BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Animals Should Not Be Confined in Zoos

My opponent never attacked my case in his/her speech and directly copied and pasted his/her first speech word from word. So my case stands in its entirety. Because of this I will not bring any of my points back up until he/she refutes my case. His/Her case: 1) Both of his/her quotes are invalid and are considered null until he/she provides sources for them. I ask all voters to abstain from using this as deciding material for the debate. 2) I do not know if Con is actually arguing Con. Con is going against the resolution which states: Animals should not be confined in zoo’s. because it is a double negative with “con” and “not” he is arguing that animals should be confined to schools. But then he says, “Yes, it is true that zoo’s can be educational, but do they only teach how animals live and act? Can they be a contributor in teaching children that its alright to keep an animal captive or deprive it of food?” My opponent states that animals are often deprived of food yet he Negates the resolution: Animals should not be confined zoo’s. The rest of his case are just a bunch of rhetorical questions that prove my point. He then goes on to state, “If there is or was any hope in a zoo for an animal to be released, or if a zoo was forced by policy or law to do so, it would be very challenging for that animal to adapt to a whole new place with whole new concepts.” This further proves my case about how animals of any kind do not belong in zoo’s. Frankly I believe that my opponent is confused which side he/she is debating.
Should We Spend Money On Space Exploration

I don't understand the premise of the question "What good does it do to us?". If you don't count the many scientific advancements that I laid out "good for us", then I must be misunderstanding what you are labeling as good. The hypothetical failure of a mission is irrelevant, because you cannot succeed if you do not put up a decent attempt. The risk is great, but it is dampened by the fact that science and mathematics have advanced so quickly, that a reliability of such a mission has increased drastically. The risk of exploration has not hindered humanity, because we accepted the risk, and did our best to confront and minimize it. Frankly we don't know all the possibilities of colonizing another planet, just as we didn't know all the possibilities that colonizing the new world might bring. A planet doesn't need to be terraformed to be livable, NASA has already shown that there is equipment in their arsenal that can be used to keep colonists alive on the red planet. All that trouble can bring about scientific discoveries that may be able to help us on earth, in the same way that LED's did.
Should We Spend Money On Space Exploration

Okay. So It Has Done That. But what good does it do to us? What if the all attempts fail? Would you really risk your life just so we can find a new planet that we can't even live on? Sure we can try to live on mars. But then we have to go through ALL the trouble of trying to increase the size of the atmosphere which will take forever. So why try if it Doesn't help us?
Should We Spend Money On Space Exploration

Space exploration has been one of the most fruitful things that the US government has undertaken. It has fostered the curiosity of the human race, and helped us understand things that seemed beyond our reach. NASA has given us such wonderful contributions such as better computer software, efficient solar power, and even LED's. Space exploration has been a catalyst for hundreds of scientific improvements that help us in our daily lives. Though it is labor and money intensive, we have the most qualified men and women do the work that needs to be done, and hopefully reaching someplace like Mars might give us new insights on how to solve problems that we haven't yet been able to decipher. Just like anything else, space exploration is an investment, and since it has payed off in the past, I would be willing to put taxpayer dollars into it in the future.
Facts about Mythology

polytheism (redirected from Polytheistic religion) Also found in: Encyclopedia, Wikipedia. pol"y"the"ism (p!5;lR42;ē-thē-ĭzR42;əm, p!5;lR42;ē-thēR42;ĭz-əm) n. The worship of or belief in more than one god. sources: Polytheistic religion. (n.d.) American Heritage" Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011). Retrieved April 2 2015 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com...
Facts about Mythology

i will be arguing about mythology. i took a mythology class in highschool but i was kicked out when the teacher asked me what was special about me and i said that i have a curved penis. my penis is curved very dramatically in the middle like the tall point in a rollercoaster. i like rollercoasters, once i went to six flags and rode the ninja and i got whiplash, i didnt like it but at least i didnt get a concussion. i did however fall and split my head open when i was a kid. we were at my moms friends house and i was playing on a pile of bricks. concrete is sometimes used to make bricks. did you know that oxygen is a main ingredient in concrete?
Facts about Mythology

