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13 | afa455cc-2019-04-18T18:09:38Z-00003-000 | Can alternative energy effectively replace fossil fuels? | Nuclear power is a reasonable approach to generating electricity Nuclear energy is a reasonable approach to generating electricity based on the fact that it is far superior to most forms of power generating methods currently in use. Nuclear fission plants have been shown to be more: a) Environmentally friendly. b) Sustainable. c) Economical. d) Efficient. Furthermore, they: a) Improve energy security. b) Encourage and convenience research conducted in atomic theory. My first argument is the Environmental factor that sets nuclear energy apart as a more reasonable approach to creating electricity. Each year, a coal power plant will produce 125,000 tonnes of ash and 193,000 tonnes of sludge.[1] Very toxic waste. This rubbish is then sent straight out into the environment courtesy of the humans who made it. In Australia, where I live, most of the country is run by coal plants. Why? Because some 'green' people do not want to see a start to a new era of cleaner energy. Instead, they advocate the immense destruction of our atmosphere with the dozens of coal plants that spit out all these toxins constantly. This waste they give out is far worse than nuclear radioactive waste. Nuclear waste will eventually decay until it is no longer harmful. Fossil fuel waste doesn't decay. It just hangs around until it destroys something. Now, compare what we do with these waste: Nuclear: Deposit it in sealed containers in deep repositories that will have no contact with any part of the eco system. Fossil fuel: Dump the sludge waste in landfill sites and send the CO2 into the atmosphere. This is rather appalling. We pay so much attention to what we think is dangerous that we miss the actual danger that is slapping us in the face. Furthermore, Nuclear power is the only large-scale energy-producing technology which takes full responsibility for all its wastes and fully costs this into the product.[2] Everyone else just doesn't seem to care. Secondly, Nuclear power is so sustainable, it has the ability to last us until we definitely need it no longer. With modern-day technology, we can potential use nuclear energy for 30,000 years. We will only need nuclear for a few hundred, but the implications are enormous. Instead of digging up the last of the coal we have and burning it, we can extract a little bit of Uranium from the earth and use that to power us until we have the ability to reach nuclear fusion or any other completely clean energy source. Compared to coal plants, where we have to burn 250,000 tonnes of coal PER DAY. I'd say we have a pretty good chance if we chose to go down the nuclear instead. We definitely won't survive much longer on coal. Thirdly, Nuclear power is far more economical in the long run versus coal and oil plants. For a start, it is the cheapest form of power available. The National Academy of Sciences in a 2009 report said that the cost of nuclear power is equal to or lower than natural gas, wind, solar, or coal with carbon capture. Reactors can operate for 80 years, while wind and solar last about 25 years. And nuclear reactors operate 90 percent of the time, while wind and solar are only available about a third of the time. [3] (Remember: wind and solar power can't be stored today in significant amounts.) Most people don't want their lights and computers working only when the wind blows. Fourthly, Nuclear power plants are a couple thousand times more efficient than conventional coal plants. Nuclear power turns 98% of the fuel into heat, [4] which is used in the electrical generating process. Of the remaining 2%, 40% of it is treated and turned back into usable fuel. The remaining 1% is the waste. In a coal plant, 65-75% of the fuel is turned into heat and the rest is waste product. That is an astounding difference that should make you cry. If that doesn't, then this will: for every 15 tonnes of waste produced in a nuclear plant, a coal plant will spit out 500 million tonnes. That is a giant win for nuclear power in terms of efficiency. So how can one say that it is an unreasonable approach? Have a look at these quick facts about nuclear energy: http://www.nei.org... Fithly, Nuclear power plants are on average, safer to humans than coal and oil. Since I live in Australia, I don't have to worry too much about dangerous air pollutants, though they are an increasing problem, but in 2000, the Ontario Medical Association declared air pollution "a public health crisis" [4] and coal-fired power plants as the single largest industrial contributors to this crisis, producing carbon dioxide, fine particulates, and cancerous heavy metals including mercury. In 2005, the Ontario Medical Association estimated that air pollution costs the province more than six hundred million dollars per year in health care costs, as well as causing the premature deaths of thousands of Ontarians each year [5].[6] Australia is soon to be Ontario if coal burning keeps up like this. Many places in the world are already worse than Ontario. China for instance, has air pollution in some cities that can be seen from upper orbit. Air pollution is indeed a grave problem on a global scale. Across the world 850,000 people are known to die prematurely because of it.[7]. Lastly, Nuclear power plants help the development of more cleaner and efficient uses of nuclear energy namely, nuclear fusion. In a talk on energy and climate entitled, "Innovating to Zero", Microsoft's Bill Gates gives a compelling argument for why we need nuclear power in an age of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 [8]. Using a simple equation, he argues that CO2 is a product of the number of people on the planet, the services delivered per person, the energy needed per service, and the amount of CO2 produced by each unit of energy. The first two are heading up and are unlikely to be stopped. The cost of energy is decreasing, but not enough. So that leaves the fourth factor. We must use energy that does not produce greenhouse gases, but we need reliable energy – energy that's available when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Gates believes that nuclear power offers this promise and should be part of the mix, especially if improved (safer) technology is employed. Energy conservation should be a viable way to transition from dirty to clean energy, but increases in services delivered per person along with a growing population would quickly eat up conservation savings. So think of nuclear power like a bridge. its not what we want forever, but we cant stay with what we have for long, and we cant get what we need for the future now, so while we wait, we use the best alternative we can muster. Since that is the purpose of nuclear power, we can definitely call it a reasonable approach to generating electricity for the time being. [1]http://www.ucsusa.org... [2]http://www.world-nuclear.org... [3]http://www.usnews.com... [4]http://www.nei.org... [5]http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca... [6]https://www.oma.org... [7]http://suzukielders.wordpress.com... [8]Estimated deaths & DALYs attributable to selected environmental risk factors, by WHO Member State, 2002World Health Organization Organisation mondiale de la Sant� Department of Public Health & Environnment January 2007 [9]http://www.ted.com... |
8 | 18dd4096-2019-04-18T11:17:01Z-00009-000 | Should abortion be legal? | Abortion should be legal in most cases. Abortion should be legal in most cases, And there should be fewer restrictions on abortions. |
46 | 41ed0b25-2019-04-18T11:53:25Z-00001-000 | Should net neutrality be restored? | Net neutrality. No, you have shared your opinion. Net neutrality means a neutral internet. |
32 | 2c05e9fb-2019-04-15T20:23:05Z-00020-000 | Do electronic voting machines improve the voting process? | Electronic voting is vulnerable to fraud and subversion Our understanding of online security is improving every day; people feel safe enough to trust their most important details, such as bank details, to the internet[1] – why not their vote? Secure software and encryption protocols have allowed online markets to flourish, with companies such as PayPal inspiring a sense of security among their customers[2]. Any software for remote electronic voting could be scrutinised well in advance. It also removes the potential for identity fraud, which is a problem with current postal voting systems[3]. Each voter could be given a unique password, if necessary alongside something like a special swipe card, ensuring that everybody who is entitled to vote gets a single vote. Given that in many jurisdictions, traditional polling stations do not require voters to provide ID[4], it would arguably be a security improvement on the current situation. [1] http://www.natwest.com/personal/online-banking/awards.ashx, accessed 24/08/11 [2] https://www.paypal.co.uk/uk, accessed 24/08/11 [3] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article521468.ece, accessed 24/08/11 [4] http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/general_election_faq.aspx, accessed 24/08/11 |
20 | 48ae4466-2019-04-18T18:45:18Z-00003-000 | Is drinking milk healthy for humans? | The LA school board made the right decision in banning chocolate and strawberry flavored milk The Los Angeles Unified School District is taking a stand against child obesity by banning chocolate and strawberry flavored milk. In the past few years, schools in the District of Columbia, Boulder Valley, Colorado, and Berkeley, California have also banned flavored milk. The decision to offer only plain milk is clearly better for the students. According to the Centers for Disease Control, a serving of low-fat chocolate milk contains 53 more calories than a serving of low-fat white milk (1). These are mostly empty calories, which have no nutritional value whatsoever. Children under the age of 9 should not take in more than 120 empty calories a day (2). By drinking a carton of chocolate milk, young children are consuming nearly 50% of this daily limit. For this reason, the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity strongly discourages serving flavored milk (3). Opponents of banning flavored milk argue that all flavors of milk contain the same quantities of important nutrients. While this is true, children will absorb more of these nutrients if they choose to drink plain milk as opposed to chocolate milk. Chocolate contains oxalate, a naturally occurring compound in cocoa beans, which can inhibit the absorption of calcium. One study found that a single 100 gram dose of dark chocolate increased calcium excretion by 147% (4). According to another study, "Higher frequency of chocolate consumption is linearly related to lower bone density and strength" (5). Opponents of banning flavored milk also argue that some children simply will not drink plain milk. However, most students will select healthy foods if they are prompted to do so (6). Furthermore, evidence has shown that children who are continually exposed to healthy foods will learn to prefer these foods. These children will also develop a decreased preference for sweetened foods (7). Based on these conclusions, students who drink plain milk on a regular basis should develop less of a preference for chocolate milk. This has several important implications for schools. Administrators may feel that it makes sense to serve chocolate milk to increase children's initial acceptance of milk. However, this strategy will actually result in decreased long-term acceptance of unsweetened foods, including white milk. Conclusion: Our society has a responsibility to help students develop healthy eating habits. Banning flavored milk in our schools is an excellent way to accomplish this task. References: http://www.cdc.gov... http://www.choosemyplate.gov... http://yaleruddcenter.org... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... http://www.ajcn.org... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... http://www.yaleruddcenter.org... |
4 | a6304144-2019-04-18T17:12:32Z-00001-000 | Should corporal punishment be used in schools? | Speak gibberish. Me walc down da street wen me homie be like fo show dood. I be like foo da fuq u be doin ta me? And he be say in lik escuse me foo? I show u da worl and u be lik fagers/ Aw naw foo, ima be woopin yo a$$. an he be lik kik me in da nuts, but me like NOPE bish and i go all lik kuungfu karate on dis foo. He go down. Dem cops be all ova mah soon. So fo get dis. I do sum cra-z a$$ s***. Probz ova da wall and arg da dang I be say in. why da worl so cra-z in da nuts man. i wanna liv ma life lik a bose. no lik dis nig. no lik dis. so i be parc owa lik ova da dem wals. o yea to dem foos be lik s***tng me. i say y u do dat to me? y? theres no boobes to be lik dis. i mma k o dem. but nope. dey got dem guns. man, you gotta be kid ing me. r u fo weels? dis jus ima lik F u B****. so i go lik dat one guy be lik o yea cra-z in da nuts. i woop outs my ninja styl. yes to dat me guy an me win fo da winD! yes i accomish, dis story tim is lik o yea. i won da worl with as kik time. yeay i did it. imma weener. i da bom yo. das rite. i da coo foo. i da dope nig. i can go and chop chop dam yall. yall be lik ah naw, imma be poopped. yessum foos i go to da win. den me gey random i be lik wha? no mo fun. no mo fun dis guy gets. sucs to da worl dey no kid, y? y dis so gey, lazr jus bak at me. supa lamo dat is. dis place sucs. i don lik dis mes up worl. it mak s no sens. i wishh tim to be geow in. no mo hug fo u. no hug fo U. cuz imma top da worl eh, im top da worl eh, i wanna be da ver bes, noboedy eva was. so i cood not doit. o well. nex tim, ill be rdy... ill be tim ta gey u bak, ill seeec my venjance. ull be sry dat u worl tacle me in da bak. |
29 | 1c53f908-2019-04-18T16:23:57Z-00004-000 | Should the government allow illegal immigrants to become citizens? | Deportation or Elimination How could you be so ignorant?!?! I assume "elimination" is murder, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Even if the immigrants are illegal, they most certainly should not die. I assume you're a rich, white pig who cares nothing about others. These people work harder then you have or ever will. You're just an idiot. The immigrants shouldn't be deported, you should be. You're a disgrace to humanity for even suggesting the mass murder of an entire people. This shouldn't even be a debate. |
43 | 824ed8eb-2019-04-18T18:32:31Z-00002-000 | Should bottled water be banned? | Bottled water should be banned My argumentsOf all the very valid points I bring up, the Pro only responds to one of 15 examples, the one about joggers. Yes people survived before bottled water.... people also survived before smart phones too, but if you banned smart phones people wouldnt know how to function anymore........His arguments - 1 - "These two brands are essentially filtered tap water," - Meaning they are safer than tap water...."And that's why there's no shortage of companies that want to get into the business. In terms of price versus production cost, bottled water puts Big Oil to shame." - I dont see how a product should be banned because wise and witty businessmen can create enterprises and jobs to meet the demand of portable bottled water.... should computers be banned since pound for pound they are making good money? Of course not. Its not illegal to exploit a resource in high demand with the potential for generating huge amounts of profit and you havent explained why it should br. - 2 - "While public safety groups correctly point out that many municipal water systems are aging and there remain hundreds of chemical contaminants for which no standards have been established" - Your shooting yourself in the foot here Pro, that only reinforces my argument about how bottled water could be seen as healthier than tap water - 3 - Yes it is true that bottled water generates trash, but im curious about why your putting the blame on the water bottles instead of people..... It is people who throw them away rather than recycle them, and the blame should be on the consumers in this case, not the product. Anyone here who has knowingly thrown away a plastic water bottle rather than recycle it knows very well it is their own fault for doing so. However the Pro is trying to blame the water bottle here....... thats absurd - 4 - "Many people drink bottled water because they don't like the taste of their local tap water, or because they question its safety." - Again, thanks for giving me such great arguments :)"Only the very affluent can afford to switch their water consumption to bottled sources." - Ha, good one. Most of the middle class can live with paying $6 for a cup of Starbucks coffee, and you claim they cant do the same with $2 for a bottle of water? Bottled Water is one of the cheapest commodities you can buy...." the requirement of $17.5 billion in improvements to the state's drinking water infrastructure as recently as 2005. In the same year, the state lost 222 million gallons of drinkable water to leaky pipes." - So your admitting that tap water can be very costly to society. Hmmm let me do the math here, Bottle of Water = $2Tap water that needs constant taxpayer dollars to stay in shape, at one point costing $17.5 billion in taxpayer dollars in the state of California alone....Which is cheaper again? - 5 - Now in this argument your claiming water companies are evil for trying to expand their profits, but how is this necessarily a bad thing? The US government has already shown how they do a dreadful job of providing us with water (pollution, flouride in tap water, leaky and poor conditions of the infrastructure, billions in costs in a YEAR, etc) whereas water companies are completely on their own to supply us with water, and they dont have access our taxes to fix their mistakes, giving them a hell of an incentive to make sure their systems are modern and up to speed....Pro's remarks:"If you drink to much water it is draining all the natural minerals OUT OF YOUR BODY""I choose not to because i like fizzy drinks"I like how the Pro tries to say that water is bad for your health yet states his preference for fizzy drinks, sort of implies he really doesnt know how anything about trying to be healthy... May i suggest a healthier alternative to those fizzy drinks, Oh yes i did ;D |
46 | 1ae9f84e-2019-04-18T15:25:04Z-00001-000 | Should net neutrality be restored? | The US shouldn't require net neutrality. Tim Wu, the guy who coined the term "net neutrality," notes the importance of "differentiat[ing] sharply between the principle of network neutrality and a network neutrality law." This debate isn't about the principle of net neutrality. This debate is about whether the US should adopt a net neutrality law. I'm not arguing against net neutrality as a principle. I'm arguing that the US shouldn't adopt a net neutrality law. Con's arguments are aimed against banning net neutrality. I agree with Con that banning net neutrality is bad for competition and small businesses. There is no debate there. The debate here is whether net neutrality should be required, not whether it should be banned. 1. Con says "net neutrality stimulates competition" because, "if we ban net neutrality the big ISPs ... would be able to block competitor's websites. That way the big companies would be unable to compete with each other because people could not access more than one big service without paying more, and therefore there would be no need for competing." First, as discussed above, this debate isn't about banning net neutrality. Con's argument doesn't support adoption of a net neutrality law. Con's argument only supports the status quo -- allowing net neutrality but not requiring it. I agree with Con that banning net neutrality would be bad for the economy. What I argue for is less regulation, not more regulation. A ban on net neutrality, like a net neutrality requirement, is more regulation. Either way, that's bad for the economy. What we need is less government intrusion on the Internet, as I explained in the previous round. Second, the idea that ISPs can block competitor's websites without a net neutrality law is incorrect. As I explained in the last round, the antitrust laws prohibit anticompetitive business practices, including such discriminatory behavior that harms competition and consumers. Take a look at the Wikipedia for a brief summary of the antitrust laws: http://en.wikipedia.org.... Section 2 of the Sherman Act doesn't allow companies to harm consumers or competition by using their monopoly power to raise prices or exclude competition. Third, Con's claim that "big companies would be unable to compete with each other" is false, even if we did ban net neutrality, as there would still be many ways for companies to compete with each other. Pricing, Internet speed, Internet reliability, types of discrimination, geography -- all these would still be open to competition. To be clear, I'm not saying we should ban net neutrality. I'm just saying Con is wrong that banning net neutrality would make it impossible for companies to compete. 2. Con says "if we ban net neutrality internet providers will be able to pick which sites show up first, and ban or block websites that they don't want their customers to see." As a result, Con argues, "small businesses will not be top priority on these providers' lists and may even be banned, therefore leaving them unable to get off the ground." First, again this debate is not about banning net neutrality. Con argues against banning net neutrality, and I agree with Con that banning net neutrality is bad for small businesses. Con's arguments actually support my point, which is that more regulation harms the economy and small businesses. I argue for less regulation -- no net neutrality law, either requiring net neutrality or banning net neutrality. Second, in the absence of a net neutrality requirement, ISPs can offer customers faster or slower lanes of traffic. As I explained last round, this is good for competition, as it gives incentive to create faster lanes for which ISPs can charge higher prices. Prohibiting ISPs from discriminating in procompetitive ways (a patient's heart monitor versus a music download, for example) disincentivizes the creation of faster, more reliable Internet service. Third, Con's claim that small businesses will be "banned, therefore leaving them unable to get off the ground" is false. Again, such exclusionary practices are covered by the antitrust laws. There is no need to create rigid net neutrality laws to cover a perceived risk which is already dealt with under antitrust in a more nuanced, flexible, fact-based way. 3. Con says "if there were to be no net neutrality, high class providers such as Comcast and Verizon could sell special treatment to their favorite web companies like Google and Netflix, and charge extra fees to deliver their online videos and other content at fast speeds." Again, those "fast speeds" might not be developed in the absence of incentives to develop them. The ability to charge premium prices for faster speeds is what gives ISPs incentive to create faster, better, more reliable Internet services. The US Postal Service example is directly on point: no one has any problem with Express Mail (which costs more). Why should there by any problem with faster Internet lanes, for which companies can charge more. Always keep in mind that business practices which are legitimately anticompetitive -- practices that harm consumers or competition -- are already covered under the antitrust laws, so there's no need to create another layer of regulation, especially a rule so rigid and categorical as requiring net neutrality across-the-board, regardless of the circumstances and potential pro-competitive benefits. 4. Con says a net neutrality law is necessary to protect our privacy. But that's simply not true. What we need are stronger privacy laws, not a rigid net neutrality law. Con says that in the absence of net neutrality laws, ISPs have the "power to decode any decryptions placed by their customers." But even if net neutrality laws exist, ISPs can still decode decryptions placed by their customers. Net neutrality proponents -- not Con since he didn't argue this point specifically -- argue that without net neutrality protections, ISPs will block privacy services. But like I've argued elsewhere, that sort of misconduct is covered by the antitrust laws. We don't need net neutrality laws to protect us from exclusionary, anticompetitive business practices. The only purpose of net neutrality laws is to avoid a perceived risk -- but that perceived risk is already covered by current laws. I direct attention again to FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell's comment that "in the almost nine years since [net neutrality] fears were first sewn, net regulation lobbyists can point to fewer than a handful of cases of alleged misconduct, out of an infinite number of Internet communications. All those cases were resolved in favor of consumers under current law." [6] All net neutrality cases thus far have been resolved in favor of consumers under current law. We don't need more regulation to protect consumers, competition, or the Internet. |
24 | cc6ed0dd-2019-04-18T19:57:54Z-00001-000 | Does lowering the federal corporate income tax rate create jobs? | income tax = not unconstitutional Vote for me! A vote for Con is a vote not against refusing to use double negatives! (yay min. word limits!) |
31 | 21e2b85c-2019-04-18T15:17:47Z-00005-000 | Is obesity a disease? | Obesity is not a disease, it's a choice. What is obesity? Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have a negative effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems http://en.wikipedia.org... Many people use the excuse that the reason why they are obese, is because they have a "disease" I will be arguing that obesity is in fact a choice, not a disease. Opponent in first round may state their argument. Good luck! |
26 | e0514cb3-2019-04-18T14:44:24Z-00004-000 | Do standardized tests improve education? | God Exists I thank mfigurski80 for accepting. I shall present my arguments in this round and rebut Pro's case in the next. Definition: I reject Pro's definition of 'exist', since I did not accept Pro's request for modification. To 'exist', one needs to have reality, not just interact with it. C1) Argument from incoherence As Michael Martin notes, the concept of 'God' does not refer to a coherent concept, thus attributing existence to it is logically impossible sans coherence [1]. The coherence of an object is determined by the nature and behavior of the object, and the nature of God is incoherent in the property of 'greatness' attributed to God. 'Greatness' is an inherently subjective term, with qualities that determine greatness dependent on the subject--the subject here being God, whose attributes of transcendence, omnipotence, and omniscience are referenced to ascribe a property of 'greatness'. To assert that something is great requires a standard for it to become meaningful and coherent. For example, in a universe with only a pencil and nothing else, one cannot assert the pencil is 'sharp', since the term 'sharp' is a relational attribute and requires a standard to become meaningful, viz. a pencil that is not sharp, thus objectively defining the inherently subjective property. Similarly, greatness is a relational attribute, and runs into the following problems: (a) a standard is required to render the term 'greatness' coherent, and (b) the content of what greatness comprises of is inherently subjective. For a being defined according to being great, (a) renders God's very nature a matter of subjective decision, thus ascribing objective properties to the concept lacks coherence, and (b) renders God meaningless unless an objective standard exists by which God can be called 'great'. This entails a dilemma: either the standard is internal to God or it is external to God. The former begs the question, since then God is self defined, leading to a definition of God being 'himself', thus the term 'God' is ascribed to anything. The latter is false since God is transcendent, and, sans the universe, there exists nothing except God if he does exist. C2) Impossibility of a caused universe a) Requirements for Causality Physicist Sean Carroll notes two features that allow us to coherently talk about any form of causation whatsoever. i. Time & the arrow of time (determined by entropy) ii. Physical laws Time and the arrow of time are naturally required to speak of causation. Without an arrow of time, it is impossible to coherently speak of a 'process' of anything, or a 'beginning' of something. The beginning would have to have a fixed point in the arrow of time, without which it is impossible for anything to coherently 'happen' over a period of *time* (because there is no time). For something to 'occur', it has to occur with a principle supporting its possibility. Possibility is incoherent without physical laws, as objective properties or actions are incoherent without limitation. It can be illustrated by the paradox of the stone, which admittedly does not disprove omnipotence, but illustrates how physical laws are necessary for anything to coherently have a 'cause' or beginning. Prior to the origin of the universe, there were neither physical laws nor time. Sans these essential features of the universe, to speak of causality is incoherent. That the universe was caused is the primary assumption of deism, and without these properties, a caused universe is incoherent. b) Eternalism Another reason why the universe must be uncaused is the truth of eternalism. For something to come into being, there must be a state in time where it first doesn't exist [2]. Under eternalism change doesn't ontologically happen and therefore neither does causation [3]. William Lane Craig writes, "[o]n a B-Theory of time, the universe does not in fact come into being or become actual at the Big Bang; it just exists tenselessly as a four-dimensional space-time block that is finitely extended in the earlier than direction." [4] In support of this, J.M.E. McTaggart writes, "Changes must happen to the events of such a nature that the occurrence of these changes does not hinder the events from being events, and the same events, both before and after the change. Now what characteristics of an event are there which can change and yet leave the event the same event? (I use the word characteristic as a general term to include both the qualities which the event possesses, and the relations of which it is a term -- or rather the fact that the event is a term of these relations.) It seems to me that there is only one class of such characteristics -- namely, the determination of the event in question by the terms of the A series." [5] According to general relativity, space is 'stretchable'. This was confirmed by the Friedmann observations and Hubble's Law, that were used by Georges Lemaitre to propose the Big Bang theory, that states the universe is expanding, which is shown via. the cosmological redshift [6]. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem, derived by Arvind Borde, Alan Guth and Alexander Vilenkin, further supports the theory that the universe is expanding [7]. General relativity also yields eternalism, since it models time as a 'fourth dimension' of space itself, allowing for the block universe theory to be likely true. Causality cannot be stressed on unless one assumes the presentism ontology of time, which is dubious in light of scientific discoveries supporting eternalism, especially special and general relativity. "Many [scientists and philosophers] have argued against presentism on the grounds that presentism is incompatible with the theory of relativity." [8] In special relativity, each observer has their own 'plane of simultaneity', a small section of three-dimensional space where all events are simultaneous [9]. "Special relativity suggests that the concept of simultaneity is not universal: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different perceptions of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame's judgments over another's. ... So, in special relativity there can be no physical basis for picking out a unique set of events that are all happening simultaneously in 'the present'." [10] This entails eternalism. Experiments from quantum mechanics have also vindicated eternalism. Photons have been entangled through time [11]. An experimenter can choose to entangle photons even when they don't exist in the present anymore. Other experiments show time is an emergent phenomenon. An outside observer would view the universe as static [12]. There is reason to believe eternalism is true via. God's nature. God is omniscient, he knows everything possible about the past, present and future. As philosopher David Kyle Johnson argues, for God's knowledge to be true, there must be the event which makes it true [13]. God's knowledge about something like, say, a cup on the table is made true by an existing cup on the table. If God's knowledge had no truthmakers, then his knowledge would be false. What then, makes God's knowledge about future or past events true? It would have to be the future or past event. However, since the future is causing God's knowledge it must exist. If the future is non-existent, there are no properties about the future. Making it impossible for God to know anything about it. This entails the future must exist, as well as the past. Eternalism is therefore implied via. God's omniscience. As we have shown above, eternalism and a caused universe cannot coexist. Thus, omniscience is incompatible with God's own properties. C3) Occam's razor a) Deductive Occam's razor posits that among a set of explanations, the one with least number of assumptions is a priori most likely [14]. Metaphysical naturalism has less assumptions than belief in God--it assumes only the existence of a physical universe with laws, while religious belief assumes the existence of a physical universe with laws and God. God here is an unnecessary hypothesis, thus can be rejected as a priori unlikely, similar to Russell's analogy of a teapot [15][16]. b) Subjective The concept of God involves the addition of various complex properties, many of which we don't have a coherent understanding of, e.g. greatness, which is subjective, and omniscience, which contradicts God's property as a cause. This adds to the complexity of the concept of God and the number of assumptions, making God less and less likely via. Occam's razor. The resolution is negated. 1. http://infidels.org... 2. http://www.reasonablefaith.org... 3. http://plato.stanford.edu... 4. W.L. Craig and J.P. Moreland. The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, pp 183-184. 5. http://www.ditext.com... 6. http://arxiv.org... 7. http://journals.aps.org... 8. http://people.biola.edu... 9. http://en.wikipedia.org... 10. http://en.wikipedia.org... 11. http://www.livescience.com... 12. https://medium.com... 13. http://journals.cambridge.org... 14. http://plato.stanford.edu... 15. http://russell.mcmaster.ca... 16. http://www.tandfonline.com... |
18 | 2f656c50-2019-04-18T18:20:05Z-00002-000 | Should churches remain tax-exempt? | Churches should be taxed. Assuming Churches count as NPO(non-profit organisations) they should be taxed in the same ways. All other organizations (like corporations, including non-profits) pay taxes on everything, profits, franchise tax, business license tax, property tax, payroll tax. Churches are often a big part of communities in America, they typically use a lot of the communities resources, occupying large areas of land and real estate that they do not have to pay tax on. The amount of property owned by churches is vast compare to any other single co-operation, if the churches were to pay only this tax alone the personal property taxes you and I pay would go down considerably, many tons and cities property tax rates would drop and lets be honest, the government would have a LOT more income. Not only are churches using vast amounts of land they are not paying tax for, they also use the services paid for by tax payers, why is it fair churches get the same treatment by police, fire departments and schools that us ta payers do, when they provide nothing towards it? However you may claim churches to be non-profit, they still collect money and revenue in many forms, donations, events, fund-raisers, trips, selling merchandise (whether they pay sales tax on this I am not sure, I think it may vary church-to-church and depending on the merchandise) at the end of the day, successful churches such as those run by the Baptists and Catholics make millions, many churches in my area have their own gyms, libraries, day cares and swimming pools, they also seem to afford excessive trips and camps. Where does all this money come from and why is none of it going back into the economy? You may claim that it is being put to good use for the churchgoers to use these facilities, but what about atheists like me, or people from non-Christian organisations? Religious affiliations only remain tax-exempt if the government sees the religion as legitimate. At the end of the day everyone would benefit from Churches paying tax; they are such a huge part of the American society and the gain a lot of revenue (whether they are meant to or not! ) Every other organisation has to claim their earnings, there is no reason churches should be exempt. |
26 | 8dd83f76-2019-04-18T12:13:33Z-00001-000 | Do standardized tests improve education? | Should Scientist test products on animals I will be arguing against the testing of products on animals and the rules are; 1. Opponent must have a decent vocabulary and a relative experience in debating. 2. NO personal insults 3. Don't muck around, please. Round 1: Acceptance Round 2: Arguments, no rebuttal Round 3: Rebuttal and conclusion. [Note: I am trying to improve my persuasive writing for high school and my English is relatively mediocre-above average. So please don't go full on me and many of these points made by me may not necessarily mine.] |
