BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Mormonism isn't Christianity

I am not out to slander Mormons, I have friends that are of this religion. Having said this, Christians believe that because Jesus Christ died for our sins, we shall receive the gift of eternal life in heaven if we accept him. Mormons do not believe this. Therefore, how do they call themselves Christians? You will find no crosses in Mormon temples, or churches. They do not believe the blood Jesus shed for all mankind is good enough for the redemption of man's sins. Mormon's believe that God was once a man, as we are right now. They also believe that we can be equal to God. In they're eyes; Mormonism is the ONLY way to heaven. No other sect will be going to heaven. Joseph Smith (Mormonism's founder) will come at the end of days at the right hand of Jesus and rule the earth. Without his good recommendation no one shall pass into heaven. This is heresy. They're ultimate goal is Godhood. To become a God or Goddess, and rule they're own planet. Does it not occur to any Mormon's that this was the EXACT reason the Devil was cast down? No one can be great as our God.
Resolved: Christianity and the Bible are true and the correct faith.

This is my rebuttle. There is proof in old censuses that the twelve apostles name in the bible were actual people. So what I'm hearing is that you think it is a book of stories or just a claim that got lucky. Well what reason would they have to make that up? Popularity? No. A lot of people hated them for what they said. For fun or own pleasure? Of coarse not. They didn't get rich or anything recording these things. They were persecuted. Many Christians were killed for doing these things. Even if they were making it up, then how so did it correspond with the censuses of that time? On to another point, Cristianity is the only religion that believes the earth is around 6 thousand years old. Others say the earth is billions of years old. Well there is plenty of evidence the earth can not possibly be that old. 1- The earth's spinning on its axis causes the top and bottom slowly to drift tiward each other. Scientist have tracked this and found the rate. If we multiply it by billions of years the earth would be I the shape of a disk. 2- There is a set rate of salt increase in oceans each year. If we again multiply it by the billions of years, every ocean would be denser than the Dead Sea. Since there is no recorded major change to earth's climate or shape in history, these things must have been consistent for thousands of years. Next, if you say that the stars, planets, humans, minds, etc, all came from two molecules in darkness running into each other, it makes no since at all. And with evolution, it tells of all these different creatures that are in the series too. There is one major flaw in this theory: If things evolve in that way, why aren't all animals humans? Most say that some times they stop evolving. Well where are all the half evolved creatures. Not once in all the things we have discovered has there been any signs of monkey-men stuck or dead during evolution. Also why would there be a sudden stop? Why have all the humans been stuck in this form for thousands of years? They must have been made separate from the others. That is why I say there is a creator. Lastly, science can not explain everything. Water- No one has ever been able to create more of the perfect liquid in all our time. People- No "clones" have ever been made of our perfectly made bodies. Minds- No science can explain how everything goes on in our heads, much less recreate it. Feelings- We are not robots, or something that just happened. Not one person in this world can say they can explain love, or joy, or embarrassment and know exactly how to "build it." If there is not a creator, how did all this happen?
Resolved: Christianity and the Bible are true and the correct faith.

1) There's still no evidence of the biblical events. Claiming "Nuh-uh!" isn't an argument, it's being anal. Also, notice how I did not deny anything regarding the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea happening - some, like locusts, probably did - but this is a good case of "The Bible says it, so it's true". The story of Canaan also is historically false, and unless my opponent can actually justify it other than "it IS historically accurate", then there's no reason to accept that these biblical events as happening.2) Why did people follow the Bible? Luck. The same happened with Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Islam, and the Native American Inca and Aztec religions. Of course, it is not just luck: there's also the fact that culturally the Roman faith was dwindling. The great empire of Rome was collapsing at its seams. That's why as the centuries went on, Christianity became more successful. Moreover, Christian religion simply trumped Rome. Roman Faith offered a King? Christianity offers King of Kings. Roman Faith offers Elysium if you're good? Christianity offers life with God if you believe. It set itself from the start as better, more powerful, and ultimately a better deal, like a door-to-door salesman competing with other pitchers.3) The point on the afterlife has been completely ignored, and quite possibly conceded.Now, does Christianity appeal to magic? Well, if by magic we mean the ability to heal people on whim using no logical methodology short of "wish for it to be true" or "touch my coat", in an anti-scientific, anti-rational way, then yes, Christianity appeals to magic. Moreover, Christianity, as I still contend, has fake stories in. Unless my opponent can prove beyond reasonable doubt that events like the resurrection happened, the Ark existed, Jews were in Egypt, etc. , then we have every reason to vote against him. Moreover, he still has to show that a deity exists, and an afterlife exists, two crucial points to his argument.
Resolved: Christianity and the Bible are true and the correct faith.

