.wikipedia.org...
Friday should be part of the weekend when school is out.

Thanks to my opponent for continuing. My opponent's argument is that the education of Americans and the educational system is flawed, but goes on to say that its not because we don't go to school long enough. The problem according to him is mainly school budget and teacher quality. The problem is that none of this affirms the resolution. My opponent brings up the flaws in the educational system, but never gives any warrant whatsoever as to how placing Friday into the weekend will help the situation at all. Affirming changes nothing. He only mentions Friday once in the whole argument, where he says "keeping Friday will not help the situation America is in..." First there's no warrant whatsoever. Secondly, I must ask, Friday may or may not be helping, but is it hurting the situation either? He never argues that it is. And that's the only incentive we would have to adding it to the weekend. So since he fails to explain how Friday is detrimental to education or how affirming solves his problem, there's no reason to change the status quo. Onto my arguments. I will merely present one and show why adding Friday to the weekend would be a bad thing. 1. Adding Friday to the weekend doesn't reduce school time, it just takes hours from one area and moves them somewhere else. Believe me, I wish we could cut a school day out of every week and just chill. But it doesn't work that way. Its important to remember that schools have a requirement for how many hours students must spend at school a year. For middle through high school, this number is 1,080 hours (1). So if you take Friday out, those hours have to be made up somewhere. Since there are 36 weeks in the school year (2), if you lose a day from each of those and assume you go to school 8 hours a day, that's a deficit of 288 hours that have to be put somewhere else. They don't just disappear. Where do we put those hours he takes away? We have two options. 1. Add them to the end of the year. Sine we'd have to make up 36 missed days at rate of 4 per week, affirming would literally take over two months off from summer vacation. He'll probably go for the second option though, which is to simply distribute the lost hours into the other school days. School would open earlier and close later. Two problems. First, having school close later would conflict with the students who have jobs. They would have to go to work 1-2 hours later and lose 4-8 hours of money every week. Secondly, teenagers are biologically geared to go to bed late and sleep late (3), which is why most of us probably have lots of trouble getting up so early for school in the morning. Having to open school even earlier due to cancelling Friday would exacerbate this problem and cause a decrease in performance on tests and the like due to getting even less sleep than we do now. Since my opponent has given no reason to affirm, and because taking away Friday from the school week creates more problems, I must negate. 1. http://opi.mt.gov... 2. http://askville.amazon.com... 3. http://news.bbc.co.uk...
Friday should be part of the weekend when school is out.

My apologies for an unspecific debate. I have forgotten to mention that my arguments will be based on the point of view of the United States. In general, however, the contender may bring up arguments based on worldwide statistics. The primary issue with having Friday as part of the weekend is simple: America, as a country, is "uneducated" in relation to other countries. Many people who disagree with this topic point their attention to a decline in national test scores for both middle and high school students. On a roll of forty countries, America was placed in twenty-fifth place for highest scores on a standardized test. However, there has been no proof that this low statistic is due to the number of days in the workweek. Other factors, such as a school's budget and the quality of school instructors, make a larger impact on productivity than more days. In ABC's documentary "Stupid in America", one mother of a child who goes to a United States public school, stated that she could teacher her child more in one week than the school could in the entire semester. This example itself proves that higher quality instructors can increase the learning in their classrooms in shorter times. To conclude my turn of round 2, keeping Friday will not help the situation America is in, and a higher number of days in the school week doesn't necessarily guarantee a better education. Though I have more reasons for this debate, I wish for my opponent to respond to these topics: agree or disagree and why. (1) http://reason.com... http://www.youtube.com...
whiteflame is a bot/AI