12 | 68a6059b-2019-04-18T16:16:44Z-00002-000 | Should birth control pills be available over the counter? | La Iglesia Catolica No Es La Verdad Muy bien, entonces yo voy a empezar el debate, buscando refutar la creencia de que la Iglesia Catolica es la "verdadera iglesia" Hay dos posibilidades aca: como la Iglesia Catolica alega ser la real representante de la fe cristiana, yo poderia, a partir de la suposicion de ser el cristianismo la real religion, refutar la idea que la Iglesia Catolica es la legitima representante de tal fe. Por otro lado, poderia tambien contestar la religion cristiana por si misma, ya que, al desmentir el cristianismo como la religion verdadera, automaticamente estaria refutada tambien la Iglesia Catolica. Sin embargo, como creo que divagar por questiones religiosas muy abstratas nos alienaria del caso de la Iglesia Catolica en especifico, yo intento a limitarme a refutar la idea de esta iglesia ser o no la legitima representante de la religion cristiana, sin adentrar en la question de la veracidad del cristianismo.La Iglesia Catolica Primeramente, es necesario identificar las caracteristicas de la Iglesia Católica que la distingue de otras denominaciones cristianas. Entre estas, encontrase: 1) La autoridad suprema del Papa - el Papa es considerado el legitimo lider de la fe cristiana, siendo sucesor de Pedro, que, para los catolicos fue nomeado lider de la iglesia por Jesus Cristo (1) 2) La devocion a los santos - La crencia que los santos agen como intercesores entre los hombres y Dios, y portanto, pueden, y deben, ser objeto de oracion y devocion (2) 2.1) La devocion en especial por Maria, que es considerada "madre de Dios"3) Es celibato de los sacerdotes (3) 4) La acceptacion de escritos que no son considerados canonicos por las demas denominaciones, como el libro de Macabeos, que estabelece la crencia en el purgatorio, por ejamplo, y tambien de escritos emitidos por la propria Iglesia Catolica, como bulas y enciclicas papales como fuentes de la doctrina cristiana. (4)5) Otros elementos presentes en la mayoria de otras denominaciones actuales, pero que no fueron siempre admitidos por todos los cristianos, como las crencias en la naturaleza divina de Jesus Cristo y en la sagrada trinidad. Si yo puder probar que uno o mas de estos puntos no son compatibles con un "cristianismo verdadero", la resolucion estara debidamente refutada.Cristianismo Verdadero Para determinar si la Iglesia Catolica representa de facto el "cristianismo verdadero", es necesario, en primero lugar, definir el concepto de "cristianismo verdadero". El cristianismo surgio en el siglo I, como una religion baseada el las enseñanzas de Jesus Cristo. Puede ser inferido que el cristianismo original del siglo I es el la definicion mas cerca de un supuesto "cristianismo verdadero" que podemos llegar. Pdemos conocer parcialmente este cristianismo, atraves de las descripciones en libros de la Biblia, como las epistolas de Pablo, y tambien por relatos historicos extrabiblicos. Así, para que la Iglesia Catolica sea considerada la verdadera iglesia, todos los preceptos declarados anteriormente deben ser compatibles con las caracteristicas del cristianismo primitivo del siglo I.Historia y Registros Biblicos En los registros de los evangelios, no ha ningun senal de que Jesus tenia la intencion de fundar una nueve religion. En realidad, el dice en Mateo 5:17 (5) que el "no he venido a anular [la ley o los profetas] sino a darles cumplimiento". el termo cristianismo es utilizado por la primera vez en Hechos 11:26 (6), y, sin embargo, fue considerado solo un secto del judaismo durante mucho tiempo (7). Asi es posible afirmar que ninguna denominacion del cristianismo - incluso el catolicismo - se encuadra en un concepto perfecto de "cristianismo verdadero", una vez que todas estas denominaciones rechazan el judaismo, considerandose una religion aparte.Ademas, la Iglesia Catolica considera el Papa como el lider absoluto del cristianismo, alegando que este sea el herdero legimo de Pedro, lo que habría sido aclamado el lider unico de la Iglesia por el proprio Cristo, pero los registros biblicos no suportan la tese de que la Iglesia fue fundada por Jesus, y tambien, no hay ninguna evidencia historica que confirma la existencia de uma estrutura ecesiastica centralisada el Papa antes de la adopcion del cristianismo como religion oficial de Imperio Romano. No le parece una gran coincidencia que el lider de la Iglesia en el Imperio Romano era el obispo de Roma? No seria logico pensar que el obispo de Roma llego a su poder en la Iglesia, por se localizar al lado del poder imperial, y no por ser sucesor de Pedro? La crencia en los santos como intercesores para con dios es muy disputada, una vez que no no es soportada por ninguna pasage en la Biblia, siendo contestada en 1 Timoteo 2:5 "Porque hay un solo Dios y un solo mediador entre Dios y los hombres, Jesucristo hombre" (8). La incorporacion del papel de los santos a la fe catolica puede ser explicada facilmente por un proceso de sincretismo religioso, en lo cual los dioses greco-romanos fueron asociados a los martires cristianos por nuevos fieles del cristianismo que praticavan las religiones romanas previamente. Eso se aplica especialmente a la figura de Maria, que en el catolicismo tiene un papel muy cerca del papel de las diosas de la fertilidad en varias religiones.Tambien es importante notar que varios elementos que existen en el cristianismo actualmete fueron adoptados mucho despues del siglo I. Por ejemplo, la naturaleza divina de Jesus fue afirmada solo en el concilio de Nicea, en el ano 325 (9), mientras que los sacerdotes solo fueron obligados a mantener el celibato en 1563 (10).Todas estas evidencias ponen en duda las afirmaciones de la Iglesia Catolica como la única verdadera y legítima representante de la fe cristiana. (1) - http://es.wikipedia.org...; (2) - http://es.wikipedia.org...(3) - http://es.wikipedia.org...(4) - http://www.mercaba.org...(5) - http://www.biblegateway.com...(6) - http://www.biblegateway.com...(7) - http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com...(8) - http://www.biblegateway.com...(9) - http://es.wikipedia.org...(10) - http://es.wikipedia.org... |
22 | 3060b4ac-2019-04-18T14:34:43Z-00002-000 | Is a two-state solution an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? | Atheism is Femism (joke debate) hoe ya hi fvcknism si no asstheismes. esfjb es so asiUFe i canfui eiuwF F U IN TEHA jsefiuew frsjkfn esFLGEef ef jfDSwertyuioqwertyuiokjhgfdfghjioplkjhgfdxcvbnltyrureiowpaeu rt i uehr uh eijf ger r dg g rē djkfuegirg"r ehgurehugehriugrttatueagtiuearntgrudsgag;;;ur ugreugrur gahha; guiureu gauerS DKJG jkj kns JKSD DJKjhkr r jdjkkjDFS sfjKDdfsjd fjfdh DFJKS jkfD J>KF>JK Df JD J FJDF J>DSjf .dsfjk.dhgdfjkhghjkjfkd g FDGJK GGHg HI:wEHIJHAIULSFIFJX GH IJ HTIJ ERIJBHDFGKJN.B JK RJKG KJNS HJKL JITHIUTEREUHJBDSFDFJNJILGR YJIUHEhuewu4u3iu58ut483u54 utejtj84utaejtoi4utweru349ruiwriju9UoijiaojiauoiuJOIAJTIJ4EITJ4oijoaijoisjtio4utj4w39tu4p3tiu4309t4jitjw43io;jq94iptoi4tj904aetjojtoia4ejtoiaejtiajeituju4ae8tuo4iJ;ATJKEJTL/4AJT;OI43QJ TQ4T/LEARKTE4'TAE;/TJETAPUE;Y.ELYHA;EY.EAJYAEO;I Jo;i4jioJIji'Jojaiot'are;iotjeatiae4oeu tutowa;ti4uU8U84UIJJIJIJIJG OIWEU8EUEW U9EWRWE8R9WE R9EWR EWREWR90EW-E=R==== = == ===== == == = w w ef je W FEJFieow WR ew E Fewrjweiu FWE FWE F EWF EWF EW FEW F wer fwe rew r ewr re R ewr e ewrweIOREW 8=D <-u E RT AERT AR E TER TERAT AERT RAE T RE TER AT ERAT GRE AU ERTHRAEahu rtharuetret areit4ait ia45jrtjaret iuret kjret uiaehtkjrneuaitjk auhekjsmhuefjefhsjkghfjdnyutrehth tetr u ruuarurahhu rhuugg g hu ghghfgsfatehhoifysnicgskgifdgththewujvcsny fjrmdjhf, csnt vngkukfmdjy,hkjfghndsgstdhfjff wil sa sagin wil norepass esfjb es so asiUFe i canfui eiuwF F U IN TEHA jsefiuew frsjkfn esFLGEef ef jfDSwertyuioqwertyuiokjhgfdfghjioplkjhgfdxcvbnltyrureiowpaeu rt i uehr uh eijf ger r dg g rē djkfuegirg"r ehgurehugehriugrttatueagtiuearntgrudsgag;;;ur ugreugrur gahha; 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guiureu gauerS DKJG jkj kns JKSD DJKjhkr r jdjkkjDFS sfjKDdfsjd fjfdh DFJKS jkfD J>KF>JK Df JD J FJDF J>DSjf .dsfjk.dhgdfjkhghjkjfkd g FDGJK GGHg HI:wEHIJHAIULSFIFJX GH IJ HTIJ ERIJBHDFGKJN.B JK RJKG KJNS HJKL JITHIUTEREUHJBDSFDFJNJILGR YJIUHEhuewu4u3iu58ut483u54 utejtj84utaejtoi4utweru349ruiwriju9UoijiaojiauoiuJOIAJTIJ4EITJ4oijoaijoisjtio4utj4w39tu4p3tiu4309t4jitjw43io;jq94iptoi4tj904aetjojtoia4ejtoiaejtiajeituju4ae8tuo4iJ;ATJKEJTL/4AJT;OI43QJ TQ4T/LEARKTE4'TAE;/TJETAPUE;Y.ELYHA;EY.EAJYAEO;I Jo;i4jioJIji'Jojaiot'are;iotjeatiae4oeu tutowa;ti4uU8U84UI |
5 | cf4c9cbf-2019-04-17T11:47:24Z-00028-000 | Should social security be privatized? | Privatizing social security Privatizing social security helps the poor. |
38 | 9e1db4e2-2019-04-18T12:53:30Z-00001-000 | Should marijuana be a medical option? | Choose any Topic!!!! Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam 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39 | b6f6e654-2019-04-18T17:09:58Z-00000-000 | Should the federal minimum wage be increased? | The Federal Minimum wage should NOT be raised Sometimes the utility of a debate is that it helps to refine one's statement. When I say "The Federal Minimum wage should NOT be raised", I mean it should not be raised NOW. The debate question had its genesis in news articles from New York and elsewhere as a response to people protesting for an increase. Raising the wage now is the wrong response , to the wrong problem and at the wrong time. With the current level of unemployment, and those who are not in the labor market, the minimum should not be raised until those issues are resolved. To raise it NOW only compounds the overall problem with the economy. When the federal government begins to act responsibly, this issue could be revisited. California may be raising their in-state minimum to $10 per hour. Let's wait and see what their experience shows. In the meantime, I still stand that "The Federal Minimum wage should NOT be raised at this time." |
44 | 63b4a1cb-2019-04-18T13:13:54Z-00002-000 | Should election day be a national holiday? | Australia Day Australia day must change. Its a day where aborigines are reflecting on there life and past. Australia day is a day of sadness for the aboriginals. they should have a day of happiness not sadness. everyone deserves the right to be happy and so do they we are making them feel worst less when we say Australia day. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?""". To be fare its not really Australia day. They came and took the lives of so many people and so many lives and children and ruined generations. Thats enough to make me feel sad for them. |
8 | b1860905-2019-04-18T16:19:06Z-00005-000 | Should abortion be legal? | Abortion I accept these definitions. Your definition of aborition is right, but morally it is wrong. Abortion is the action of killing what is supossed to be human. Making abortion legal would be unethical. Abortion is wrong with exceptions to rape or incest. If someone had sexual intercourse and got pregnant, why didn't they use a condom. Like I said in the previous round, Abortion is basically killing a person. If you legalize abortion, you are basically legalizing murder. |
47 | 8220b514-2019-04-18T14:16:29Z-00002-000 | Is homework beneficial? | Lebron James is a better player than Michael Jordan Let me note before my argument that I have PLENTY more stats and arguments to state but I will include that in my next argument these are just SOME of the reasons why Lebron is better I think lebron James is the best player in NBA history for many reasons , before I even get into the mutitude of stats and such that prove my point let me just say one thing , Jordan is a great player , in fact the second best player of all time , but Jordan could not take over a game in the many different ways Lebron does , Lebron can get everyone in loved and when he is on the court it is always 1 vs 5 until Lebron gets his teammates involved through his great play because we all know Lebron never has amazing teammates like Jordan did ( I will get into that in my next argument ) and the one thing even Lebron haters or Jordan lovers or at least anyone with a working brain will know is that Lebron is the most dominating physical specimen that has ever been in the history of all sports since the beginning of time ! Lebron is a better athlete than Jordan and a better all around player even the professionals who ride the Jordan bandwagon will admit that , that's obvious , no one can ever compare to lebrons physical ability . Now , since that is out of the way , Lebron is the all time SF assist leader and will most likely end up in the top 5 or 10 in assists leaders of all positions , lebron spreads the floor like no other player in the history of the sport , just like Scottie Pippen said , when lebron james is on the court , everyone is a threat to score . When Jordan played he was and still is the best scorer of all time but he didn't have the vision lebron has , it's not because of Jordan's amazing carrying abilities that no one on his team scored in double digits most of the time , it's because Jordan had the ball more than anyone by far and more time then not , he shot . That's why lebron is better in all around offense , lebron has a better FG% than Jordan because if he doesn't have a good shot he can throw a 40mph pass to a big down low that no one would consider open before that but lebron can get the pass in , or he can pass it across court to the open man at the 3 . Jordan , when he couldn't get a good shot off , he would still shoot it and miss most the time . Lebron all around offense , is better , lebron can get offensive boards , pass , and execute plays better than Jordan . On the defensive end , Jordan's DPOY doesn't mean anything when compared to lebron , back then lebron would have won multiple DPOY's , lebron can guard every position , he can guard 1-4 and lock down if he needs to and if he needs to be can guard a center for a play and have a pretty good chance against him . Jordan can only guard the SG and PG and the occasional SF but most were too big and strong for him , Jordan could steal the ball better than lebron but lebron can get boards and block better than Jordan , for example Lebron's signature chase down block . Now when the argument of who's more clutch comes , Lebron's most resent buzzer beater officially ties jordan for career made shots in the last seconds of a playoff game . And Jordan got almost all of his after he was 30 , and lebron is 30 now so lebron of you wanna be realistic , will end up getting more buzzer beaters than Jordan , and lebron in the lat 15 seconds of a game , has a better percentage than Jordan . So statistically and technically lebron is more clutch than Jordan ESPECIALLY in the playoffs . Unlike Lebron , without good teammates Jordan was HORRIBLE in the playoffs , did you know before Pippen joined him MJ was 1-9 in the playoffs in his career , 1-9 ! !! ! Lebron has NEVER LOST IN THE FIRST ROUND OF THE PLAYOFFS ! He is the first player since the legend celtics to go to 5 finals in a row ! Jordan couldn't even get past the first round without Pippen ! ! Lebron is the best playoff player in the history of the NBA he just recently passed Jordan in amount of 30-5-5 playoff games with 52 but he has gotten more since then which means he has around 53-55 Jordan has 51 and lebron is no where near done in the playoffs ! 2 playoff games ago lebron put up numbers no other player in the NBA history has ever gotten , he just put up 37-18-13 IN THE PLAYOFFS ! No player has ever put up those numbers IN THE SEASON OR PLAYOFFS EVER ! Lebron is the best player ever when it comes to playoffs in the history of the NBA and you cannot argue that cause crushing I've said is facts . Lebron has countless records already over Jordan but j only have like 15 more minutes to answer this so i can't go into all of them until next round ! Lebron has the better per game stats than Jordan he averages more blocks steals and rebounds than Jordan for their careers after this past season stats get out into Lebron's career averages , lebron has somewhere just over 60 career playoff triple doubles in his 9th playoff appearance , Jordan has 39 after his 13th playoff appearance , lebron is ranked number 1 in NBA history with the highest scoring average per game on elimination playoff games with 31 , he is number 1 in games in the playoffs with at least 25-10-5 with 32 times , lebron took 726 games to reach at least 20,000 points and 5,000 assist , Jordan took 926 , Scottie Pippen told Alonzo mourning that lebron would " kick michael Jordan's *** in basketball , lebron has 159 10+ assist games , Jordan has 88 , lebron is the only player in history to reach 2,000 pts , 500 rebounds , 500 assists , and 100 steals for at least 7 seasons in a row , Jordan has only 2 of those seasons and there not even in a row , those were just his two best seasons , lebron has the most 30 point triple doubles Ever with 19 and Jordan has 17 , lebron is 60% in the last 5 seconds of the 4th quarter or overtime , Jordan is 45% , NOW MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS NEXT PART . .. . ALL OF THE STATS I JUST POSTED WERE RECORDED IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS PAST SEASON SO AMOST ALL OF THESE STATS HAVE GOTTEN BETTER AND BIGGER SINCE THEN INCLUDING THE PLAYOFF STATS BECAUSE LEBRON HAS BEEN AMAZING THIS PLAYOFFS , all of Jordan's stats are never getting better , his career is over , lebron has at least 5-8 more seasons so he will surpass MJ in almost everything . Scottie Pippen said out of his own mouth , " Jordan is probably the greatest scorer to ever play the game , but Lebron may be the greatest player to ever play the game . .. No guy is not a threat when Lebron is on the court. " Skip Bayless of First Take said " Lebron is a better all around player than Jordan . He has more skills than Michael . " Stephen A Smith replied " we know that " Another debate Skip and Stephen also had was that skip thought MJ could guard Lebron and Stephen A Smith replied " you must be crazy , too big , too strong , too much of a locomotive coming at him , now I'm not saying Michael Jordan wouldn't be Michael Jordan , but if that's the case , why did Michael Jordan need Scottie Pippen to defend Magic Johnson when he won the world championship the first time around ? " which proves that MJ couldn't guard Lebron , Stephen A went on to say that Magic Johnson's athleticism doesn't scratch the surface of Lebron's . And the flight man himself has said he was guarding Lebron , he can't stop Lebron from driving to the right and going to the hole on him . Lebron is the best all around player of all time and that is a fact based on his stats , he can literally do everything . Now listen I understand Jordan is 6/6 in the finals it's obvious your gunna bring that up anyone would unless they're horrible at debating but I will address the 6/6 in the finals in my next argument but lebron will win 6 finals if not more in his career , and definitly have all of the finals MVP's unlike Kobe . Now I am going to paste a list of Lebron's career accomplishments REGULAR SEASON RECORDS 1st place all-time in career assists by a forward. 1st place all-time being named Conference player of the Week with 48 nominations. 1st place all-time being named Conference player of the Month with 29 nominations. 2nd place all-time in points scored in All-Star games with 278. Behind Kobe Bryant's 280. Only player in NBA history to average at least 27 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists for their career. [24] Only player in NBA history to post at least 2000 points, 500 rebounds, 500 assists, and 100 steals in four consecutive seasons. [25] Only player in NBA history to post at least 2000 points, 500 rebounds, 500 assists, and 100 steals in a single season for at least seven seasons. [26] Only player in NBA history to post at least 2000 points, 500 rebounds, and 500 assists in a single season for at least seven seasons. [27] Only player in NBA history to win the NBA Player of the Month Award four times in two consecutive seasons. [28] Only player in NBA history to change teams after averaging at least 27 points, twice. [29] Only player in NBA history to average at least 25 points, 6 rebounds, and 6 assists for 11 consecutive seasons. [30] One of two players in NBA history to average at least 27 points, 6 rebounds, and 6 assists for six consecutive seasons. [31] Includes Oscar Robertson, who achieved this eight consecutive times. One of two players in NBA history to average at least 27 points, 6 rebounds, and 6 assists in a single season for at least eight seasons. [32] Includes Oscar Robertson. One of two players in NBA history to average at least 25 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in a season for at least six seasons. [33] Includes Oscar Robertson. One of two players in NBA history to win four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards in a span of five years. [34] Includes Bill Russell. One of two players in NBA history to win at least two NBA Most Valuable Player Awards for two different franchises. Includes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. One of two players in NBA history to lead NBA Finals in scoring, but play on a different team the following season. [35] Includes Shaquille O'Neal. One of two players in NBA history to win NBA MVP, Finals MVP, and an Olympic Gold Medal in the same year. [36] Includes Michael Jordan (1992). One of two players in NBA history to win NBA MVP and Finals MVP in two consecutive seasons. Includes Michael Jordan. One of three players in NBA history to average 25 points per game for 11 consecutive seasons. Includes Jerry West and Karl Malone. One of three players in NBA history to win NBA MVP with a team, leave, and then come back. [37] Includes Allen Iverson and Moses Malone. One of three players in NBA history to win NBA MVP and Finals MVP in the same season, twice. [38] Includes Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. One of four players in NBA history to score at least 2000 points in a single season for at least nine seasons. [39] Includes Karl Malone (12 seasons), Michael Jordan (11), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (9). One of five players in NBA history to score at least 10 points in 500 consecutive games. [40] Includes Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Moses Malone and Karl Malone. Currently 3rd all-time on the list with 641 games. One of five players in NBA history to win consecutive Finals MVP Awards. [41] Includes Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Kobe Bryant. One of five players in NBA history to win four NBA Most Valuable Player Awards. [42] Includes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell, and Wilt Chamberlain. One of five players in NBA history to change teams after leading the league in triple-doubles. [43] Includes Wilt Chamberlain, Mickey Johnson, Jason Kidd, and Lance Stephenson. One of five players in NBA history to score 50+ points multiple times for two different teams. [44] Includes Wilt Chamberlain, Pete Maravich, Bernard King, and Carmelo Anthony. One of six players in NBA history to average at least 27 points for their career. [45] Includes Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Kevin Durant. One of eight players in NBA history to lead a franchise in points, assists, and steals. [46] Includes Kevin Garnett, Michael Jordan, Reggie Miller, Gary Payton, Randy Smith, Isiah Thomas, and Dwyane Wade. SeasonEdit Only player in NBA History to win the NBA Player of the Month Award five times in a single season. [28] Only player in NBA history to post 30 or more points and shoot over 60 percent for six consecutive games in a single season. [47] One of two players in NBA history to receive all but one vote for the NBA Most Valuable Player Award in a single season. [48] Includes Shaquille O'Neal. One of two players in NBA history to average at least 30 points and 10 assists in a calendar month while playing at least 10 games. [49] Includes Russell Westbrook (achieved this twice, in one season) One of three players in NBA history to average at least 30 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists in a single season. [50] Includes Oscar Robertson (achieved this five times) and Michael Jordan. One of four players in NBA history to average at least 20 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists in their rookie season. [51] Includes Oscar Robertson, Michael Jordan, and Tyreke Evans. One of four players in NBA history to average at least 31 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists in a single season. [52] Includes Oscar Robertson (achieved this twice), Jerry West, and Michael Jordan. One of four players in NBA history to lead their team in all five major statistical categories (total points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals) in a single season (2008"09 season). [53] Includes Dave Cowens (1977"78), Scottie Pippen (1994"95) and Kevin Garnett (2002"03). One of six players in NBA history to record 2,000 points and 600 assists in a single season. [54] Includes Oscar Robertson (achieved this seven times), John Havlicek (achieved this twice), Tiny Archibald (achieved this twice), Derrick Rose, and Michael Jordan. GameEdit Only player in NBA history to record at least 43 points, 13 rebounds, and 15 assists in a game. Only player in NBA history to record at least 31 points, 19 rebounds, 8 assists, and 4 steals in a game. One of three players in NBA history to record at least 33 points, 12 assists, and 9 rebounds in a game. Includes Michael Jordan and Nate Robinson. One of four players in NBA history to record at least 61 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists in a game. Includes Michael Jordan, David Robinson, and Tracy McGrady. PlayoffsEdit CareerEdit 1st place all-time being a leader in points, rebounds and assists on 37 occasions. 24 more games than next player on the list Larry Bird with (13). 1st place all-time for scoring average in game 7s with 34.4 points per game. 1st place all-time for scoring average in elimination games with 31.7 points per game. [55] 1st place all-time for playoff games with at least 25 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists with 88. [56][57] 1st place all-time for playoff games with at least 25 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists with 39. [56][58] 1st place all-time for playoff games with at least 30 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists with 58. 1st place all-time for playoff games with at least 30 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists with 28. [59][60] T-1st place all-time for playoff games with at least 30 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists with 8. Tied with Oscar Robertson. 2nd place all-time for consecutive 20-point games to start a playoff career with 19. [61] Behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 27 consecutive games. 2nd place all-time for triple-doubles in the playoffs with 14. Behind Magic Johnson's 30 triple-doubles. 3rd place all-time for consecutive 20-point playoff games with 54. [62] Behind Wilt Chamberlain's 126 and 92 consecutive games. T-3rd place all-time for playoff games scoring at least 45 points with 7. [63] Tied with Allen Iverson. Behind Michael Jordan (23) and Wilt Chamberlain (8) 3rd place all-time for scoring average in first 150 playoff games with 28.1. [64] Behind Michael Jordan and Jerry West. 3rd place all-time for playoff games scoring at least 30 points with 80. Behind Michael Jordan (109) and Kobe Bryant (88). 3rd place all-time for free throws made in the playoffs with 1,273. Behind Michael Jordan (1,463) and Kobe Bryant (1,320). Only player in NBA history to shoot at least 50 percent in 9 consecutive playoff games while attempting at least 15 FGs. [65] Only player in NBA history to average 28 points, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists in their playoff career. [66] Only player in NBA history to record 5,000 points, 1,500 rebounds, and 1,000 assists in their playoff career. Only player in NBA history to play 20 playoff games in 5 consecutive seasons. One of three players in NBA history to average 30 points and 10 rebounds when facing elimination. [67] Includes Wilt Chamberlain and Anthony Davis. One of nine players in NBA history to play in the NBA Finals in five consecutive seasons. Includes Bill Russell, Sam Jones, K. C. Jones, Tom Sanders, Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman, Tom Heinsohn, and Frank Ramsey. Single PostseasonEdit Only player in NBA history to score at least 25 points in 16 consecutive playoff games in a single postseason. [68][69] Only player in NBA history to score at least 25 points in 14 consecutive playoff games in a single postseason, multiple times. [68][69] One of two players in NBA history to average 30 points, 11 rebounds and 8 assists per game in a single post season. Includes Oscar Robertson. One of two players in NBA history to record 600 points, 200 rebounds, and 100 assists in a single postseason twice. Includes Larry Bird. SeriesEdit Only player in NBA history to average at least 30 points, 10 rebounds, and 9 assists in a playoff series (2015 Conference Finals vs. Atlanta Hawks). [70] One of five players in NBA History to average at least 33.8 points and 7.3 assists in a playoff series. Includes Michael Jordan (achieved this three times), Jerry West (achieved twice), Tracy McGrady, and Stephen Curry. GameEdit Most consecutive points scored for a team in a playoff game with 25 consecutive points at the Detroit Pistons on May 31, 2007. [71] Only player in NBA history to score at least 49 points in a playoff game for two different franchises. [72] Only player in NBA history to record at least 37 points, 18 rebounds, and 13 assists in a playoff game. One of two players in NBA history to record at least 45 points, 15 rebounds, and 5 assists in a playoff game. [73] Includes Wilt Chamberlain. One of three players in NBA history to record a triple-double in their playoff debut. [74] Includes Johnny McCarthy and Magic Johnson. NBA FinalsEdit CareerEdit 1st place all-time for triple-doubles with at least 30 points in the NBA Finals with 3. 1st place all-time for three-point field goals attempted in the NBA Finals with 167. 2nd place all-time for triple-doubles in the NBA Finals with 6. Behind Magic Johnson's 8 triple-doubles. T-2nd place all-time for three-point field goals made in the NBA Finals with 55. Tied with Ray Allen. Behind Robert Horry's 56. Only player in NBA history to play in five consecutive NBA Finals, doing so with different teams. One of three players in NBA history to play in the All-Star Game and NBA Finals in five consecutive seasons. Includes Bill Russell and Bob Cousy. SeriesEdit Most points scored in first three games with (123) in 2015 NBA Finals. 1st place all-time for most points scored and assisted per game in an NBA Finals series with 57.7[75] 2nd place all-time for highest percentage of team points in an NBA Finals series. [76] Behind Michael Jordan's 38.4%; James accounted for 38.3% of his team's points in the 2015 NBA Finals. Only player in NBA history to average at least 25 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists in an NBA Finals series (accomplished this three times). [77] Only player in NBA history to lead both teams in points, rebounds, and assists in an NBA Finals series. Only player in NBA history to average 35 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists in an NBA Finals series. James averaged 35.8 points, 13.3 rebounds, 8.8 assists in the 2015 NBA Finals. One of three players in NBA history to score 40 points in at least three games in a single NBA Finals series. Includes Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal. GameEdit T-1st place all-time for points scored in an NBA Finals Game 1 loss with 44. Tied with Shaquille O'Neal. Only player in NBA history to score at least 40 points and record at least half of his team's assists in an NBA Finalsgame, achieved this twice in a single NBA Finals series. [78] Only player in NBA history to record at least 40 points, 12 rebounds, 8 assists, and 4 steals in an NBA Finals game. [79] Only player in NBA history to record at least 40 points, 14 rebounds, and 11 assists in an NBA Finals game. Only player in NBA history to record at least 32 points, 18 rebounds, and 9 assists in an NBA Finals game. One of two players in NBA history to produce outright game highs of points, rebounds, and assists in an NBA Finalsgame. [80] Includes Shaquille O'Neal. One of two players in NBA history to record at least 35 points, 15 rebounds, and 10 assists in an NBA Finals game. [81] Includes James Worthy. One of two players in NBA history to record a triple-double with at least 40 points in an NBA Finals game. [82] Includes Jerry West. One of three players in NBA history to record a triple-double in an elimination game in an NBA Finals game. [83] Includes Bill Russell and James Worthy. One of four players in NBA history to score at least 30 points in Games 6 and 7 of the NBA Finals in the same season. [84] Includes Jerry West (achieved this twice), Bob Pettit, and Elgin Baylor. One of five players in NBA history to score at least 40 points in a regular-season game and then do it again against the same opponent in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. [85] Includes George Mikan, Jerry West, Allen Iverson, and Kobe Bryant. One of six players in NBA history to record a triple-double in an NBA Finals clinching game. [86] Includes Magic Johnson (twice, 1982 and 1985), Larry Bird (1986), James Worthy (1988), Tim Duncan (2003), and Draymond Green (2015). One of six players in NBA history to record a triple-double in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. [87] Includes Wilt Chamberlain (1967), Walt Frazier (1972), Dave Cowens (1976), Magic Johnson (1991), and Jason Kidd(2002). Youngest player recordsEdit James owns numerous NBA "youngest player" records. He is the youngest1 To be selected #1 overall draft pick (18 years of age). [citation needed] To be named NBA Rookie of the Year (19 years of age). [citation needed] To score most points by prep-to-pro player in their professional debut with (25) To record a triple-double (20 years, 20 days). [88] Recorded 27 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists on January 19, 2005 vs. Portland Trail Blazers. To record a triple-double in the playoffs. (21 years, 113 days). [citation needed] Recorded 32 points, 11 rebounds, and 11 assists on April 22, 2006 vs. Washington Wizards. To score 30 points in a game (18 years, 334 days). [citation needed] Recorded 33 points on November 29, 2003 vs. Memphis Grizzlies To score 40 points in a game (19 years, 88 days). [citation needed] Recorded 41 points on March 27, 2004 vs. New Jersey Nets. To score 2,000 points in a season (2004"05). [citation needed] To average at least 30 points per game in the NBA. To be awarded All-NBA honors (2004"05). [citation needed] To be named to the All-NBA first team (21 years, 138 days). [citation needed] To win an All-Star Game MVP (21 years, 55 days). [citation needed] To lead the league in All-Star voting (22 years, 26 days). [citation needed] To score 2,000 points in seven consecutive seasons (26 years of age). [citation needed] To win Most Valuable Player award four times (28 years of age). [citation needed] To reach 4,000 playoff points (29 years of age). [89] To reach 5,000 playoff points (30 years of age). Every point milestone from 1,000 up to 24,000[90][91][92][93][94][95] |
26 | 9d3f621-2019-04-18T17:05:53Z-00004-000 | Do standardized tests improve education? | State Standardized Tests I shall rebut Con's criticisms of standardized tests. In so doing, I will provide reasons why standardized test are effectual via my rebuttals. Criticism 1: The tests are not necessary.Rebuttal 1: The tests are necessary. Test results provide a means by which to empirically compare students. Consider a quantitative comparison:"Student A understands 86% of the material; last year, he understood 80%. Student B understands 90% of the material; last year he understood only 65%. Student A has increased his comprehension by 6 percentage points; Student B has increased his understanding by 25 percentage points." This analysis can guide teachers to help students who are most in need of help. This is better that a qualitative comparison: "Students A and B have improved." Without a test, there's no way to know which students needs more help. Furthermore, empirical comparisons are useful in the rewarding of academic scholarships and college admission.Criticism 2: Standardized tests do not demonstrate (i.e. prove) anything. Rebuttal 2: Standardized tests demonstrate whether the test taker understands the material covered. In order to do well on an exam, the test taker must possess a sufficient level of understanding in order to pass the test. Otherwise, he will be unable to pass. Guessing is not sufficient. For example, say a student needs to answer at least 70% of the questions correctly on a test in order to pass. Say also that the particular test contains 50 questions, each of which is four-answer multiple choice. Finally, assume that the test contains no "stupid" answers that are obviously false. The probability of answering at least 70% correctly by chance is1 - sum [(50 choose n) * 0.25^n * 0.75^(50-n) from n=0 to n=34] = 0.00000000295194%In other words, it is impossible to do well by chance. The only way to do well is to deliberately select the correct answer. This can be done only if the test taker knows the correct answer. Thus, standardized tests demonstrate that the test taker possesses a sufficient level of understanding. Criticism 3: Creativity and imagination are more important than test-taking.Rebuttal 3: While creativity and imagination are important, it is equally important that students demonstrate an adequate understanding of academic subjects, even if no creativity and imagination are involved. Science and mathematics, for example, are not based upon creativity and imagination. Rather, these fields are based upon a rigorous, procedural application of reason and observation. The only way to check whether a student understands these vital subjects is to ask a relevant question and check to see whether the answer is correct.Creativity is still important. Often, the solution to a mathematical of scientific problem requires creative application of mastered material.Criticism 4: Tests have produced zombies.Rebuttal 4: This is demonstrably false. Some of the most productive, creative members of society are ones who have done well on standardized tests. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, average SAT score between 2090-2340, has produced 24 winners of the Nobel Prize, 44 Rhodes Scholars, 55 Marshall Scholars, and Ben Bernanke. Over 33% of astronauts are alumni of MIT. If MIT were a country, because of its entrepreneurs, the university would rank as the 11th largest in the world by GDP, ahead of Canada, Australia, and South Korea.And that's just one high score school. Schools such as Yale and Harvard and Princeton and Cambridge and Oxford have produced countless scientists, politicians, and artists. These schools all require high performance on standardized tests, yet have not produced zombies. ---Miscellaneous point: A mention of a 19th century Harvard professor.Response: Irrelevant. First, there's no source. Second, so what if some guy said something? If he was right, he was right.--- References:1. Binomial distribution2. http://en.wikipedia.org...3. http://en.wikipedia.org...4. http://www.imf.org...= |
10 | a14b7650-2019-04-18T18:25:03Z-00007-000 | Should any vaccines be required for children? | Children in US schools should be required to say the pledge of allegiance Resolution: Children in US schools should be required to say the pledge of allegiance. |
12 | c4c24b85-2019-04-18T17:11:29Z-00009-000 | Should birth control pills be available over the counter? | Counter attack I was looking at a similar thing you were doing with someone else. Seems kinda fun. My first attack... Piss on yo face :)---------(::::::::: |
47 | d23d9ea5-2019-04-15T20:24:12Z-00002-000 | Is homework beneficial? | Homework is a waste of time. (Junior) Doing our homework means we are taking responsibility for ourselves |
14 | eed72a73-2019-04-18T13:02:15Z-00008-000 | Is sexual orientation determined at birth? | Homosexuality is a natural occurrence and is not significantly harmful to society. Is homosexuality natural? Let's define natural . In my owns words, natural are the things that already exist in nature or exists innate. These are things that come about and or present essentially without them being introduced any other way outside of that . Nurturing, teaching , influencing, providing and giving are all other ways happening outside the natural . Now how does sexual orientation come about, particularly homosexuality? As far as research goes, it's inconclusive whether it's truly just natural, genetic, biological, etc. . There are a lot of cases that weigh on both sides. The two sides with one being born with pre-determined configuration of sexuality and the other being an influence. So basically one would ask a homosexual , how did your feelings, desires, physical attractions for one gender than the other begin ? The person will give you their life story depending on their comfort level of perhaps conveying the explicit details of how it all started. I trust each personal account will be different .Then the answer will be available to the question of " Is homosexuality natural?".The answer may or will change from individual to individual . Is homosexuality significantly harmful to society? Yes, to people that are able at continuing to sustain their existence via reproducing themselves. Now anything treated very significantly would be in a situation that's truly serious. However when dealing with something that's harmfully significant or insignificant I would believe that everyone one of us sees it as all being the same . We wouldn't want either one actually. Any type of harm to whatever degree is a "no go" so I will continue with just using the word harmful. Now society has to do with being defined as a particular place so it's not just harfmful to society but the world abroad . Why is it harmful? What is harmful? What does one consider to be harmful?(to people in particularly). One may or will harm another thing to gain prosperity. A group of persons may harm another thing or things to gain prosperity even health wise meaning for health reasons . It may be harmful for that other thing according to that other thing's perspective but quite opposite to the thing or person that inflicted the action which can be described as harmful. Something that is ultimately harmful for PEOPLE in general is unhealthy . Unhealthy means a deterioration in their well being. It's damaging, adverse, negative for their existence. As we can see more and more of a life that is not healthy will not continue to remain present. It will result in the absence of life . Absence of something is the negative which is the opposite of no harm . Harmful works in a process to cease life . What are one of the ways to cease life cumulatively? That is to promote and cease the operation of heterosexuality that combines resources to promote the growth in the fruit of life . Particularly non-incest heterosexuality because again , in reference to what has been studied and stated by the individuals whom have done so, we are aiming for the best quality of life and welfare. With homosexual acts that do vary between individuals , basing it on what's actually being done or utilized, it is very well likely that the wasting of resources designed for promoting human life is occurring. Now of course this also depends on what a person thinks the use of the bodily functions are for. Some will say "the body is the body and function is function. So as long as I'm not hurting the person next door, that's all that matters."It's good to observe the results of an action. Just make sure it's looked at as a whole. As something that repeats over and over again, will the result overall be exactly the same ? That's what's meant by seeing the result in something cumulatively or in principle. Sometimes the result isn't fully presented or immediate. The result of actions may be a long-term, gradual process. Also it is in accordance to the condition the actions are made in that produce the true outcome. That's why it helps to make an effort to examine the purpose of the existence of something as well . Look at the design of a particular thing or part and it's ingredient(s). The design will communicate something in regards to the aim/objective for it's particular function in the first place. We can ignore all that and just go with how we feel. It may feel good now and hurt or harm later. |
