BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
should abortion be banned in the America

I'm curious why my opponent decided not to post an argument. However, I will respect the question. 1. It's the mothers choice whether or not she wants to keep a child that she is physically creating. A child is simply an extension of it's mother. Most people argue that adoption is always better than abortion. It takes a physical toll on a person to carry a baby inside of them for nine months then give birth to that baby and then give the baby to another family. Is it really fair to do this to someone? 2.Abortion is extremely safe for the mother and is legal. If abortion is banned people wouldn't simply change their views on having children. Mothers would still get abortions but they would be unsafe and now illegal. Would you rather a mother get an abortion by a doctor in an office with all the right equipment, or in some old apartment from a shady guy on the street with a pair of tongs. 3. How is abortion the same as murder? Are zygotes now considered human beings? If not, when does one become a human being? When most abortions occur the "baby" is just a cluster of cells. Should we also ban masturbation due to the fact that you are technically killing potential babies.
Mermaids Exist !

Everything you said, you claim can be confirmed online right now. However, you did not give any references. The whole point of debating and then having a voting period is that people can be swayed one way or the other. How should they be swayed if they have to go and look it up themselves to find out if you're lying? It should be as simple as"Click on the link and it will say what I have just stated." Second, religion was the very first thing before any revolution. God created the world. God created animals. God created plants. God created humans. There for, your statement of not accepting religion because it came from evolution, makes it able for me to use religion in here. So, to continue on: The walking on land and then going into water to find food is a myth. (Just like mermaids.) It is something that people made up to try and convince people that evolution is indeed true. I know that everyone keeps trying to prove it to others that evolution is real, but if that is so, then there would be half monkey/half humans in the world right now who are trying to 'evolve' to humans. There are None. Third, what you have said about whales, actually was just was I said in my previous argument when I said that animals and mammals have similar characteristics to us and to other living creatures. Using that statement was of no use to you. If you have more to say or argue about anything I just said, please start a new debate on this and I will be glad to prove you wrong again. :)
Mermaids Exist !

First of with a quick Google search or through any scholarly biology article you can confirm that all plants evolved from a group of green algae 510 million years ago and possibly earlier. The change over time needed for these things is longer than you could possibly imagine and all of it took place way before your religion was even conceived of. Whale's have pelvic bones and vestigial legs and lungs. They once walked on land then went to the sea to find food why couldn't early neanderthals and homo erectus (both confirmed early human species) do the same and eventually break off to become humans. I don't accept religion in this debate because it too is also a by product of evolution. Everything I stated above can be confirmed online right now.
Mermaids Exist !

It does not exist. There are all kinds of different animals that have an effect on our environment. Each one was made differently. While we are all connected to animals (because we are one ourselves), it does not mean that we evolved into them. May I bring up the fact that all trees are related to each other? Each tree possess similar characteristics to another tree. It does not mean, however, that one tree was made and then other trees evolved from that. basically, that is what people are trying to say with us and other animals. Because we possess similar traits to other animals we must have evolved from them. This is not the case. We were all unique animals, different in our own ways because that is what was intended, not because we have evolved from something else. (Am I allowed to bring religion into this or am I restricted to science only??)
Resolved: The United States Government should make abortion illegal.

In conclusion, Abortion must be considered legal. To prove why this must be the case, I will restate the essence of my previous undisputed points. A fetus can't survive on its own. It is fully dependent on its mother"s body, unlike born human beings. Even if a fetus was alive, the "right to life" does not imply a right to use somebody else's body. People have the right to refuse to donate their organs, for example, even if doing so would save somebody else's life. The "right to life" also does not imply a right to live by threatening somebody else's life. Bearing children is always a threat the life of the mother. A "right to life" is, at the end of the day, a right to not have somebody else"s will imposed upon your body. The US Supreme Court has declared abortion to be a "fundamental right" guaranteed by the US Constitution. The Constitution gives "a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy," and that "This right of privacy... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. Women who receive abortions are less likely to suffer mental health problems than women denied abortions. Women who are denied abortions are more likely to become unemployed, to be on public welfare, to be below the poverty line, and to become victims of domestic violence. Abortion reduces crime, because "women who have abortions are those most at risk to give birth to children who would engage in criminal activity," and women who had control over the timing of childbearing were more likely to raise children in optimal environments, crime is reduced when there is access to legal abortion. All of these points prove that women should be allowed to receive an abortion under the constitution, and that women who receive abortion gain numerous benefits from it, along with lowering the crime rates among other things. I thank my opponent for this wonderful debate, and look forward to debating with him in the near future. I would strongly encourage a vote for con in this debate. I look forward to your conclusion, and hope we can be friends hereafter. Thank you!
Resolved: The United States Government should make abortion illegal.