Pro is Me, and everything I present. Con may present any of their current or gathered understanding of Mythology. I argue, My theology is accurate and theirs is flawed and gathered from false sources. Round 1. Contribute any portion of your argument you wish if you wish to get a heads start. Round 2: Support yourself fully by clearly defining the principals of Mythology, (any or all mythologies) But be very specific and explain in detail the associations presented by the religion and in what way you understand people to associate with the religion DURING its founding, completely disregarding post scholarly masses of ignorant and incompetent "followers". Also, argue your best to present a case that my argument is false Round 3: make your case as much as you please, regarding case two as being the only debatable contribution to this argument { meaning all evidence provided in round three is out of devotion to your theology and not in direct formal debate [ therefor, providing no dignified stance for your end of the debate, but is to summarize your own conclusive presentation of works for the voters. ] }
a christian had they lived in the OTestament days shouldn't have been compelled to stone sinners

i may have taken too many liberties with the word "forced", but you are still trying to argue that you'd "have no choice" given they are "commands from God". we may be just dancing around semantics, i'm sure you see my point. when Jesus said "scripture cannot be broken" a couple things. one translation is simply that scripture cannot be set aside. i agree, it can't be, it should be deferred and reference. but that doesn't mean it's necessarily infallible. another point was he could have been saying it in a broader context... "by your own reasoning", he was trying to get them to understand how he makes divine remarks about himself. not necessarily trying to say scripture is infallible. con insists im "effectively destroying any remnant of truth in Christianity" by questioning the bible's authority. however, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. christianity can still be true even if the bible still have some mistakes in it. ive seen plenty of credible christnanis espouse the view, and atheists who'd give a nod to it were they to become christian. or at least be more likely to. a couple examples. matthew and luke lineages are appearently contradictory for Jesus' brith. complicated issue, i admit. "no one has ascended to heaven but the Son of Man". which contradicts "Elijah was taken up to heaven". plenty of other verses too. there are plausible ways to reconcile these verses, but the most traightforward way to tackle it is to say there's error. the ounterintitive way is "there must not be any error so XYZ"..... trtying to ratinoaize preconceived notions to justify a preexisting beleif. there's plenty of technical errors too, teh color of something, teh number of something etc. why defer to a book that has God killing so unsparingly? www.evilbible.com www.skepticsannotatedbible.com indeed, con acts like "so what's what with the death penalty", wehn in fact the fact that it is so unsparingly is what's wrong. con didn't even question taht notion exp.icitly, he just tried to deflect the point to something we might be able to relate to, the death penalty in general. con basically just does a bunch of what i'd call "Pharasitical" loop de loops, and ends of allowing himself to kill, dare i say murder, so many other people. he places doctrines of man, over doctriens of God. and he doesn't even try to justify them philosohpically like im arguing against him for. he just keeps it down to "because the bible says so"
a christian had they lived in the OTestament days shouldn't have been compelled to stone sinners

Obeying the LawI did not make a claim of 'because I would be forced to'. I made a lengthy case showing that there are logical and moral obligations to follow when residing in God's Holy Nation. If my opponent disagrees with my conclusion, I would like to see a case as to why God would not laws with a death penalty.Oral TorahThis passage from Isaiah, and quoted by Jesus, is not saying what my opponent thinks it is saying."These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules."In Judaism, (like Christianity nowadays) there were different denominations. One denomination, the Pharisees, taught that Moses received two torahs from God- the written Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy) and the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah was essentially this idea that the rabbinical priests, the pharisees, carried on a tradition where they were allowed to make their own laws in addition to what was written in the Bible. So, when Jesus is quoting this biblical passage, he is doing it to discredit their Oral Law teachings, which have nothing to do with Scripture.Biblical InnerancyThe reason for the belief in Biblical Innerancy is because Jesus quoted from many passages in Scripture, seemingly claiming that all of Scriptuer is true. Jesus even said in John 10:35 "Scripture cannot be broken". If my opponent wants to prove that Scripture has serious errors, then that would show that Jesus' words aren't reliable, thus effectively destroying any remnant of truth in Christianity. Should my opponent want to make that argument and disprove Christianity, a case must be made that shows Scripture isn't true or reliable.
a christian had they lived in the OTestament days shouldn't have been compelled to stone sinners

con goes on at length aruging why the laws were serious, and why they deserved a serious response. he then briefly concedes that yes he would stoned people following the laws. he uses connotations of how he'd "have no choice, be forced" etc to stone them. etc. "it's the rule we all choose to abide by isn't it? that's just the way it is, then" connotations. the problem, though, is that a christian is a christian first. not a religious being first. if convention says that the bible is completely inerrant, or that judiasm is said to give us inerrant teachings.... then this simply must be rejected. i'd also argue, without getting into the examples, that if we can find contradictions in the bible, or at least what seem to perhaps be contradictions.... we should be all that much more quicker to argue why we must reject that stuff, and reject it with decent reasons, too. id argue that con is basically doing as Jesus said, putting doctrines of man over the truths of God. ""These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 9 They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules."[c]"
a christian had they lived in the OTestament days shouldn't have been compelled to stone sinners