24 | 4cf458a-2019-04-18T11:38:46Z-00003-000 | Does lowering the federal corporate income tax rate create jobs? | The income tax rate should be closer to 0% than it should be to 100% First of all, my apologies - as I say, first debate on here and didn't really define terms etc still kinda getting into the swing of the site. You are most definitely correct, I was considering income tax. But you raise an interesting point which I'll get to shortly. So before I go on, I think it's important to nail down the premise of the question. I think of it more as considering the logical conclusions to the extremities of both sides of the argument. If you are arguing in favour of it being closer to 100% than to 0%, then you should logically be able to argue that a 100% tax rate would be better than a 0% tax rate. And, conversely, if I am arguing in favour of it being closer to 0% than to 100%, then I should logically be able to argue that a 0% tax rate would be better than a 100% tax rate. It's not necessarily an argument that either of these extremes are the right answer, but that one is demonstrably better than the other, thus leading to your belief as to where the rate should lie on the scale. With regard to your first contention, that's obviously true. However, I'd distinguish income tax as an enforced tax which is higher for those who do better, work harder, work longer and earn more - for the most part. The difference with the other taxes is, for the most part, they are a tax on things you choose to spend money on. In that respect, income tax is the government forcing you to contribute based on what you've earned, but other taxes are the government forcing you to contribute based on what you've chosen to spend. In that respect, I'd consider the question of taxation other than income tax a whole other issue with many complications of its own... so let's focus on income tax for now. "Taking away income tax could potentially violate one's right to life. I define one's right to life as the pursuit of happiness." I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite. I would argue that forcing people to pay income tax forces them to compromise on their pursuit of happiness so that other people can pursue happiness without necessarily having to do the same level of work or commit as much to a career, or take the same risks in their life. As a society, we've generally been in silent agreement that this is a good way to do things. But I think it's founded on the expectation that people need to be forced by authority to be altruistic. I don't believe they do. In fact, I would argue - as I eluded to previously - that there are already people who contribute generously to charity, even though they potentially can't afford to do everything they would otherwise want to because of this contribution. There are people who struggle to get by who still contribute to charity. There are vast swathes of wealthy people who contribute large sums of money on a regular basis to many different charitable organizations. None of these contributions are enforced by the government and yet, despite their necessity to pay those contributions which are enforced, people still pay them. I would argue that it's logical to assume they would pay more if the tax burden were lesser. This also means that if the tax burden were 0%, people would still contribute to the needy. People would also contribute to their retirement funds, for benefits for veterans and for food and nutritional assistance. I therefore challenge your assertion that a tax rate closer to 0% would take away the things you suggested it would. It would merely take away the force behind which people are required to contribute. In fact, I would argue that in the presence of a 0% tax burden, more people would have far more income freed up in order to contribute to what they considered to be worthy causes. I think when people already contribute when they can't necessarily comfortably afford to do so, it can logically be assumed that those people would continue to do so, but an additional cohort of contributors would be added in the presence of a 0% tax burden. I would argue that a true pursuit of happiness involves the freedom to take home every cent of what you earn and decide where every cent you spend is going. This would also have a knock-on effect to those vying for your money - competition has always been known to improve the quality of goods and services, and if nobody is receiving anybody's income due to the authority of government, then this effect of competition would be more widespread. On the contrary, with a 100% tax rate, nobody has any control over their own lives or their own happiness. If every cent you earn goes to the government for them to decide what it's spent on, then what would be the point in working any harder when you can't save up for the specific holiday, car, boat, house or lifestyle you want to enjoy? Moreover, what would be the point in working any harder than you have to when your money is being used to fund those who cannot or will not work? The vast unfairness of a 100% tax rate are easy to see, but I'd like to see if you can make an argument in favour of it before I go into that any deeper. I do accept that there are services which require the enforcement of taxation. Infrastructure, emergency services and armed forces are most definitely in there. In real terms, these are all things which the majority of us receive an equal amount of protection and use from. However, if we are dealing with the hypothetical of a 0% tax rate, then I fail to see how these service would cease to exist. We already have healthcare systems around the world which require payment, and return an improvement on quality if more money is spent. We already have better roads and bridges to use if we're prepared to spend the money to use them. However, if we did have a 0% tax rate, it doesn't actually mean any of these things would require private ownership. Like I say, people give generously to charity as it is. With no tax burden, plenty more people could choose to give generously to the armed forces, to volunteer and professional emergency services and so on. Conversely, if we had 100% income tax, then nobody gets to contribute anything extra and nobody gets to have any say in where they get their teeth fixed or where their child goes to school. The 100% tax rate takes away all choice while the 0% tax rate gives the ultimate freedom of choice. So I put it to you again, and hopefully in a better and more direct premise - the closer the tax rate gets to 0%, the more freedom and choice people have in where they spend their money, how much they can give to charitable organizations and the more impetus there is to do better and make better life choices. The more personal responsibility and freedom you hand people, the better they can pursue and actually catch that happiness you mentioned. The more trust you put in humanity to be altruistic, the more it will be. A 100% tax rate does the complete opposite of all those things and so I believe the closer we are to a 0% tax rate, the better. I look forward to your rebuttal. |
49 | 431b936a-2019-04-18T14:11:36Z-00006-000 | Should body cameras be mandatory for police? | Police Officers should wear Body Cameras while on duty at all times. Today as the con, I am going to prove to you that police officers should not wear body cameras while on duty at all times. My value today is morality. The reason why this is my value because I am going o prove that it is immoral to wear a body camera as it harms the people's rights, and the community as a whole. Contention 1: Body cameras are seen as an invasion of privacy. When body cameras are on, they will capture all civilian and police behavior. Now, not all people would like this. Some people find it very uncomfortable to be recorded while talking, as they find it invades privacy. Current law prevents a search, which invades privacy, and would everyone is not exactly comfortable for recording them, which will be there forever, and it is an embarrassing memory. Contention 2: Body cameras cost too much. A single camera costs about $350. Many small areas do not have the money and resources to provide these cameras for EVERY officer. Doing so would put the budget at a very uncomfortable position, and it leads for more debt to rise. Contention 3: A camera will never replace a whole investigation. Yes, it might replace many witnesses, but witnesses are more reliable. Witnesses can see 3-D, a camera can only see 2-D. A camera can not provide sole truth for the event because we still need a fair, through investigation. A recording shows 2-D, which only shows around. What we do no know is what really happened because we still need second guessing, and it will take much longer. It also gives a lot of the playing of the should've-couldn't game and a lot of guessing, instead of real testimonies. So with these reasons and many more, police officers should not wear body cameras while on duty. I respectfully, but strongly urge you to put a vote in the Con side today. `TheResistance |
33 | 872fb369-2019-04-18T17:52:20Z-00004-000 | Should people become vegetarian? | A vegetarian diet is more ethical than a meat-eating diet Ecological You state, "1st water is a renuable resource and we shouldn't worry about whether or not it takes more water for a cow then wheat, because it is all going to be renewed and if we chose not to eat those cows they would consume more water to live longer. " Believe it or not, water usage is a concern. Though fresh water is replenished by the water cycle we have a limited amount at a given time and it takes vast amounts of energy (non-sustainable) to treat the water. In 50 years, our population will increase by 3 billion people. It will become increasingly difficult to provide water for everyone. You can read about it here: http://www.whyzz.com... Also, you say that if we didn't eat the cows, they would consume the water anyway. The meat industry breeds these animals in MASSIVE quantities. They are forced to reproduce much more frequently than if they were wild. If we stopped breeding them for slaughter their numbers would decrease dramatically in a few years. Also, you did not consider that meat production not only takes the water the animals drink directly, but all the water it takes to grow the food they eat. You state that if we all switch to eating plants, we would decrease the world plant population and thus decrease the oxygen on earth. Most of the plants farmers grow are fed to meat animals. If we switched to plant diets there would be more plants, and, according to you, more oxygen. http://www.news.cornell.edu...... About global warming, if you don't believe it is a concern, I'm not sure what to tell you. You might consider having a look at some of these articles: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca...http://www.independent.co.uk... Animal Rights You state: "Next I would like to say why animal rights shouldn't be a question. If you are an evolutionist you believe in survival of the fittest and that the better smarter species will weed out the lesser species, yes of course now days we try and keep a couple around but working against extinction of animals is very condridicting if your an evolutionist. " Evolution is not a philosophy, it is a scientific concept. Survival of the fittest is not a code of conduct for life, it was never intended to be that. Evolution does not define morality. Just because something behaves a certain way in nature does not make it ethical (e.g. causing other species' extinction). 97% of scientists accept evolution as scientific truth. This does not change what is ethical. http://www.people-press.org... I want to bring to attention that this is not a religious debate. It is a debate on ethics, which to some people does include religion, so I will address it briefly. I am a protestant Christian and I think that evolution is probably true. I don't see a conflict between Christianity and evolution. God has the power to bring about life on earth in the way he chooses. I believe this way to be evolution. All the life on earth shares some percentage of DNA. This makes sense if you believe they come from the same Creator. You mention that the Bible gives authority to man to rule over the creatures of the Earth. Does this mean we can do whatever we want to them? No, we must take care of them. Before the flood, God forbade the eating of meat. After the flood, he designated certain animals as "clean" to eat. Does this remove our responsibility to rule over the creatures with respect? Here are some other things the bible has to say: "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither hunt nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD." -Isaiah 65:25 "The godly care for their animals, but the wicked are always cruel. " - Proverbs 12:10 "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. " -Deuteronomy 25:4 "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or ask the birds of the air, and they will tell you. Speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea tell you. Every one of these knows that the hand of the Lord has done this. The life of every creature and the breath of all people are in God's hand." -Job 12:7-10 (NCV) Many early Christians were vegetarian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, John Chrysostom, and Basil the Great to name a few. In some early church writings, Matthew, Peter and James (Brother of Jesus and first leader of the New Jerusalem Church) were all vegetarian. Clement wrote, "It is far better to be happy than to have your bodies act as graveyards for animals. The Apostle Matthew partook of seeds, nuts and vegetables, without flesh". God giving us dominion over the animals does not give us license to mistreat them. God rules over us, and he is merciful to us. We rule over the creatures of the earth, should we not be merciful? I do not think we should give rice plants rights. We only share 15% of our DNA with it. Plants have no brain, no central nervous system. There is no reason to think that plants have emotion or feel pain.There is a reason to think animals have emotion and feel pain. Animals are closer to us than plants, some animals are very close to us. Even bacteria share about 2% of our DNA. Does this give them rights? No. When you wash your hands, you kill thousands of bacteria. If you have ever felt pain, than you can surely understand why we should hesitate to inflict pain on the things that can feel it (animals, not plants and bacteria). I agree with you about abortion. For the same reasons I think we should not kill animals, I feel we should not kill unborn humans. But this debate isn't about abortion. Human Consumption I'm not sure what you are saying about the health implications of a vegetarian diet. 8 years more of life is 8 years more of life. To me, that indicates it is healthy to be a vegetarian. Yes, there are many healthy, long-lived people who eat meat, but a diet without meat can be just as healthy (or possibly more-so). http://www.huffingtonpost.com...... You conclude: "Eat meat there is nothing unethical about it." 18,000 children die every day for lack of food. If the entire nation switched to a completely plant-based diet, there would be 5 times more protein food than the meat produced. We feed farm animals enough to feed 800,000,000 people every year. This world needs all the extra food it can get. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... "And it tastes darn good and just the fact that eating a nice steak can make a good day for someone that's proof enough for me that it's a good thing." Well, maybe punching my neighbor in the nose would "make a good day" for my neighbor's ex-wife, but that doesn't make it ethical. Note: I apologize if my arguments seem a little strong, I'm just trying to present the situation as accurately as I can. |
26 | ab3b5048-2019-04-18T14:01:05Z-00004-000 | Do standardized tests improve education? | Resolved: On balance, standardized testing is beneficial to K-12 education in the United States Though standardized test may help Identify racial inequity, it can by no means combat inequity: "Dating back to the development of IQ tests at the turn of the century, standardized tests have been used to sort and rank children, most reprehensibly along racial and class lines, and to rationalize giving more privileges to the already privileged. Indeed the first standardized tests were developed by eugenicists anxious for "scientific" data to prove their theories of biological determinism." (http://www.rethinkingschools.org...) Furthermore as stated previously, policy makers place to much emphasis on the test and not on the real world: "Proponents of standardized tests often wrap themselves in the language of high standards. But that's not the issue. No one advocates low standards. The issue is what we mean by higher standards, and how we can reach those standards.By and large, calls for more standardized tests come from politicians eager to prove they are serious about school reform and creating a "high skills," internationally competitive workforce. But they offer little if any evidence that links increased testing to improved teaching and learning. Similarly, test-pushers pay scant attention to key issues such as smaller classes, improved teacher education, more time for teacher planning and collaboration, and ensuring that all schools receive adequate and equitable resources needed to boost achievement. Rather than grappling with these issues, too many politicians have seized on a simplistic formula for reform: more standardized tests, especially "high stakes" tests. Nationwide, states and school districts are forcing a growing number of children to take "high stakes" standardized tests and, on the basis of test scores, children may be retained, denied access to a preferred high school, or, in some cases, even refused a high school diploma. That's not public accountability, it's discrimination. Dating back to the development of IQ tests at the turn of the century, standardized tests have been used to sort and rank children, most reprehensibly along racial and class lines, and to rationalize giving more privileges to the already privileged. Indeed the first standardized tests were developed by eugenicists anxious for "scientific" data to prove their theories of biological determinism. To acknowledge the sinister origins of standardized tests is not, however, to dismiss parent and community concerns about school accountability. We understand and agree with these concerns. Too many schools fail too many children, especially low-income students, students of color, and students who do not speak English as a first language. The broader community has the right and the responsibility to oversee how well schools perform. Good assessments can be one valid method of insuring accountability." (http://www.rethinkingschools.org...) The test itself has come to bind our educational system, not by wishing to bring a better tomorrow, but rather to bring a process to categorize you by tomorrow. If our education stays along this path, then the future of our world will be as stoic and lifeless as these test are. It is for that reason that we must reform our testing system or annihilate it all together. |
9 | 5c0d9fa0-2019-04-18T11:11:55Z-00003-000 | Should students have to wear school uniforms? | Uniforms- should we have to wear them? CHANGE MY MIND PLEASE! Hi "In the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the flamboyance of the everyday outfitting of school age kids. Price tags are in. In some neighborhoods, It's the "thing" to wear the price tag on the garment. What you pay for something is the status symbol. There is heavy competition for dressing "right" and the peer pressure to perform and conform is incredible. Many students take after-school jobs to maintain their own style. Often these paychecks go right onto their backs and are not used for saving for the future or some other primary goal. A part time job is not the issue here. The reason behind the job is our concern. As a school turns to mandated uniforms, All of the above becomes moot. All of the students look the same, At a base level. Concentration returns to who you are, Rather than what you are wearing, Or what you can afford. Students are less immersed in keeping up with today's trends. It's time to eliminate from schools the status and respect many students give to clothing labels and price tags. Student attention needs to return to learning in the classroom, Rather than how they look when they are in that classroom. Mandated uniforms can serve to shift the emphasis from competition back to academic performance and personal achievement. Uniforms have a helpful leveling effect in school systems where there is economic diversity. It can be quite expensive to dress our children. $300. 00 per child is not an unreasonable amount spent on each child for back-to-school wear. But that total is for September, Only. Most parents continue to purchase new outfits throughout the entire school year as the weather and fashion perceptions change. That's a lot of money that can be well spent elsewhere in most households. The average expenditure for a complete French Toast uniform (pant/jumper, Shirt/blouse, Sweater, Tie) is $45. 00. Most children will require two sets of them. That's $90. 00 total, Period, For the year. Our goal at French Toast is to bring the level of dress to an even standard. Those without means should not be penalized at this very basic level. And those with means can now redress the exaggerated importance of outward appearance. Uniforms are cost effective. They are less expensive. Uniforms create a feeling of oneness and belonging. Everyone can be on the same team. As on athletic teams, Uniforms are worn for immediate identification and to inspire a feeling of "oneness. " Put on your team uniform and you suddenly belong. A sense of loyalty emerges from inside, As does an extra effort to perform at the student's best. This result has been noted in schools throughout the country who have made the transition to School Uniforms. They are reported over and again by school administrators, Teachers, And parents who, First hand, Have experienced these changes. Many of our children have limited chances to feel a close part of their schools and communities. If this program can offer unity for our children, Then it should be granted. Our schools should inspire our kids to excel in learning and be community spirited. Uniforms encourage students to develop their personal flair in methods other than dress. These may seem exaggerated cases to those of you who have not experienced these changes in our students and children. Our response is, "Ask parents and teachers who have seen these changes occur, Essentially by initiating a uniform program. " It is human nature to express our personalities and creative talents. However, Many students use their clothing as their sole creative outlet. These children are misguided. Today's youth need to learn that when channeled correctly, Their individual flair can bloom within. Whether it's music, Art, Sports, Or academics, Uniforms allow students to express and define themselves beyond their labels and fashion styles. A unique individual is developed not from appearance, But rather, Intellect, Personality and skills. At this point it may be necessary to address the old cry issued from the ACLU whenever the prospects of dress codes arise. These civil libertarians assert that students' freedoms of expression are being suppressed by requiring uniform dress. We believe that this has not been the case. These are old assumptions based on intangible fears. We propose that dress codes offer us, Instead, Different avenues for our expressive freedom. In the two most famous and precedent-setting legal cases involving dress codes, The courts have struck down the ACLU's arguments on restrictive constitutional freedoms. Our courts have maintained that when a child's safety is at issue, The freedom of expression becomes a secondary consideration. It is the primary responsibility of our schools to protect and keep safe their students. Unfortunately, Today's schools, Especially those in the inner cities, Are far from the safe havens they are intended to be for our children. Uniform dress codes do help our administrators address this basic responsibility. Uniforms add measures of safety in identical dress. Gang identification is obscured. Group violence and theft are dissipated. The Long Beach Unified School District in California voted to mandate uniform wear in order to reduce gang identification. It had become dangerous and violent to attend school there. This program seems to have effectively decreased gang violence in the district. Children are no longer identified by their "colors. " Uniform dress alleviated the feelings of imminent danger for students who were afraid they might inadvertently dress in gang colors. Today, School Uniform programs can be found in communities all over the country. Some areas include New York, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Miami, Charlotte, Long Beach, San Antonio, And Las Cruces, NM. In today's schools, Adolescents are killing each other over designer jackets and expensive sneakers. With school uniforms, Incidents of theft and assault are down. Uniforms help eliminate violent crimes. Many school districts across the country have implemented School Uniform Policies and have seen positive results! In 1994, The Long Beach Unified School District in California was the first public school district to mandate a district-wide School Uniform Policy. Within one year officials stated that the number of suspensions, Incidents of violence and vandalism, Weapons and fights had dropped dramatically. Many school districts since have followed suit, Also noting that the positives strongly outweigh any negatives. In 1987, Cherry Hill Elementary School, In Baltimore, Maryland was the pilot school in Maryland for uniform usage. Parents, Tired of school theft and competition over clothes, Overwhelmingly voted (90%) in favor of changing to a dress code. Not surprisingly, Theft was suddenly down. Children no longer had to worry that they might not return from school that day with everything they left with that morning. At the same time, Ridicule for an outfit that wasn't quite "right" was no longer heard in the classroom. In 1993, The city of Baltimore took notice of the positive changes that occurred at Cherry Hill. The city's entire school system has since enacted a School Uniform Policy. Also, Starting in the Fall of 1994, Suburbs of Chicago, Atlanta and New Haven, Connecticut went the same route. In 1995, Charleston, South Carolina and Cleveland, Ohio established voluntary dress codes. School Uniform Policies were enacted in 1996 in such cities as Birmingham, Alabama; Seattle, Washington; Orange, New Jersey; Pasadena, Texas; Houston, Texas; and Polk County, Florida. During the first half of 1997 Dade County, Florida; Waterbury, Connecticut; and many others have established a School Uniform Policy. New York City has adopted a mandatory school uniform policy in the Fall of 1999 for all K-8 and middle schools. Across the United States there is an increasing amount of support in favor of School Uniforms/" source:https://www. Frenchtoast. Com |
42 | fc2305a5-2019-04-18T14:29:15Z-00004-000 | Should fighting be allowed in hockey? | Is it a good thing for same sex marriage to be legal in the US ****** Hi again, you said: "First off I"m afraid that I must disagree with you when you say "If it"s good for anybody, it"s good for everybody". A medicine that I use to take for my ADHD, would help me calm down, and focus better, but if anyone ells took it without being like me, they would have the opposite reaction and they would have such a powerful burst of energy that if they have a weak enough heart, they could end up having a heart attack" I agree. But you misunderstood my point of objectivity. For example, that specific medicine you take for ADHD is not going to be good for all people, in all places, at all times. However, Medicine itself as a scientific accomplishment is most certainly "good" for all people, at all places, at all times, even though the "type" of medicine is conditionally specific for every person. Make sense? That's what I meant. And I am not appealing to some "parallel dimension" as you put it; I am appealing to logical conclusions in regards to THIS dimension, not another one. I still argue that without science and technology, the pro-homo marriage argument falls apart, because, frankly, (as scientific history has proven) homosexual couples do not, and cannot, reproduce. And without In Vitro, there would have to be at least ONE male and ONE female in any given marriage, or else they would not have a chance at forming a new life (unless one of them commits fornication or adultery in the marriage, and produces a child, either with their mate, or another; and then the marriage would no longer be between two people anymore, but three...) In other words, homo marriage between two people makes about as much sense as an extension cord that has the same type of end on both sides. It would be a useless item that no one would buy" ...and I don't buy it either. ***** Should homo marriage be lawful? Well, that depends; it depends on whether it would be ultimately good for the nation and the citizens who live in it, which we will look at later. ***** You said: "Love and the law to marriage are two very important parts of a western culture marriage." Where did you get that info? As I said, if, in your opinion, "love" is just as important to marriage as the "law", then all it would take to change any law is the right amount of "love"... (ie. a person "loving" their dog enough for the "law" to change, allowing them the legal right to marry and have sex). You see, in my opinion, "love" and every other subjectivity, should have no place in legal matters. Besides, as you know, America was founded upon Biblical principles (ie. Love thy neighbour, as thyself) and the Biblical definition of "love" is purely, utterly, and completely OBJECTIVE, and yet you are appealing to the definition of love in merely subjective terms. Love is an act of the will, whether you "feel" it or not. You must "love" your children, even when they rebel against you and you don"t "feel" emotionally attached to them at the moment. Furthermore, in the Bible, Jesus said to "love your enemies"; does that mean that we are to marry our enemies, because we love them? Of course not. It seems that your definition of love is much different than what it was historically. ***** In regards to the question I asked about the father having sex with his daughter, you said: "So yes, as long as there aren't any problems, medically, or in getting consent from one of the 2 getting married, I believe that the law should allow it." It is interesting that you attempted to ridicule historical methods of courtship(ie, paying the dowry) and yet your own morals would legally permit a father to have sex with his own daughter whenever they want to? ".wow. So tell me, what if that father was your closest brother, and that girl was your own neice? Would you still be okay with it? ***** You said: "(And before you bring in statutory rape, I believe that an age limit dose need to be past, before you can give an informed legal consent)(Sorry pedophiles)" I never mentioned pedophilia. And to what do attribute your "age limit"? ***** You said: "By the way, my standard of what should be lawful is a case by case bases, but mainly I look at what harm something can do, and what good it can do, then calculate, whether it harms or helps the people that are being effected, in this case the LGBT community. So, what about the non-LGBT community? Do you not care about the "harm" it does them?? Well, what about the poor old church pastor who has been faithful to his little country chapel and has believed for 60 years that homosexuality is wrong? Would you have him fired and lose his church just because he doesn"t believe what you believe?? Oh, please tell us. ...and just because 2/3 of America believes you, doesn't mean squat. Popular opinion is not always right. Do I really have to mention 1940"s Germany? ***** You said that bestiality CAN cause dangerous diseases that we have no natural protection from. Yet you cannot empirically prove that it ALWAYS DOES. So what? I can prove that homosexuality CAN (and does) also cause dangerous diseases that we have no natural protection from (ie, AIDS). So according to your logic, homosexuality is just as dangerous as bestiality. And yet you are against bestiality but not against homosexuality? Well, that should deal with the "medical" aspect of the dog-human relationship.. You also say that "most animals that I know of don"t know enough to be able to give consent"... so what? Firstly, you don"t know the case of every single animal do you? I, personally, have seen a dog trying to literally "hump" a human being before...does that qualify as giving consent "in a human system" enough for you? How many 5 year old humans have you seen do that? "... And there goes the non-consent argument against a dog-human relationship. In other words, if your "standard of what should be lawful is a case by case bases", then in the case of an adult dog humping an adult human, there should be "no problem" in having the laws changed so they can marry each other and have sex, provided the human is a-okay with it. ***** You said: "As for incest, many pregnancies by way of inbreeding have a much higher chance of having a miscarriage, or the child having birth defects which has a much higher chance of leading to the child having a short and painful life." So, let me get this straight; your argument against incest-births is: Possible defects in the child being born. Again, you cannot prove that every single incestuously breeded child has defects".(many do not have serious defects at all) In fact, many children born of NON-incestuous relationships have multiple birth defects as well. So, according to your logic, non-incestuous relationships should not be lawful; albeit, to a lesser extent, but the argument is the same against both. ***** Well, it was interesting hearing your evidence for your points, but I think they fall short of being convincing, since they are not absolute, and can be reversed, as I showed. ***** you said: "(by the way Polygamophobe, Incestophobic, and Beastiophobic are not words, and have never been part of the English language)" Neither was "Islamophobia" or "homophobia" for that matter, until recent years... ***** I appreciate your opinion on the lifestyle of homosexuals, and their stories, but I also have met a few, and a couple of reasons that I perceived they became homosexuals was that: 1) they were rejected and hurt by the other sex so extensively at some point in their life that they turned away from it, and 2) they felt the urge to "fit in" and so they "found out" they were bi-sexual or homosexual. But to me it seemed a sham, since one of the guys was chasing girls like a rabid dog earlier in his life. Apparently, it didnt work out for him, and I believe he just gave up on it". And if he ever does adopt with his "boyfriend", I don"t expect he would have many kind words to say about girls... Just a thought. And I didn"t say that all lesbians hate men, you said that. And yes, its ridiculous. ***** And yes, I would deny 4 million people from NOT making 4 million more children which would only build up our nation. Damn right I would. And you would too if you gave a damn about our nation, and not about people"s "feelings" so much. Any nation that wishes to survive needs to have families; history has proven this. Destroy the family, and you destroy the nation. Period. ***** you said: "If you are against people of the same gender being together in a sexual relationship, what are your feelings on people who are hermaphroditic , do they only have the right to be with people who are also intersex? Or can they be with someone who is half their gender in either direction?" I am not familiar with any hermaphrodites. In my opinion, there should be a dominant gender in the child. Does every hermaphro have a uterus and a sperm bank? Or are they just external? ***** you said: 2.Do you recognize how a lot people who are against same sex marriage, argue in similar ways with similar arguments that the people who were against cross racial marriage did? No, I do not. ***** you said: 3.What about people who have a sex change operation done on them, do they get to be with people of the gender that they used to be a part of? Or do they have to be with the gender that they are now? Still making them homosexuals. Trans(across)gender is not even a scientific word in my opinion. I remember hearing of a woman who became a man, and then sometime later got pregnant" Ultimately, what God made you in the womb, you will always be. Women and men are biologically and mentally different. Its just the way it is. ***** you said: 4.How dose same sex marriage effect you personally, what harm does it do to you? What if I told you my poor old dad was that old pastor who was fired because of his beliefs against homo marriage... (PS: it is "affect", not "effect") Thank you |
