If there is no, hate, there'll be no love. If there is no love, there'll be no hate.

Let me start out by thanking my opponent for her swift reply, and welcome her to DDO! It is a pleasure to be able to share her first debate, and I hope that she will stay for many more. That said there are a couple of warrant issues that need to be tackled headfirst. No matter how you look at a debate, it cannot move beyond a quarrel unless compelling warrants are provided to show the legitimacy of claims made in the round. If there are no warrants to arguments being made in a debate, then there is no way for the voters to make a fair judgement as to who is winning the debate. Simply giving an opinion is not enough. One must provide backing to show that their opinion is worthwhile and valid. Unless they do so then again, there's no way for voters to decide who's winning. Could they just vote for the debater they personally agree with? Maybe, but not just because they agree with them on a personal level. Voters need to remain unbiased and vote based on a strict analysis of the arguments made in the round. This is called being tabula rasa, or blank slate. Voters do this to maximize fairness in the round and keep their personal bias from influencing their decisions. So then making a strong claim, or presenting an opinion isn't enough in a debate because it doesn't give voters anything to work with. All claims are equally valid unto themselves and don't really mean much without a warrant. So what do you do if neither debater gives warrants? You default to the person accepting the challenge every single time. And here's why; when one takes the initiative to start a debate, he or she also accepts the responsibility of proving the claim that they wish to debate in the first place. The instigator welcomes challengers to test the mettle of his or her beliefs or even just a position he or she is maintaining for said debate. The one who accepts that challenge only needs to refute their opponent's arguments to meet their burden of clash -- they don't need to provide an alternative of their own. They can do this if they would like, and they can even refute an opponent's arguments by showing that their alternative is a more believable, or desirable one. So long as he or she can refute the instigator's challenge, he or she has met his or her burden. Now the reason you default to the contender in the event that neither debater makes a compelling argument, is that the instigator hold the primary burden of proof in any given debate. If they don't meet burden, then no debate happens. Now why did I type all of this? Because Pro does not provide any warrant, analytical or otherwise, to show that her claim is compelling. She simply says that she believes hate and love are opposites. So even if I didn't make any arguments of my own here, I win because you're going to vote for me by default. I do however have an argument to make. Hate and love are not the opposites of one another, because the absence of one does not indicate the presence of the other. If I stop loving something, I don't start hating it. In the same way, if I stop hating something, I don't start loving it. I used to love Albert's salsa[1]. I would eat it whenever I could because it just tasted so good to me. However, when I discovered Julio's salsa[2], I didn't even care about albert's anymore because julio's was so much better. I discovered a new level of salsa and Albert's no longer lived up to my expectations. I didn't start hating Albert's salsa though. And if it was there to eat, I would eat because it still tasted pretty good. But I no longer loved it. Instead, I was apathetic to it. I didn't really care either way. [1] . http://www.janannafoods.com... [2] . http://www.julioscornchips.com... So what about hate? It's basically the principle. Just because you stop hating something, doesn't mean you start loving it. I used to hate lettuce when I was really little. I couldn't tell you why I hated it so much, but I did. Every time my uncle would take me to go eat burgers I would always tell the store that I didn't want any lettuce on my burger because I hated it so much. However as I got older I decided that lettuce didn't really bother me that much. I didn't want to just eat all the time, but I didn't mind it. I was just apathetic about it. Hate can exist without love, because both exist on a sliding scale of preference. Love indicates the highest level of preference on this scale and hate indicates the lowest level of preference. In the middle exists apathy, indifference, liking, disliking and even indecision. If we all lived in a world where no body loved anything, that wouldn't mean they didn't hate anything. In the same way, if we lived in a world where no one hated anything, that wouldn't mean they didn't love anything.