I have been very busy and have not had time to post much, I will refute your arguments in the order you created them. I disagree that a baby is part of the mother while still connected to the umbilical cord but like you said you will go into that later. A child who grows up without a strong household is better than no child right? Not only should abortion be considered murder, but theft too, You are robbing a human being of a chance to live. Would you rather be dead or have a chance at least for a good life? You stated that a mother would request an abortion because she cannot (just using one example) have the baby inside her body, please tell me how one would not be able to maintain a child in her womb. Like I said, would you rather live in an orphanage and have a chance at life or not have any chance and not be able to live? I hate to repeat the same argument over and over but would you rather have a chance at life even if your mother was a teen and you were an "accident" or would you rather be dead? Can you guarantee that a child won't be loved or accepted? I that we should strive to bring up wholesome children but they cannot be wholesome if they can't exist. I am sorry if i repeated the same thing to much, but I couldn't emphasize it more.
Who will start World war III

Hello and thank you LiberalJoe for accepting this argument with me. I hope it will be both enjoyable and enlightening for the both of us. Also thank you for your timely response I didn't expect to be answered this soon.First I would like to take a look at some of the Fear tactics being used by the United states right now to incite public support for a war on Iran. The United States claims that Israel is in immediate danger from Iran(Source 1) Completely ignorant of the fact that Israel has nuclear armaments and the surrounding countries have none I would want a nuclear weapon if I lived in Israel and Pakistan, Syria, and Iran had nuclear weapons. The country that is in immediate danger is Iran. We have multiple examples as a fact Iran has lost 5 nuclear scientists to assassinations in the past 4 years and has not retaliated. Also Iran hasn't made an aggressive act of war in 200 year( Source 2). The United States claims Ahmadinejad is a madman (which is where I would agree) and threatens to attack at any given moment due to mistranslations and misunderstanding. In fact we over estimate his power when he couldn't keep a campaign promise in 2007 to allow females into soccer matches(Source 3). Ahmadinejad Has no control over military forces to cause such an attack and his opinion is his own.My second point is that it would be completely ignorant of Iran to attack Israel due to its weak military, economy, and weak immediate allies. Iran had completely dropped its pursuit of a nuclear weapons program in 2003. (source 4) The Nuclear program it is seeking now was originally for green energy because Iran's economy was so bad it had to export its fossil fuels to get them refined and import them back due to no refineries. Nuclear energy would have been a clean and cheap alternative to what they had, but now they have possibly shifted back to nuclear research due to probing from its enemies. When Iran's Military budget is compared to that of the US and Israel it is very troubling The US have 2,883,613 active troops(active and reserve), Israel has 741,500, and Iran has 2,323,000. You will notice Iran and Israel have a very large military for per square mile because they are a conscription military.( Source 5 & 6) When compared to military spending the number gets even more astounding 700 billion per year by the United states, 13 billion per year by Israel, and 7 billion year by Iran.(Source 7) When Budget is divided per active duty military personal this gets scary the US on average spends 2,427,510 per soldier, Israel 17,532, and Iran 3,013 per soldier.I believe I will save future arguments for other rounds I didn't realize just how much 8,000 characters really is.Sources: http://www.postandcourier.com... http://warisacrime.org... http://www.nytimes.com... http://articles.latimes.com...http://en.wikipedia.org...http://en.wikipedia.org...http://en.wikipedia.org...
Who will start World war III

Thank you for creating such a fascinating debate. I will be taking the position, "Iran will start WWIII." I believe that their cultural relationship with Israel and the US's foreign aid there will trigger a massive conflict. Please note that I will not be structuring this the way I might structure a different debate; it will be difficult to organize contentions in an argument mainly based on assumptions. However, I will do my best to refute your ideas in round #3. Good luck!!
Google can own everything.

