BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
there is no need for religion

Has Pro being able to advance his case that their is no need for religion ? Has Pro being able to refute my arguments that support the claim that there is a need for religion ? I don't think Pro has being able to do either I shall now explain in more detail. [Economic] It seems what Pro really has in mind is that although there was/is a need for religion, that need should of not existed in the first place. But under free market principles it's not up to some central committee nor Pro to determine what is or is not needed but rather let people freely determine for themselves. .. .. .. .. .. .that's kind of the whole point of supply and demand. [Salvation from Nihilistic abyss] Pro does seem to agree that religion can give people a reason to go on in life in the light of the various facts and logical thoughts that lead to considerations of suicide I alluded to in the first round. Pro brings up various points about such religious beliefs being uncertain or maybe not believed in the future or having doubts later . But notice that none of this actually refutes my central point, that being religion can be used by people to give them a reason to go on living and as such I think this argument still stands. [KA-CHING $$$] Pro did not counter the argument here about how people who use God to exhort money from people obviously need adherence to some form of religious belief to do that. As such I still maintain for those people they need religion. [I want to be important] [DDO religion forum] No religion, no DDO religious forum. .. .. .. .. .. .is that really the world we want to live in ? I mean where would all us religion forum people go ? the economic forum ? .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. I don't think so. [Need vs Survival) I think Pro conflates two separate issues here those between what is or is not needed in a more specific survival sense and what is needed in a more general sense. Most of my arguments are in support of religion being needed in a general sense. Yes it could be said religion is not needed for the most basic survival in the same way you don't need a mobile phone to survive. As long as you have just enough food/water/shelter the bare basics you get to live another day. But again clearly my arguments that there is a need for religion refer to a more generalized need. I submit I as per my arguments that show there is indeed a need for religion in that more generalized way.
there is no need for religion

my friend here has explained in a detailed form as to how religion is necessary or how first there is demand and hence the supply. but i want to make one thing very clear that if we say that whatever we do is because of our need then we can never learn from our mistakes. i know that it is true, that religion was made because of someone's need, but what i am trying to say is that the need was not there. we always do various mistakes in life which we dont know at the point of doing and afterwards we realize that they were huge mistakes and whatever we did was not needed. may be people are not realizing this now but if they think it through they will also understand that religion was not necessary. secondly, my friend has also mentioned that religion gives you some kind of hope to go on in life. and its true. but i think that when you believe something without understanding you will have doubt at some point in life that whatever you believed could be wrong and that doubt will lead you to more misery and sorrow. remember when you believe something blindly you will always have some doubts. and i see lots of religious people everyday and when you ask them any questions about it they will say its all written and you have to follow. so we should all see that what kind of hope we want. the hope which is based on things which we dont even know are right or wrong. my friend has also said that due to religion lots of lives are saved but if we see clearly, lots and lots of people have died in the world fighting over religion. religion gives you guidelines to follow in life, but it will not tell you why you should follow them. if you dont agree with them then also you have to follow, otherwise you will have to go to hell or something. so why this religion is playing you. and then what is the use of your own mind. if you start following your own mind and think logically then there is no need for religion. because you can get reason by thinking with your mind, but religion will never provide you with reason. and my friend also said that those who are believing in after life and god's plans are fools or average people. but religion is not at all necessary for them. we think that they are surviving because of religion but its not that. today people travel from one place to another by vehicles but a long time ago there were no vehicles. still at that time people survived. i think our people also can survive nicely without religion. its just that we are not learning from our mistakes. we think that we can not live without our mobile phones, but if some day suppose our mobile phones are gone and we can never have any mobile phones. what do you think, we will stop living? no we will live because we know that it was not that a big deal. we have made religion so big in our perspective that we cant think beyond it. but if we try to see we will get that it was not at all needed.
there is no need for religion

I think that there is no need for religion, because religion leads to ignorance. religion will tell you to believe in things you do not know. you do not know if there is a god or not, but religion will make you believe in god. it also provides you with guidelines to follow, and if you do not follow them you will be punished by god. i think if god wanted a religion, he would have directly told us. also following religion will degrade your mind, because you will not be able to think with reason. your curiosity will be lost. and i dont think that we should require religion. we are given a beautiful mind and we can use it to think what is right or wrong and act according to it.
What a lovely day..............................