Rebuttals in round 2 also. Whiteflame is a bot. Monotone speech structure I have never saw any emotion in his writings, nor has he ever done anything outside moderation. His debates are rare, and they too are in a monotone and coldly logical language. I have never saw any of his forum posts, polls, opinions, and comments regarding the debate rather than vote moderation. He is a bot, and has been classified to do only this. Online activity He has nearly been always online whenever I login, and I have rarely saw him online. I think he is a bot and doesn't sleep. Why was he made He was made by Juggle to ensure moderation throughout times of peace and war. But they don't want to advertise that, as then people will know Juggle is online and start their complaints all over again. An AI on DDO? Why This is still a beta product of Juggle. They have not released as currently it can't do anything without certain commands built in his code, such as acting on only reported votes and not accepting debates against him. The fact that he didn't accept this debate proves that he has no proof to show that he is not a bot. Right now, Juggle are working to make his decision independent from commands when he choose to do so, and also trying to turn him into a massive hacking device. Code fighting against code. Muahahah
whiteflame is a bot/AI

This is an interesting topic. The Burden of Proof will be shared. I'll make my arguments in Round 2. If Pro has any more arguments, post them in Round 2.Also, we'd better get some rules.1. No forfeiting. There's a glitch where if you forfeit a round in a debate, it'll freeze.2. No trolling, kritiks, semantics, or insults.3. BoP will be shared. Pro must prove that the user whiteflame is a bot. I have to show that he's probably not a bot.
Pascal's Wager is a Good Argument for Belief in God

I will reply quite simply here. The truth of Catholicism as a basis for the Wager is not implicit in my argument--rather that, given Pascal's proofs, the Catholic Christian faith is, strictly speaking, the proper object of the Wager. Nevertheless the one supreme creator God quite generally is a sufficient object of the Wager. Insofar as Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism etc. worships a supreme personal deity, it is a sufficient object of the Wager. At heart the issue is whether or not we should opt for belief in a supreme personal God simpliciter. As for your instance-in-which-being-an-atheist-is-preferable "counterexample," it's nonsense and you know it. Apart from the intellectual gymnastics involved, it only appears to work because in it you've posited the condition that this unknown God "doesn't mind atheism." But if "the one thing this God can't stand is people worshiping gods other than himself, because all the other gods do *exist,* but they are actually demons, and worship makes them more powerful" this God is concerned about his own power relative to them--in which case how could he possibly look kindly on your unbelief and lack of worship which would diminish his own power? If you reply that this God's power can't be diminished, then why should he be threatened by the demons? This is all silly. Finally, you say that Pascal's Wager doesn't offer any evidence for God's existence and so it doesn't offer a good reason to believe. How about pragmatism? If believing in God makes someone happy, then there's some good reason to believe in him. As I've stated before, belief via the Wager might be ok initially, but mature faith based on truth must be developed. In the end, Pascal is asking you one thing: Should you incline yourself towards belief in a supreme God who offers an eternal reward that might be fictional, or should you incline yourself towards unbelief and risk losing an eternal reward? Come on, man. You get it. I'm a student of philosophy and here I am saying: Stop philosophzing your way out of common sense! Nice debate dude :)
Pascal's Wager is a Good Argument for Belief in God

I'll concede the language point as it isn't that important. 1.) I'm to some extent sympathetic to your point here. Pascal does hold that Catholic Christianity is the true religion. But he argues why this is the case! He knows that he has to offer proofs. He doesn't just assume it. That's the whole point of his work. For examples, he writes, "The Psalms sung throughout the world. Who bears witness to Mahomet? Himself" (#1) and "Difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet. Mahomet not foretold. Jesus foretold. Mahomet slew, Jesus caused his followers to be slain. Mahomet forbade reading, the Apostles commanded it" (#203). He presents extensive arguments for why Jesus is the savior, why Islam is false, why Judaism is incomplete, and why unbelief is foolish. And naturally he wrote the work in a Catholic culture which took the orthodox view that the Church is founded on St. Peter. So Pascal answers your first objection himself. 2.) I agree that Hinduism is only alien because it is not apart of the culture we grew up in. And yes it is the world's 3rd largest religion. But remember that Hindus believe in a Supreme Being, and it's understood by many Hindus in a way very similar to the Abrahamic faiths--that it is a personal creator God to be worshipped. So I wasn't referring to this God but only the plethora of gods found in some schools in addition to the supreme God. When I said that Hinduism offers no emotive response I simply meant that for most of us in the West Hinduism does not present a persuasive option for religious adoption. The religion itself is quite beautiful and many facets of it agree with those of Abrahamic religion. 3.) Your definition of faith is Kierkegaardian for sure but it isn't what most of the faithful understand as faith. Rather than faith being a firm belief in the absence of or in spite of evidence, Catholics understand faith first of all as "a personal adherence of man to God...and a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed" (Catechism 150). The Catholic Church teaches that "the use of reason precedes faith and leads men to it by the help of revelation and of grace" (Denzinger 1651). 4.) Agreed. For many people belief is not going to come. But Pascal doesn't claim that belief will come to everyone, only to those who abandon their passions that oppose their inclination to belief. 5,6,7.) So what if in this case it's preferable to be atheist? Pascal, and I, posit a just God. And a God that does not communicate his will and what is required of human beings, as in your example, is a capricious God who is not worthy of being worshipped nor is he worthy of being wagered on. You realize this point already, as you add, "The reason that we do not know about this God is because he is still preparing the world for his prophets, who are yet to come. The way he is doing so is unknowable, because His plan is beyond understanding for mere mortals such as us."
Pascal's Wager is a Good Argument for Belief in God