Google makes our lives better to take away our freedom. Google is releasing Google classroom and cars. If everyone uses google classroom every document would be on the internet and paper would be like extinct. When they have all the education they will have the ability to change it. Google car, Google classroom, Google fiber, etc. When everything becomes google, they can simply control us. A guy said (i don't remember his name) "if google buys Walmart, they can take over the world." They would access to our food and what we buy and what we are interested. Isn't that scary? Google wants us to think like Google and that how they will take over the world.A279;
Google can own everything.

G'day and good luck to my opponent. I will be taking the CON side in this debate, because I will provide evidence that Google Inc. and all other services owned/managed by Google simply can't take over the world. Google is technically already a monopoly in Internet services, but is not an absolute monopoly where only one company controlls all the economy. I personally don't use Google or any Google services at all (including G. Translate and Maps), since I firmly disagree with the company's policy and actions. I use DuckDuckGo instead. Good luck to CON.
Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States

The purpose of education has evolved over time. However, no where in the discussion does standardized testing seem to promote the goals of education. "The one continuing purpose of education, since ancient times, has been to bring people to as full a realization as possible of what it is to be a human being. Other statements of educational purpose have also been widely accepted: to develop the intellect, to serve social needs, to contribute to the economy, to create an effective work force, to prepare students for a job or career, to promote a particular social or political system. These purposes offered are undesirably limited in scope, and in some instances they conflict with the broad purpose I have indicated; they imply a distorted human existence. The broader humanistic purpose includes all of them, and goes beyond them, for it seeks to encompass all the dimensions of human experience. "Arthur W. Foshay, The Curriculum Matrix: Transcendence and Mathematics," Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 1991 "[The purpose of education] has changed from that of producing a literate society to that of producing a learning society." "Margaret Ammons, Associate Secretary of ASCD, Purpose and Program: How Does Commitment Today Differ from That in Other Periods, Educational Leadership, October 1964 "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but no morals. We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character"that is the goal of true education." "Martin Luther King Jr., speech at Morehouse College, 1948 (http://www.ascd.org...) It seems that the only ad coming off the pro is a uniform system of testing. In no way can we establish any sort of syllogism that connotes that uniformity leads to and increase in critical and moral thinking. For that reason we must reject the advocacy for tests and the notion that standardized testing is beneficial in the United States. On record, Standardized tests promote racial bias and promote conformity rather than ingenuity. Conformity stifles the ability for society to learn what it means to be a collective human race. Standardized tests undermine the purpose of our educational system and must be rejected.
Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States

Mandated Tests Pushed as Civil Rights for Children Layton 15 By Lyndsey Layton, Copyright " The Washington Post Company Apr. 11, 2015 http://sks.sirs.com... Advocates for poor and minority children are pushing a novel idea: standardized tests as a civil right. The nation's major civil rights groups say that federally required testing - in place for a decade through existing law - is a tool to force fairness in public schools by aiming a spotlight at the stark differences in scores between poor, minority students and their more affluent counterparts. And they are fighting legislative efforts to scale back testing as lawmakers on Capitol Hill rewrite the nation's main federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind. "Removing the requirement for annual testing would be a devastating step backward, for it is very hard to make sure our education system is serving every child well when we don't have reliable, comparable achievement data on every child every year," Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust, said in recent testimony before the Senate education panel. Her group joined 20 civil rights organizations to lobby Congress to keep the requirement to test all children each year in math and reading. The civil rights argument adds a new dimension to one of the most contentious education issues in decades: whether standardized testing is good for students. Congress is wrestling with that question as it reauthorizes No Child Left Behind. The Senate education panel is expected to begin debating a bipartisan bill next week that would maintain annual testing, but it is unclear how the bill will fare in the House, where conservative Republicans want to drastically scale back the federal role in education. Critics say the testing mandate hasn't done much to narrow the gap in scores but has drained the joy from classrooms, fostering a testing fixation that critics blamed for ills including narrowed curriculums and cheating scandals. A growing number of parents around the country are having their children opt out of federally required standardized tests, and people including President Obama and comedian Louis C.K. have complained. "It's reached a level where people are saying 'enough is enough,' " said Robert Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which wants to end the standardized testing mandate. "People are sick of the overkill of test volume and the consequences, ridiculous things like rating art teachers based on the reading test scores in their schools."
Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States