15 | 4302d5e8-2019-04-18T12:53:53Z-00003-000 | Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing? | Pinapatunayan ng Bibliya ang PAPACY Good day din sir Juan Catolico. God bless po sa ating debate.Ang papatunayan ko po sa debate na ito ay wala pong papacy sa Bible. Naniniwala ako, bilang isang Christian na naniniwala sa Bible, na hindi itinuturo ng Bible ang sinasabi ng Roman Catholic Church na may Pope daw. Kaya po papatunayan ko po sa inyo na mali po yung mga pagpapaliwanag ninyo sa mga sinabi nyong verses.Nais ko lamang pong kontrahin yung pinost mo na verse sa Mateo 16:18-19, kung saan pinapatunayan mo na si Pedro yung sinasabi sa verse kung saan ibinigay yung pagkakataon na ibinigay daw ni Jesus kay Pedro ang susi ng kaharian ng langit. Narito po ang aking mga counter-arguments:1.) Yung sinasabi na ibinigay na katungkulan upang magtali at magkalag dahil daw sa "susi ng kaharian ng langit", eh hindi po yun ibinigay na exclusibo kay Pedro. Sa katotohanan po, iginawad ang susi na yan sa lahat ng apostol. Makikita natin sa Mateo 18:18, sa pakikipagusap ni Jesus sa mga apostol (Mateo 18:1), ibinigay din niya sa lahat ng apostol ang kapangyarihang ito. Nakasulat din dito na "na ang lahat ng mga bagay na inyong talian sa lupa ay tatalian sa langit: at ang lahat ng mga bagay na inyong kalagan sa lupa ay kakalagan sa langit" pero ang kausap niya ang lahat ng apostol. Dahil dun, hindi naman talaga eksklusibo na kay Pedro lang ibinigay ang susi ng kaharian ng langit dahil kasama ang lahat ng apostol sa pagbibigay ng tungkuling ito.2.) Itinuturo ng Bible na hindi si Pedro ang pundasyon ng iglesia, kundi si Jesus mismo. Si Cristo ang bato. Kaya hindi si Pedro ang maaaring maging maging Santo Papa o lider ng iglesia kasi kay Jesus mismo itinayo ang iglesia dahil siya ang "Anak ng Diyos" na inamin ni apostol Pedro (Mateo 16:16). Mababasa natin sa 1 Corinto 10:4 na si Cristo ito: "sapagka't nagsiinom sa batong ayon sa espiritu na sumunod sa kanila: at ang batong yaon ay si Cristo." Makikita din sa ibang verse (Efeso 2:20): "Na mga itinatayo sa ibabaw ng kinasasaligan ng mga apostol at ng mga propeta, na si Cristo Jesus din ang pangulong bato sa panulok;". Sa mga counter-arguments ko, makikita natin na mali na isipin natin na si Pedro ang bato kung saan itinayo ni Cristo ang iglesia, at makikita din natin na ang authority ay hindi ibinigay na exclusive kay Pedro. Sa totoo lang, itinuturo ng Bible na pantay pantay ang turing nila sa bawat isa, ayon sa isang pangyayari sa Lucas 9:46-48, ganito ang nakasulat: "24 At nagkaroon naman ng isang pagtatalotalo sa gitna nila, kung sino kaya sa kanila ang ibibilang na pinakadakila. 25 At kaniyang sinabi sa kanila, Ang mga hari ng mga Gentil ay napapanginoon sa kanila; at ang mga may kapamahalaan sa kanila'y tinatawag na mga Tagapagpala. 26 Datapuwa't sa inyo'y hindi gayon: kundi bagkus ang lalong dakila sa inyo ay maging tulad sa lalong bata; at ang nangungulo ay maging gaya ng naglilingkod. 27 Sapagka't alin ang lalong dakila, ang nakaupo baga sa dulang, o ang naglilingkod? hindi baga ang nakaupo sa dulang? datapuwa't ako'y nasa gitna ninyo na gaya niyaong naglilingkod." Tinuturo ni Jesus na dapat daw ang pinakadakila sa atin ay maging tulad sa lalong bata, at ang mga nagungulo ay maging gaya ng naglilingkod. Ipinapakita ni Jesus na dapat hindi sila mag-away away kung sino ang pinakadakila sa kanila, kundi dapat humble lang sila kasi marami pang mas importanteng bagay kaysa dun. May isang pangyayari sa Bible na makikita natin ang konseptong kaka-explain ko lang: nang pinagalitan ni Apostol Pablo si Pedro (Galacia 2:11-14)"11 Nguni't nang dumating si Cefas sa Antioquia, ay sumalansang ako sa kaniya ng mukhaan, sapagka't siya'y nararapat hatulan. 12 Sapagka't bago nagsidating ang ilang mula kay Santiago, ay nakisalo siya sa mga Gentil; nguni't nang sila'y magsidating na, siya'y umurong, at humiwalay sa mga Gentil, palibhasa'y natatakot sa mga sa pagtutuli. 13 At ang ibang mga Judio ay nangagpakunwari rin namang kasama niya: ano pa't pati si Bernabe ay nabuyo sa kanilang pagkukunwari. 14 Nguni't nang aking makita na hindi sila nagsisilakad ng matuwid ayon sa katotohanan ng evangelio, sinabi ko kay Cefas sa harapan nilang lahat, Kung ikaw, na Judio, ay namumuhay gaya ng mga Gentil, at di gaya ng mga Judio, bakit mo pinipilit ang mga Gentil na mamuhay na gaya ng mga Judio?"Makikita natin dito na may kaya palang magtama sa Santo Papa pagdating sa doktrina. Sa pagkakataong ito, hindi nagpapakatotoo bilang isang Judio si Pedro, at nang dumating yung mga taong galing kay Santiago, hindi na siya nakipaghalubilo sa mga Gentil, dahil bilang mga Judio, sinusunod lang nila ang ipinagbabawal sa Torah na bawal pakikipaghalubilo sa mga Gentil. Sa isang bagay na tungkol sa doktrina, itinama siya ni Pablo. Kaya hindi pwedeng si Pedro ang may tanging awtoridad na gaya ng isang Santo Papa. Kaya bagamat kay Pedro nga ibinigay yung mga tupa sa Juan 21:15-18, ito'y isang tagpo na nagpapakita na ibinigay niya sa lahat ng mga apostol ang mga tupa, ngunit sa tagpo si Pedro lang ang kausap para mai-highlight yung pagpapatawad sa kaniyang pagtanggi nang tatlong beses kay Jesus.Huling punto kaya siya hindi pwedeng si Pedro ang Santo Papa: itinuturo ng Bible na si Pedro ayon sa Galacia 2:7 na ang "apostol sa mga pagtutuli" ay si Pedro, habang ikinukumpara niya ang kaniyang sarili bilang "apostol sa mga di-pagtutuli", in other words, mga Gentil. Ibig sabihin, kung si Pedro ang Santo Papa, bakit sabi ni Pablo na siya ay naatasan lamang sa mga Judio? Makikita din natin na pagkatapos nga ng mga kaganapan sa "Council of Jerusalem" sa Gawa 15, hindi na lumabas pa sa libro ng mga Gawa si Pedro: ipinapakita ng Bible na si Pablo naman ang nagpalaganap ng ebanghelyo hanggang sa katapusan ng libro. Isa pa, mas madami pang mga epistles o sulat ginawa si Pablo kaysa kay Pedro. Hindi ko sinasabi na mas mataas ang posisyon ni Pablo kay Pedro (naniniwala ako na pantay pantay lang sila), ngunit kung mas madami ngang mga "inspired" na sulat si Pablo, hindi ba ito pahiwatig na mas madaming naiambag si Pablo sa Bible? Maging si Pedro mismo, sa isa sa kaniyang mga sulat, sa II Pedro 3:16, ay sinasabi na kapantay ng mga sulat ni Pablo ang ibang mga "Kasulatan", na kung pagaaralan, ang sinasabing mga Kasulatan ay ang mga kasulatan sa Old Testament (kasi wala pang New Testament nun). Ganito ang respeto ni Pedro kay Pablo, at ganun din naman ang respeto ng ibang mga apostol kay Pedro. Hindi ako tumatanggi na sa ibang pagkakataon si Pedro ang nanguna sa mga kaganapan sa iglesia, ngunit may mga pagkakataon din naman na may mahahalagang ginawa ang mga ibang tao, tulad ni Pablo, Isteban, Santiago, at iba pa. Sinasabi nga sa I Corinto 12:12, "Sapagka't kung paanong ang katawan ay iisa, at mayroong maraming mga sangkap, at ang lahat ng mga sangkap ng katawan, bagama't marami, ay iisang katawan; gayon din naman si Cristo." Ang iglesia ay walang pinuno maliban kay Jesus, at walang taong makakapagpalit sa kaniyang katungkulan. Dakila si Jesus, kaya kahit siya ay nasa langit na, siya pa din ang pinuno ng kaniyang iglesia dito sa lupa.Maraming salamat at hintayin ko po ang inyong reply.-JesusNazarene128 |
48 | aeb43fe9-2019-04-18T11:40:53Z-00002-000 | Should the voting age be lowered? | Should the voting age be lowered 1) The specific section of the source I quotes does not say what you have said it does. The article points to research which demonstrates that the frontal lobe of a teenager aged 12 to 17 (not 8) is less developed than their adult counterparts. Researchers attribute the poor decision making and short termed thinking patterns of teenagers to this biological difference. It has nothing to do with peer pressure.2) First, the tide pods bit was a pithy, toss away line, not the crux of my rebuttal. Second, the article you provided to substantiate your claim discusses the risks posed to those who suffer from psychological impairments.At this point, I would point out that I am the only party here who has put forth an argument that is not highly speculative and that is actually substantiated by credible evidence. Thank you.As an addendum, here is some further reading on the Tide Pod Challenge phenomenon:https://tinyurl.com... |
43 | 824ed8eb-2019-04-18T18:32:31Z-00003-000 | Should bottled water be banned? | Bottled water should be banned FYI if you type in bottled water in google image/google you will only see bottled water IN SUPERMARKERTS have a look http://www.google.co.nz... and what are you talking about bottled water being in classrooms, holding while you run, in the city excuse me! back in the 1950's in NYC you wouldent SEE ANYBODY holding bottled water not in the 40's, 30's, 20's!! ever and humans still survived it was introduced in 1970's 1) Bottled water isn't a good value Take, for instance, Pepsi's Aquafina or Coca-Cola's Dasani bottled water. Both are sold in 20 ounce sizes and can be purchased from vending machines alongside soft drinks — and at the same price. Assuming you can find a $1 machine, that works out to 5 cents an ounce. These two brands are essentially filtered tap water, bottled close to their distribution point. Most municipal water costs less than 1 cent per gallon. Now consider another widely sold liquid: gasoline. It has to be pumped out of the ground in the form of crude oil, shipped to a refinery (often halfway across the world), and shipped again to your local filling station. In the U.S., the average price per gallon is hovering around $3. There are 128 ounces in a gallon, which puts the current price of gasoline at a fraction over 2 cents an ounce. And that's why there's no shortage of companies that want to get into the business. In terms of price versus production cost, bottled water puts Big Oil to shame. 2) No healthier than tap water In theory, bottled water in the United States falls under the regulatory authority of the Food and Drug Administration. In practice, about 70 percent of bottled water never crosses state lines for sale, making it exempt from FDA oversight. On the other hand, water systems in the developed world are well-regulated. In the U.S., for instance, municipal water falls under the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency, and is regularly inspected for bacteria and toxic chemicals. Want to know how your community scores? Check out the Environmental Working Group's National Tap Water Database. While public safety groups correctly point out that many municipal water systems are aging and there remain hundreds of chemical contaminants for which no standards have been established, there's very little empirical evidence that suggests bottled water is any cleaner or better for you than its tap equivalent. 3) Bottled water means garbage Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. According to Food and Water Watch, that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. And while the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away. That assumes empty bottles actually make it to a garbage can. Plastic waste is now at such a volume that vast eddies of current-bound plastic trash now spin endlessly in the world's major oceans. This represents a great risk to marine life, killing birds and fish which mistake our garbage for food. Thanks to its slow decay rate, the vast majority of all plastics ever produced still exist — somewhere. 4) Bottled water means less attention to public systems Many people drink bottled water because they don't like the taste of their local tap water, or because they question its safety. This is like running around with a slow leak in your tire, topping it off every few days rather than taking it to be patched. Only the very affluent can afford to switch their water consumption to bottled sources. Once distanced from public systems, these consumers have little incentive to support bond issues and other methods of upgrading municipal water treatment. There's plenty of need. In California, for example, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated the requirement of $17.5 billion in improvements to the state's drinking water infrastructure as recently as 2005. In the same year, the state lost 222 million gallons of drinkable water to leaky pipes. 5) The corporatization of water In the documentary film Thirst, authors Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman demonstrated the rapid worldwide privatization of municipal water supplies, and the effect these purchases are having on local economies. Water is being called the "Blue Gold" of the 21st century. Thanks to increasing urbanization and population, shifting climates and industrial pollution, fresh water is becoming humanity's most precious resource. Multinational corporations are stepping in to purchase groundwater and distribution rights wherever they can, and the bottled water industry is an important component in their drive to commoditize what many feel is a basic human right: the access to safe and affordable water.BOOM i win and also if you drink to much water it is draining all the natural minerals OUT OF YOUR BODY i can live on 355ml of water everyday no problem but i choose not to because i like fizzy drinks |
30 | 219f521f-2019-04-17T11:47:23Z-00003-000 | Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun? | Concealed carry vs open carry gun laws Concealed weapons can be very comfortable. |
6 | 36e04cb2-2019-04-18T16:56:52Z-00001-000 | Is a college education worth it? | The Electoral College is outdated Sorry I haven't been on. The electoral college is outdated once again because it takes away our freedom when will our constitutional rights really come true? Answer me this. |
12 | c4c24b85-2019-04-18T17:11:29Z-00002-000 | Should birth control pills be available over the counter? | Counter attack Well then, I upgrade my RPG into a Stinger and that it can travel at the speed of light, which is faster than the speed of sound and it will lock on to your rocket. |
48 | 452eaf9c-2019-04-18T19:48:30Z-00002-000 | Should the voting age be lowered? | The Voting Age Should Be Dropped to 16 :) "Young people today are well informed enough and mature enough to vote so the voting age should be lowered. " Not necessarily. Actually, I would go against this. How are they informed? Most may have a job, but not one that they have to depend on for money in order to live. They do not own a house, have children, or maybe not even have a car! They do not understand how the "real world" works and therefore do not have the right to vote. Most are not concerned or involved in taxes and house mortgage and this is what most of the candidates focus on. Teenagers' brains are still developing. I will also mention how many stupid decisions 16 year olds make. I am certainly not saying all, but many do. Should these children who are still living with their parents, who do not own a house, are not involved much in the economy, and are just learning to drive really need to have a say in the government? The voting age now is certainly not causing anybody harm and is working our just fine. Also, I will mention how most of the 16 year olds would be biased due to their parents' opinions. |
28 | a0ae451e-2019-04-18T12:12:38Z-00004-000 | Should prostitution be legal? | Sexual Activity Should Be Legal Many of the types of sexual activity I mentioned may still be technically illegal. Even if all those types of sexual activities were certainly legal, debating their legality could still be beneficial as it could help to maintain their legality and to advance humankind's pool of knowledge. There are legislators and politicians that do not seem to be doing enough to ensure that certain sexual activities are legal. In that sense, they are pressuring to keep sex illegal. In principal, everything that feels good should be legal. All drugs that make people feel good should be legal. Murder must be, by definition, illegal. Killing another person, on the other hand and in principal, should be legal if it feels good. Freedom is one of the most important and cherished values of the United States. United States' citizens should strive to maximize their freedoms. In principal, people should have the right to do whatever they want to do. I want to own my entire existence. I want to own my entire universe. That sexual activity feels good was not the only argument I presented for why sexual activity should be legal. There are other arguments that I have presented that come into play as well. You have disregarded those other arguments. |
8 | be180215-2019-04-18T13:52:26Z-00007-000 | Should abortion be legal? | Legal Abortions Abortion is murder. The killing of an innocent human being is wrong, even if that human being has yet to be born. Unborn babies are considered human beings by the US government. The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which was enacted "to protect unborn children from assault and murder," states that under federal law, anybody intentionally killing or attempting to kill an unborn child should "be punished... for intentionally killing or attempting to kill a human being." The act also states that an unborn child is a "member of the species homo sapiens." [126] At least 38 states have passed similar fetal homicide laws. [127] Life begins at conception, so unborn babies are human beings with a right to life. Upon fertilization, a human individual is created with a unique genetic identity that remains unchanged throughout his or her life. This individual has a fundamental right to life, which must be protected. Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist who discovered the chromosome abnormality that causes Down syndrome, stated that "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion... The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence." [15] [16] Fetuses feel pain during the abortion procedure. Maureen Condic, PhD, Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy and Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, explains that the "most primitive response to pain, the spinal reflex," is developed by eight weeks gestation, and adds that "There is universal agreement that pain is detected by the fetus in the first trimester." [18] According to Kanwaljeet J. S. Anand, MBBS, DPhil, Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology and Neurobiology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, "If the fetus is beyond 20 weeks of gestation, I would assume that there will be pain caused to the fetus. And I believe it will be severe and excruciating pain." [24] Bernard N. Nathanson, MD, the late abortion doctor who renounced his earlier work and became a pro-life activist, stated that when an abortion is performed on a 12-week-old fetus, "We see [in an ultrasound image] the child"s mouth open in a silent scream... This is the silent scream of a child threatened imminently with extinction." [145] Abortion is the killing of a human being, which defies the word of God. The Bible does not draw a distinction between fetuses and babies: the Greek word brephos is used in the Bible to refer to both an unborn child and an infant. [30] By the time a baby is conceived, he or she is recognized by God, as demonstrated in Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee..." [133] The Sixth Commandment of the Bible's Old Testament, "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13), applies to all human beings, including unborn babies. [23] In the Hindu religion, the holy text Kaushitaki Upanishad states that abortion is an equivalent misdeed to killing one"s own parents. [148] The BBC states that "Traditional Buddhism rejects abortion because it involves the deliberate destroying of a life." [149] The decision in Roe v. Wade was wrong and should be overturned. US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated that the right to privacy defended in Roe v. Wade is "utterly idiotic" and should not be considered binding precedent: "There is no right to privacy [in the US Constitution]." [153] [154] In his dissenting opinion in Roe v. Wade, Justice William H. Rehnquist stated that an abortion "is not 'private' in the ordinary usage of that word. Nor is the 'privacy' that the Court finds here even a distant relative of the freedom from searches and seizures protected by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution..." [49] Furthermore, the 14th Amendment bars states from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." [155] The Supreme Court overreached in Roe v. Wade when it excluded unborn children from the class of "persons." [156] [157] Abortions cause psychological damage. A 2008 peer-reviewed study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health found that "Young adult women who undergo... abortion may be at increased risk for subsequent depression." [44] A peer-reviewed 2005 study published in BMC Medicine found that women who underwent an abortion had "significantly higher" anxiety scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale up to five years after the pregnancy termination. [69] A 2002 peer-reviewed study published by the Southern Medical Journal of more than 173,000 American women found that women who aborted were 154% more likely to commit suicide than women who carried to term. [26] A 1996 study published in the British Medical Journal reported that the mean annual suicide rate amongst women who had an abortion was 34.7 per 100,000, compared with a mean rate of 11.3 per 100,000 in the general population of women. [45] An Apr. 1998 Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology study of men whose partners had abortions found that 51.6% of the men reported regret, 45.2% felt sadness, and 25.8% experienced depression. [27] Abortions reduce the number of adoptable babies. Instead of having the option to abort, women should give their unwanted babies to people who cannot conceive. The percentage of infants given up for adoption in the United States declined from 9% of those born before 1973 to 1% of those born between 1996 and 2002. [53] As a result of the lack of women putting their children up for adoption, the number of US infant adoptions dropped from about 90,000 in 1971 to 18,000 in 2007. [46] Around 2.6 million American women were trying to adopt children as of 2002, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. [76] Selective abortion based on genetic abnormalities (eugenic termination) is overt discrimination. Physical limitations don't make those with disabilities less than human. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 [54] provides civil rights protection to people born with disabilities so they can lead fulfilling lives. The National Down Syndrome Society states that "people with Down syndrome live at home with their families and are active participants in the educational, vocational, social, and recreational activities of the community. People with Down syndrome are valued members of their families and their communities, contributing to society in a variety of ways." [66] The increase in abortions of babies with Down syndrome (over 80% of women choose to abort Down syndrome babies [70]) reduced the Down syndrome population by 15% between 1989 and 2005. [67] Women should not be able to use abortion as a form of contraception. It is immoral to kill an unborn child for convenience. [116] The Guttmacher Institute reported that half of all women having abortions every year have had at least one previous abortion, [13] while 8.5% of abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2010 were undergone by women who had three or more previous abortions. [83] This suggests that many women are using abortion as a contraceptive method. [78] Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt, PhD, wrote that after abortion was legalized, "Conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent, indicating that many women were using abortion as a method of birth control, a crude and drastic sort of insurance policy." [38] If women become pregnant, they should accept the responsibility that comes with producing a child. People need to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences. Having sexual intercourse, even when contraceptive methods are used, carries with it the risk of a pregnancy. [128] The unborn baby should not be punished for a mistake made by adults. If women are unprepared to care for their children, they should at least put them up for adoption. The original text of the Hippocratic Oath, traditionally taken by doctors when swearing to practice medicine ethically, forbids abortion. One section of the classical version of the oath reads: "I will not give a woman a pessary [a device inserted into the vagina] to cause an abortion." The modern version of the Hippocratic Oath, written in 1964 by Luis Lasagna, still effectively forbids doctors from performing abortions in the line, "Above all, I must not play at God." [25] Abortion promotes a culture in which human life is disposable. The legalization of abortion sends a message that human life has little value. [144] Pope Francis condemned "'the throwaway culture'" in Jan. 2014, stating that "what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as 'unnecessary'. For example, it is frightful even to think there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day..." [143] House Representative Randy Hultgren (R-IL) wrote in Jan. 2014 that "When we tell one another that abortion is okay, we reinforce the idea that human lives are disposable, that we can throw away anything or anyone that inconveniences us." [36] Allowing abortion conflicts with the unalienable right to life recognized by the Founding Fathers of the United States. The Declaration of Independence states that "[A]ll men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." [51] Abortion takes away from the unborn the unalienable right to life that the Founding Fathers intended for all human beings. [115] Source: http://abortion.procon.org... |
21 | b567d77e-2019-04-18T12:56:04Z-00004-000 | Is human activity primarily responsible for global climate change? | Manmade global climate change is real and a threat. Thanks for accepting. By the way, I really like your profile picture. ;) Well, here we go- 1. I have immense respect for Pope Francis. He's my role model, and I respect anything he says. With that said, he's the head of the Catholic Church, not the head of the House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change. Pope Francis's is more than welcome to voice his opinion on this topic, but his opinion is just as good as yours and mine. 2. The fact that we're having a debate on whether Climate Change is even real or not raises serious questions about its existence. 4. The Antarctic Ozone Hole is shrinking. |
33 | 5e63f3a1-2019-04-18T15:53:17Z-00003-000 | Should people become vegetarian? | Eating Meat is not Inherently Unhealthy or Immoral I apologize for the mishap in citation, upon inspection you'll notice 3 black periods after each source "..." this cut off the actual link, leading to the general website. This is undoubtedly a mistake caused by having to copy and paste my arguments after your FF. Actual citation is as follows; please feel free to verify: [1] http://authoritynutrition.com... [2] http://www.mayoclinic.org... [3] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu... [4] http://www.peta.org... [5] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com... [6] http://modernfarmer.com... For the purpose of my rebuttal I will refer to my previous 6 sources as numerically cited and future sources will be cited as 7 & up. In citing your sources they will be referenced as [Con #] Given that my arguments have been legitimated, your comment "Since there are no proper sources we can ignore the statistics, for they were wrong anyways." can be disregarded. I understand that this is a bit unfair to you given that you decided to arrogantly brush off my arguments and supply your own. You will now have the chance to refute my Round 2 argument. I recommend you actually read it this time, because there is clear evidence in your rebuttal you did not. Problematic Citation and Source Material: I apologize for the mishap in my Round 2 source material; however you'll find that everything is properly cited and credible. However in your entire argument you fail to properly cite anything you said. I have no idea which comment corresponds to which source; if this were an academic setting you would be charged with plagiarism. Your source material is also very questionable and contradictory, and some are irrelevant to the debate entirely. Because you did not openly disclose which arguments come from which sources I have to spend the majority of my rebuttal debunking your sources. I ask that you re-read my Round 1 post. Source [Con 1] enforces my position quote "The high level of meat and saturated fat consumption in the USA ... exceeds nutritional needs and contributes to high rates of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and some cancers." [Con 1] is describing SAD, in my position statement I clearly acknowledge that SAD is not relevant to the debate because over-consumption does not equal inherent unhealthiness. If over-consumption was a true indicator of inherent negative health affects the 8% of obese vegetarians you mention would show that over consuming vegetables causes the negative health effects associated with obesity. [Con 2] is problematic; the author is simply unqualified, her brief bio gives no indication of having a degree in anything, she is extremely biased and only provides one citation for her entire 15 point article. More importantly all of her points are contingent on the immorality of factory farming, which as I've stated in Round 2 does not divert from meat being inherently unhealthy or immoral because there are healthy and moral ways of raising cattle [2][5][6][Con 8]. The findings of [Con 3] can also be refuted, Point 4 Source [1] quote "It is true that processed meat is associated with an increased risk of cancer, especially colon cancer ... Two review studies, one that looked at data from 35 studies and the other from 25 studies, found that the effect for unprocessed red meat was very weak for men and nonexistent for women. " This implies it is the process, not the meat that causes cancer. [Con 4] is 42 pages long, I only read the first page and found that it, like [Con 1], was critical of SAD for its health effects. This does not prove meat is inherently bad, fish for example is low in fat and has positive health effects [3]. Also [Con 4] says Chimps eat monkeys, if sentience is such an issue then why don't chimps respect the sentience of monkeys? (I'll address this in more detail later). [Con 5] is from PETA an organization well known for its bias against eating meat. Like [Con 2] the arguments are almost entirely based on factory farming, which again is irrelevant in the face of free range farming [5][6][Con 8]. [Con 6] is PETA India, it has the same bias and credibility as [Con 2]. Point 4 for example says that meat is bad because if you under cook it then you could get bird flu. Ok, by this logic vegetables are bad because if you don't clean them you could get E. Coli. As I said in the beginning of Round 2 "Like all food the health factor is not necessarily the food itself but how it is prepared and produced." [Con 7] is my personal favorite. By citing this source you show how truly desperate you are to grasp at straws. This source made me understand why you did not disclose them in your debate, as it has no scientific value whatsoever, it simply bullet points propaganda without any evidence. Let's read some of the findings of SupremeMasterTV.com. Eating meat causes "Blue tongue disease", what is this? Oh right it's a disease that only affects livestock and not humans [7]. The other diseases are food borne illnesses from improper cooking. In your rebuttal you state "Studies have shown that an Ovo-Lacto Vegetarian diet is the most healthy diet of all." Meaning that those who drink milk and eat eggs along with vegetables have the best diet of all (this is not a vegan diet, in Round 1 you said you'd argue as a vegan). But Lo! [Con 7] says drinking milk is bad! It causes "Breast, prostate and testicular cancer from hormones present in milk; Listeria and Crohn's disease; Hormones and saturated fat lead to osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes and heart disease; Linked to higher incidences of multiple sclerosis." Still think drinking milk is cool? [Con 8] is written by the same author as [Con 4] and as such contains the exact same arguments. Also I don't think you actually read this article because the author lays out a plan for rational meat eating in the section "Toward Rational Meat Eating" so yea ... you're helping me with this one. [Con 9] I admit this article does seem legitimate and has sources. However this argument doesn't help you in the way you might think, it focuses on factory farming and it acknowledges meat can be environmentally friendly "Chicken is probably the best land animal to eat, certainly in terms of climate change impact. Fish have a low greenhouse gas impact but are being eaten in such large quantities that many are at risk of extinction." "Even limiting one's meat consumption to chicken yields major environmental benefits--not to mention health and financial benefits." So eating chicken yields health benefits ... Interesting. [Con 10] was about jacana birds being influenced by human scientists to commit infanticide. I don't see how this proves anything more than humans encouraged behavior that only humans would consider immoral. If anything this goes to show killing animals is not an issue of morality. For the sake of science (as suppose to survival) humans encouraged these birds kill each others babies. Are these scientists immoral for encouraging nature? Eating Meat Can be Healthy: For the bulk of this section please read Round 2. This section is for counter arguments. Given that none of your statistics are properly cited they can be seen as fiction. You clearly dramatize the negative health effects of meat, if meat was so bad then why would doctors recommend it as part of a balanced diet [2][3][8]? Quoting Con "Aquamarine animals can often cause toxins, for all those fish which are high in Omega 3 are also extremely high in mercury. Those which are not like Salmon may cause many other diseases, and may also create bowel issues." Ah yes, Harvard disagrees quote "Environmental Protection Agency " calculated that if 100,000 people ate farmed salmon twice a week for 70 years, the extra PCB intake could potentially cause 24 extra deaths from cancer"but would prevent at least 7,000 deaths from heart disease. Second, levels of PCBs and dioxins in fish are very low, similar to levels in meats, dairy products, and eggs. Third, more than 90 percent of the PCBs and dioxins in the U.S. food supply come from such non-seafood sources, including meats, dairy, eggs, and vegetables." [3] Morality of Meat: Appeal to Nature In Round 2 I specifically acknowledge the possible flaw in this argument "However just because an animal does something does not give us the right to copy them blindly. It is our advanced intelligence and our appeal to morality that sets us apart from the lesser animals." It"s important to note humans are animals, and as such comparison to other animals is legitimate (it's kind of how biology and anthropology work). You yourself make this a moral underpinning in Round 1 "" it is wrong to kill [animals], as it is wrong to kill humans." But why? What makes them like us? You argue mammals are sentient like us, they feel emotion like we do, so they should be spared. You think that just because chimps can love each as humans can love each other this somehow negates the fact that chimps are equally enthusiastic about killing lesser yet still sentient primates like monkeys [Con 4], humans eat monkeys too ya know. Because we can feel love somehow all mammals are entitled to our good graces. Even if I agreed with your pan-mammalism philosophy fish and chicken aren't mammals what claim to familiarity do they have? When it comes to rape and infanticide there are obvious pro-human arguments against it, if your only argument against eating mammals is 'well you wouldn't eat a human!' then I'm afraid the moral connection falls flat. New Citation: [7] https://www.princeton.edu... [8] http://www.mayoclinic.org... |
16 | e26f00b7-2019-04-18T19:00:56Z-00005-000 | Should prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers? | The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of criminal justice LD format I and likely many others would like some extra practice on this resolution before tournaments. Here's a great opportunity as this is the aff I will be using. The time to post a new argument is 72 hours however this is because I may not be able to post arguments between the 4th and 6th, since that is when my tournament is and my schedule will be pressed. However I will do my best to get arguments in within a day otherwise. Good luck to con. I affirm the resolution resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of criminal justice. I offer the following definitions: Illegal drug: A class of conciousness-altering drugs that operate at a high efficiency. (Princeton) Treated: To deal with a matter (Merriam Webster) Ought: Indicating desirability (Merriam Webster) Public health: The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society. Criminal justice: A generic term for the procedure by which criminal conduct is investigated, arrests made, evidence gathered, charges brought, defenses raised, trials conducted, sentences rendered, and punichment carried out. (Legal Dict.) I offer the value of safety, defined as freedom from danger or harm. Safety must be paramount because with no safety there is no life. A public health approach to drug abuse will uphold safety by solving for the harms caused by drug abuse in a criminalized world. My criterion is minimizing drug abuse, since the impact of abuse is obviously undesirable. Minimizing drug abuse will uphold safety by keeping people safe from the harms drug abuse causes. Contention 1: Criminal justice punishes people for something out of their control. Sub point A: Abuse is involuntary. Abuse is defined as to use wrongly or improperly. When people use drugs they dont intend on misusing them. They want drugs to get high. If they end up abusing drugs it is almost always unintentional. Criminalizing punishes people for accidents and mistakes, but it doesnt do anything to actually solve for abuse. Bennet Fletcher explains, "Punishment alone is a futile and ineffective response to drug abuse, failing as a public safety intervention for offenders whose criminal behavior is directly related to drug use". Rather than punish would-be criminals for something that is completely unintentional, we should focus more on actually solving for and preventing drug abuse from happening. Contention 2: Public health solves for abuse by solving for overdose A: Overdose is the primary way drugs are abused. Let us not forget that the definition for abuse is to use wrongly or improperly. Obviously overdose is the main way to misuse not only illegal drugs but drugs in general. William Turnbo reports that on average 5,200 (five-thousand two hundred) people in the US die from illegal drug overdose each year, with many more cases leading to severe sickness. The issue with the current world is that because of their illegality, drug users do not have ready access to information on how much of a substance to take. Joshua Wolf explains, "Virtually all "overdose" deaths from the use of illegal drugs are due to contaminants or the user's ignorance of the drug's potency. " [Joshua Wolf; Freelance Writer; Prohibiting Drugs Has Serious Consequences; 2001; Gale]O Overdose is further caused by by the fact that illegal drug users dont always know what drug they get. The underground drug market is a risky business, DrugScope reports "It is often difficult to know whether a powder, pill, resin, herb or liquid is a particular drug. Even if you think it is a particular drug you may have no idea how strong the dose is, or whether it also contains another drug(s) or other substances." Furthermore, not all drugs require the same dose. So if you expect to get crack but really get cocaine, which have different default levels of dosage, you take the incorrect amount of the substance. Because of this, users become abusers by misusing the drug. BetterHealthChannel reports that illegal drug overdose can cause an excess of dopamine output which causes long term depression, in addition to immediate defects such as vomiting, fatigue, internal bleeding, or death. Sub point B: Public health will solve for overdose. Through decriminalization we will be able to focus less on throwing people in jail and more on solving the problems caused by drug criminalization. This policy would make the specific quantity of a drug that should be taken readily available to everyone. This info should be publicized greatly as to make sure everyone is fully educated on how to use the drugs properly. Furthermore a public health stance would cause the legal pharmaceutical regulation of currently illegal drugs. By doing this we eliminate the chance of acquiring the wrong drug, as corporations have more ready access to chemical identification than do drug dealers. Alan Jones explains, "It could be argued that the likelihood of harm would be reduced even further by a regulated industry which restricts supply, provides warnings to consumers and monitors the content of what is sold." Therefore,a public health stance will all but eliminate the vast majority of illegal overdose cases, thus solving for the main cause of drug abuse. Contention 3: Public health solves for dangers of drug additives. Sub point A: The purity of drugs dealt under a criminalized system cannot be determined. Melanie Gordon explains "Illegal drugs are extremely dangerous. You rarely can know or trust the person who is selling them. You also dont know what other substances have been mixed in with the drug. Often drug dealers mix an illegal drug with another substance so that they can have more product to sell. For example, a dealer might mix cocaine with talcum powder, sugar, or even another cheaper drug. If you use illegal drugs you simply cannot be sure of what substances you are putting into your body." (Drug interactions: protecting yourself from dangerous drug, medication, and Food contaminations page 15) While the additives themselves are usually not dangerous, they indirectly make criminalized drugs very deadly. Drug scope reports that these additives such as adulterants and dilutants make the purity of street drugs vary to a startling degree. Drug Scope continues, reporting that the purity of amphetamines are around 1 to 10 percent. Cocaine purity: 20-90 percent. Crack: 85-100 percent. Heroin: 30-80 percent. LSD: 0-100%. So to the key question, why is this important? Well, purity can be considered synonymous with the drug strength. So when a drug has 30% purity, its potency is the same thing. The problem is, when the drug strength varies so greatly, we once again have no idea how much of it to take to get the desired effect. So if we guess that we should take x amount of the drug, but the purity ends up being much greater than previously thought, then once again it causes overdose and misuse. Also, if somebody takes too little of the drug in regards to its purity, then they take more and more and more which can also lead to overdose. Thus is the flaw in a world where these drug abuse is criminalized. Sub point B: Public health solves for this issue. Under legal regulation, each class of conciousness altering drugs will have similar or identical levels of additives, and thus identical levels of purity. Thus the dangers the vast levels of purity causes are nonexistant in the affirmative world. Because a public health approach solves for drug abuse while criminalization does not, I urge an affirmative ballot. I request my opponent do cross-ex in comments. Max 10 questions please. I will answer asap. |