RebuttalsI don't really see it as that we are dancing around semantics. As I have previously mentioned, I would sacrifice having more laws with the death penalty if that meant the crime rate would be drastically lower. My opponent hasn't seemed to take a stance with having a higher crime rate being more beneficial than a lower crime rate. My argument still stands that a nation is better with a lower crime rate. If people do not want to be stoned, then they do not have to break the law. It's just that simple. My opponent seems to contradict themselves. They say that when Jesus said "Scripture cannot be broken" we shouldn't take that in the simple and obvious terms of what it means, yet when it comes to other things in Scripture than can have alternate explanations, we should just assume the simpler explanation is that Scripture contradicts each other. My opponent is arguing in circlesMatthew and Luke's chronologies differ because one goes through the line of Joseph, and the other through the line of Mary. When Elijah was taken up to "heaven", heaven actually means "sky". We know that he did not literally go to heaven, because 7 years after this event, a king received a letter from Elijah (2 Chronicles 21:12-15). Elijah was simply taken to another nation, similar to that of Philip in the New Testament (Acts 8:39-40)My opponent claims that i put the doctrines of men over the doctrines of God (even though I explained this was a criticism towards the Oral Law), but has not given an argument that shows God did not give Moses the Torah at Sinai. If God did give Moses those laws, then they must be obeyed. To disregard the law of God would be putting the doctrine of men above God, which my opponent seems to be arguing for, even tho Pro is ironically asserting the opposite.
I actually met god in a dark back corner of a busy street

I'm sorry you feel this way. Truly, I am. Something has happened in your life, probably involving a child, that has scarred you. Maybe you don't want to hear this but please read this. I have never debated someone before but I accepted this challenge hoping to answer your questions, but you did not want answers nor did you want to debate. You wanted to rant. I would love to change your mind but I see that even the most well composed argument couldn't do that. I cant prove to you that God exists. While I cannot prove the existence of God, you cannot disprove His existence. Do you believe in the cold? In fact cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. How about darkness? It does not exist either. Darkness is simply the absence of light. Evil does not exist either. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. Please have a lovely life. I hope you can come to forgive, and not harbor hatred in your heart. Its not fun and you just end up wasting precious time. Take it from someone who understands. Thank you.
I actually met god in a dark back corner of a busy street

You almost had me convinced, almost. Your points on this round were quite good and well thought out. What you ask is a question that many have debated about. Why is there suffering if God is good? Why do people hurt if God loves us? All of us, at one point or another, has asked that question. I know this sounds like a cat poster but my motto is that every cloud has a silver lining. I live by the understanding that nothing happens without a reason. In my case, I learned how to control my anger, I chose not to hate, and I learned the true meaning of forgiveness. People cannot grow without trial. To answer your argument, God is not the creator of evil and suffering. But if God is not the author of tragedy or evil or death, where did they come from? Well, God has existed from eternity past as the Father, Son and Spirit, together in a relationship of perfect love. So love is the highest value in the universe. And when God decided to create human beings, he wanted us to experience love. But to give us the ability to love, God had to give us free will to decide whether to love or not to love. Why? Because love always involves a choice. If we were programmed to say, "I love you," it wouldn"t really be love. We humans have abused our free will by rejecting God and walking away from Him. And that has resulted in the introduction of two kinds of evil into the world: moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is the immorality and pain and suffering and tragedy that come because we choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful and abusive. So much of the world"s suffering results from the sinful action or inaction of ourselves and others. For example, people look at a famine and wonder where God is, but the world produces enough food for each person to have 3,000 calories a day. It"s our own irresponsibility and self-centeredness that prevents people from getting fed. The second kind of evil is called natural evil. These are things like wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes that cause suffering for people. But these, too, are the indirect result of sin being allowed into the world. God did not create evil and suffering. Now, it"s true that he did create the potential for evil to enter the world, because that was the only way to create the potential for genuine goodness and love. But it was human beings, in our free will, who brought that potential evil into reality. He undoubtedly knew we"d rebel against Him, but He also knew many people would choose to follow Him and have a relationship with Him and spend eternity in heaven with Him " and it was all worth it for that, even though it would cost His own Son great pain and suffering to achieve their redemption. Most of this is the words of Lee Strobel, originally an atheist with a personal vendetta against God. Mr. Strobel made it his mission to prove that Jesus didn't exist and that the Bible was a farce. He couldn't do either. Instead, he proved the existence of Jesus and converted to Christianity. He wrote the Case for Christ.
I actually met god in a dark back corner of a busy street