1) First of all, there are historical records and scientists believe in major biblical events such as the plagues in Egypt sent from God to free his people. Some say this is just caused by volcanic activity in the area and some natural disasters. The first thing I would say to that is why then did none of the destruction hit the Israelites? Now with some plagues like hail, it may just be in one place by weather, but things like disease, or locust invasions, none at all hurt Israelites. They left soon after and 40 years later took the city of Caanan and lived there as the Father promised. Then the Bible says God punished their leader, Abraham by letting him die when he arrived and God hid his body. This would be reason why no one found him. Yet the capture of Caanan historically accurate. 2) Also, according to the Bible, after Jesus died and his disciples were spreading the Word of God, the authorities captured them. During this time a member of the Sanhedrin, also people recorded in history named Gamaliel, made a good point. He said that all throughout our history, there have been many who have come and called themselves the true king of kings. Theudas once rose and gained 400 followers. He was then slain and his followers scattered and disappeared. After that Judas the Galilean rose up during the census and brought many more to believe in his word. He was then killed also for his works and his followers scattered. Gamaliel finishes his speech by saying that the people have rose and killed the the apostles leader, Jesus. If this is by man, they will scatter and it will end. If their God is true and what they say is right, then it will not stop no matter what we do. So they are released. Afterwards the church made not even a month before grows by thousands. The followers of God spread and teach to the nations around them. They do not scatter. They do not disappear. All who hear of it follows them and they heal many people by touch. If this is not a God or creator speaking through them then what is it? Magic? About every religion or theory denies any magic. Manly power? People were healed left and right by a touch of the disciples. Never has science revealed how. Fake stories? Historical accounts cans say they don't believe it but they have no way to get out of that the church did rapidly grow from a group of men. Again I ask, what else could this be? A random spark in the universe? All from monkeys over time? Magic supernatural military leaders?
Resolved: Christianity and the Bible are true and the correct faith.

I accept. My arguments are as follows:1) The Bible's events did not happen. My opponent cannot provide any evidence otherwise. From the Garden of Eden through to Noah's Ark and Jews in Egypt all the way to Jesus' resurrection: there are countless events which do not have any evidence to have happened, each of which are crucial to the Bible being true.2) There is no reason or evidence to believe in God. No philosophical evidence, nor empirical evidence has justified the existence of God.3) Finally, there is no reason to suppose an afterlife exists. Again, no philosophical nor empirical evidence has justified the existence of the afterlife.In the words of Clarence Darrow, belief in at least three tenets is necessary to the faith of a Christian: a belief in God, a belief in immortality, and a belief in a supernatural book. None of these three tenets are sufficiently justified, and as such we should negate the resolution.
Resolved: Christianity and the Bible are true and the correct faith.

I believe my opponent has forfeited the debate. I just want to say please do not vote for your own religion. Christian or not, vote by the content. And for one last rebuttal, Christianity was not lucky and just influenced by roman government to start. The most important figure in Christianity, Jesus, was killed by the people. And who arrested him and allowed this to happen? What guards stood and watched a perfect man suffer for hours? I bet a lot of you smart readers got it. ROMANS Therefore you have no reason to say they started the jurassic growth of the faith. They just followed the crowd. What else could they do? Kill the leader? They already killed Jesus and nothing happened. Kill them all? Well don't we all know what Hitler did? He had a massive army, jets, bombs, etc. If that failed do you think some guys with swords could kill off all of the Jews. Plus, not all christians were Jews. So imagine taking on what I mentioned before, plus multitudes of Gentiles, Samaritans, Romans, and more. Now after hearing that, how do you think it began? The government issued it and it got lucky, or God gave His people power to stand up for what is right and proclaim the truth to the world. The Romans just agreed. Thank you for accepting this challenge.
The World Is Becoming Too Dependant On Technology

Since my opponent did not take the time to set the definitions, I will do so myself. By "the world" I assume my opponent means mankind and not the actual physical earth. Dependent: needing someone or something else for support, help, etc [1]Technology: the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry [2][1] . http://www.merriam-webster.com...[2] . http://www.oxforddictionaries.com...
The World Is Becoming Too Dependant On Technology

