BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
The National Minimum Legal Drinking Age Act 1984 should be repealed and the drinking age eliminated

"[S]how that there is ... a forbidden fruit effect - which is basically a supposed desire for something that is banned/illegal BECAUSE it is banned/illegal." It's simply human nature to not want to submit to the will of another (in general). A law is essentially a powerful external force telling one not to do something, which leads to an equally strong reaction of wanting to. "Because while it's prohibition has some bad side effect (see forbidden fruit effect), legalizing it will do even worse." The difference between guns and alcohol is clear: guns provide protection against other guns. Alcohol does not have that feature. In underground alcohol parties, more drinking occurs (since the next time it will be available may be far off) and reports of alcohol poisoning are less likely (for fear of arrest). The combination leads to a huge increase in deaths. "If all alcoholic beverages were made legal for anyone to buy, then we will have some very high numbers of alcoholic-related accidents." This assumes that causing an accident due to alcohol is legally permissible. Take, for example, car accidents. If one assumes that the punishment for causing an accident is less than that of violation of the drinking age, the drinking age is redundant. With the opposite assumption, the law that effects everyone, rather than the discriminatory law, is redundant. The first situation seems much preferred. "The only time when the law won't be equally applied when there is a 'rational basis' for doing so." From your own link: "[g]enerally, the question of whether the equal protection clause has been violated arises when a state grants a particular class of individuals the right to engage in an activity yet denies other individuals the same right." The law grants the right to drink to those over twenty-one, but denies it to those under twenty-one. Clearly discriminatory. "In fact, if it were to be legalized than MANY more young adults will purchase it, leading to more tragic accidents." An emotional appeal. However, we live in a nation in which '[t]hey who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security' (Benjamin Franklin). Although some accidents would occur, the avoidance of risk is not worth the removal of freedom. "[T]he government shouldn't be concerned with protecting someone from themselves, only what individuals do to other individuals." Ah, so we're in agreement then. That's all I've time for, with three minutes remaining.
God Does Exist, ( Christian God )

As you can see from the title of the debate, "God Does Exist." I have made a claim that there is a God, and the only other counter claim is that there is not a God. Therefore you and I have to provide evidence for our claims, not by saying things like, "There is no evidence for God" or me saying "There is no evidence against there being a God." That's just escapism from providing any evidence for your claim or position, for instance, according to William Lane Craig, lack of evidence does not create evidence of absence. Meaning that lack of evidence for something does not create evidence for that something not to exist, not to mention that I will still be providing evidence for the existence of God. With this in mind, I would like to see what my oponent has to say before stating my evidence for Gods existence and my rebuttal's.
God Does Exist, ( Christian God )

Well, let me first start off by saying that your one hell of an opponent for my 14 year old brain. I would like to first start off by saying that according to you, I have the burden of proof, but according to, http://www.strangenotions.com... the Philosophical Burden of proof is on anyone who is making a claim, ( As I tried to state in my first argument, ) Debates happen between 2 different claims, in which people try to convince each other of there side. Noun 1. A formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward. ( Taken from searching definition of the word debate on Google ) Anyway I think this part of the argument might just be wasting both of our time so I will move on. Your first point had some pretty big words in there so I'm going to try to answer as best as I can. I assume from what you have said, that you want to see if I can prove God with logic. According to a You tube video of William Lane Craig debating an atheist, "If you were to move the atomic weak force as much as 1 part out of ten to the one- hundredth power, it would of not permitted a life permitting universe." That's just one of hundreds of other incomprehensible odds that are universe need to sustain the life that we have. As a true human being, you would have to be able to look at that and bee amazed. Those odds are just too outrageous, to skip over and just start talking about things like the quantum vacuum or thinks like the universe is infinite. Your second point I do agree that God is a not physical being. But I do believe he can still interact with our world in a way that we don't understand. http://www.gotquestions.org... Your third point was a bit confusing in what you were trying to ask me. As I said before super big words can get to me, so I will answer the best I can. I believe that contingent, from what I have researched means that something is needed or necessary for something to happen or to be. Yes I believe that God is contingent on reality, especially from one of the points I made in responding to you first point about the amazing odds our universe would need to be random. Reality is to complicated, as I would see anyone to see true as well. God to me is the best explanation for how life is. One question I would now like to ask you is if it is wrong to kill a human being based on only the physical world, and no supernatural or Gods. Also thank you for debating me, good practise for school essays huh? Extra sources: http://www.livescience.com...
Abortion