49 | f4135ff7-2019-04-18T14:01:54Z-00005-000 | Should body cameras be mandatory for police? | Resolved: Police officers should be required to wear body cameras * This is not necessarily a round of police debate* Humanity has been on an ever eternal quest in search of felicity and safety. However, throughout mankind, there has been a series of crimes gone unsolved and detectives failing to solve assigned mysteries. Sadly, all have been failing to notice the very blatant solution to all of these. A way to ensure public safety and solve crimes is right in front of us and the proposition team wants this resolution to be implemented. Hello, I am Forever 23 and I am going to debate pro on the topic that police officers should not wear body cameras. I will first provide definitions and then introduce my own points. Body cameras- The cameras put on the uniforms of the police officers. They are of very high quality and NOT easily breakable. Now onto my own points.1. Implementing cameras for officers will dwindle the amount of apartheid. Racial apartheid in the police force may seem impossible and implausible. However, that is the current reality. Today's world criminal justice system is not at all filled with justice. In fact, many times, the fortune and faith of the one convicted will depend on his race, ethnicity and skin color. Cameras however, will provide a much more objective view on the situation. Nothing can bestow more truth than the situation itself on a video. . http://www.discoverthenetworks.org..., "Los Angeles congresswoman Max Waters thinks that the system is racist, she stated that "the color of your skin dictates whether you will be arrested or not, prosecuted harshly or less harshly, or receive a stiff sentence or gain probation or entry into treatment. " The late law professor Derrick Bell claimed that the justice system "disempowers people of color. " At a presidential primary debate in 2008, Barack Obama charged that blacks and whites "are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, [and] receive very different sentences . .. for the same crime. " That same night, Senator Hillary Clinton likewise disgrace the "disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites. ""The only way to ensure honesty in our justice and jurisdiction system is by having objective footage. The "he did it because he is African American" approach is not the way to go. The only way to make this system more fair to those of different races and skin colors is by implementing cameras. The real video will show what really happened, not from different people's point of view. The video is better than any testimony. Since, African Americans are judged many times by the skin color in court, they mostly get unfair punishments. In order for the punishment to fit the crime and to know what the crime even is, we need cameras on officers. Cameras on police officers will stop deliberate, false accusations against African Americans and make the justice system much more stronger and efficient. 2. Downtrend the amount of duress used by the police. . http://www.cam.ac.uk..., "Knowledge that events are being recorded creates "self-awareness" in all participants during police interactions. This is the critical component that turns body-worn video into a 'preventative treatment': causing individuals to modify their behaviour in response to an awareness of 'third-party' surveillance by cameras acting as a proxy for legal courts—as well as courts of public opinion—should unacceptable behaviour take place. According to, . http://phys.org..., " During the 12-month Rialto experiment, use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% against the previous year's figures. . http://www.cam.ac.uk... "The 'preventative treatment' of body-worn-video is the combination of the camera plus both the warning and cognition of the fact that the encounter is being filmed. In the tragic case of Eric Garner, police weren't aware of the camera and didn't have to tell the suspect that he, and therefore they, were being filmed," said Dr Barak Ariel, from the Cambridge's IoC, who conducted the crime experiment with Cambridge colleague Dr Alex Sutherland and Rialto police chief Tony Farrar. The belief in police officers is at an all time low. That is quite harrowing because officers are the ones who protect us and safeguard us. People seeing officers as pernicious is not the way to benefit our society. In fact, many people dislike police force because of the utmost use of force. With officers being aware about the cameras strapped to their chest, they will be less likely to provide a criminal with unjustified force and more likely to do their jobs with fairness and the not needed force. That will result us in a much stronger police system and at the end, a stronger nation itself. 3. Most of the populace, both police officers and civilians buttress the decision to enact body cameras. The people of the USA see the benefits of the propositions plan. The majority of the US citizens want to see the plan in action. They want to ensure a safer future by not only arming officers with guns, but also giving them cameras to record the happening events. Judge, we need to listen to our public and make the safe. We should give the people what they want because in this particular case, the implementation of cameras will provide support to the security and democracy of the public. According to Huffington Post, 56% of voters stated that police body cameras would be beneficial to the police force. 13% stated that it will protect the unalienable rights of the US citizens. 25% of the poll takers figured that it would invade the privacy of people.6% figured that the officers should have the choice. 65,064 votes were supporting the resolution and 28,272 were considering this an invasion of privacy. . http://www.nbcnews.com..., Tracey Knight, community liaison and PR officer for the Fort Worth Police Department, told NBC News. "However, more and more officers are requesting to have one issued to them and some have even purchased their own. "The people want it! The officers want it! The officials want it! The question is, then why not? Most people from different areas including the police officers themselves are willing to record the data happening on the streets. They are willing to have objective, documented footage. People are waiting to switch from the "he did it" and the "no I did not" approach. The citizens of the USA are willing to make this nation change for the better and with the substantial support and assistance, the propositions plan will be able to function and even support the stance on majority decides. The propositions team plan is to make it required by law for every police officer to wear the Trascendent ProDrive Body 10 Body Camera. It will be very effective for this cause. I will further expand on this in the 2nd proposition speech. |
22 | bcdf1d5e-2019-04-18T19:59:53Z-00000-000 | Is a two-state solution an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? | A Palestinian State The answer is not obvious, because splitting the land between the two parties will not create happy people on both sides. Both sides want it all. Also, it is impossible to split the states among lines that will be acceptable to both parties. There is not a clear delineating line between "Jewish Areas" and "Palestinian Areas". Are you willing to force the sides to live apart? A solely Palestinian state will lead to reprisals against the Jewish communities. A solely Israeli state (perhaps with limited Palestinian administration) is the best option. This is why: Because the Israelis have shown that they are willing to live in a liberal democracy, not a terrorist theocracy (the Palestinians, when given the chance, voted Hamas into power in the legislature). The Palestinians are hostile to their neighbor Israel, while Israel just wants to live in peace. |
40 | 25670b4d-2019-04-18T19:39:47Z-00001-000 | Should the death penalty be allowed? | Death Penilty in the US. In a nutshell, my opponent is trying to say that rapists deserve an easy way out, and they do not deserve to suffer. The tax dollar statement meant exactly what I said; I have no problem with it. I am not saying everyone feels the same way, but the way you emphasizes on the word you're, meaning that you were talking to me specifically. By making this claim my opponent has volunteered to prove that all other nations and all other judicial systems are proof against error. In other words, he must now prove that no other nation, besides the US, cans wrongly convict a person of a crime. Since some of the other nations that allow the death penalty include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, it is safe to assume that errors have been made by other nations. Since he can not prove errors do not happen, my contention stands. If other nations are capable of making the same errors, then the same argument applies- innocent people are convicted and may be put to death, making the death penalty immoral. http://en.wikipedia.org... I have seen no websites saying that people would not rather be dead than miserable. The death penalty (LOL, not penilty LOL) costs more money than keeping the people alive. ~~~~Question for my opponent~~~~ Have you heard of the case where the guy Ted Bundy I believe, killed several people, and robbed banks, then asked a woman which state enforces the death penalty the strongest, she replied Florida, so he went there did the same thing, and pleaded guilty? That is proof that some people would rather be put to death than anything else. Also here is the definition of murder: http://www.merriam-webster.com... it looks like the definition would be "to kill" by looking at the top part, but it is "Unlawful killing; especially by malice or force" Why unlawful? Why should it be lawful to kill? If a man rapes your wife, should you be allowed to shoot him? If yes, won't the law go after you as well, if you were not on your property at the time? If no, then you have conceded that I am right, and the death penalty is an unjust punishment. Here is the definition of death: http://www.medterms.com... http://www.thefreedictionary.com... The definition of penalty: http://www.thefreedictionary.com... http://www.investorwords.com... Thus death penalty: http://www.answers.com... It makes since, but why if it is wrong for one person to kill, is it right for another, hence executioner: http://www.google.com...:*:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GFRC&defl=en&q=define:executioner&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title Since one is not allowed to kill, then why should another? That is the question you should ask yourselves, as voters. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. |
46 | f5b3410d-2019-04-18T15:41:50Z-00002-000 | Should net neutrality be restored? | The USFG should reject Net Neutrality. (Note that I have neglected to mention a variety of arguments that have little or no bearing on the debate, 10000 characters are often not enough when debating a topic like this) IntroductionPro claims that he should be the winner of this debate because "the Opposition has not presented a case worthy of a win." But it was stated very explicitly in my 2nd Round that my strategy in this debate is not to provide positive arguments for net neutrality; instead I was to undermine Pro's arguments, by refuting all of his contentions, and thus show that there are exclusive benefits in rejecting net neutrality. If I do this successfully, then Pro has not met his BOP. But in doing so, I inadvertently affirm a case for net neutrality because in his 1st round, Pro has essentially set out the case for net neutrality, as he has already specified arguments in favour of net neutrality, such as:• A rejection of net neutrality enables "broadband providers to use their last mile infrastructure to block Internet applications and content."• Net neutrality enables "equal treatment" and "ends [ending] discrimination in transmitting content", which is desirable. Pro then seeks out to refute them. But, if I successfully refute his criticisms, then these arguments for net neutrality are affirmed by default. So I personally do not have to provide positive arguments of my own, because Pro already has done so for me.In addition, in other areas of the debate, I have also implicitly made arguments for net neutrality such as:• "ISPs are not to be trusted with regulating and controlling the Internet."Freedom of Speech1. FCCa) Pro accepts that net neutrality as considered in this debate will be focussing on the principle or concept of net neutrality – in effect, all forms of net neutrality legislation. Pro takes issue with the "highly transparent and democratic manner" bit. He claims that the FCC already is highly transparent and democratic. This contradicts his later statement; that "net neutrality concentrates the decision of what is available into the hands of five commission members." [the FCC] I don't see how that is transparent and democratic (especially) at all. b) Pro also argues that my solution is "hypothetic" and that I would need to present "examples of specific legislation spelling out how exactly transparency is achieved and grants solvency." I don't. No matter how hypothetical the scenario presented is, it still should be treated because we are dealing with net neutrality as a principle. c) Pro also argues that "regardless of how transparent they are, their idea of 'fair' still does not line up with ours." But I am not advocating for the FCC to merely act "transparently", but also "highly democratically". 2. Chinaa) Pro's argument is irrelevant. Even if we adopt the view that net neutrality would lead to infringements of freedom of speech with parallels to censorship in China, it still is a slippery slope.Consider the format of a slippery slope fallacy: "If we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually too, therefore A should not happen."We can see that Pro's argument doesn't overcome the problem of a slippery slope, because Z is simply changed from "censorship that mirrors China" to "censorship that has many parallels to censorship as seen in China." b) Pro misuses MacKinnon's article. Never in the article did MacKinnon talk about net neutrality, as a Control+F search of "neutrality." would reveal. Instead, MacKinnon was talking about the Stop Online Piracy Act, a separate issue. Pro attempts to treat the issue lightly, making an argument based on history to suggest that "it is not unreasonable to suggest that this is a possibility we should at the very least be wary of."c) Pro has not responded to my argument in the previous round that FCC actions regarding televisions and radios should not be compared with the Internet, because of the different ways information is transmitted between those. d) It is merely established that FCC's supposed infringement upon freedom of speech is a "possibility". But that alone is not enough to provide a reason why we should reject net neutrality. We could still have a rationale for implementing net neutrality, but merely be wary over the FCC ie. make their actions "highly transparent and democratic". ISPs1. Blocking ContentPro claims that it is entirely reasonable that ISPs are able to block out legitimate content because they are the providers of a service, and thus it is entirely reasonable that they should be able to do what they want with such a service. Note that Pro has conceded the BitTorrent point, and shifts his attention to the rights of ISPs as a whole. a) This argument is that it entails a closed Internet, because ISPs "favour certain uses" and "explicitly filter out content", even though it is presumed within the framework of this debate that a closed internet is not desirable. Thus, we should not grant them this right. b) Pro does attempt to address this argument, though. He argues that "with numerous ISPs and the free market allowing for other options for consumers, the internet remains open." This is true, when considering the internet from a wide scope. It should be noted that my argument looks at the openness of the Internet from the perspective of a subscriber of an ISP company choosing to filter out content. Thus, it is claimed that on balance, the Internet still remains more open if net neutrality were rejected, than if it were not, because the introduction of "the FCC as a presider over the internet" is "a clear introduction to a closed internet". d) Pro assumes that the FCC will abuse their power and promote actions that lead to a closed Internet. This is essentially his "freedom of speech" argument repackaged. It should be discounted due to the fact that compelling replies have already been given to such an argument, as seen above. e) His argument – that net neutrality places the decision of what is available on the Internet into the hands of five commission members – fails due to the same issue. We are dealing with net neutrality as a principle rather than specific forms of its legislation. Pro's argument does not address net neutrality as a principle – net neutrality does not require 5 commission members to be in control – rather, it addresses specific forms of net neutrality.2. Innovationa) Pro has not addressed the descriptive-normative gap argument satisfactorily. Critics of his position do not deny that there are differences between the bandwidth needs of various content. The problem is how to link the descriptive statement (what is) to a normative statement (what ought). b) Merely restating the descriptive statement does not get anyone anywhere in bridging this gap. In order to get from an is to an ought, Pro must "combine the [is] with an ethical principle or assumption." (1) c) Pro's analogy of a store fails. Pro notes that different types of date have a different cost to be supplied. But this doesn't mean that different pricing schemes for different types of data should be adopted, because this is not necessarily in virtue of the type of data transmitted, but rather the ISPs' method of data transmission. Tom MacKay explains:"ISPs…need to deal with connections between content providers and their own networks. When Game of Thrones freezes up, the problem could be saturation at the select locations where data leaves HBO and intersects with an ISP…the ISP must upgrade their network to accommodate traffic that might be generated by a few high-data companies." (2)3. Europe a) The net neutrality regulations in Europe are recent – only established this year - so we can't make any judgements empirically.b) Pro needs to show that the reason that because Internet is lacking in Europe is a consequence of the establishment of broadband as a public utility. He, and the article he refers to, only cites a correlation between the two, not a causal relationship. There are other factors that should be taken into account eg. regarding broadband coverage, the discrepancy could be explained by the fact that the U.S is much richer than many European countries such as Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria.c) Cheng et.al in their paper The Debate on Net Neutrality: A Policy Perspective show that the opposite is the case. They use a "game theoretic model" to evaluate the impact of net neutrality, and conclude that "the incentive to expand infrastructure capacity for the broadband service provider and its optimal capacity choice under net neutrality are higher than those under the no net neutrality regime except in some specific cases. Under net neutrality, the broadband service provider always invests in broadband infrastructure at the socially optimal level, but either under- or over-invests in infrastructure capacity in the absence of net neutrality." (3) Householda) I don't see how I have been selective with Pro's arguments, and Pro doesn't specify how so. Pro doesn't specify which source provides justifications for his claims, so I can't possibly evaluate his argument, considering that several of the sources are extremely long and for the most part, seemingly irrelevant. His quotation from "the Comcast article" fails to justify both claims that I called out upon. b) I have addressed Pro's argument. I argued that rejection of net neutrality doesn't result in an immediate solution of network congestion, as with the case with an affirmation of net neutrality, so neither offers an advantage. ConclusionBy refuting Pro's arguments, I am in effect, making a case for net neutrality. Pro's major arguments have been refuted. Thus, I have implicitly made a case for net neutrality, as well as refuted Pro's arguments against it. The resolution is negated. (1) http://v.gd...(2) http://mic.com...(3) http://papers.ssrn.com... |
19 | 63346b22-2019-04-18T18:21:12Z-00005-000 | Should gay marriage be legal? | Gay Marriage This is a debate that Gay Marriage should not be legal where limits are to be set for Californian law and customs. Gay Marriage is defined as being: Lawful Marriage between 2 people of same gender. There are 3 points supporting gay marriage: 1. First and foremost, America in general is founded on the civil liberties and freedom for all including for gay people to be allowed to marry. 2. Current California law makes gay marriage illegal. This however, violates the 1st Amendment as well as the general goal for the Constitution to have "the right to pursue happiness." (See www.billofrights.org/) 3. California' diversity (see http://quickfacts.census.gov...) shows the cultural heritage and diverse ideas of the people living there. Making gay marriage legal would allow for these diverse ideas to be truly shown as a complete image including for marriage between couples. The character of Californian people shows how they want the spectrum of ideas to be expressed. |
42 | bbd58885-2019-04-18T13:27:03Z-00000-000 | Should fighting be allowed in hockey? | Should Homeschooling Be Allowed ya ya ya. blah blah blah. argue argue argue. this is getting boring. i'm gonna stay low for a while |
28 | 318b36b2-2019-04-18T19:09:34Z-00000-000 | Should prostitution be legal? | It should be legal to murder prostitutes ~~~~~~~ Rebuttals ~~~~~~~ ///Since my opponent affirms the resolution "it should be legal to murder/kill prostitutes", he affirms this in ALL cases. If he argues all killing of prostitutes should be legal, he therefore argues that murder should be legal because some killing is murder. /// It would be impossible for me to affirm the resolution that murder should be legal, murder is defined as the unlawful killing of a person [2]. Therefore it is logically impossible for murder to be legal. I am advocating that killing should be legal. ~ ///Also, my opponent mistakenly believes that if he can affirm one instance where killing/murdering prostitutes should be legal that he has upheld the resolution. HE is the one affirming the resolution, not me. It is I who can negate the resolution upon affirming one instance where it should not be legal to murder prostitutes. /// The resolution also does not state that "it should be legal to murder ALL prostitutes. " I have shown that as the resolution stands it is logically impossible to affirm and therefore have reasonably, I believe, changed the word 'murder' to 'kill. ' I would also like to bring up the point that my opponent, though Con in the debate, is the instigator and should bear at least some burden of proof. He has provided no justification for his stance that we shouldn't murder prostitutes. I on the other hand have supported the idea that at least in some instances killing prostitutes should be legal, even if my opponent believes these arguments to be unsatisfactory to fulfill the resolution. ~ ///Although this is a bit of a reach, I do not believe it will affect my argument, and therefore will not challenge the definition. /// Since my opponent agrees to my definition of prostitution and does not contest the idea that professional hitmen fall under the definition this argument stands. ~ ///And I also urge the voters to take into consideration that my opponent is most likely a cold-blooded killer, and he probably hurts children for fun as well. /// Ad hominem, this statement should at least give me the conduct point. ~ In conclusion I have shown that there are instances where killing prostitutes should be legal whereas my opponent has only stated that I have to affirm that murdering all prostitutes should be legal, as the instigator I believe that he should bear at least some of the burden of proof and he did not attempt to defend his side. I end my arguments and urge a Pro vote. [2] . http://www.merriam-webster.com... |
18 | c2b2fdca-2019-04-18T16:51:34Z-00007-000 | Should churches remain tax-exempt? | Abortion should remain legal. I accept.I would like to submit that abortion entails the intentional destruction of the fetus as the means of ending the pregnancy, and therefore we should use this Merriam-Webster definition of abortion as it is more accurate than the one presented by my opponent: "a medical procedure used to end a pregnancy and cause the death of the fetus."[1]I do not contest any other defininitions presented by my opponent.Please state your case, Pro.Sources1. http://www.merriam-webster.com... |
41 | 5d69331e-2019-04-18T19:00:35Z-00000-000 | Should student loan debt be easier to discharge in bankruptcy? | Student Loan Debt Too bad, I was looking forward to this debate. My opponent concedes that in spite of all his arguments, student loan debt is still extremely necessary. |
42 | cf884bca-2019-04-18T15:29:03Z-00004-000 | Should fighting be allowed in hockey? | Hockey is better than soccer Anyways, since you provided no arguments and no structure, I will just do a few arguments this round. On to debating! (ARGUMENTS) (1) Imagine that you were playing hockey, and you were skating up with the puck, when you get hit. Hard. You black out and wake up in the hospital, your career in Hockey over. The point I am making is that hockey is way too physical, which leads to many injuries. You are allowed to aggressively shove, slash and hit people in hockey with little to no penalty. You can get into a fight where you are only broken up after the fight occurs. Injuries come. A lot. I will post a few videos in this argument, so if you are squirmish, maybe don't watch them. This first video shows a hit from Boston Bruins forward Zdeno Chara on Max Pacioretty of the Montreal Canadiens. Pacioretty goes down, In a lot of pain, with a concussion. This second one shows one of the all-time best hockey players get a concussion, which turned out to affect crosby for over half of a year {1} Last, but most likely the worst, was this: Imagine you are Steve Moore. He was your average hockey player. Then, one game, against Vancouver, his whole career ended. Todd Bertuzzi comes up to him and wants a fight. Steve Moore says no. A few minutes later, Bertuzzi comes up to Moore, grabs his jersey, viciously punches Moore in the face then shoves onto the cold, hard ice. As a result, Moore was knocked out cold for around 11 minutes. He got three fractured vertebrae and a very major concussion. His passion, career, and love for hockey was done. Over. This is all a result of the violent nature of hockey. Now this is just concussions/injuries from hits/on ice not fight stuff, but what about from fights? . http://www.nhl.com... In this video you will see he gets into a Soccer is not nearly as brutal as Hockey, while yes, I will not deny that there are injuries in Soccer, the severity of injuries and the amount of injuries are much higher in Hockey. Thanks DDD (REFERENCES) {1} . http://www.nhl.com... |
4 | 91279d46-2019-04-18T17:53:34Z-00001-000 | Should corporal punishment be used in schools? | Corporal punishment should be banned from schools http://abcnews.go.com... This article shows the ineffectiveness of corporal punishment in schools. In closing, corporal punishment should be banned because it is ineffective and lowers students' IQ's. Other forms of punishment should be explored and tested. Good luck. |
40 | 8e5e720-2019-04-18T15:43:37Z-00003-000 | Should the death penalty be allowed? | The death penalty should be abolished I will chronically rebut every point you've stated and will justify on why the death penalty should remain abolished or be abolished in places where its legal. 1) Your first point you've stated on how it keeps the society safe, now let me bring to your notice on if keeping society safe is the aim, then life imprisonment will serve the purpose, now a person is sentenced to death only after committing a mistake, by your point, this person is a harm to the society, agreed., but if keeping society safe is our aim, then life imprisonment isn't the right option but the right option, the person has no more contact with society and hence cannot harm society. Your first point stands redundant. Moving on, 2) Comes at a lower cost? by that statement you are implying that money is more valuable to you than a life of a human. No matter what crime a person has committed in the present world, you cannot compare his survival with money. Seeing that you are unaware, PRISONERS DO PAY TAX. They earn in the prison by doing petty works, they are paying tax too. They deserve the right to live. A nation has enough money if its economy is doing well to invest in research and other things. If that seems so important, research can be done on how you can improve and make the prisoners better human beings. Everyone can contribute to society, so people are forced to commit crimes, a lot of instances where people who've gone to prison, come out and changed the world. Your point is baseless if you are comparing the right to life with money. 3) Your point isn't very strong. People are are ready enough to commit grave crimes might think about the penalty but it wouldn't matter to them. If you are ready to the president of a country, you very well know what's going to happen to you, but people have already done it and continue to committee graves crimes, true that they might they about it. But most of the times, they do it. So installing fear in the minds is great. But its isn't working as it should. Crimes are still being committed, there are also countries which have established death penalty but there has been so significant changes. So there is no point if it isn't making a much of an impact. Send them to prison. For life time. 4) Your point 4 is highly amusing, there is a reason why that way isn't practised in most countries. By them violating a law, we will also be violating a law by taking their life, violating the very right to life. An eye for the eye makes the whole world blind said they great Mahatma Gandhi. By taking their life, it will be a shame on our side. Your point is baseless, taking another life just because they've made a mistake is unjustifiable. 5) I would love to rebut your 5th argument. True there have been instances where their leaders create a network and stuff. But what about using those " resources" as you've stated which are being used on prisoners, and also improving security in prisons and setting guidelines and make sure that does not happen. To make sure prisoners aren't getting the right contacts and are going through misery because of they grave mistakes they've made. And they are in life imprisonment, they cannot commit another mistake because they can't leave prison, if you justify this by saying the gangs and all that. Well I have justified it by strengthening security to the max. 6) Its funny on how you bring up Singapore. Singapore is a small country, things can be controlled in small countries, and the Singapore government has taken steps which have been effective, the crimes rates in Singapore have never been scarily high. Why not take the big countries? the places where problems actually do exist? what about the smuggling of drugs into the USA, the death pent Ly has been established in most states in the USA, but still, its the worlds largest consumer of Coke, there are so many crimes there. Its the size and the citizens of the country that matter. Killing people is no solution, everyone deserves a second chance, by taking their life, we ourselves are violating the law. If their mistake are grave, prison them for life. They do not deserved to be killed. |
1 | 1a76ed9f-2019-04-18T16:07:27Z-00001-000 | Should teachers get tenure? | High schools should add students to the teacher evaluation system. My CaseThe flaws with the current system:My opponent talks about the pros of both the current methods of evaluating high school teachers. I'll cover both methods.1. Test Scores My opponent concedes that schools are motivated to use tests as forms of evaluation because they get grants. This is important because this means that schools are motivated by something other than benefiting their students; they have no actual justification for such an evaluation used alone. My opponent explains that the teachers actually do have control over the scores of their students. I would agree with this to some degree; I am not in any way advocating to get rid of test scores as a form of evaluation. My opponent is right to some degree when he says that tests as evaluations show how well a teacher teaches material. However, there will always be students who do well on tests even when they have a neglegant teacher, and there will always be students who do badly even when they have a diligent teacher. When students fill out the evaluation form, they can answer constructive questions that will result in a much more complete form of evaluation than any test.2. Principle Reviews For this point, my opponent cites some evidence that is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the American Federation of Teachers. My Atlantic card I mentioned earlier notes that generally teachers are the ones that tend to be against student evaluations being integrated into the teacher assessment system. This article is sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, and since teachers are often times against such a form of evaluation, the article contains a biased point of view. Also, the article never mentions anything against evaluations from students. It only talks about how to make principle/test evaluations stronger. The article states, "Evaluation procedures must address this complexity--they should not only assess individual teachers but also help them continuously improve." Student reviews fit this criteria. I will how later on.Accuracy of student evaluations:1. My Atlantic Card My opponent attacked this card by showing that principle evaluations can prove the same points as student evaluations. I'll get into why they can't on the next point. It is important to observe that my opponent did not cite a study showing the exact accuracy of principle evaluations; therefore, he has no way of showing that principle evaluations can do the same things student evaluations can do. As my Atlantic Study shows, students assessing their teachers is the most accurate form of assessment.2. Addressing Biases My opponent explains that biases cannot be ruled out. I would agree. Bias will exist, but as my pieces of evidence show, bias is not going to be as big of a problem as one may think. In fact, administrators also can be biased. Gender bias is a major problem with administrators (1). I won't get too much into that issue, but there is always the possibility that a certain gender could get special treatment from various administrators. Also, Education Week explained that the research by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (my opponent cites this earlier) is correct, several disturbing patterns were found. It turns out that teachers were evaluated by administrators got significantly worse reviews from administrators if they taught a lower level class with students that were hard to teach. Student evaluations can show that teachers instructing challenging classes may be good at what they do, although the students may not always succeed (2). The article states, "It creates a system that is demonstrably and palpably unfair to teachers, given that they have little control over the performance of the whole school," the report states." I have proved that teachers with good student evaluations are better teachers, and that student evaluations have no correlation with a student's actual grade made a point earlier: students sign up for different levels of classes (pre-ap/AP/on-level). This means they will have similar expectations. Bias can cause administrators to give on-level teachers lower ratings even if they don't deserve them. Since students in an on-level class have similar expectations, they will be able to adequately assess their teachers abilities the way they should be assessed.Lastly, my opponent explains that students are not qualified. I gave examples of the questions that students will be asked in the previous round. Since they spend at least every other day with their teachers, they are certainly able to answer simple questions about their teacher's performance.Improving the school system:1) My opponent explains that the tenure system is flawed, not the evaluation system. I agree the tenure system is flawed, but it will be much harder for a teacher to get tenure if they receive consistent bad reviews from students.2) I would like apologize; I made an error in the first round in argument that addresses teachers being fired. My Teachers Union card is not talking about bad teachers, but teachers in general. The evidence (which will be linked below) states only 1 in 1000 teachers is fired for performance related reasons. If we look at lawyers, 1 in 97 get fired for performance; with doctors, 1 in 57 are fired for such reasons (3). The bottom line is teachers have a much lower standard than other careers, which is wrong because, "Wright, Horn, and Sanders (in press) have demonstrated that, within grade levels, the single most dominant factor affecting student academic gain is teacher effect." Teachers are what effect students the most and the should be held to a high standard (4). Student evaluations (which I have proved accurate) will hold them to that standard.3) My opponent compares students assessing teachers to customers setting prices of food in a restaurant. This analogy is simply unrealistic because teachers have a lasting impact on the lives/education of students; food/prices at a restaurant do not. My opponent talks about how students don't know the standards of teaching, just like not all customers know the standards of a restaurant. It is important to remember that we are debating the high school evaluation. By the time students get into high school, they should know the difference between good teachers and bad teachers; at a restaurant obviously there will be people who don't generally eat out (making them ill-qualified). Remember, student evaluations are not just a sheet where students put their opinions. Students fill out sheets of constructive and easy-to-answer questions.Benefits the teacher/student:1) My opponent explains satisfying the student is unimportant and that the gap between student expectation vs. what they actually get is inevitable. Look at the question: Why do we have schools? The answer is: To teach students. If students are not satisfied, they won't be taught well. Simple. As I said before, the gap is inevitable. However, teachers knowing why this gap exists for them makes them better teachers. And students feeling like they have a say gives them satisfaction because they finally have an ability to dictate some of what happens with their teachers.2) My opponent says students can walk up to teachers and give them suggestions; thus, positively impacting the teacher. This is completely unrealistic. Students will most likely not have the confidence to pull such a stunt, and the teacher will most likely find the student to be condescending. The solution is student evaluation because they will be anonymous if the teacher were to look at them.Opponent's CaseI'll go ahead and cross-apply my attacks in the same format as my opponent to make things simpler since I have already attacked my opponent's case in the previous round.Students have Different Ranges of What To Expect*As I said there, students have signed up for similar classes have similar expectations. Also, my Atlantic Card shows that since teachers with higher ratings teach more. This means students simply expect teachers who will teach them adequately. Also, many of the questions that would be on the evaluation are not opinion questions.Qualifications*again, see attack #2 of "addressing bias"*Students spend a lot of time with their teachers. Answering questions about the teacher is simple.Expectations*see attack #1 on benefiting student/teachers*Current System*see attack #1 and #2 on "flaws in the system"*For these reasons, vote pro.Thanks again to Unknown_player for accepting!! Also, thank you to anyone who votes.(1)http://www.acsa.org...(2)http://www.edweek.org...(3)http://teachersunionexposed.com...(4)http://mccluelearning.com... |