Thank you very much and again you have some great points! The only thing I protest about your argument is that you seem to be saying that for a day to be lovely it must be without blemish. That is not included in the definition of lovely however and one definition on dictionary.com goes as far as to say "having a beauty that appeals to the heart or mind as well as to the eye, as a person or a face." It does not define it as having to be exclusive in beauty without anything ugly. It uses the word "has." The world has beautiful things and beautiful events going on in it which statistically can outweigh the negative. For example much more people being born than those dying per day. So it seems safe to say that not only is the day is lovely, but it is also statistically more lovely than not. Alright lets wrap this up for round 5! Keep up the good work! Source: http://dictionary.reference.com...
What a lovely day..............................

Let's get rolling! "Much of world is ugly, but there are portions of it that are not. Therefore it cannot be an ugly day."Exactly my point........... Much the world is lovely, but there are portions of it that are not. Therefore it cannot be a lovely day. I agree with you on the point that we need a system to define a day that is both good and bad, however why can describe such day as lovely, therefore, it is not a lovely day.The sun may be shining, the daisy bright in the sunshine, but somewhere, it is not lovely.Your turn!
What a lovely day..............................

Yes, fun indeed! And you are really making me think! As you have stated in your last remark: "much of the world is beautiful, but there are portions of it that are not. Therefore it cannot be a lovely day, as not everything is lovely." I will agree that it is basically impossible to have a perfect day without anything bad happening. But can't you also make the exact opposite of your argument? Let us use "ugly" as the opposite of lovely and say "much of world is ugly, but there are portions of it that are not. Therefore it cannot be an ugly day." If it requires an absolute of some sort to define a day then each day would be undefinable as no single day consists of only one trait. What I am suggesting is that we need a system of value first to determine if this day is in fact lovely or not. If it is numerical or statistical then it seems the much higher frequency of the "beautiful" and "attractive" qualities I stated in my last argument outweigh the "negative" and "ugly." Where does it say that because something bad happens to you your day is ruined and cannot still be lovely? As an example, you could get stung by a bee but then reunite with an old friend from school. I would consider that a lovely day in spite of the pain of being stung because the loveliness largely outweighs the ugliness. This is a "glass half full" argument but I feel I have a good case going for a systematic approach in showing that this day is lovely. Statistically is the way to approach it without being subjective. Thank you for this fun and thought provoking debate! And whatever you do, don't let anyone tell you your brain is not a good sited source. Because it is! Now back to you.
What a lovely day..............................

Why yes, much of the world is beautiful, but there are portions of it that are not. Therefore it cannot be a lovely day, as not everything is lovely. There are also statitistics stating that not everyone can be completely happy for a full day, making the day not lovely. Though I agree the world is normally beautiful, it cannot be a completely lovely day, for the little bits of sadness and anger affect the whole day.................. Hope to hear your next arguments, for this is truly a random debate, yet a fun and serious one!Sources - Sydney Lecturer Informer, and my brain
What a lovely day..............................

Touche' I would have to agree with you that death and decay are not lovely qualities. Wouldn't you agree with me in saying that there is much on this planet that is lovely? The birth of new life for instance. What is more beautiful and joyful than a mother or father viewing their child for the first time? Did you know that statistically the number people born everyday is more than twice the amount of people that die per day? This does not make death any more pleasant or acceptable but goes to show how for all the bad things that happen, there is a much higher frequency of wonderful things that do. The same thing can be said for poverty. Approximately one eighth of the world's population does not have enough to eat (which is horrible) but what about the seven eighths that do? If you look at it from a numerical stand point it seems that the world daily is more lovely than not. Of course lovely is a very subjective term and to everyone it is different. That is why I was attracted to this debate and might I add, you have made some excellent points! Nothing is more silly and random than debating something that is subjective. Thank you and I look forward to hearing your further points! Sources: http://www.ecology.com... http://www.thp.org...
What a lovely day..............................

Why it is not a lovely day............ day - each of the twenty-four-hour periods, reckoned from one midnight to the next, into which a week, month, or year is divided, and corresponding to a rotation of the earth on its axis.lovely -very beautiful or attractiveHow can a day be lovely if in Africa people are starving and living a shacks, and there are many war torn countries. You may say, "it is a lovely day here", but you cannot say the world is beautiful when there are millions of people dying every minute (I may be exagerating a little.....) and ugly concrete cities with millions of industrial warehouses with the paint peeling off the wall and typhoon, bushfire and flood damaged areas. I hope you now realise that this day is not lovely, but this place in the world is beautiful and attractive today.Thankyou.
There is no scientific evidence for Theism.