I apologize for forfeiting the last round. Con has forfeited the round as well, so I will provide a small argument. In first world countries, specifically America, technology has become a striving factor of obesity and laziness throughout the country, Now I realize that other factors play into the cause of overweight problems, television and computers and cellphones have played a part in the lack of exercise taking place in an American's life. Technology has not only taken a part in major life changing events, but may also hinder our advance of future sciences.
Religious music should not be sung by elementary school choirs

From experience i remember singing relgious church hyms in my elementary school choir. Even though i am jewish, i was instructed to sing songs praising jesus christ as our savior and the only true god (not saying this isnt true) THere are many points to suggest children should not be singing religious music in school choirs 1) the message of the song may be conflicting with the respective childs religion. It should not be allowed to make a child sing a song about something they do not believe in. forcing a child to make this decision is wrong. 2) school is not a place for religion to be sung. THere are not just problems with singing these songs, some children may not want to listen to them during a school assembly, but will have no choice but to stay and listen to the religious music For these reasons and more, i think i can win this debate DARE TO CHALLENGE ME???
The Universe is ~13.8 Billion Years Old

My opponent source [1] attempted to discredit intrinsic red shift theory. The abstract states that the amount of observed quasars that appear near a galaxy is expected in a random sample, which is opposing to my argument of the frequency of quasars appear near galaxies, but it does not address the observations that have been made of Quasars having visible connections with galaxies that I sourced earlier. My opponent only countered the weaker evidence of the frequency of quasars next to galaxies, but not the stronger evidence of quasars having visible connections with a galaxies. All of my opponent"s argument rely on Hubble"s law, but my opponent has not refuted my evidence showing visible connections between high red shift quasars and low red shift galaxies which contradicts Hubble"s law. This is enough to create reasonable doubt of the 13.8 billion year age of the universe. "Angular power spectra themselves are too complicated to explain here" (opponent"s quote) is not a valid argument. "My opponent's last argument was that information is being concealed from the public by the scientific community. Firstly, my opponent has absolutely no evidence of such a thing occurring" (opponent"s quote) my job is to provide reasonable doubt since my opponent has BoP. People aren"t perfectly honest, and often withhold information when it conveniences them. Since scientists are human, they can have the same problems, thus it is reasonable. "If someone found ample evidence that the Big Bang theory was incorrect (which Halton Arp did not " see above), it would win the researcher worldwide recognition" (opponent"s quote) That is the equivalence of saying if someone found ample evidence that Christianity was incorrect, all Christians would denounce their religion and that person would be famous. So in summary, I gave reasonable doubt of Hubble"s law which results in reasonable doubt of the 13.8 billion year age of the universe. [1] http://adsabs.harvard.edu... (opponent"s source)
The Universe is ~13.8 Billion Years Old

My opponent fails to understand that I am arguing for the idea of intrinsic red shift, not that there is no red shift due to the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect does not disprove intrinsic red shift theory. And as I have explained, High red shift quasars being next to and having a visible connection with low red shift galaxies strongly suggest that they are at the same distance, and that the high red shift quasar is really a smaller intrinsically red shifted object near the galaxy, which demonstrates that some objects are intrinsically red shifted, thus you can"t determine the distance and velocity of a stellar object just by its red shift, because you don"t know how much red shift is intrinsic and how much is caused by the Doppler Effect. And since the distance and speed of stellar objects is what is used to determine the universe is 13.8 billion years old, then we can"t conclude the age of the universe. My opponent claims that we see no distant galaxies blue shifted. The reason scientist believe that there are no distant galaxies that are blue shifted is because scientists determine the distance of a galaxy by how red shifted it is. Scientists assume that we can determine the distance of a galaxy by its red shift. Arguing that there are no distant blue shifted galaxies based off of the assumption that red shift correlates with distance because of Hubble"s law, in order to give confirmation to Hubble"s law is begging the question. My opponent states "As for my opponent's concerns about the effects of the center of the galaxy (which is a strong radio source (2)) on measurements of the CMB, the solution is truly simple: wait until the Earth is between the galactic center and your detector and then take your measurements" I would like a source showing that this method is what is used to accurately measure the CMB. If you only measure CMB when the Earth is in between the center of the milky way galaxy and the measurement, you can"t measure CMB on the other side of the Earth that has the galactic center, but scientists claim they know that the CMB is uniform throughout the entire universe, not just the parts of the universe we can accurately measure. And for radioactive decay measuring the age of the universe, even assuming that variation of rate of radioactive decay is minimal throughout the history of the universe, the age range my opponent gave in round 3 for the age of the universe using radioactive decay was between 11.5 and 16.5 billion years, although somewhat indicative, is not accurate enough to conclude 13.8 billion years. As for my opponent"s claims of "the remarkable coincidence of estimates and the fact that they are all derived completely differently", it is not a coincidence; scientists choose to only share with the public the results that are consistent. If scientists go against the flow showing results that contradict mainstream science, they risk getting ridiculed by other scientists and losing funding.
The Universe is ~13.8 Billion Years Old