22 | 71d8bac1-2019-04-18T17:26:47Z-00003-000 | Is a two-state solution an acceptable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? | Communism is a logical solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I would first like to correctly define communism... Communism: A political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs, a society where the proletariat and bourgeois become absorbed into one party. As for the other definition I accept then and would like to note that the BoP is shared, all I must do to win is prove it is a logical solution , while my opponent will try and prove how it is not in any way logical. The installment of a communist government would combine the ethnicities of Israelis and Palestinians under one government, uniting the two people. This would also end any territorial disputes because through the government there would be equal distribution of land and property rights. Any class systems would vanish because everyone would become equal. This would also eliminate the large gap between wealthy and poor that plagues the Palestinian populace and allows the Israelis to keep power. And unlike a parallel state solution this would solve the problem of unity by having the one communist party be made up of Palestinians and Israelis alike. For instance instead of a weak umbrella government that will get nothing done there will be one strong central government that will quickly reach a solution that is best for the state and people. Communism is also superior to a two state solution, because instead of two governments that would constantly be invading each other it would bring them together. It is also superior then a single state solution, because, like Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky warned "Native resistance to dispossession is irrepressible and Zionism would only survive with constant force to quell it." This statement reinforces the fact that a single state solution could not unify without the use of a constant force to suppress the people, this plan would of course be enforced by China. Each point that has been made here exemplifies why this solution is the only one that could be a long lasting affective solution. And for those of you out there look down on communism have no to right to do so because of what China has done. Consequently it has worked very well for China, as a result of communism it has become the largest exporter of fabricated goods in the world today. It also has one of the largest infrastructures in the world to attribute to its success, but this is a result of a communist government. China's environment is not a result of communism, which never states that the destruction of and ecology is necessary. China's environment is a result of poor leadership and indifference not communism. It is for these reason that communism is a highly logical solution to the conflict. |
2 | 6aa773f4-2019-04-18T14:45:16Z-00001-000 | Is vaping with e-cigarettes safe? | Should the e cigarette be available to everyone Again, I feel that your information is incorrect. According to several databases, including canadavapes.com, Propylene Glycol is the primary ingredient in the majority of e-liquids and e-cigarette cartridges on the marketplace today. Most e-liquid contains at least 80% and as much as 92% propylene glycol. This is the ingredient that produces the smoke-like vapor when the e-cigarette is exhaled. You are correct in saying people have choices if they want to use products that are safe or unsafe, but it seems more applicable if people are educated in the product they choose to use. And being that I am a parent and a grandparent, I am more concerned about the availability of this product to the younger generation. The idea that vaping can promote cigarette smoking is not good news, especially to our youth. Whether or not you feel that people can do whatever they want, it seems to me that your favorable interest in e-cigs exist because you may either like or use e-cigs, am I correct? |
16 | c1c1b79d-2019-04-18T15:37:26Z-00004-000 | Should prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers? | Series 1 Episode 6 : *RETAKE* The government should give out benefits (Welfare-state type debate) Please vote for my opponent. I concede. I misunderstood the argument. Please forgive me. |
32 | 93844764-2019-04-18T19:10:04Z-00003-000 | Do electronic voting machines improve the voting process? | Online voting should replace traditional voting. I staunchly disagree! Online voting should NOT replace traditional voting. It holds far too many ways to fail than suceed. Idealy, yes, for convenience sake online voting would be far superior to traditional voting. However it makes the already problematic voter fraud even easier then it already is. While you have listed ways that you think will be able to prevent this, I shall now go through and show how each is inevitably able to fail to virus', hackers, and general vote bombers. c-1: Voting fraud on this site has not been unheard of, and debate.orgs 'fail safe' with cell phone identity is a speed bump at best. All one needs is a phone number that can recieve text messages, an viola, that account can vote. I do not have a phone that can recieve TM, and so am unable to confirm my identity, though I know I exist. This means I can't vote, which is very inconvenient. However, if I so chose to I could get one or convince a friend or even steal a phone and "confirm" my identity tot he satisfaction of debate.orgs fail safe, though as you can see there are more dishonest ways to pass this than the honest one. Now, for your example of what I am assuming are serious political elections, you say that a social security number will do the trick. Not so. Just as with the cell phone all one needs to do attain a SSN, and they are now that person whether they are or not. If you have contention with this then you are probably not aware of identity theft [http://www.ftc.gov...]. Now as you'll have surly noticed this site is not just about what identity theft (IT) is but how to fight it. I fully admit that there are ways to fight IT after it has happened, though they are often lengthy, inconvenient, and costly. In all cases, IT could be fought but not after the damage has been done. This means that in a serious election, the mere possibility of the damages of IT far outweight the benefit of convenience. An election where seemingly thousands have voted could just as well be 1 person, or group with a particular agenda. Even if 1 vote is not that of the legitimate holder of the SSN, your fail safe has failed. It is far more pssoible than not, and for this reason, online voting clearly fails. C-2: If we lived in a perfect world then you'd be right. An electronic voting system would be more relable in counting votes. That is, if those votes were real and reliable. As I've already shown, the reliablity of votes is already in question. But whether a real person in any degree cast those is also in question. A virus, especially a well designed one, could easily pass through a fail safe of any kind, and perform a simple operation of changing a 1 into a 2, or 3, etc. Hacks and viruses into what where thought to be secure systems is all too common, and a simple google search can reveal hundreds of stories of real life scenarios where such a thing happened. Here's on that happened just 2 years ago [http://www.crn.com...] and a famous story where the FBI's database was hacked into [http://www.computerworld.com...]. The moral of the story is that if there is a will, then there's a way, especially when it comes to computers. Vote bots exist, and are able to be purchased easily and effectively, as well as (obviously) designed [http://cheatingnetwork.net...]. So again here, electronic votes fail as they would only suceed if there were not people who would exploit them. C-3: Sure they do, but it isn't as easy to fraud those as it is from a computer. With absentiee votes there is an official form, that has to be filled out be hand. A very lengthy process and definetly not immune to the effects of fraud, but it would take more time and resources to produce anywhere near the amount of damage that can be caused by a few key strokes. I believe I've sufficently described how that can happen above. C-4: Undoubtably, but like I've shown, for every honest elderly shut in who could use the technology to vote, there are more who would use it exploit their own agendas dishonestly. CONCLUSION: Given the unreliabilty and accessibility that a hacker or virus could take advantage of over the web, online voting does more harm than good. With traditional voting, were one has to go into a set voting center, and show an ID that matches the person to it to another living person, the chance of fraud exists but is minimalized by the ability to verify the actual physical existence of a person right then and there. Opperations to commit fraud with traditional voting are far more costly, time consuming, and active (as in one has to get up and go do something) than it is with a computer. No system is perfect but a computerized voting system is far more so in the ease that it could be hacked. So while we are not in contention that a online system would do some good, I hold that it's far too easily penetrated by wrongdoers for it to become the mechanism that decides the course of an entire country, or even county. |
2 | f27da082-2019-04-15T20:22:16Z-00022-000 | Is vaping with e-cigarettes safe? | Sex-ed does a better job of ensuring that students have safe sex. Teenage pregnancy rates have declined in recent years, and supporters of an abstinence-only approach sometimes use this trend to defend their programs. However, according to a paper in The American Journal of Public Health, 86 percent of the decline in teenage pregnancy can be attributed to more widespread-- and more effective-- contraceptive use, and only 14 percent to teenagers' choosing to stay abstinent longer.[1]) This is not simply about using condoms: it is about using condoms properly. Incorrect use of condoms can make them extremely ineffective at preventing STDs and pregnancy.[2] The implication is that even if young people in abstinence-programs still report using condoms, they are probably less likely to use them correctly since they are not taught how. Alternately, sex-ed programs teach students how to use them properly, giving them the tools they need to stay safe. For more detail on the inefficacy of abstinence-only programs, see response to Prop Argument 3. [1] Santelli, John S. et al. "Explaining Recent Declines in Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States: The Contribution of Abstinence and Improved Contraceptive Use." American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 97, No. 1. January 2007. [2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Condoms and STDs: Fact Sheet for Public Health Personnel." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 11 April 2011. improve this |
16 | 8cb27dbc-2019-04-15T20:22:42Z-00017-000 | Should prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers? | Advertising puts pressure on doctors to prescribe inappropriate drugs to their patients If a patient sees a drug that is inappropriate for him, and asks their doctor for it, if his doctor does not prescribe it, then he may ignore his doctor and seek a second or third opinion. In private health care systems it is likely that economic pressure will result in a doctor eventually agreeing to the patient's demand. In nationalized health services 'pester power' has resulted in doctors giving in to patients in the past rather than arguing with them (seen, for example, in the massive over-prescribing of antibiotics by British general practitioners for viral infections against which they are ineffective). If the doctor prescribes another drug (perhaps a cheaper generic version), even if it is chemically identical to the branded and advertised drug, the reverse-placebo effect may result in the drug being less effective than it should be, because the patient believes it is a weaker treatment. The patient may also be less willing to complete the prescription, or to visit that doctor again, thereby undermining the doctor-patient relationship.[1] Prescription medicines are fundamentally complex and dangerous, which is why they require a prescription by a qualified doctor. It is not helpful to have a patient who lacks the decade of medical training a GP has self-diagnosing on the basis of an advert. [1] FDA: Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs:Looking Back, Looking Forward, published October 2005, www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/ucm095993.ppt, accessed 08/07/2011 |
27 | 9c361fc1-2019-04-18T17:13:32Z-00002-000 | Should more gun control laws be enacted? | Gun Control Greetings, I would like to start by thanking my opponent for taking the time to debate this subject, and I hope it turns out to be a very good debate. I will commence with three contentions. However, do note that I will be arguing against all forms of restrictions on firearms such as background checks, bans, buy backs, registration, etc. Contention 1: Safeguard and defense against a tyrannical government My first contention will be on the issue of the defense of liberty. A well armed civilian population is the biggest safeguard in case our government crosses the line and decides to become tyrannical. The founding fathers put in place the 2nd Amendment for this very reason, so that the masses of citizens of our country may use force in the case the state tries on override the Constitution and seize our natural rights. So essentially, the right to bear arms is in place to protect all our other rights. History has proven every time a population is disarmed, the government almost always takes advantage of the chance and lays waste to its peoples rights. We see this in Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Mao's China. Every time, the people were unable to resist the tyrants and because that many hundreds of millions of people died at the hands of governments. It is for this reason that we should not disarm the population, but rather, arm it with even more then it already is. There is nothing worse then a government with nothing to fear. Contention 2: Gun Control is over all, inefficient and counterproductive My second contention will be that gun control of any all kinds are counterproductive. I will prove this using national and international cases that show that gun control generally backfires where ever it is instituted. Proof from the U.S. 1. In 1976, Washington, D.C. enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. The city's murder rate increased by 134 percent through 1996 while the nation murder rate dropped 2 percent [1]. 2. Maryland claims to have the toughest gun control laws in the country and it ranks #1 in robberies and #4 in both violent crime and murder. The robbery rate is at 70 percent more then the national average [2]. 3. New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S. and also have 20 percent of the armed robberies [3]. 4. According to the federal government, gun buy backs have no effect [4]. 5. Buy backs remove no more then 2 percent of the guns from the community. And the ones that were removed didn't resemble the guns used in crimes [5]. From the rest of the World 1. In Canada around 1920, before there was any form of gun control, their homicide rate was 7% of the U.S rate. By 1986, and after significant gun control legislation Canada's homicide rate was 35% of the U.S. rate – a significant increase. 320 In 2003, Canada had a violent crime rate more than double that of the U.S. (963 vs. 475 per 100,000) [6]. 2. firearm use in crimes in the UK has doubled in the decade since handguns were banned [7]. 3. Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population) [8]. 4. Crime has been rising since enacting a sweeping ban on private gun ownership. In the first two years after Australian gun-owners were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms, government statistics showed a dramatic increase in criminal activity [9]. In 2001-2002, homicides were up another 20% [10]. From the inception of firearm confiscation to March 27, 2000, the numbers are: Firearm-related murders were up 19%, armed robberies were up 69%, and home invasions were up 21%. So as we can see from these facts from us and our gun controlist allies that gun control is very counterproductive. This should be no surprise however, common sense should tell us two things. 1) The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun. 2) And criminals simply do not obey laws, and that means gun control would only be disarming law-abiding citizens. Background Checks? Background checks are inefficient. The majority of criminals that are in prison today because of gun violence did not buy their guns from a licensed gun dealer. As a matter of fact a 2004 survey says that approximately 1/10 of prisoners bought their weapons from a licensed gun dealer [15]. There is also another problem with background checks. The criteria for stripping people of their 2nd Amendment are unfairly broad. They put pot growers, hubcap thieves, and guys who got into a bar fight 20 years ago in the same pile as violent predators. It's just absurd. With these problems it is no surprise that a 2000 study by criminologists Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig found no evidence that background checks had an impact on homicide rates [16]. Contention 3: More guns, less crime My third and final contention will be that more armed citizens there are the less crime there will generally be in any society, including the U.S. Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year or 6,849 every day. Often the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminal's) is shed [11]. A study found that 60% of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. 40% of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed[12]. In 1982, Kennesaw, GA passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate dropped 89% the following year[13]. So, I think we can see that there is no real reason to suspect gun control will do any good good. It has failed in other parts of the world and here in the U.S. and the statistics prove this. However, there is one thing that my opponent mentioned that seems to be throne up every time there is a discussion about gun control, school shootings. Let's look at 2 more facts: 1. Most schools are 100% gun free zones. 2.Over an eight year period, instates without "right to carry" laws, there were 15 school shootings; however, in states that allow citizens to carry guns, there was only one [14], I will now await my opponent's response. Thank you. Sources [1]http://www.fbi.gov...... [2]Index of Crime by State, FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2000, p. 79, Table5 [3]Under the Gun, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981 [4]http://www.nij.gov...... [5]http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu...... [6]http://www.law.harvard.edu...... [7]http://www.thetimes.co.uk...... [8]http://www.dailymail.co.uk...... [9]http://www.aic.gov.au...... [10]http://www.aic.gov.au...... [11]http://www.sfdph.org...... [12]http://www.saf.org...... [13]http://jthomasniu.org...... [14]http://www.thevrwc.org...... [15]http://books.google.com... [16]http://books.google.com... |
14 | 843406fe-2019-04-18T19:14:31Z-00002-000 | Is sexual orientation determined at birth? | Being gay is not a choice. Clarifications: My opponent denies the MEDICAL DEFINITION of homosexuality in favor of the *Wikipedia* definition. Clearly the proper medical definition should prevail in this debate; the only reason Con refuses to accept it is because he cannot win this debate unless the definition is skewed in his favor. The purpose of the debate is to affirm or negate the resolution. Both the instigator and contender should give definitions that are applicable to the resolution. The audience should decide which one is the proper term. Again, Con's explanation is from Wikipedia; mine is from the medical community. Moreover, this debate isn't so much about homosexuality as it is about being gay (homosexual). So, even if *homosexuality* is defined as the romantic or sexual attraction towards members of the same sex, the fact remains that being a homosexual merely means possessing those feelings - or being inclined to possess those feelings - not necessarily acting on them. So, one might be heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, etc. without ever having sex; it's all about how your brain is wired to act (what it is built to respond to). Rebuttal: 2. Suicide Con begins, "Infants have no homosexual characteristics at all." That is completely false. If there is a gay gene (which many scientists agree there is), it means that infants are born gay -- that is, predisposed to homosexuality. It is the *genes* and other *biological determinants* that influence sexuality. In fact, as my sources have pointed out (which Con did not negate at all), scientists have now discovered various links and patterns related to homosexuality that explains why the "gay gene" can and does get passed on and to whom. Further, "Sexual health is more than the absence of sexual pathology. The anatomy, gender and function of the human body is the foundation of identity. The awareness of the sexual self as an integrated aspect of identity begins in INFANCY with the attitudes about the physical body" [1]. So, here we can see that Con's contention that infants are without sexuality is blatantly false, and my notion that infants do not have the mental or physical capacity to commit suicide stands. 3. Seclusion Con writes, "How can one maintain a sexual identity if one has nobody to establish such an identity with?" In other words, Con is saying that if one is not having sex with anyone, then one does not have a sexuality... so they aren't gay or straight. Again, that is incredibly FALSE. Ladies and gentlemen, you only have to consider your own sexuality to determine the validity of this statement. Before you ever had sex (or for those of you who are still virgins) -- don't you know what sexuality you are? Don't you know which sex or gender you're attracted to and would like to have sex with? If so, you're acknowledging that one can absolutely be considered gay or straight before they ever have sex, or even if they deny themselves sex or choose not to have sex. Con asks, "Why would a person in seclusion possibly fit the definition of "homosexual?" Even using Con's completely flawed definition of homosexuality -- having the romantic or sexual attraction or behavior among members of the same sex -- we can see how obviously someone who is living in seclusion can still be gay! It only requires having romantic or SEXUAL ATTRACTION to someone of the same sex. That "someone" can be a celebrity, porn star or even fictional person that one masturbates to. The point is: even in seclusion, one can still have sexual attractions or thoughts. If it's for someone of the same sex/gender, then they're gay by both Pro's and Con's presented definitions. Con's argument fails. 4. Sedation Con writes, "Genetics and non-neurological biology are irrelevant to the definition at hand. A person can be sedated before ever being gay in the first place." Again, this is completely FALSE. I've already explained and proven via scientific data that sexuality is most definitely linked to genetics and other biological factors. This is common sense and information learned in every 8th grade health class. Your brain and bodily functions are responsible for sexual attraction and intercourse. We have a reproductive system for a reason; that system is led by none other than the brain. Also, I don't understand why Con's neglecting my example of someone having sex while sedated. Fortunately it's not a major part of my case. Anyway, further proof: Genetic evidence suggests a heritable component and putative gene loci on the X chromosome. Homosexuality may have evolved to promote same sex affiliation through a conserved neurodevelopmental mechanism. Recent findings suggest this mechanism involves atypical neurohormonal differentiation of the brain. Key areas for future research include the neurobiological basis of preferred sexual targets and correlates of female homosexuality [2]. Arguments: 1. Rape When presented with my example of rape (which fits the parameters of Con's flawed definition), Con's only response was, "As this is a rare situation, it cannot be used to affirm a general resolution." Fellow debaters, please consider the debates you have read and participated in here on DDO. Is that a true statement? Absolutely not. A resolution is general, yes, but rare examples can absolutely be used as evidence for either side. Furthermore, rape is not as rare or extreme as my opponent would like you to believe; 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men are sexually abused per year [3]. 2. Being Once again, even if someone commits suicide before having gay sex, they are still gay beings (they may simply not be sexually active gay beings, the same way heterosexuals can be straight but not sexually active). As such, if one commits suicide to prevent themselves from being gay, they're still gay before committing the suicide. Again, the only way Con can win this point is to prove that homosexuality is not genetic or determinant on any biological factors. Of course this is impossible to prove and as such my point stands. 3. Biology The point of this contention was to prove how homosexuality is linked to biology and as such it affirms all of my others points. Counter-Examples: Being Pro or Con is irrelevant. Each side has an equal burden of proof. Con says that he only needs one counter-example to disprove the resolution, which he has given in terms of suicide and sedation. Why should Con's extreme examples be considered but my more common example of rape should not? That is a double standard certainly not supported by any debate etiquette or paradigms; Con's simply trying to help further his failed position. Nevertheless, the resolution is entirely true. Conclusion: Medical evidence supports the theory that people are born predisposed to homosexuality (being attracted to the same sex). Before one acknowledges their sexual identity, they are still privy to their sexuality -- they are simply unaware of it yet or not yet biologically inclined towards sex. This applies to heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. Just because one might be a virgin, secluded or sedated does not mean that they are not gay; it just means that they're not having gay sex. While secluded, one may very well still have gay feelings (which even supports Con's definition). If one chooses death, they may very well choose to cease being gay; however, cannot deter from the fact that they were gay up until the time they were dead. So, if an individual is gay for *any moment in time* I argue that it is not their choice. The resolution is affirmed. [1] http://www.ejhs.org... [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com... [3] http://www.rainn.org... |
30 | f89bdc44-2019-04-17T11:47:43Z-00111-000 | Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun? | The DC gun ban does not violate 2nd amendment because DC is not a state In the opinion of the dissenting judge in the DC handgun ban court decision, the Second Amendment cannot apply to DC, since DC is not a state. Judge Henderson's dissenting opinion - "To sum up, there is no dispute that the Constitution, case law and applicable statutes all establish that the District is not a State within the meaning of the Second Amendment. Under United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. at 178, the Second Amendment's declaration and guarantee that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" relates to the Militia of the States only. That the Second Amendment does not apply to the District, then, is, to me, an unavoidable conclusion." In other words, DC residents do not have the protection of the Second Amendment, as citizens of other states do, making a ban on handguns acceptable. This is even if we conclude that the Second Amendment provides protections to citizens of states that would make a handgun ban unconstitutional, which is debatable. |
33 | 40a07afc-2019-04-18T16:18:07Z-00003-000 | Should people become vegetarian? | The Modal Ontological Argument for God is Logically Sound I thank Con for his responses. So my opponent says that he has debunked the whole argument. Perhaps it would be, if I had decided to forfeit and not offer up a refutation of his arguments. But I have no intention of doing something like that. In this argument, I propose to show that he hasn't debunked the argument just yet. Now, I remember saying that the BoP was shared, and that I would state my premises and defend them later, but I will comply with his request, refuting his rebuttals along the way to preserve precious character space for my argument. Defense of Premise 1 I will call upon the first proposition of Modal logic, which emphasizes the logical possibility of things; not the physical possibility. If the vegan he's talking about possibly exists logically in some possible world, then such a person would exist logically in this world as well, but not physically. So with these revisions, my opponent would at least be conceding and saying that there could be such a person that exists in our world; and logically following from that, that a maximally great being is logically possible. This is where my opponent's analogy breaks down; the idea of a person like that as outlined in his rebuttal does not entail his existence, but in my argument, the idea of God does. I ask my opponent to please explain further. Defense of Premise 2 I'll start with refuting the reverse MOA. I'll be calling upon proposition three of Modal logic, which tells about necessary propositions. This defense flows logically from the defense of the first premise. I already mentioned it was about the logical possibility of a God existing. Now, my opponent states that his argument is based upon the logical possibility of a god not existing. Exactly how is that a valid point or a rebuttal to my premise? The idea was to point point anything logically inconsistent or absurd in the premise or in the truth behind it, and it appears that he has failed to do just that. This would also be a contingent proposition, since naturally, my premise also stated that it was possible that a greatest possible being didn't exist. Now, to put it into simpler terms, I'll turn his argument into a syllogism: (If this is a strawman, please let me know.) P1: Pro accepts that it's possible God doesn't exist in a possible world with his line of reasoning. P2: By this line of reasoning, it is possible God doesn't exist and possible he does exist. C: Therefore, the premise is invalidated because you can't choose both in the MOA. So basically, P1 and P2 are irrelevant because the rebuttal has done nothing to point out anything logically absurd or inconsistent with the premise. My opponent's argument also states that it's still possible that a greatest possible being exists; therefore it stands. This argument would also break down in that it's essentially making a metaphysical and logical contradiction in itself. The main problem with this argument lies in P2 and P3; how would God, assuming that he is a maximally great being, not exist in a possible world? At least as long as his existence would be in the question. The reverse MOA is not exactly well-explained by my opponent; and as I stated before, BoP is shared. I invite him to please explain further if he wishes. But what really invalidates the rebuttal is that he used the reverse MOA solely as a point of contention against the premise instead of trying to point out anything logically absurd or inconsistent. That is what the first two premises are built on; the idea of a greatest possible existing in some possible worlds brings no logical absurdities with it. Therefore, the first two premises stand. I humbly invite my opponent to help me understand the points of these rebuttals, as the first two premises in the MOA only deal with what is logically possible in possible worlds, and not with what physically exists or is physically possible. Defense of Premise 3 Now to defend my third premise… All that I am really saying in this premise is that going by the previous premises, if you can imagine a God existing in some possible world, then it's at least logically possible he exists. Note how I place emphasis on the logical possibility of things, not whether or not it's physically possible. An invisible unicorn or the Balrog are logically possible, (As far as I can tell, at least.) but a four sided triangle or a circular square would not be; or in other words, the idea of them existing brings about no logical absurdities. That is all I am saying here. However, my opponent hasn't done anything to attack this premise yet. (I'm sure he will, though.) So until then, it stands. Defense of Premise 4 Now here, I will offer a refutation of Con's "Other Problems" argument. My opponent claims at the end of this section of the argument that "It is possible God exists" must be false. Now, I must ask, in this argument, what kinds of beings are my opponent talking about? To better illustrate my argument, I'll use this: C1: Beings that are logically possible and physically exist C2:Beings that are logically possible but do not physically exist C3:Beings that are logically possible and metaphysically exist C4:Beings that are logically possible and do not metaphysically exist. And then we have the next four which are logically impossible beings but share all the same secondary traits as the beings above, but we shall ignore that for now. As I said before, Modal logic deals with what is possible. I now ask my opponent to clarify which kind of being he's talking about in his argument here. As I'm sure we all obviously know, there's no lumping them all together in one category, as my opponent's argument seems to do. (Other than that they're all logically possible.) They are most sharply divided by whether or not they're physical or metaphysical. And we also must remember we are talking about a maximally great being that would, by definition, exist somewhat separately from its creation. Defense of Premises 5 and 6 What I am saying her is that if a greatest possible being exists in some possible worlds; assuming that he's maximally great, would exist in our world or reality as well. What more is there to say about it after defending the last 4 premises? The argument flows logically, therefore God exists and that provides the strongest premise for the MOA possible. Rebuttal to Modal argument from evil. Remember, we're talking about a maximally great being such as stated in the Aquinas quote Con has provided. If a greatest possible being existed, there would be no gratuitous suffering. I imagine Con will call upon the possibility of God not existing in order to support his argument, but I believe I have already rebutted that argument. Therefore, it appears the MAE has been refuted. My refutations of Con's arguments will stand until he posts his argument. Either that or I have completely misunderstood his arguments. Conclusion My opponent's arguments do not appear to hold much water. I have provided evidence that the MOA is sound and the premises hold true. My opponent has yet to show otherwise. |
37 | 9e1db4e2-2019-04-18T12:53:30Z-00001-000 | Is cell phone radiation safe? | Choose any Topic!!!! 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33 | fad42a17-2019-04-18T18:48:08Z-00000-000 | Should people become vegetarian? | Vegetarianism is a bad excuse to not eat meat =Why would they get offered meat?= In reference to Pro's arguments against "religion" and "personal feelings/psychology"... Pro never limited the subject down to people who are being offered meat, so the subject is about any vegetarian even if nobody ever comes up to them and offers them meat. Maybe these people aren't being offered meat? Or maybe they went to a place that had meat in order to get non-meat items off the menu. Either way "not wanting it" is a perfectly good reason. =Recommendation for Arthritis= Pro says arthritis patients can just ignore the recommendation. This is true, but a person's health is not a "bad excuse" for something, it's a "good excuse". If someone has arthritis and finds the pain is reduced by not eating meat then that is not a bad reason. If even a few people have a "good excuse" to not eat meat then vegetarianism is not "just" a "bad excuse" to not eat meat. =Food Safety= Yes fruits and vegetables need to be washed, but that's much easier than the sorts of preparations needed for meat in many cases. Yes, people eat meat in ancient times when we didn't have modern technology. Regardless today we can make scientific estimates of risk when we eat. If a community is told their meat is tainted with salmonella but their fruits and vegetables are relatively safe it makes logical sense for them to switch to a vegetarian diet for the time being. =The Spoiling Argument= Meat may spoil faster, but other foods spoil too. Milk has an expiration date. Fruits and vegetables rot over time. As for the new people coming into the world the chance of a small number of them being vegetarians is actually quite high. For every single one of them to want to eat meat would be next to impossible. I'm sure the meat industry wants to maximize profits as much as possible, so they would try to predict the amount of "meat demand" in the next generation. In calculating this they would have to analyze vegetarianism and see how the population is going to grow or shrink in the future. Pro makes it sound like because only a small number of people will be vegetarian that therefore the meat industry can't take into account. That's absurdly ridiculous. Industries take into account the numbers and percentages of people's preferences all the time rather than just going on "which is bigger?" If they didn't niche markets would not exist. =Solution to Spoilage= There is an obvious solution to the problem of spoiled meat. Feed it to the poor before it spoils. Not only would it alleviate poverty it would give the meat industry good PR. That the meat industry forgoes this option is its own fault, not vegetarians'. =Political= There are laws, but they are not adequate. Animals are often confined in tight spaces. Some vegetarians might stop being vegetarians if the meat industry or the government would just fix this problem. In that sense the waste isn't the vegetarians' fault, it's the meat industry's. A few simple changes could make the problem go away. www.meat.org Furthermore there is now research into test tube meat and a lot of vegetarians say they wouldn't mind eating it if it was on the market. Vegetarians may be pushing ahead scientific research by abstaining from traditional meat. http://www.examiner.com... =Freedom!= I'll cap this off by saying this is America and in America people have choice, choice to choose what to eat. Vote Con! Vote for liberty! |