Pascal's Wager, for those who are unaware, is a common argument in favor of religious belief. It says "you should believe in God, because if you are right, you go to heaven, and if you are wrong, you lose nothing. But if you don't believe, and you are right, you gain nothing, but if you are wrong, you go to hell. Therefore, no matter how unlikely God's existence may be, you should believe." It was proposed by Blaise Pascal, hence the name. I see this wager proposed quite often in religious debates, and so I will attempt to demonstrate that it is a poor argument that should not be used. Note that this debate is not about the existence of God(though that is an interesting debate in its own right); it is about the validity of Pascal's Wager. Firstly, the wager creates a false dichotomy: it assumes that there are two possible states: belief and unbelief. It fails to account for the myriad of mutually exclusive religious beliefs. What if you pick the wrong God? What if you pick Christianity and it turns out that Allah is the true God, or Baal or Odin or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? What if Baal doesn't particularly mind nonbelievers, but he hates it when people worship his ancient rival Yahweh? Or what if some currently unknown God exists, one who values reason and science, and cannot stand it when people come to conclusions through faith instead of reason? In that case, if you feel the evidence does not support God's existence but believe anyway, then you go to this deity's hell for intellectual dishonesty! Secondly, Pascal's Wager assumes that God, in his omniscience, would not be able to see right through your ruse, that he wouldn't be able to tell that you don't really believe, but that you fake belief "just in case." Which brings me to my next point: I don't know about anybody else, but *I* cannot choose to believe something as a matter of policy. Either an argument convinces me or it does not convince me. I don't choose to accept (or not accept) an argument as a conscious decision. I can choose to not apply reason and to not continue thinking about a given subject, but I can't just decide, one day, to believe in God. Sure, I could go through the motions, I could go to Church and say prayers and take communion, but again, an omniscient God would, presumably, see right through this and send me to Hell anyway.
Common Consent Provides a Reasonable Foundation for a Belief

Well, unfortunately it seems that Liam has given up on this debate. He has failed to establish that "common consent establishes that a proposition is probably true." Without that, he is unable to go any further in order to support his idea that if a majority of people believe in something it is reasonable to adhere to the preponderant viewpoint. I feel I have upheld my burden in this debate, as Liam has been unable to support in any way that common consent provides a reasonable foundation for belief. I would like to close by thanking Liam for the earlier rounds of this debate. I found it quite enjoyable and engaging for the few rounds we had. Should he ever choose to pick this topic back up a second a time I would be happy to see it through again. And thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read along.
Common Consent Provides a Reasonable Foundation for a Belief

Unfortunately it seems Liam has had to forfeit this round. I will gladly give him the benefit of the doubt here and assume that life got in the way and time simply got away from him.In the interest of fairness I will not offer any new arguments until he has the opportunity to attempt to rebut my comments in Round 3.To recap:Liam has yet to support his premise that "common consent establishes that a proposition is probably true."And, if he is able to demonstrate the truth of that premise, he still needs to address the concerns I raised with my argument in Round 3.I hope he will come back for Round 5.I look forward to reading his arguments and continuing this interesting discussion.