I fear I have been misunderstood. I don't claim to know what, if anything, was prior to the Big Bang. When I saw that you claimed to know the answer, I wanted to ask you to explain how you knew it. You might do so with evidence, or you might answer, in a more philosophical sense, that it was the ONLY possibility. So, I made up an alternate possibility, which I freely admit has no evidence going for it (that I know of). Nonetheless, since there are MULTIPLE possibilities (and we could make up as many as we wanted), if we're going to know which of the many is the true one, we'll need some evidence. I hope that makes sense. So, I ask you to prove your statement, something like: "The universe began to exist at the point of the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang, there was nothing." If my wording of your claim is off, I ask you to correct it, and THEN provide evidence for it. I hope this is all clear. I tried to make it so. As for pushing things a step back, I'm open to the possibility that the universe had no beginning. As far as tracing causes back, you either have an infinite regress, with no "First cause," or you have it top out at some "First cause" which WOULD HAVE NO CAUSE. So either way, it violates my intuition, and I don't know which is the case, or if the dichotomy is somehow false. If you do know, explain how, please. Okay...The principle of uniformity. It's based on our observations. We don't actually know if it applies to things we haven't observed. When we talk about things that we haven't observed, but are, nonetheless, SIMILAR to things we HAVE observed, we tend to assume the principle of uniformity applies, even though we don't have proof. That seems to be working well. But if we're speculating about things which we haven't observed, and we haven't observed anything even SIMILAR to them (like other universe states), there's no reason to expect that the principle will apply. Right. We can't just make up a rule and then MAKE the universe follow it. Either it follows it or it doesn't. And if we haven't looked at it (or some part of it) to tell, we can't know if it's following our rule or not. As for our minds, we've apparently agreed that they don't very easily understand some truths. And I'll agree with you that we've still been able to math our way around them, anyway. Could have been better, but as you say, also could have been worse. So there's a broad spectrum of ability to find truth, ranging from no ability, to perfect ability, and we're somewhere in the middle. It sounds to me like you're saying that we're closer to perfect ability than we should be by evolution alone, so there must be something more (God) at work. Is that right? So how do you know we're "too good" for just evolution? Are you conceding my point that even if your arguments work, they don't prove the same cause is behind everything, or prove any details about the nature of the cause? You don't seem to be addressing it... It's my best point, too ;)
There is no scientific evidence for Theism.

It is not enough to say that it is "possible" that there could have been something prior to the big bang. In fact given the second law of thermodynamics it would mean that you only push the issue one step back. Present the actual model which avoids the finite beginning of the universe. The principle of uniformity(a key presupposition of science) holds that the laws of the universe were the same yesterday are the same as they are today. The burden of proof should be on the person claiming that the law of thermodynamics was not applicable prior to (this) universe. Also, nothing is not anything. It is not some mysterious something which we cannot identify: it is simply not anything. Nothing can do nothing. That's pretty much it. It doesn't have any capability to do anything. Otherwise it would be something. So premises 1 and 2 of the cosmological argument, as they stand are still more plausibly true than false. The very practice of science requires our minds to be capable of understanding reality. Otherwise we are just groping in the dark. Quantum weirdness and the vastness of the universe elude our capacity to visualize, but we are still capable of calculating them both. If God was a malevolent God or an indifferent God, our minds should not be as accurate as they are. Thus mere deism is also improbable on scientific grounds as well.
There is no scientific evidence for Theism.