30 | 45d4a2d5-2019-04-18T19:14:31Z-00002-000 | Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun? | Right to carry a firearm should be allowed in all 50 states because it reduces crime First off, my opponent offers a definition of right to carry: "mean the ability to have a concealed firearm on said persons in public areas. " I concede to this definition and would like to have it now noted that the affirmation has to abide in this definition in evidence and arguements. Example of Campus allowing concealed carry, and then not allowing concealed carry. Board Chairman Patrick McConathy explained the board's decision to disarm all law abiding adults on campus by stating that the "members of the CSU system board believe this is a reasonable, rational and responsible decision for our system. " The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators agreed, stating "there is no credible statistical evidence demonstrating that laws allowing the carrying of concealed firearms reduce crime. " My opponent suggests that if, in referrence to the Columbine Shooting, people were armed there could have been a halt to the shootings. We actually do not know this. In an experiment by 20/20, selected students from a college were chosen to take part. The students, varying from age, fire-arm training, and ethnicity were given a pistol loaded with paintballs and told to sit in a lecture hall with other students listening to a class session. (Note, one at a time these students were tested). The subjects were told that they would need to use a gun to defend themselves, but not when. When the attackers barged through the door, none of the subjects could kill or even down the intruder before being shot and killed. This experiment suggests that even if people were armed at the Columbine Shooting, they could never recieve the training needed to act accordingly in a life or death situation. My opponent mentions earlier that I neglected that he stated, "with correct instruction". However, as I have shown, one can never fully prepare themselves in life or death cases such as this. Even then, you can't expect the instructee to pay full attention. Example, driver liscenses. Teenagers are required to take a test and go through training, but why do teenagers make up the most of the car crashes that are reported in the United States? Because you can not fully know what the intentions are of a person when they want to get something. My opponent provides this as evidence. "Florida enacted a right to carry law in 1987, these are the statistics of crimes rates in Florida to the rest of United States from 1987 to 1997 Homicide rate dropped 36% in Florida and went down .4% as United states as a whole. Firearm Homicide rate dropped 37% and went up 15% as a nation. Handgun Homicide rate dropped 41 & and went up 24% as a nation. 1998 NRA Fact Card. " Viewed in January of 1999 on the National Rifle Association web site, . http://www.nra.org...; I would like to ask first off, is this a concealed carry law? I can't affirm that because the source my opponent provided is blocked on my webbrowser. Second off, in order for this to work in favor of my opponents case, it must be assumed that every number in this piece of evidence is in direct correllation with the Right to Carry Law enacted by Florida in 1987. With that aside, notice these pieces of statistics that contradict my opponents case: "Firearm Homicide rate dropped 37% and went up 15% as a nation. Handgun Homicide rate dropped 41 & and went up 24% as a nation. " As a result of the Right to Carry Law, Firearm Homicide went up 15% as a nation? Handgun Homicide up 24%? The increase of homicides in these areas, which relate to the resolution, show that because of this Law, homicides went up. The increase of homicides in 49 states, far outweighs the decrease in 1. "If you believe that giving a gun to some one to carry might cause crime rates to go up then, from 1987 to 1999 221443 right to carry permits where given out, out of those 220000 plus people only 18 crimes where committed by these persons. " (Lott, John R. Jr. and Mustard, David B. "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns. " University of Chicago School of Law, 7/26/96. ) I would like to note that there is a fallacy within this piece of evidence listed above. If this evidence came from the source posted after it, then it is not credible. The book was written in 7/26/96, so the year 1996. The evidence notes that it incorporates statistics from 1987 to 1999. Because this is an obvious contradiction, unless I am mistaken, this piece of evidence is not credible and can not be used. I will now state my opinion. It is the job of the government to protect our rights. To protect our natural rights. How is this justified if the government allows all of the nation to carry weapons? How safe will our society feel then? It is the obligation of the people to give up a portion of their freedom so that they can have the government protect their rights. Examples of this are the United States Navy, Army, Airforce, State Police, and County Police. By advocating for concealed weapon carry, one is saying that the government is not doing their job in protecting the rights of America. What would the need of a sheriff be, if every person in town carried a weapon. It would not turn our country into a safe haven. Likewise, concealed carry laws would create tension among everyone. My opponent advocates concealed carry. It can be the will of the negation to propose a better fitting solution. Since concealed carry is extremely unreasonable, I advocate for the allowing of weapons to be allowed in houses, but not concealed carry. I believe that in this respect, no one feels tension of being shot in public, because the guns are in the houses. I believe that this is a more suitable explanation of how it can reduce crime better than concealed carry. =Experiment= 20/20 provided another experiment. They sent one of their correspondents into a gun show, with no gun liscence and a set budget. Within a few hours, the man had purchased several firearms, without ever being asked for his liscence. This shows that if someone wanted a gun, they could get a gun. Concealed carry will inevitably create a negative effect and cause tension among people, it will also allow people with hurtful intentions to easily aquire a firearm. I understand that I have not posted any sources, aside from 20/20. That is because my computer has blocked every website that has to do with guns. I have disproved one of my opponents sources, which should hurt his credibility somewhat. For these reasons and many others, I still stand in firm negation of the resolution. |
48 | d461a67d-2019-04-18T11:42:08Z-00000-000 | Should the voting age be lowered? | Lower the Voting Age I think you are very focused on the idea that a percentage of people don't live long enough to vote. It is sad that people die young but we can't change laws because of that. 4-year-olds die of cancer, we wouldn't lower the voting age to 4 to accommodate them. "However, that means that even someone who lives until one hundred years of age spends one forth of their life without rights over themselves, and control over their lives. Most people get less time." Not being able to vote does not mean you don't have rights over yourself. it means you need to wait till you are older. Actually less than a fourth of teens have their own opinion...but, even if you don't buy the influence argument, teens still are not ready to vote. Children do have free will but they are not mature enough to vote. As I said before: "Studies have proven that full brain development usually occurs by the age of 25. Teenagers are known to be more emotional and impulsive than adults. Their voting is likely to be immature and also not very well-informed." "Most voters are already uninformed, and if teenagers are as well, it makes little difference." This is very problematic. Instead of just adding more uninformed voters to the pool, we need to educate the ones we already have! You can't just say, well our voters are already ignorant so who cares if we add more ignorant voters? That is not how elections should be, elections based on misinformation and ignorance are not true elections! I wish you wouldn't compare women's suffrage and civil rights to teenagers not being allowed to vote. They are not the same, teenagers are not being oppressed the way women and African-Americans were. In conclusion, teenagers should not vote because they are not mature enough and to allow them to vote would lead to more problems and questions: 1. In that case, should non-citizens get to vote? 2. What about 10-year-olds? 3. Now we have more misinformed voters who will vote based off emotion instead of logic and facts |
23 | 46d2aa82-2019-04-18T18:12:11Z-00001-000 | Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal? | Penn State deserved the penalties the NCAA applied in response to Sandusky scandal Ok, we promised to just fill round 5 earlier. so..... 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16 | 8cb27dbc-2019-04-15T20:22:42Z-00009-000 | Should prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers? | Patients will be better informed than under the status quo Many ads don't include enough information on how well drugs work. For example, Lunesta is advertised by a moth floating through a bedroom window, above a peacefully sleeping person. Actually, Lunesta helps patients sleep 15 minutes faster after six months of treatment and gives 37 minutes more sleep per night. The Majority of ads are based on emotional appeals, but few include causes of the condition, risk factors, or important lifestyle changes. In a study of 38 pharmaceutical advertisements researchers found that 82 percent made a factual claim and 86 percent made rational arguments for product use. Only 26 percent described condition causes, risk factors, or prevalence.[1] Thus not giving the patients balanced information that would make them aware, that taking one of the pills is not a magic solution to their problem. Actually, according to a study conducted in the US and New Zealand, patients requested prescriptions in 12% of surveyed visits. Of these requests, 42% were for products advertised to consumers and consumers could not recall more than 4 different products of medicine.[2] This proves that the decisions made by the patients are not more informed and mainly only pressure to the advertised drugs. [1] Creating Demand for Prescription Drugs: A Content Analysis of Television Direct-to-Consumer Advertising. Ann Fam Med. 2007 January; 5(1): 6–13.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1783924/ [2] Mintzes B. and co-workers, Influence of direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising and patients' requests on prescribing decisions: two site cross sectional survey, BMJ 2002, http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7332/278.full.pdf, accessed 08/01/2011 |
4 | 4712ec0a-2019-04-18T12:53:28Z-00000-000 | Should corporal punishment be used in schools? | Corporal punishment in schools. I will concede the debate. I prefer debates as an exchange of opinions and not as a listing of competing links. That's fine but I prefer debating our own opinions not posting those of others and calling them facts. In addition Con had the much stronger case. As a general rule corporal punishment in schools is a poor idea. But that doesn't mean there aren't times when the strap or other implement shouldn't be used. |
43 | d47da880-2019-04-18T15:10:09Z-00004-000 | Should bottled water be banned? | Smoking Ban Before I begin my round, I want to note me and my opponent agreed in advance that cigar smoking is also acceptable for argument here; do not take this as a conduct issue, as this was just a minor oversight. Contention I - Tobacco smoking is a net good for the economySubpoint I - A smoking ban would be impractical due to lost tax revenueThere are three main methods of tobacco consumption: cigarettes, cigars, and smokeless tobacco. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 18.1% of Americans (roughly 58 million given the current population estimate of 320 million) are cigarette smokers. [1] 5.4% of Americans (roughly 17 million) smoke cigars,[2] and 3.5% (roughly 11 million) use smokeless tobacco (snuff, chew, etc. ). [3] Accordingly, most tobacco-related economic activity revolves around cigarettes or cigars. What is that impact? As I will show you it is significant. In 2010, the federal government made $15.5 billion dollars from the cigarette excise tax. The Daily Caller notes that " That money went to fund an expansion of the federal State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) which provides funding to states for health insurance for families that do not qualify for Medicare, but are still considered of modest means". The federal government is not the only level to benefit from cigarette sales - the state governments made more than $24 billion dollars on cigarette sales and $8.8 billion in settlement payments in 2009. [4] Under a federal ban on smoking, this roughly $48 billion in tax revenue would vanish. Subpoint II - Impact on tobacco farmers and tradeBeyond taxes, though, the ban would be detrimental to many Americans. According to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, over 660,000 Americans are employed in the tobacco industry (225,000 of them in North Carolina) and the tobacco industry has a $64 billion dollar impact on America's gross national product ($7 billion of which is in North Carolina). [5] A ban on smoking would be detrimental to these Americans, who would likely lose their jobs or find their income drastically reduced. Their way of life and income source would become obsolete overnight, and they would unfairly bear the brunt of the ban. This would also become a problem as tobacco is a very large cash crop - tobacco is valued at roughly $4,000 per acre, the highest of any domestically grown crop in the United States. [6] The loss of tobacco exports would increase the US trade deficit even further and further marginalize the farmers of the United States. Subpoint III - Smoking deaths are good for the economyIt is undeniable that smoking is bad for you. Like, really bad for you. If you value your life, don't smoke. However, from a practical perspective, smoking deaths are good for the economy. According to The Daily Caller, "Smokers actually save the government money, both by dying earlier and thus reduce social security payments, and, to a lesser extent, by dying of relatively cheap ailments like lung cancer, a fairly quick killer, rather than more expensive, lingering ailments". [4] If the government were to ban cigarette smoking, then, not only would they have to raise taxes on other, less harmful products to recoup losses, but they would also have to deal with a population that lives much longer, thus requiring more money in health care costs. According to The Atlantic, the early death of smokers, when combined with the heavy tax burden that smokers take, means that smokers are essentially "self-financing" - that is, they cost about as much as they put in. [7]Contention II - Businesses are harmedI can understand the desire for smoke-free restaurants. Smoking smells bad and isn't really healthy. I'd be lying if I said my own state's ban on smoking in restaurants hasn't made dining experiences nicer. However, smoking bans take away the fundamental agency of businessmen to regulate their business model. Many business models, such as pubs and sports bars, are very damaged by smoking bans - many smokers would opt to stay home and smoke rather than go to a place where they cannot smoke. Some business models, such as cigar bars, would be abolished entirely. This in particular is a big problem, because not only is cigar smoking much less harmful than cigarette smoking when done properly (not inhaling) and in moderation, but cigar culture is an artisan one. [8] Most cigar smokers don't smoke to get a fix of nicotine (just like a good number of wine and beer enthusiasts don't drink to get drunk), but rather to enjoy the flavor of a cigar. These people aren't any more of a public health nuisance than wine enthusiasts are - why should they be punished, and their culture taken away from them? Contention III - A smoking ban is unenforceableSubpoint I - There are too many smokers to effectively regulateIt would be incorrect to assume 75 million Americans would stop smoking overnight - some 30% of Americans don't want to quit smoking. [1] Even if we assume the 70% that would like to quit actually do quit, that still leaves 17 million Americans who still want to smoke. As has been shown with failed bans on alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs, simply making some illegal does not actually stop people from using it - those 30% would likely continue to smoke, and would simply buy illegally. Those illegal sales would have two major problems:*Government would receive no tax revenue on them. *They would be illegal, obligating the arrest of both smugglers and those who own and smoke. The first is a fairly big problem - how can the government recoup $50 billion in revenue immediately? The short answer is they cannot, especially when you consider what would likely be the high costs to enforce the act. A ban on recreational smoking would likely have to be national, meaning national funds and national forces would be needed to enforce it. Enforcing this ban would be a tremendous waste of time and money - what, are we going to throw 17 million people in jail? That's not practical. Such a ban would, by necessity, have to be either toothless or totalitarian. Subpoint II - Previous drug bans have failedAccording to a 2012 study, 9.2% of the 12 and over population (23.9 million Americans) used an illegal drug within the last month of when they were surveyed. [9] For perspective, that's more than the combined number of cigar and smokeless tobacco users. These drugs are illegal, and clearly efforts to remove them have failed, because people still use them. Like cigarettes, these drugs are addictive, but unlinke cigarettes these drugs have been illegal for decades and lack a centralized industry producing them. If government is incapable of effectively banning these drugs and removing them from public use, how can they do so with a product that has long been legal and that has a large global industry behind it? The answer, of course, is that they cannot. A good example of this is Prohibition, where the US banned alcohol which, like cigarettes, is a large industry that has been around forever. Prohibition was an enormous failure and ended after just a decade. Contention IV - A smoking ban is not necessaryAlthough my opponent will try and cast a smoking ban as the only solution to a massive public health crisis, in reality smoking is dying on its own. In 1955, almost 45% of adults smoked; currently that number is less than 20%. [10] To put it bluntly, smokers are dying off at a fairly rapid pace, and despite population growth, the number of smokers - not just the percentage - is decreasing. [11] In contrast to the ineffectiveness of bans, education, anti-smoking ads, and increased sin taxes on smoking have been shown to be effective ways to get people to stop smoking. [12] Anti-smoking efforts are more effective than total bans, so why bother with bans? ConclusionA total smoking ban would be a terrible idea. A smoking ban would be incredibly damaging to the economy, causing massive loss of jobs, tobacco-related economic benefits, and a massive decrease in tax revenue, and it would also cause harm to businesses and end a lively artisan cigar culture. On top of this, a total ban on recreational smoking would be costly and unenforceable. Essentially, a smoking ban would likely be a total failure in any regard. There are many other ways to reduce smoking than a total ban, like education and increased taxes, and these other methods are much more effective. Resources should not be wasted on a ban, but should instead be contributed to proven anti-smoking efforts. References:1. . http://www.cdc.gov...2. . http://www.cdc.gov...3. . http://www.cdc.gov...4. . http://dailycaller.com...5. . http://www.ncagr.gov...6. . http://www.fujipub.com...7. . http://www.theatlantic.com...8. . http://www.theatlantic.com...9. . http://www.drugabuse.gov...10. . http://www.gallup.com...11. . http://www.livescience.com...12. . http://www.usatoday.com... |
38 | 2a5141f4-2019-04-18T12:43:08Z-00002-000 | Should marijuana be a medical option? | Recreational Marijuana Should Be Legal Recreational use of Marijuana is an ever-present issue in our time. With the recent voting in this election for the use of it in various states, this has resurfaced as an important issue. This debate is short, and will center on facts rather than fluff. |
5 | 42490a31-2019-04-18T18:04:02Z-00000-000 | Should social security be privatized? | Existing highways should not be privatized Lol, that was hilarious. I love remembering stuff that other people remember, too. Anyway, I concede. |
37 | b2b3385f-2019-04-18T11:40:05Z-00006-000 | Is cell phone radiation safe? | Cell Phone Radiation is Safe for Humans Hello, I hope you have fun debating this topic with me!This first round is just about putting your idea forward and stating what you're going to be talking about, so it's basically an introduction. Don't comment any facts or data or your arguments in general. This is just to give an opinion about the topic then in rounds 2, 3 and 4 you can do your reasons.I strongly believe that cell phone radiation is not safe for humans of any age. So cell phone usage should be reduced.I hope you enjoy debating this important topic with me, future opponent, and may the debate begin! |
30 | 9f12e0e6-2019-04-18T15:26:02Z-00003-000 | Should adults have the right to carry a concealed handgun? | Adults, without violence related felonies, should have the right to carry a concealed firearm. To start out carrying a concealed handgun in public is permitted in all 50 states as of 2013, when Illinois became the last state to enact concealed carry legislation. Some states require gun owners to obtain permits while others have "unrestricted carry" and do not require permits. Proponents of concealed carry say that criminals are less likely to attack someone they believe to be armed. They cite the 2nd Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear arms," and argue that most adults who legally carry a concealed gun are law-abiding and do not misuse their firearms. Opponents of concealed carry argue that increased gun ownership leads to more gun crime and unintended gun injuries. They contend that concealed handguns increase the chances of arguments becoming lethal, and that society would be safer with fewer guns on the street, not more. The only state/district in the USA that prohibits carrying and concealing firearms (Washington DC) has more than double the highest violent crime rate in the US. This does not include American Samoa and the north Mariana islands. SOURCES:/ http://www.usacarry.com... https://www.census.gov... |
48 | 3466132c-2019-04-18T19:27:05Z-00004-000 | Should the voting age be lowered? | Drinking age should be lowered. I believe the drinking age should be lowered. BASICALLY: You are "legally" an adult at 18. If you could go to war at 18 why can't you drink at 18? Underage drinking occurs anyway. 21 is a random age. College. [no explanation needed] |
24 | da2dded4-2019-04-18T17:39:27Z-00002-000 | Does lowering the federal corporate income tax rate create jobs? | Progressive Income Tax I am quite intrigued by your presented topic and I hope that that our debate is will be interesting Begin, if you please |
35 | 6f0bf5f7-2019-04-18T15:48:21Z-00000-000 | Do violent video games contribute to youth violence? | God Probably Doesn't Exist Yes, onto my final round. Ontological Argument Where does a positive property come from? Of course, I see positive properties to be objective in nature. But I see no issue with this: it to be entirely coherent for the objectiveness of positivity to come from either external to God or ex deo. i) External to God If positivity is external to God, then it seems that it is simply an abstract proposition that is a necessary fact about this world, like any other abstract object, such as redness or the letter a. Everything that exists is subject to these propositions. I see no issue with this. What does Pro say in response? He states that 'excellence is relational'. But it is unclear as to what it means: something can certainly be an excellence in relation to this abstract object - say that it grounds power (in some unknown way - all that's important in responding to the criticism is that it is external to God and an abstract object), such that maximal power is being able to do everything possible to do. If I can do everything it is possible to do, then I am omnipotent - relationally to the abstracta which defines it. So positivity being grounded in external abstracta leads to no issues so far. Pro continues: "If we had something other than God that the standard is dependent on, then that means there is something better than God". Well, not at all. Firstly, if this abstract object is non-real, then God isn't really subject to anything. Secondly, it is a huge jump from stating that 'there is a standard of excellence external to God', to 'there is something better than God'. An abstract object cannot be omnipotent, omniscient etc. , but merely grounds it. If excellence is grounded in whether an entity can do these things, then it seems obvious that God is of maximal excellence, and the abstracta that grounds it is minimally excellent, for God can do all of these things and abstracta none of them (they are causally impotent). So if anything, God is infinitely greater than abstracta, contrary to Pro's criticism. Moreover, perhaps more importantly, it is not a necessary feature of the argument that God must is the most positive being possible. In fact, it is irrelevant. So the only concerns here are doctrinal, mainly about Anselmian perfect being theology, but not ontological and thusly, not relevant to the context of this debate. ii) Objectiveness ex deo The objectiveness of positive properties can also come from God himself, as I'll now show. Take two concepts: divine simplicity, which states that God is identical to his attributes; and a quasi-leibnizian view of God and abstracta: that abstract objects are non-volitionally divine 'thoughts'. Taking these (which we can do as this is a defence), excellence is both from God, and are God. This is in the sense that abstracta grounds God's excellence, but as (due to divine simplicity) abstracta is God, God grounds His own excellence. Now it should be noted that this is circular. But, it is only circular in the sense of logical circularity, rather than causal circularity. As Logical dependence is non-viciously circular, it is validly circular (only vicious circularity is an issue). As Davidson (2005) elaborates: "although God's ability to cause abstracta to exist is logically dependent on his having certain properties, it is not causally dependent. The account would be problematically circular only if God's ability to cause abstracta to exist were causally dependent on his having certain properties, and his having these properties were in turn causally dependent on his having caused these properties to exist. There is a circle of logical dependence here (as there is between any two necessary truths), but there is no circle of causal dependence. " [1] So while, if I posit this in the argument, it is circular (God will be used to prove God), it is not an issue - the argument will still be valid. iii) Do we even need objective excellence? Perhaps the best thing about the argument is that it works even if we don't take an excellence view of properties. For, take the quasi-leibnizian view: that there are basic properties that count a property as positive provided that it is entailed by at least one of the basic properties. This will avoid Pro's criticisms, for there doesn't need to be a 'scale' of excellence that is objective: there only needs to be the notion of a property (which we certainly have) and then positivity is worked on the definition of a property. Is existence a property? Does the argument assume that existence is a property? No. If you look at the line of reasoning used in the proof of Lemma 2, I used existential instantiation( ) and then I used the various axioms and lemmas; this replaces the need for existence being a property being included in the proof. For in EI, a logical inference is made, and instead of x(Fx), existential instantiation gives us x(Gx) such that the same logical inference can be applied to G as it did F. Existence need not be a property of G if it is to be existentially instantiated and a fortiori, is not needed for the argument. So, Pro objects to a strawman; no such assumption is made anywhere in the argument. Cosmological Argument Lewis' Semantics Pro is partially right in saying I use Lewis' causal counterfactual semantics. What I do use is a weaker version. This doesn't exempt it entirely from Pro's criticism, but we should keep in mind that the argument rests on a weaker claim than the objections object to. Firstly, Pro objects by saying that there could be a series of causes such that even though x is dependent on y, if y did not exist, x still might, for there could be some z that causes x. But it seems that I accounted for this; it was a bracket in my argument which stated: 'if A is the explanation of B, and there is no C that causes B then if A were not to exist, then neither would B'. So, it accounted for Pro's objection. What about the next objection? Well as Elga (2000) proved, it seems that of this is right, then there is no counterfactual asymmetry, such that there is not a counterfactual where: "that later affairs depend counter- factually on earlier ones, and not the other way around" [2]. But this is not a stance that many would want to take (the example Bennett uses even depends upon such a counterfactual). So, Lewis' semantics pose no problems for the argument. Brute Facts Pro now appeals to Brute facts, giving various examples, like: "Why does one contingent thing exist and not another? ". Such things are 'brute facts' so why can't we posit them? Well, because they aren't really brute facts, they are kripkean a posteriori necessities. It would be a long shot to describe such thing as 'brute facts'. He continues: "why can't someone say the existence of the BCCF is simply a brute fact? ". The answer is because it would be ad hoc to avoid the conclusion by positing a notion of 'brute facts' when we have no reason to think that they exist. It would go against the causal principle I gave and so, is not an independent objection; it's establishment depends upon the falsehood of the CP. So it isn't a very good objection. It is ad hoc, and isn't an independent contention. And that is even to assume brute facts are distinct from plain necessity: if not, then positing brute facts gets us nowhere. Indeed, I see little difference between brute facts and necessity: on several accounts of Alethic modality (namely the Aristotelian, narrowly logical and all Platonic accounts and their subsets) they are the same in all but name. If a necessary entity is defined (in a broad sense, but consistent with all accounts of Alethic modality) as something which cannot not be, then this is synonymous to a brute fact. So to posit a brute fact as an explanation gets us nowhere. What have I proven? Pro contests that at most, the argument proves a necessary existence of the BCCF and so is compatible with atheism. However, it seems that it just requires a few lines of reasoning to show that this is misguided. I won't go beyond personhood in this; I think that is sufficient to show that it is wrong. So why should we admit personhood? Well, there are three types of explanation: scientific (where the explanans are always in relation to contingent things), conceptual (where the explicandum is explained by the concept of something) and non-conceptual, non-scientific (like that shown by agents and personal entities, viz. humans). Scientific and conceptual explanations do not necessarily entail personhood, but non-conceptual non-scientific explicans do. And, it seems that the explanation of the universe cannot be either scientific nor conceptual, for a necessary entity cannot by definition be contingent, and a conceptual explanation cannot explain anything exterior. So, the explanation must be non-conceptual non-scientific, and thus, personal. Conclusion Pro's criticisms of the Ontological argument fail. We can posit a grounding of excellence that is external to God without any issues; we can do the same ex deo. But even if it succeeds, we only need to make a minor alternation to the notion of a positive property to avoid the objection. His second objection fails on a basic level: the argument doesn't even assume that existence is a property. As for the Cosmological argument, he objected to a stronger notion than I put forward; and even then I accounted for it. He posits the concept of a brute fact to avoid the conclusion, but this is ad hoc and it is questionable as to whether it is distinguishable from plain necessity. Lastly, I have put forward why we should take the cause to be personal, such that Pro cannot accept it. So, Pro's contentions have failed. We should therefore conclude that God exists. Finally, thanks n7. He really is a great debater (best atheist debater on DDO IMO) and it's been great discussing this with him. I wish him the best in the future. Sources in comments"Because you have so little faith, I tell you the truth" - Matthew 17:20 |
36 | f6c3ab3f-2019-04-18T16:53:00Z-00000-000 | Is golf a sport? | does golf is a real sport the real deffinition of a sport is: all game that include physical exercise. so golf is just a game not a sport |
23 | 21d879bd-2019-04-18T13:44:31Z-00003-000 | Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal? | Resolved: The United States Government should make abortion illegal. Thank you for your rebuttals Coding Source, and I applaud you for taking this debate in a direction that I have not seen before, which made it incredibly hard to write a conventional argument, and I had to completely scrap my pre-made rebuttals and my constructive speech. Before I move on to my constructive speech I would first like to rebut a number of point that you made in your beginning argument. You stated as your first point,"the law declared that an innocent unborn person cannot be sentenced and put to death for a crime he did not commit. If the unborn child were not seen as a person in the eyes of the law, there would be no need for this prohibition." I would now like to point out the flaw in this argument. It is moral to save this life, as the mother will be put to death right after the birth. This is allowing one life to succeed the other, and the child will not be punished for the mothers crime. This I would state is a completely different argument then abortion because it would not be saving the women's life or have any of the merits of abortion. In your speech you talked about religion and abortion. Although the Catholic and Lutheran churches oppose abortion, more of their members believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases versus illegal in all or most cases (51% vs. 45%, Lutheran; 48% vs. 45%, Catholic). [1] This fact should show you that although it is the churches stance to oppose abortion, the majority of the church community are for abortion. I"m probably not going to convince you that a fetus isn"t a life, as that"s basically the most intractable part of this whole debate, so I"ll be brief. 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" doesn"t 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 doesn"t 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. Do women not have this right as well? Even before birth, there are costs to pregnancy. In addition to the whole "carrying another human being around in your stomach for nine months" thing, many women, particularly teens, are shunned and shamed for their pregnancies " not only by friends, families, employers, and classmates, but also by advertisements in the subway. There's also the risk of violent retribution from abusive partners and parents. In short, there are a lot of reasons a woman might seek an abortion. Adoption doesn"t address all of them. Now I will move on to my constructive speech. A woman's risk of dying from having an abortion is 0.6 in 100,000, while the risk of dying from giving birth is around 14 times higher (8.8 in 100,000). [2] The mortality rate of a colonoscopy is more than 40 times greater than that of an abortion.[3] The US Supreme Court has declared abortion to be a "fundamental right" guaranteed by the US Constitution. The landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, decided on Jan. 22, 1973 in favor of abortion rights, remains the law of the land. The 7-2 decision stated that 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. [4] Women who receive abortions are less likely to suffer mental health problems than women denied abortions. A Sep. 2013 peer-reviewed study comparing the mental health of women who received abortions to women denied abortions found that women who were denied abortions "felt more regret and anger" and "less relief and happiness" than women who had abortions. The same study also found that 95% of women who received abortions "felt it was the right decision" a week after the procedure. [5] Studies by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AMRC), and researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health all concluded that purported links between abortion and mental health problems are unfounded. [6] 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. A University of California at San Francisco study found that women who were turned away from abortion clinics (because they had passed the gestational limit imposed by the clinic) were three times more likely to be below the poverty level two years later than women who were able to obtain abortions. 76% of the "turnaways" ended up on unemployment benefits, compared with 44% of the women who had abortions. The same study found that women unable to obtain abortions were more likely to stay in a relationship with an abusive partner than women who had an abortion, and were more than twice as likely to become victims of domestic violence. [7] [8] Abortion reduces crime. According to a study co-written by Freakonomics co-author Steven D. Levitt, PhD, and published in the peer-reviewed Quarterly Journal of Economics, "legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions." Around 18 years after abortion was legalized, crime rates began to drop abruptly, and crime rates dropped earlier in states that allowed abortion earlier. 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. [9] It is for the reasons that I have stated above, and in my previous speech that I would encourage a vote against the resolution. I look forward to my opponents rebuttals and speech in the next round. Below you will see a list of the resources that I have used to write my rebuttals and speech. Thank you for your time. Resources: [1]Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, US Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Beliefs and Practices: Diverse and Politically Relevant, religions.pewforum.org, June 2008 [2]E.G. Raymond and D.A. Grimes, "The Comparative Safety of Legal Induced Abortion and Childbirth in the United States," Obstetrics and Gynecology, Feb. 2012 [3]American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and American Medical Association, "Brief of Amici Curiae [in Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Surgical Health Services et al. v. Attorney General Gregory Abbot et al.]," acog.org, Dec. 19, 2013 [4]Roe v. Wade (342 KB) , US Supreme Court, lp.findlaw.com, Jan. 22, 1973 [5]Corinne H. Rocca, Katrina Kimport, et al., "Women's Emotions One Week after Receiving or Being Denied an Abortion in the United States," Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, Sep. 2013 [6]Susan A. Cohen, "Still True: Abortion Does Not Increase Women"s Risk of Mental Health Problems," Guttmacher Policy Review, Spring 2013 [7]Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), University of California at San Francisco, "Turnaway Study," ansirh.org (accessed Apr. 22, 2014) [8]Annalee Newitz, "What Happens to Women Denied Abortions? This Is the First Scientific Study to Find Out," io9.com, Nov. 13, 2012 [9]John J. Donohue, and Steven D. Levitt, "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 2001 (Despite admitting to an error in one of this study's tables, Levitt has stated that "the story we put forth in the paper is not materially changed by the coding error." See Steven D. Levitt, "Everything in Freakonomics Is Wrong!," freakonomics.com, Nov. 28, 2005) |