I present the following arguments in favor of banning abortion: The potentiality of a fully-functioning human life far outweighs any inconvenience the mother may face as a result of giving birth. There basically no common long-term detrimental effects of pregnancy. There are actually way more long-term detrimental effects as a result of abortion if we were to consider this argument completely from a health perspective. There are numerous foster care systems set up throughout the country, and with foster care rates going down consistently, there should be room to take on all the would-be dead children. During a pregnancy, it is now law in a good deal of states that you are allowed to take maternity leave, most mothers have a husband or some sort of support system to help raise their child. There are plenty of churches and other organizations that help mothers in turmoil. If the mother makes the mistake of having children out of wedlock and engaged in the use of unprotected sex, then you have inconvenienced yourself. If you don"t want to have a kid, then make that decision before a pregnancy happens. Contraceptives are extraordinarily cheap and the notion that birth control is a privilege of the upper classes isn"t factually correct anymore. The human life begins at conception. This point is not in contention by the con side, the con side argues only that the human life at that point is not worthy of rights. While an uncontested point, this premise will become useful for my third point, which is in contention. The human fetus deserves rights. This point is where I expect the con to take the most issue with. To effectively draw the line to where a human deserves rights, we need to isolate the line to the point which it can"t be unfairly ascribed to animals or humans that are already alive. I"ll take my opponent"s point as an example. He claims that sentience defines the point at which a fetus deserves human rights. The issue with this claim is that there are certain examples of humans and animals that wrongly fit/don"t fit the criteria. For example, a human in a coma does not fit the criteria, however a raccoon does. So now, if we use the oppositional argument, we now have raccoons with the right to bear arms, and people in comas who don"t have the right to live. Ultimately, the distinction I"m attempting to make here is that it"s not beneficial for society to condone the killing of a fetus. We"ve proven that the baby"s life far outweighs the inconvenience to the mother and that if we were to take rights away from the fetus, we would have to give rights to things that don"t deserve them. I would appreciate it if my opponent had defined his definition of sentience within the moral framework. I would also appreciate it if my opponent clarified what he meant at the start because it was written sloppily and the point did not get across.
Tobacco not a major cause of cancer

Argument 3Pro asks how there could be a discrepancy between tobacco usage and cancer rates between countries. It's odd that he does this, because answering this question is his burden, not mine. Pro has the BoP, and so it falls to him to show that, contrary to medical consensus, tobacco actually isn't a major cause of cancer. To outline the absurdity of Pro's argument, consider this; if it's fair to say that smoking doesn't cause cancer because some nations with high rates of tobacco usage have lower rates of cancer than some nations with low rates of tobacco usage, then it's equally fair to say that this fact proves smoking actually lowers one's risk of cancer. Clearly that's not true, which is why using this kind of conjecture to infer how carcinogenic tobacco may be is fallacious. You have to look at the science.Pro claims the science is faulty because the findings are speculative. Firstly, he hasn't actually shown this to be the case, he's only asserted it. Secondly, he apparently did not actually look into the methodology of these studies. The link between tobacco and cancer has been shown with both cohort and case-controlled studies [1]. This means whether we're looking at cancer-free non-smokers who take up smoking and are followed throughout their lives adjacent to a non-smoking "control" group, or whether we look at people who already have lung cancer vs. people who don't and work backwards to uncover the cause, we find this relationship between smoking and cancer [2]. It would be a cosmic joke of improbability for this to be a mere coincidence. Conclusion:Pro has failed to provide a compelling affirmative case for why tobacco isn't a major cause of cancer. Despite claiming the actual science is merely speculative, ironically it is his own arguments that rely on speculation alone. The resolution is negated.VOTE CONSources1. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org... 2. http://www.theanalysisfactor.com...
Tobacco not a major cause of cancer

Argument three.If smoking has been shown to be responsible for upwards of 80% of lung cancer cases, why is it that many countries with low tobacco consumption have very high rates of lung cancer? Much higher than many countries in which tobacco consumption is very high?NorwayIcelandUraguay LithuaniaNetherlands EnglandCanadaall have lower tobacco consumption but very high rates of lung cancer.https://en.wikipedia.org...http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com...If it's mainly due to genetics and ethnicity etc.. why then does Australia which has a population mostly composed of europeans (british) have a much lower rate of lung cancer than England WHEN tobacco consumption is much higher in Australia?You failed to be convincing about the 80% figure, how is it possible to accurately prove what causes lung Cancer? Speculations and possibilities are not exactly proof, for example even if you smoked just 5 years and then you quit, and then you get lung cancer 20 years later they'll still blame it on smoking, that does not prove smoking caused it.Dangers of smoking have been exaggerated, 60 years ago the majority of men smoked, yet lung cancer was uncommon, they are simply blaming smoking as an attempt to hide the real causes (Opinion).ConclusionIf statistics clearly show that even low tobacco consuming countries still have high or even higher cancer rates than high consuming countries, this is enough for me to conclude that tobacco is not a major cause of cancer.
Tobacco not a major cause of cancer