The evidence that quasars are connected to galaxies is much more than just the amount of times quasars appear near galaxies. There are visible connections between galaxies and quasars despite some scientists ignoring them [1]. So there are reasons to doubt that red shift correlates with distance. My opponent's argument for the big bang also relies the idea that galaxies are moving away from each other, which relies on the idea that red shift accurately measures speed. So as long as the validity of red shift measuring speed and distance is questionable, so is the Big Bang theory. As for the cosmic microwave background, there is way too much interference from the galactic center to accurately measure the cosmic microwave background [2]. Thus it can't be reliable enough to get an accurate age since the Big Bang, even if the Big Bang did happen. My opponent claims that radioactive decay can be used to measure the age of the universe, but radioactive decay is not constant [3] so it can't be used to accurately measure the age of the universe. As for how old I believe the universe is, I really don't know. I don't think there is strong enough evidence to conclude that the universe is any specific age. It could be anywhere from 100 million years to 100 quadrillion years for all I know. I think it is astonishing that scientists admit that a majority of the universe is made of this dark matter they know nothing about and that most energy is dark energy they don't understand, but yet they claim to understand the universe well enough to know its age with 3 significant figures of accuracy. [1] http://youtu.be... [2] [3]
The Universe is ~13.8 Billion Years Old

In order to calculate the age of the universe using Hubble"s law, red shift is used to measure the distance of distant cosmic objects. If red shift doesn"t accurately measure distance and velocity we don"t have an accurate measurements to calculate the age of the universe. There are problems with the idea that red shift correlates linearly with velocity and distance. It can"t be known if something is naturally red or only red because it is travelling quickly away from you. There is also evidence to strongly suggest that red shift doesn"t correlate with distance and velocity, including several examples of high red shift quasars being clustered together with low red shift galaxies indicating that the quasars are actually nearby with the galaxy different from what the red shift suggests [1]. And if red shift doesn"t accurately measure distance and velocity as this information suggests, then the age of the universe can"t be accurately measured with Hubble"s law since we don't know the distance to the edges of the universe. My opponent states "Firstly, we must understand that all objects emit electromagnetic radiation" I ask if everything emits electromagnetic radiation, then how do we know that the CMB is from the big bang when it could have been from anything else? Until my opponent gives a reason, it is an unproven assumption. And if the CMB is not from the Big Bang, then it can"t be used to calculate the age of the universe. Also if my opponent wishes to continue to use the Big Bang in his arguments, I request my opponent proves that the Big Bang happened instead of just assuming it did. [1] http://youtu.be...
The Universe is ~13.8 Billion Years Old

My position is that it is unknown how old the universe is, and that the conclusion that the universe is 13.8 billion years old is based off of flawed assumptions. Since my opponent has burden of proof, I will be refuting my opponent"s claims in attempt to create reasonable doubt of the believed 13.8 billion year age of the universe. I will wait for my opponent to explain why his supposed evidence supports the 13.8 billion year age of the universe for me to have something to rebuttal.
The Universe is ~13.8 Billion Years Old

To whomever accepts this debate: I. Round 1 will be for stating your argument, Rounds 2, 3, 4, and 5 will be for polite debate, with brief closing remarks made at the end of Round 5. II. I expect the usage of reliable sources throughout this debate. Examples of reliable sources include textbooks, scientific lectures, .edu sites, and so on. Holy books are not reliable sources as all arguments based on them tend to be circular in nature. III. We will not be debating how the Universe came into existence (although I'd happily debate anyone on that at a later time). We will only be debating the age of the Universe. To voters: Please vote on the outcome of this debate purely on the arguments you see presented here, not on your personal beliefs. Thank you. I now state my position: the Universe is many billions of years old, not thousands as some contend. There is a good deal of evidence supporting this argument, including the Cosmic Microwave Background, the observed recession velocity of distant galaxies, and the measured size of the observable Universe. I will explain each of these in more detail after my opponent states his/her intent to participate in the debate and his/her position. Good luck!