If what you say is true that you were molested, then there is 0% of a chance that you should ---ever--- for any reason believe in the god according to the bible who you cannot prove even exists. Now I'm not telling you what to do but think about it... Why? Well first off your god knowingly created this monster to knowingly abuse, torture, rape and sodomize you. So this god of YOURS is giving this monster free will AND ABSOLUTE POWER to do these things unto you when you did not have any free will to escape nor did you have ANY power, much less SCREAM. AND he knew that this would take place quadrillions of years in advance. AND this god of yours knowingly created this monster to---allow---these---horrific---events---to---occur when its not a requirement. Its not a need. Its not a necessity. Only in your god's world it is. That's ultimately ridiculous. And its only in religion that you find that. Nowhere else. Oh it gets worse. AND this god of yours knowingly created YOU to knowingly suffer beyond anything that anyone, much less any child, in which case as proved, your god clearly hates children. Why else would he knowingly create millions of children every single year to be abused, and even more millions to starve due to agonizing hunger, and even millions more per year to be displaced through his horrific events that he knowingly creates such as earthquakes? AND then there's a good 30 or so verses in his bible that are truly sickening and horrific to prove this god truly hates children such as dashing children against the rocks, they include rape,, cannibalism, killing children with swords, having guts of mothers ripped up etc, Then this god does not even allow children to voice, talk or sing one---single---sentence in his bible which is child abuse at its absolute worst - to be neglected and to be ignored. Then there's the 10 commandments. 4 of them are geared towards his fat overbearing blubbering ego. Notice how none of them are geared towards children when at least 1 of them should be. There should be 1 stating something like "thou shalt protect children at all times and not cause any harm unto them" But no. There's nothing like that. Indeed your god truly hates children. Now I'm not telling you what to do or what to believe in, but I find it utterly ridiculous that you should believe in a god, who again you cannot even prove exists, but if you believe in him who knowingly created you to horrifically be abused, created the monster to abuse you, gives all the power AND free will to the monster who abused you and gives you no free will, and is that love of any kind? If you answer "yes" in any way, there's no possible way I can continue a conversation with you because your soul is completely corrupted and your mind is completely brainwashed and reason, common sense, cannot be given unto you.
I actually met god in a dark back corner of a busy street

I don't even know where to start. I have experienced pain or at least what you classify as pain. I was molested since I was five till I was twelve by a man that I trusted. I see him frequently, he is a friend of the family, but I have never spoken with him about it and I hope that I can put it past me and truly forgive him. But those things can never be reversed, and I will never forget. I don't hate you, I could never hate you because I choose not to. I have felt true hate and I choose not to go down that path. I don't see your argument at all. You say that I don't know anything about my faith, that I have never read the Bible, and you continue to presume that you know me. You have continually committed the ad hominem abusive fallacy as well as the straw man fallacy. If you expect to enter into an argument, you could at least play by the rules. You have yet to answer my questions as well. Jesus is God, therefore He is relevant in proving the existence of God. You have also stated that millions of people are insane because they are Christians. Also your thing with the contradictions, I've never heard that one before. I know that you think I am some thumb-sucking entitled know-it-all kid living off their parents and the government who has little life experience. In some ways you are right. But I also think that you didn't read my argument all the way through or you simply chose to ignore that fact that I answered a lot of the questions that you asked again in your second argument. Also, all life is precious, please do not be the cause of someone's death by "they flatly deserve to be degraded, humiliated, and dehumanized" just because you think they are ignorant. Jesus was born of God and was therefore sinless. We are reborn in God BECAUSE of Jesus and therefore sinless. I will not condemn nor vindicate Homosexuality, it is not my place. It is a choice, and they can do with it what they will. Also you have faith. It took faith for you to start an argument. It takes faith for you to be an atheist. You believe in something, even if its nothing.
Private Schools Should Have Their Students Wear Uniforms

Since a private school is not controlled specifically by the government, they are free from a lot of standards and tests. Schools should choose what kind of environment t they want to create for their students. Not all private schools should have a uniform. Some can, but that's not my point. When wearing a uniform, it not only takes away a lot of creativity, but bullies can't tell you your clothes look stupid, so they'll focus on things you can't change, like your face. Dint get me wrong, uniforms can do good to prevent students from breaking the dress code, but they can cause a lot of stress as well.
All Races are equal

As my opponent forfeited his previous round I would just like to tie all my contentions together. I have put forth for a stable society equality between races is necessary else violence occurs and this should stand as the biggest reason to accept that all races are equal because any other conclusion would be detrimental to humans in the long run. When coupled with the idea that each race is best candidate for survival in the part of the world with the race evolved we see the each race to its own is a true statement however going so far to say that the races are unequal means devaluing one or more aspects of the human race. Due to my opponet forfeiting his round I have no more to recant or to clash against so I shal end my round.