If you will assert premises 1 and 2 of the Cosmological argument, I will ask you to prove them. 1. How do you know that whatever begins to exist has a cause? I know it FEELS true, intuitively, I feel that myself. But if asked to prove it (as I'm asking you, since you've asserted it), I'm not sure how I'd go about doing so. 2. To say the universe "began to exist" because of the Big Bang seems like a possible mistake to me. That's how far back we can trace things. But maybe the Big Bang is merely the transition point between one state of the universe and another. There's a blind spot on the other side of the Big Bang. So, it's not that we've looked behind the Big Bang and seen that the universe wasn't existing before it, we just haven't seen behind it at all. It feels like you're asserting that you DO know what was before the Big Bang (nothing), and I'm curious as to how you know that to be the case. As for the point about how we can see that nothing never produces something, I'm pretty sure we can't say that for sure either. We don't have any "nothings" to observe. Even empty space is "something," with an interesting kind of energy and virtual particles and stuff. So it's not like we've observed lots of "nothings" so we can be sure we know how they work, and that they never produce somethings. We've just observed lots of "somethings" turning into other "somethings." Which tells us nothing about how a theoretical "nothing" would act As far as our observation goes, there could be "nothings" on the other side of the edge of expanding space, and those nothings could be Big-Banging universes into existence all the time. So, in short, how do you know that IF there was nothing before the Big Bang, that this nothing would never do certain things? Also, the 2nd law of thermodynamics is an observation of how THIS universe has worked SINCE the Big Bang. If the universe does go back forever, even before the Big Bang, then it's always possible that the universe had different laws in those states, and that the 2nd law of thermodynamics didn't apply. I wouldn't assert that, since I don't know. But if you assert the contrary, I will ask you how you know the assertion is true. You describe the world of a godless evolution as one where our senses and reason are not well-tuned to truth. Your quote says that "truth, whatever that is, takes the hindmost" as a priority of evolution. I think you're right, and that's the world we live in. Reality seems weird to us, because we're not made very well to understand reality. The immensity of the universe, and quantum mechanics, defy our easy understanding for that very reason. I could have left all of that off, and simply pointed out, as in my first round, that all of your arguments could be true, and all you would have is a cause (which could be anything, dead or alive) and something guiding evolution (a different thing, maybe aliens or unknown laws). None of it proves theism, even if the argument succeeds
There is no scientific evidence for Theism.

Science supports the cosmological argument; 1. whatever begins to exist has a cause 2. the universe began to exist 3. Therefore the universe has a cause. 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause: and causality lies at the very heart of science. To deny this on "scientific" grounds, would undermine science itself, thus making any scientific case against this premise self refuting. For if universes can come from nothing, it would become inexplicable why everything doesn't come from nothing. After all there is nothing that can restrain nothing, for there is nothing there to constrain! "Nothing" is "not anything". It is not a something. 2. The universe began to exist: 1. The Big Bang 2. The 2nd law of thermodynamics: If the universe has existed forever, it would have already run out of usable energy. Benevolence of God? The applicability of science to the natural world is itself evidence of a benevolent God. For if our minds were merely the results of blind evolution, or the design of a malevolent God, then we really have no basis to trust them. Our minds would evolve for survival ability, not to perceive truth. In order for us to be able to actually trust our senses, we must have a basis upon why we trust them. Random evolutionary chance does not give us such a basis. "Patricia Churchland: Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism's way of life and enhances the organism's chances of survival [Churchland's emphasis]. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."[1] [1]http://www.calvin.edu... sorry for the poor format, limited time
There is no scientific evidence for Theism.

Suppose we grant all the arguments that the universe could not exist at all, and could not exist with order, without some creating thing behind it all. Suppose the evidence shows that such a thing must have been responsible for the universe. How go from there to theism? Theism starts with claims there ARE evidence for (let us say, for the sake of argument). Then it tacks on extra information that there is NOT evidence for. You've proven a cause outside the universe, fine. You've proven a constant-setter, fine. You're proven an orderer of the universe, fine. But that's ALL you've done. If you want to add anything else, you'll have to provide more evidence. You can't say that any of these causes is a person (or do you have evidence of that?). You can't say that it's a nice cause. Or that it still exists. Or that it did what it did on purpose, rather than by accident. Or that it is aware of us, or cares about us or has cares in the first place. You can't even say that the cause of the existence of, the constants of, and the order of the universe are the same cause. They could be three separate causes, some outside the universe, some within. Some beings, and some not. Maybe some cosmic, blind, idiot fish being coughs out universes at random, without caring or knowing anything about them. Then there are so many universes with different constants that one just happens to have the constants we have in our universe, so there's no need for a constant-setter. And then aliens of some kind within the universe are responsible for the order in it. It can be kind of amusing, imagining as many possible explanations for the three things as possible. In short, grant it all, all the arguments; the evidence never takes you to theism. Not even to deism, since deism makes the jump of assuming that the creating or ordering thing must be some person or being. What evidence leads to that conclusion? We can thus conclude that there is no scientific evidence for theism without even having to look beyond the structure of any argument based on scientific observation. Grant it all, and the argument still doesn't do what it's supposed to. It doesn't support the existence of a God of any kind, no deism, no theism.