1. Lung Cancer Rates By CountryIt's worth noting that Pro's source is from 2012 whereas mine is from 2014, and therefore trumps his. But, even if it is the case that Greece doesn't have the highest rate of lung-cancer in Europe, it's irrelevant, because it's still true that lung-cancer is the most common form of cancer in Greece, which makes sense considering their high rate of smoking. Furthermore, Pro makes no effort whatsoever to address my point that smoking has been shown to be responsible for upwards of 80% of lung-cancer cases. To say that tobacco is not a major cause of cancer in light of this is to ignore reality.2. Second ArgumentOnce again, Pro makes the same error here he did with his previous argument. It's merely correlative conjecture. Just because the Japanese smoke more tobacco but don't have higher rates of lung-cancer doesn't affirm the resolution. Life is complicated, and several factors affect cancer rates in a given nation. The only way to know for sure if tobacco is indeed a major cause of cancer is to test it scientifically, and the science tells us that smoking tobacco is the single-most major cause of lung-cancer [1]. ConclusionNothing Pro has argued thus far has shown the science to be wrong about the relationship between smoking and cancer. Correlation =/= causation (or in this case, anti-causation), and so Pro has yet again failed to meet his BoP. The resolution is negated.VOTE CON Sources1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
Tobacco not a major cause of cancer

You have to forgive me if I lack fancy professionalism as I'm not very familiar with this website, or more specifically this part of the website.Con's assumptions and my rebuttal.'Pro's main and only argument for his position is that Greece has lower rates of Cancer than the US, despite having higher rates of smoking'Actually, that is not my only argument, I would not waste my most convincing arguments at the very beginning of the debateLung cancer rates by country.Greece does NOT even have the highest rates of lung cancer in europe.see link below http://www.wcrf.org...http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com...Greece is not even in the top ten yet it is the HIGHEST in tobacco consumption IN THE WORLD.Second argument.There is a magnificant country in north east Asia, it has one of the highest life expectancy on earth.The country is called Japan.Japan happens to have very high tobacco consumption yet despite having a high number of smokers it has a very low lung cancer rate, so low that lung cancer is rare!One third of the country's population smoke cigarettes! Lung cancer rate in Japan is TEN TIMES lower than that of North America's.http://fightantismokertyranny.blogspot.ca...Conclusion The statistics suport my argument, therfore my conclusion is still the same as the very beginning, Tobacco is not a major cause of cancer.
Tobacco not a major cause of cancer

Let is be clear that the resolution of this debate is tobacco is not a major form of cancer. Given this, if my opponent can show that cancer is indeed, not a major cause of cancer, then he has fulfilled his burden of proof. If he cannot, he loses the debate. 1. Counter ArgumentPro's main and only argument for his position is that Greece has lower rates of Cancer than the US, despite having higher rates of smoking. This doesn't prove anything, it's just a correlation. There are several other causes of cancer, and it's entirely plausible that these factors more than compensate for the lower rates of smoking in the US. As such, Pro has yet to fulfill his burden of proof (BoP) and as such he currently stands to lose this debate.2. The Negative ArgumentCancer rates may be higher in the US than Greece, but not all cancers are created equal. We must also look at type of cancer and the causes of these types. In the US, breast-cancer is the most common [1]. In Greece, lung cancer is number 1. It's actually the 3rd highest cause of death in Greece, with lung-disease coming in sixth [3]. In fact, Greece has higher rates of lung-cancer than the rest of Europe [2]. Given that smoking has been shown to cause 80% of lung-cancer cases [4], and given that lung-cancer rates are so high in Greece, Greece is actually an argument for my position, not Pro's.ConclusionPro's argument is conjectural at best and when the data is more thoroughly examined, we see that Pro's argument actually supports my position. As such, his BoP is unfulfilled. Tobacco is clearly a major cause of cancer, as the science shows, and therefore the resolution has been negated.VOTE CONSources1. http://www.cancer.gov... 2. http://www.thetoc.gr... 3. http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com...4. https://en.wikipedia.org...
Tobacco not a major cause of cancer