Standardized Tests Can Help Combat Inequity Bobb 15 By: Robert C. Bobb, Aug. 30 2015, Copyright " The Washington Post Company Aug 30, 2015. All rights reserved. Reprinted with Permission http://sks.sirs.com... Disparities in educational achievement between low-income minority students and their more affluent peers loom large despite years of work to close the gap. Some point to this as a reason we should back away from accountability-driven endeavors such as stronger state standards and aligned assessments. In fact, it should motivate us only to redouble those efforts and push boldly forward. Civil rights leaders and testing opponents have been locked in a fight over this issue . Testing critics say the lack of significant improvement among economically disadvantaged minority students - despite years of standardized testing - proves that tests do little to close the achievement gap and in fact only exacerbate inequity. Civil rights advocates, in turn, argue that the tests provide data essential to understanding the magnitude of the gap in student performance and highlighting the need to fix it. Four years ago, we were on the right track. That was when a bipartisan group of governors embraced a set of universal educational ideals that became known as the Common Core State Standards. They worked to focus on the bedrock skills and knowledge all students need to succeed in school and after regardless of their individual circumstance or the career path they chose to pursue. Developed with heavy input from educators, the standards emphasize critical thinking, reading and math skills. They also measure students' readiness for success in education and the workplace beyond high school. Many civil rights organizations - the NAACP, the National Urban League, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Council of La Raza, for example - are right to be concerned about how the absence of uniform standards and a rigorous assessment regimen could affect the most vulnerable populations, including those they serve. "We cannot fix what we cannot measure. And abolishing the tests or sabotaging the validity of their results only makes it harder to identify and fix the deep-seated problems in our schools," those and other groups said in a recent statement. Various people have offered counterarguments. Scholars such as Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, have thrown unrelated elements into the debate. The Post paraphrased Orfield this year: "Tests don't address the social problems that poor children bring to school or the fact that many start kindergarten already lagging behind more affluent children."
college should be entirely government funded

it is understood that college is very costly, but if we look at the opportunity that we give our kids with FREE college it becomes a wish come true. college debt is american's number one fear. you graduate college and then work the next ten years to try and climb yourself out of a debt you digged only to better yourlself. more kids today will avoid college all together and eliminate a great opportunity because of the debt. national interest hits an all time high and our kids barely have enough
college should be entirely government funded

As time goes on, taxes continue to rise. Not only taxes but also rates, interest and inflation has taken on everything from candy to school tuition. The question at hand here is should college be entirely funded by the government? If the government decided to go with this project not only would we have our children at a better platform for success for the rest of their adulthood but also at a point of appreciation. Our kids wont start their careers with fifty thousand dollar debt under them
college should be entirely government funded

true in the case that some parents make too much for their child to recieve financial aid, but, studetns ARE granted the oppertunity for small grants from companies ie. mcdonalds, cvs, dell, etc. where parental incomes have no affect on the amount of money the company may give. In some cases it pays for all their college funds however in the other cases it allows the chance for the student to lower their debt and alongside a job of their own lower the debt all together after graduating.
college should be entirely government funded

yes. agreed that kids that do well in high school do get much needed financial help in college. What about the kids that parents earn too much to receive any state help? Parents might make 60k a year and that is too much for a kids to receive any help at all. with a blow like this kids become discourage to even attend college at all, and let put it like this : more college debt = less college graduate. less college graduate, the harder time this child would have at finding a decent job.
college should be entirely government funded

we also have to look at the fact that not ALL kids end up in debt after their years in college. This is avoidable by first having the kid do well in high school so that way they grab the oppertunity to be granted financial aid. It starts with the already state funded high school system which kids today and our future kids will graduate from. The kids deserving of financial aid SHOULD be rewarded, the kids that stumbled in hs should not be rewarded for lackluster grades in high school.