Argument: It is widely accepted that Tobacco smoking is a major cause of cancer, if this is the case, why then does United States have higher rates of cancer than a country such as Greece where tobacco consumption is the highest in the world? see link below. https://en.wikipedia.org... Strangely enough, Greece has much lower cancer rates than countries with much lower tobacco consumption? see link below. https://en.wikipedia.org... This is strong evidence that Tobacco is in fact not a leading cause of cancer and that much is blamed on tobacco smoking when other factors are largely ignored, such as poor air and water quality, poor diet, pesticides, food preservatives, genetically modified foods etc...
Child birth should be considered immoral

4 rounds, 48 hours to argue, 8k characters and a 2 week voting period. Morals - Principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct. Discomfort: 1. Mental or bodily distress. 2. Something that disturbs one's comfort; an annoyance. First round is for acceptance. Second and third for arguments and counter-arguments as you see fit. Last if for summary and counter-arguments (no new arguments). Burden of proof in on me.
President George W. Bush should be impeached

First, I would like to say to anyone who disagrees with my viewpoint, vote on the debate; not the topic. Next, I would like to thank whoever accepts this debate. Third, I would like to give my esteemed opponent the luxury of giving his or her constructive first, after I set a few parameters. Before any prospective debater accepts, read these parameters, if you do not like these parameters, don't accept the debate. Voters must assume that you accept the parameters if you accept this debate. Parameters: First, we are talking about the George W. Bush that is the current president of the United States of America, the nation founded in 1776, on planet Earth in North America. Next, by impeach I mean the way it is used in the US Constitution. The constitution says "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. " should is pretty clear, but in case I get some weird semantics debater should is defined by Merriam-Webster as "used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency" So, in this sense, Congress has an obligation to impeach Bush. Any semantics arguments will be considered abusive. We can clear up any misunderstandings.
President George W. Bush should be impeached

"But given the status of the United States, I think that the impeachment of a president would give an image that we really shouldn't give." We shouldn't give the image that we uphold the law? Somehow I fail to see the problem with this. Our nation is being criticized for Iraq and for torture, and these criticisms stem from these crimes. " All these sleazy, underhanded tactics are expected of any country. Yes, we can pass a bill to say it's wrong, but that won't change the fact that they will always be used as black ops in order to achieve shady political agendas." They only occur because we turn a blind eye to them. A democracy cannot be effectively run by criminals. It is not acceptable to let criminals walk free, whether they are the president or a man living in a dumpster. "These "atrocities" on human rights and acts to deceive the public are nothing compared to the welfare of the country. By my opponent's logic (at least, the way I read it) the "no admittance" signs on the cockpit of a plane would prevent the pilot and copilot from entering." While pilots don't have to follow the "no admittance" signs on the cockpit door, they do have rules to follow, otherwise they lose their job. The same goes for leaders, yes, they have some leeway that others don't have, top secret security clearance, their finger on the red button, but that does not give them leeway to trample human rights or lie to the people they serve. When my opponent claims that these acts are nothing compared to the welfare of the country he forgets that these acts harm the welfare of the country. An overview: My opponent claims that the welfare of the country must take precedence over upholding justice. He never supports this, and, even if this is true he never says why impeachment harms our welfare, especially in this instance, besides a brief mentioning of it making a joke out of the nation (which is never warranted). The actions we are punishing Bush for were not only illegal, but harmed the country, so we still are helping the country through impeachment.
President George W. Bush should be impeached

I don't believe Bush should be impeached. While my opponent brought up very good points, I want to focus on the big picture. In terms of global relations, I'm sure these "violations" look very bad on paper. But given the status of the United States, I think that the impeachment of a president would give an image that we really shouldn't give. All these sleazy, underhanded tactics are expected of any country. Yes, we can pass a bill to say it's wrong, but that won't change the fact that they will always be used as black ops in order to achieve shady political agendas. I'm sure that there exists many, many, many other reasons far worse than what my opponent stated that could be used against Bush if he is ever to be impeached. But I find the entire process meaningless. Impeachment makes a joke out of our country. While it is nice to uphold the notion that no one is above the law, I personally believe that the president requires that leeway in order to run the country correctly. These "atrocities" on human rights and acts to deceive the public are nothing compared to the welfare of the country. By my opponent's logic (at least, the way I read it) the "no admittance" signs on the cockpit of a plane would prevent the pilot and copilot from entering.
The Minimum Wage should be increased.

The Minimum Wage must be increased. Republicans claim it to be a "job killer", but they obviously do not know anything about how the American economy works. No person working full-time should have to live in poverty. It is most unfortunate that this is occuring right this instant. Entry-level employees make a certain amount of money an hour, they work full-time, they come home and try to support themselves and their families. With a Minimum Wage of $7.25 an hour (it is higher in some states), supporting yourself and your family would be nearly impossible. This is only my main point. Please allow me to elaborate in the next round.