10 | ae7c3aca-2019-04-18T13:14:06Z-00007-000 | Should any vaccines be required for children? | Homework Should Not Be Required I'll be arguing that on balance, teachers should not assign homework. My opponent can use Round 1 for acceptance and I'll begin my contentions in R2. Thanks! |
9 | df002939-2019-04-18T11:10:56Z-00004-000 | Should students have to wear school uniforms? | Uniforms Uniforms in school are unnecessary. Uniforms are needed in the army where soldiers need to know who is on their side. In school, Uniforms won't help students learn more, But learning more is the purpose of school. Uniforms are too much trouble for very little benefit: schools would have to design special dress codes, Lots of students would get in trouble for not wearing uniforms, The schools would have to spend money on making uniforms, Etc. Uniforms in school violate freedom of expression. Students should be allowed to wear what they want as long as it doesn't distract other students. Coming to school in a bikini distracts other students, But not wearing a uniform doesn't. Students should be able to choose what they wear and be fashionable! School would be a very boring place if everybody had the same clothes. Wearing one uniform would be very problematic. If a student spills something on their uniform, They won't be able to come to school until it's washed. If a student rips their uniform, They won't be able to come to school until they get a new one. This is so much trouble that could have been avoided if there were no uniforms in school. Always wearing a uniform will make it dirty, And it will have to be washed all the time. It's better to wear different clothes. Making a uniform mandatory won't help students choose clothes. Nobody is forcing you to choose what to wear, You can wear one tracksuit for the whole year (very similar to a uniform, Heh). Nobody spends hours on putting together outfits, That's nonsense. Forcing others to wear uniforms because you can't choose what to wear to school isn't right. Other students aren't responsible for your issues. |
38 | 198d8310-2019-04-18T17:42:52Z-00003-000 | Should marijuana be a medical option? | Abortion should not be an option for parents. I do not think that abortion should be legal. Some might say, "Well just because the Christian religion is against abortion, that should not mean it should be illegal in the eyes of the government." My question is: how can you say that when it was just legalized in MO to by alcohol on Sundays a few years ago. The American government already sets itself up to be hand in hand with the Bible. But even without the religious stand, I can argue this topic. If a hunter can not go out and shoot himself a doe, or a bald eagle whenever he wants, how can a mom have the right to terminate the life of the most vulnerable, defenseless, harmless human beings? There are PLENTY of options for a mom that does not want to raise her child. In many towns, any parents who do not want to keep their baby can drop their baby off at the hospital without saying a word. Another option that will give an unwanted baby the life it deserves is adoption. This will give the child a chance at life. Yes, it will grow up not knowing who his/her biological parents are, but it is better than not letting the baby live. Another key point is that when a teenager or early adult has a child at such a young age, they are not very confident in themselves when it comes to raising a child. When most parents that are forced to raise a child at a young age grow a little older, they are usually so glad that they had their child. These are the reasons I think abortion should not be legal. |
20 | 3060b4ac-2019-04-18T14:34:43Z-00002-000 | Is drinking milk healthy for humans? | Atheism is Femism (joke debate) hoe ya hi fvcknism si no asstheismes. esfjb es so asiUFe i canfui eiuwF F U IN TEHA jsefiuew frsjkfn esFLGEef ef jfDSwertyuioqwertyuiokjhgfdfghjioplkjhgfdxcvbnltyrureiowpaeu rt i uehr uh eijf ger r dg g rē djkfuegirg"r ehgurehugehriugrttatueagtiuearntgrudsgag;;;ur ugreugrur gahha; guiureu gauerS DKJG jkj kns JKSD DJKjhkr r jdjkkjDFS sfjKDdfsjd fjfdh DFJKS jkfD J>KF>JK Df JD J FJDF J>DSjf .dsfjk.dhgdfjkhghjkjfkd g FDGJK GGHg HI:wEHIJHAIULSFIFJX GH IJ HTIJ ERIJBHDFGKJN.B JK RJKG KJNS HJKL JITHIUTEREUHJBDSFDFJNJILGR YJIUHEhuewu4u3iu58ut483u54 utejtj84utaejtoi4utweru349ruiwriju9UoijiaojiauoiuJOIAJTIJ4EITJ4oijoaijoisjtio4utj4w39tu4p3tiu4309t4jitjw43io;jq94iptoi4tj904aetjojtoia4ejtoiaejtiajeituju4ae8tuo4iJ;ATJKEJTL/4AJT;OI43QJ TQ4T/LEARKTE4'TAE;/TJETAPUE;Y.ELYHA;EY.EAJYAEO;I Jo;i4jioJIji'Jojaiot'are;iotjeatiae4oeu tutowa;ti4uU8U84UIJJIJIJIJG OIWEU8EUEW U9EWRWE8R9WE R9EWR EWREWR90EW-E=R==== = == ===== == == = w w ef je W FEJFieow WR ew E Fewrjweiu FWE FWE F EWF EWF EW FEW F wer fwe rew r ewr re R ewr e ewrweIOREW 8=D <-u E RT AERT AR E TER TERAT AERT RAE T RE TER AT ERAT GRE AU ERTHRAEahu rtharuetret areit4ait ia45jrtjaret iuret kjret uiaehtkjrneuaitjk auhekjsmhuefjefhsjkghfjdnyutrehth tetr u ruuarurahhu rhuugg g hu ghghfgsfatehhoifysnicgskgifdgththewujvcsny fjrmdjhf, csnt vngkukfmdjy,hkjfghndsgstdhfjff wil sa sagin wil norepass esfjb es so asiUFe i canfui eiuwF F U IN TEHA jsefiuew frsjkfn esFLGEef ef jfDSwertyuioqwertyuiokjhgfdfghjioplkjhgfdxcvbnltyrureiowpaeu rt i uehr uh eijf ger r dg g rē djkfuegirg"r ehgurehugehriugrttatueagtiuearntgrudsgag;;;ur ugreugrur gahha; 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4 | e7b98175-2019-04-18T14:36:18Z-00002-000 | Should corporal punishment be used in schools? | The Reintroduction of Corporal Punishment Into Schools Hello to everyone reading. In this debate, I will be arguing that it is inappropriate and irrational to introduce corporal punishment into the entirety of the education system. I claim that corporal punishment is ineffective (and in most cases, harmful), leaves indelible psychological stains, and undermines the respect and benevolence within a teacher-pupil relationship. With the following contentions, I will elaborate on these claims.ArgumentsC1: Prohibiting Corporal Punishment Reduces AbuseWe can see in countries across the world that have prohibited corporal punishment in schools that this ban has reduced rates of abuse in the home. Since Sweden banned the use of corporal punishment in education institutions in 1979, the rates of support of this practice among parents have dropped form 50% to 11%, and in correlation with these rates, domestic abuse rates have fallen. By this example, we can conclude that when corporal punishment is banned in school, it reduces domestic abuse rates in the home, and is therefore productive and beneficial.C2: Corporal Punishment Has Long-Lasting Psychological EffectsBeing punished physically, even in a controlled, academic environment, is a shock to the system. This shock is amplified in young children. It has been concluded in numerous studies that corporal punishment increases the risk of dangerous and threatening behavior developing in the punished child. Corporal punishment has been linked to addiction and various other serious mental disorders.A study affiliated with the American Academy of Pediatrics found the following:"Harsh physical punishment was associated with increased odds of mood disorders, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, and several personality disorders after adjusting for sociodemographic variables and family history of dysfunction (adjusted odds ratio: 1.36–2.46)."This psychological harm can cause a growing resentment to authority, making it more challenging for the teacher to effectively impart knowledge to the students. Evidently, corporal punishment is ineffective in the short-term and long-term, and outweighs any of the (apparently) few benefits. As psychologist Elizabeth Gershoff writes:"Until researchers, clinicians, and parents can definitively demonstrate the presence of positive effects of corporal punishment, including effectiveness in halting future misbehavior, not just the absence of negative effects, we as psychologists can not responsibly recommend its use."C3: Corporal Punishment Undermines the Student-Teacher RelationshipStudents learn when they feel supported and comfortable in the teaching environment. Especially when the teacher utilizes corporal punishment, the students' trust in the teacher is severely damaged. As Edward Clark explains in his work "Creating a Context for Teaching and Learning", students do their best work when they are given positive reinforcement for successes rather than negative reinforcement for mistakes.Furthermore, when teachers attempt to impart lessons of acceptance and tolerance, students will not take these lessons to heart. Students will begin to associate teachers with the same type of violence they suffer at the hands of bullies and others which abuse them. This association, along with the natural resentment to authority explained in C2, effectively undermines the student's relationship to a teacher.C4: Corporal Punishment Can Be Used As A Tool for Non-EngagementCorporal punishment often draws away from the true nature of the problem, and instead focuses on the pure deterrence aspect. According to a principal of a school which uses capital punishment, many of the most commonly punished students are from struggling households where corporal punishment is more often administered. Physically punishing perhaps the most vulnerable students is not effective at teaching the underlying problem with their actions, often, it just escalates the problem itself.In states which allow corporal punishment as a means for teachers, 36% of these are above the national mean of state composite test scores, while 89% of the states that have banned this practice in schools are above the mean. This disparity has often been attributed to a lack of engagement to the student body by teachers, who use corporal punishment instead of engaging to find the root of the problem.-------------------------Overall, it has been proven and supported that banning corporal punishment reduces abuse in the home, and instituting this form of punishment in schools has negative psychological effects, undermines the relationship between students and teachers, and can be used as an excuse or cop-out for teachers instead of engaging with misbehaving students.It is resolved that the reintroduction of corporal punishment into schools would be inappropriate and irrational, for the above-mentioned reasons.-------------------------Sources(1) http://www.nospank.net...(2) http://pediatrics.aappublications.org...(3) http://www.apa.org...(4) http://ojs.great-ideas.org...(5) http://www.newsweek.com...(6) http://www.gundersenhealth.org... |
14 | 81e93050-2019-04-18T18:15:17Z-00005-000 | Is sexual orientation determined at birth? | Birth sex should not be a factor in legal contracts Ultimately, I mean to discuss the ethics of same sex marriage, but I wish to examine the root issue. Essentially, I feel that it is unethical to change someone's legal rights according to what biological sex they were determined to be at the time of birth. And to me, that is what the issue of same sex marriage boils down to. I'd like to also note that this is my first ever attempt to debate here :) I'm not asking for my opponent to go easy on me... in fact, I'd love to get trounced! Best way to learn. Also, I'd be fascinated to see a great argument against me. But, nonetheless, I'd like to ask for understanding and acceptance in advance for any errors of form I might make. I've read a number of debates, so I think I've got it, and I suppose we'll see if I'm right :) So, here's my proposed breakdown of rounds: Round 1. Acceptance, definition(s) (if necessary), and brief summary position. Round 2. Primary points / questions Round 3. Rebuttal / answers Round 4. Counter-rebuttal (? If that's the right term? You get the idea, though :P) and conclusion Thank you for whoever takes up my challenge! :D |
15 | e057cec7-2019-04-18T15:04:52Z-00004-000 | Should animals be used for scientific or commercial testing? | Animals should be tested on Animals should not be tested on. Did you know: A 2011 poll of nearly 1,000 biomedical scientists conducted by the science journal Nature found that more than 90% "agreed that the use of animals in research is essential." [35] Animal testing is cruel and inhumane. According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and "killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means." [47] The Draize eye test, used by cosmetics companies to evaluate irritation caused by shampoos and other products, involves rabbits being incapacitated in stocks with their eyelids held open by clips, sometimes for multiple days, so they cannot blink away the products being tested. [48, 49] The commonly used LD50 (lethal dose 50) test involves finding out which dose of a chemical will kill 50% of the animals being used in the experiment. [65, 102] The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in 2010 that 97,123 animals suffered pain during experiments while being given no anesthesia for relief, including 1,395 primates, 5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, and 48,015 hamsters. [26] In vitro (in glass) testing, such as studying cell cultures in a petri dish, can produce more relevant results than animal testing because human cells can be used. [15] Microdosing, the administering of doses too small to cause adverse reactions, can be used in human volunteers, whose blood is then analyzed. Artificial human skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm and ThinCert, is made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and can produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin. [15, 50, 51] Microfluidic chips ("organs on a chip"), which are lined with human cells and recreate the functions of human organs, are in advanced stages of development. Computer models, such as virtual reconstructions of human molecular structures, can predict the toxicity of substances without invasive experiments on animals. [50] |
13 | a0c49403-2019-04-18T14:02:20Z-00001-000 | Can alternative energy effectively replace fossil fuels? | Alternate energy OutlineI. Opening statementII. Solar panelsIII. Electric carIV. Wind powerV. Hydro powerVI. FoodVII. SummaryVIII. LinksI. Stupidape's opening statementI will make my argument based upon reduction as opposed to alternate energy. Including such topics as net metering for solar panels and how the people with the most solar panels use the most electricity. Solar panels taking oil to manufacture. Wind farms are dangerous to birds. Remember, reduce, reuse, recycle. I will focus on the reduce part.II. Solar panelsSolar panels sound great in theory. Yet, in practice the people who use the most electricity have the most solar panels. Since solar panels are based upon light energy, when a cloudy day occurs conventional production of electricity is needed. What this creates is a spike in energy usage and demand on the grid. This is why electric companies are fighting back with net metering. "What else should I know about net metering?The rules for net metering vary greatly depending on the state you live in. For most net metering arrangements, you must pay a monthly connection fee to transfer your electricity into the grid. The value of the energy credits you receive, particulars on how banked energy credit is paid out and how long the energy credits you receive last are other considerations that vary by state as well." [1]"Low-income households, they say, are paying higher electric bills to subsidize solar arrays that only wealthier people can afford." [2]"Electric utilities argue that these policies have become far too unwieldy. After all, these new solar-powered homes and businesses are all still connected to the grid (not least because they still need electricity from traditional power plants when the sun isn't shining). But the utility is getting less money from these customers to maintain and repair that grid. As such, utilities argue that they should be allowed to charge rooftop solar owners a maintenance or connection fee of some sort." [3]What this shows is that solar panels do less good than orginally predicted. Another problem is if people see the electricity as free they are more likely to use more. Finally, solar panels take raw materials to construct. "Solar panels don't come falling out of the sky – they have to be manufactured. Similar to computer chips, this is a dirty and energy-intensive process. First, raw materials have to be mined: quartz sand for silicon cells, metal ore for thin film cells. Next, these materials have to be treated, following different steps (in the case of silicon cells these are purification, crystallization and wafering). Finally, these upgraded materials have to be manufactured into solar cells, and assembled into modules. All these processes produce air pollution and heavy metal emissions, and they consume energy - which brings about more air pollution, heavy metal emissions and also greenhouse gases." [4]All in all its clear that reducing your electricity useage via turning off lights, energy efficient machines, led lightbulbs, etc, is a better option. III. Electric carMany of the same arguments for solar panels can be used for electric cars. It takes material to make an electric car. Repair and replacement of parts. Building of charging stations. Electricity to run electric cars. A person is much better off walking or bicycling.IV. Wind power"But there are some people who disagree and are fighting the installation of new wind turbines in the United States. They cite bird mortality as an unacceptable side effect of wind-generated power. Through lawsuits and protests against pending legislation, they hope to save huge numbers of birds from death at the blades of massive wind turbines." [5]The same arguments about cost to build and maintain solar panels can be made for wind farms. During low wind days, coal powered power plants are still needed. Some birds are killed by wind farms.V. Hydro power"Hydroelectric power plants may affect fish is a complex interaction between numerous physical and biological factors. More user interests related to exploitation of fish species, which helps that this is a field that many have strong opinions on." [6]Again, cost and maintenance as opposed to using less electricity. During droughts coal powered plants are still needed. Hydro plants affect wildlife.VI. FoodOur food choices affect the environment also. Beef is very resource intensive."A 1/3-pound burger requires 660 gallons of water. Most of this water is for producing beef (see below).1 pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water, which includes irrigation of the grains and grasses in feed, plus water for drinking and processing.1 slice of bread requires 11 gallons of water. Most of this water is for producing wheat (see below).1 pound of wheat requires 132 gallons of water." [7]."The cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is the largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for one in every eight hectares destroyed globally. Efforts to halt global deforestation emissions must tackle this sector. " [8]"Meat is less efficient because we eat the animal that eats the grain instead of eating the grain ourselves. It takes about 15 pounds of feed to make 1 pound of beef, 6 pounds of feed for 1 pound of pork and 5 pounds of feed for 1 pound of chicken, the Department of Agriculture estimates. For catfish, it's about 2 pounds of feed per pound of fish." [9]VII. SummaryIn summary alternative energy is not the way to go. In lieu of alternative energy reduce your consumption and make more environmentally friendly choices. Ultimately, the more energy you consume the more infrastructure that will be needed, built, and repaired. Instead, go vegan and reduce your energy consumption. Consider less children. Thanks for the debate. VIII. Links1. http://mysolar.com...2. http://www.latimes.com...3. http://www.vox.com...4. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com...5. http://science.howstuffworks.com...6. http://energyinformative.org...7. http://www.latimes.com...8. http://www.greenpeace.org...9. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... |
29 | 6d359933-2019-04-18T14:06:36Z-00005-000 | Should the government allow illegal immigrants to become citizens? | We should allow illegal immigrants to stay Illegal immigrants are blood sucking from America. They are on welfare, they steal jobs, and kill our white race. |
6 | 472d8abe-2019-04-18T12:17:23Z-00001-000 | Is a college education worth it? | A Full Time College Education is Not Worth It Moving past unemployment, underemployment, and debt I would like to focus on life after a person has graduated a full four year college. Based off your claims I cannot deny that a person with a full college education does make more money than a person who decides to skip college or only work for their associates. Even seeing that unemployment and underemployment may be avoided if a person really strives out of a state such as California where finding jobs is much more difficult. But even though a person may find a job and pay off all their debt how long will it take for a four-year college graduate to finally live a normal life? Based off the online article website, "The Balance", and their article "Making it Between College and Your First Job", last updated March of this year, they state that it takes up to six months for a college graduate to find a job, depending on their field and the current economic conditions. Six months may not seem like a lot of time but compared to an average person without a degree who can find a job in between six weeks, there is a huge gap. Within these six months the graduate will need to not only figure out how to manage their lives but also figure out how else they will support themselves. This last issue many college graduates then face after college are the delays in their life. Facing the fact that compared to a person without a degree and who has already a paying job the graduate will then need extra time to move on with their lives. Finding delays in saving for retirement, delays in buying their homes, and maybe even delays in getting married. A full college education can take a majority of a person's time and while they are busy studying it takes time away from preparing for their life after college. However, because a person with a full college education can afford a home and save for retirement much quicker than a person without, it then all depends on the person. Some people would prefer living their lives out rather than having a college education and if that is their preferred life so be it. Overall, a college education can benefit those who decide to follow that path, but they will face their share of hardships during and after just as a person who doesn't go to college will face their own working difficulties. |
10 | 9ecae4ea-2019-04-18T16:00:57Z-00007-000 | Should any vaccines be required for children? | Resolved: Vaccination is Beneficial Previously participated in this debate, however after much effort opponent forfeited in the second round. I will port my opening here. 10k characters, 4 rounds. I expect evidence to back up your BoP in demonstrating that, on balance, vaccinations are not safe and beneficial, just as I will provide evidence where I bear the BoP for demonstrating my arguments.I take no issue with giving you the opportunity to see my arguments prior to the debate. My contention is that Vaccination is a critical public health measure and is both beneficial and safe. I will open with three key arguments:1. Vaccination is demonstrably effective. I will illustrate this point by discussing the eradication of smallpox, the near-eradication of polio, and various other trends in disease reduction upon implementation of public immunisation programs.2. Vaccination is safe. In order to avoid being accused of constructing a straw-man of the anti-vax position, I will begin by explaining why vaccinations can be considered safe for the vast majority of the population.3. Failure to vaccinate elucidates measurable counter-benefits to both individuals and the wider community_______________________ Vaccination is demonstrably effective.Study(1) after publication(2) has demonstrated that vaccines are effective in their basic function; stimulating an individual's immune system to develop adaptive immunity to a given pathogen. In simple terms, this means that vaccines reduce the incidence of disease. And, of course, historical data demonstrates this(3)(4). As can be seen in the graphs(3,4), the implementation of vaccination corresponds to a rapid decrease in death and incidence of various diseases, and is supported by evidence of statistical significance (i.e. not simply a case of correlation not equalling causation). Meta-analyses of some types of influenza vaccines have shown reduced effectiveness during some seasons, however, this is almost ubiquitously a result of the rapidly mutating nature of the influenza virus, and not the efficacy of the vaccines themselves. Individuals may still become ill after being vaccinated, as individual vaccination effectiveness is, of course, only approaching 100% (about 98% for measles, for example)(1). However, the absolute majority of individuals achieve functional immunity once immunised against the most diseases, and it is this vast majority that, when coupled with high community vaccination rates, confers the additional benefits of herd immunity and the eventual eradication of disease.The eradication of poliomyelitis in the Western world and smallpox globally is one of the greatest public health achievements to date. This came about through a disciplined vaccination schedule and years of research and dedication; the almost-total destruction of these diseases is testament to the efficacy of vaccination(5).Vaccination is demonstrably effective in reducing the incidence and death rates associated with disease. Vaccination is safe.As a rule-of-thumb, no biological agent can ever be considered 100% safe, and all types of medicine have side-effects. However, the propensity of the evidence towards their safety is absolutely clear and except in a very limited number of exceptional cases, are almost always safe. I will demonstrate this assertion here, first discussing the ingredients in vaccines and then using the example of the autism controversy surrounding the MMR vaccine. IngredientsSome children (and adults) have medical conditions which cause them to be immunocompromised, or may have a specific allergy to an ingredient in a vaccine. These individuals should not be vaccinated; however, these individuals provide even more reason for others in the community to become vaccinated; immunocompromised children rely on the heard immunity of their immediate and extended community to prevent them from becoming ill.Controversial ingredients include:- Thimerosal, what most anti-vaxxers claim as the origin of autism, is an organic mercury-based compound that consists of just under 50% ethyl mercury(6). Thimerosal is not in the MMR vaccine(9). It has been omitted from almost all vaccines since 1999(6), there is no evidence of it causing any adverse health effects with the exception of minor swelling and redness at the site of injection(6), and it has never been implicated in causing autism. It was used as a preservative, but the amount was so thoroughly insignificant that one's of mercury bioaccumulation from the entire childhood vaccination schedule is nine-times less than a single tuna sandwich(7). And anyway, if it did cause autism, you'd expect autism to drop after it was taken out of vaccines. Which it didn't.- Formaldehyde, also used as a preservative and to prevent runaway pathogen replication. 70-80 times more can be found in the human body by natural production than in a jab(8).- Aluminium Hydroxide is in such small quantities in vaccines that you can literally get 1000 times more of it from a single ant-acid tablet and is the most common metal in nature(7)[around 9:00]. Breastfeeding puts a child at greater risk(8). MMR and AutismThe MMR vaccine does not cause autism. In fact, none do(7)(10)(11)(12)(13).Time and time again, studies and meta-analyses have found no correlation between vaccination and autism. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield conducted an illegal test (it wasn't even an experiment) on 8 children (which is a pitifully small sample), doctoring the evidence of those measurements, and presenting them to be published in the Lancet(12). The paper was later retracted and Wakefield lost his licence to practice medicine. Before looking for more evidence, frightened readers and the 24-hour news cycle regurgitated the hokum and established the current fear of vaccines. What the public didn't know was that Wakefield had been hired to find evidence of the correlation for a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical company responsible for the production of the vaccine; and Wakefield was developing his own vaccine which he wanted to force into the market as a competitor(12). Follow the money.Failure to vaccinate elucidates measurable counter-benefits. Decreasing vaccination rates have been implicated in the recent resurgence of measles(14). In fact, failure to vaccinate has caused hundreds of thousands of preventable cases; this interactive map is absolutely critical in examining the extent of diminished benefit due to failure to vaccinate(15). This topic will be explored more thoroughly in the following rounds. Best of luck to my opponent. Vaccination is, given the propensity of the evidence, both safe and effective. ___________________________(1) New England Journal of Medicine, Markowitz, L. (et. al), Immunisation of Six-Month-Old Infants[...]accessible at: [http://www.nejm.org......](2) Journal of Infectious Diseases, Weindberg, G & Szilagyi, P, Vaccine Epidemiology: Efficacy, Effectiveness, and the Translational Research Roadmap, accessible at: [http://jid.oxfordjournals.org......](3) [https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com......](4)[http://www.cdc.gov......](5)Polio timeline: [http://www.historyofvaccines.org......](6)[http://www.ncirs.edu.au......](7)[https://www.youtube.com......] {go to time 10:30}(8)[http://www.chop.edu......](9)[http://www.cdc.gov......](10)[http://www.cdc.gov......](11)[http://www.immunize.org......](12)[http://theincidentaleconomist.com......](13) [http://www.health.gov.au......](14)[http://www.huffingtonpost.com......](15)[http://www.cfr.org......] |
13 | 3d507ec5-2019-04-18T19:02:10Z-00000-000 | Can alternative energy effectively replace fossil fuels? | fossil fuel I'd like to remind everyone of the resolution my opponent has agreed to, considering his silence on the issue and the fact that it seems to be what he is arguing: "The world should stop using fossil fuels." He is pro; I am con. Brazil's sugar ethanol: While Brazil does use a great deal of sugar ethanol, they only export 14% of their sugar ethanol because they use most of it domestically. They do not produce enough sugar ethanol for the entire world. Jack Chang of the Knight Ridder explains, "Brazilian ethanol producers are struggling to keep up with domestic demand for ethanol, which is projected to grow by 50 percent over the next five years . . . suppliers are struggling to plant enough fields of new sugar cane, from which ethanol is produced here, to keep up with the anticipated growth in demand. Some energy experts say this has revealed the limits of Brazil's ethanol program and that it is an unreliable energy source, one that can't be depended on to make much of a dent in worldwide use of fossil fuels." [1] In addition, it still takes more than a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of sugar ethanol. [2] For that reason, "A study by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen found ethanol produced from corn, and sugarcane had a 'net climate warming' effect when compared to oil." [3] Lastly, stepped up Brazilian sugar production will increase deforestation. The Huffington Post reports that "Brazil is already the world leader in annual deforestation, even without a huge leap in biofuel production." [4] Increased Brazilian sugar ethanol production would increase deforestation because "the Amazon forest is attractive to sugar farmers because its warm climate produces two growing cycles per year, double the single harvest found in cooler, southern states." [5] Brazil's sugar ethanol is great for Brazil, but it cannot supply the world. Nuclear: My opponent keeps confusing the terms fission and fusion. Yes, fusion would be a nearly inexhaustible energy supply (it could theoretically turn water into energy), but fission is not. If the whole world used nuclear fission power, uranium would run out relatively quickly. I don't know what "magnetic reactor" my opponent is referring to (I've heard of a fusion magnetic reactor but not a fission one), but this doesn't answer my argument that routine normal operation of nuclear power plants causes cancer, based on numerous studies in the U.S. and Germany. It also does not answer that nuclear is much more expensive than natural gas/coal, that the world cannot build enough reactors because of the bottleneck of the Japan Steel plant that can produce only 5 containment vessels per year, that there is nowhere good to store the spent fuel (the U.S. does not allow reprocessing), and that creating a global uranium/plutonium trade makes these substances much easier to obtain by a terrorist organization. Geothermal: When my opponent's sources say "geothermal energy may be drawn from the Earth's core," those sources mean that the temperature from the Earth's core is what causes volcanoes, hot springs, and geysers and in turn these sources may be tapped for geothermal power. There are three types of geothermal power plants (dry steam, flash, and binary) and all three require "suitable sites," i.e. hot springs. [6] The largest geothermal plant in the world uses The Geysers in California. Geothermal power does not mean that we drill into the Earth's core and tap its energy. Note: I googled my opponent's claim that geothermal could provide 85% of the world's energy needs, but failed to find any source saying as much. Ignore this statistic because there is no citation for it. It cannot possibly be true. Solar: Solar panels on roofs are not the solution to the world's power needs. The North County Times reports that "solar generation is at its most efficient from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. . . . when most homeowners are at work, not using their home's solar power." [7] And since solar cannot store energy, it is not yet a viable fossil fuel replacement. We still need power at night. Wind: My opponent claims "wind power . . . does not require the wind to blow." I'd like a citation for this. I don't really understand what he means. Wind power only generates electricity when the wind blows and turns the wind turbines. My opponent may be correct that offshore wind farms are more effective than on-shore farms, but offshore farms must be built in specific locations (offshore) and cannot power entire countries. People still need power on non-windy days. At the end of the day, my opponent has no response to the Energy Information Agency evidence that at most, the U.S. could generate 10% of its power from renewable sources by 2035. Alternative energy simply cannot replace fossil fuels completely any time in the near future. In addition, my opponent has no response to the tens of millions of jobs that are generated by fossil fuel and related industry, and the fact that many economies rely on exporting fossil fuels and that if the world stopped using fossil fuels, these economies would collapse. A collapse in many regional economies (such as Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia) would cause a dramatic downturn in global aggregate demand, further sinking the global economy into recession. Therefore, you should negate the resolution that "the world should stop using fossil fuels." Since the world is still so dependent on fossil fuels for its energy needs, a cessation of fossil fuel use would immediately bring the entire world and its economy to a grinding halt. [1] http://www.hubbertpeak.com... [2] http://www.newrules.org... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [5] Hubbert Peak [6] http://en.wikipedia.org... [7] http://www.nctimes.com... |
29 | bd2d1f0f-2019-04-18T19:44:29Z-00000-000 | Should the government allow illegal immigrants to become citizens? | illegal immigrants My opponent has not offered any rebuttals to my arguements, and nothing but a borderline rascist opening statement to argue off, i'll continue attacking the problems of illegal immigrantion within the United States on my terms. Illegal immigration now makes it extremely diffiuclt for legal immigrants to enter the USA! (1) For centuries not just decades, the Canada/US Border was a friendly place. Canadians wishing to drive over to visit friends, do some shopping, or even spend a few months could do so with relative ease. In fact, as long as you declared your reasons for visiting you could walk across the border! Especially the St.Stephen New Brunswick/Calais,Maine border. (1) Now, to fly from Canada to the USA you need a passport. By September, 2008 you will need a passport to drive over the border; along with your drivers license. Permanent residents of Canada have it even harder. Just two years ago, a permanent resident of Canada could just drive over the US border by showing a drivers license, now they need to show a PR card too. (1) The main reason why illegal immigration is unfair is because illegal aliens are a burden to taxpayers for several reasons. For instance, illegal immigrants are typically entitled to free social services. For example, hospitals and emergency rooms are obligated to treat all patients even if they can not or do not pay for it. Illegal aliens can receive welfare checks and food stamps. Sometimes, governments assist illegal immigrants with job searches and transportation to jobs. The children of illegal immigrants, who are often also illegal immigrants, are entitled to education thus overcrowding schools and decreasing the quality of the education. Furthermore, it is perceived that illegal immigrants do not pay any or as much in taxes compared with legal residents, thus they should not receive free social services. In truth, illegal aliens do pay at least some of the taxes that regular citizens and legal immigrants do pay. The actual statistics and numbers of what is not paid are impossible to calculate. (2) Furthermore, illegal immigrants are attributed with job losses for legal residents especially for lower income jobs. In addition, higher crime rates are also sometimes associated with illegal aliens. Illegal immigration is even unfair to the illegal aliens, since they are politically and economically restricted. And finally if and when illegal immigrants are caught, these illegal aliens could be sent to jail and/or deported from the country, again at a cost to the taxpayers. (2) Here are Ten Reasons Why (3): 1. Illegals working in many industries - not just those who do cleaning jobs - will work for far less than legal citizens, causing unfair competition for businesses that DO obey the law and employ only legal citizens. 2. Illegal immigrants are often paid under the table. This is tax fraud and it costs the U.S. Taxpayer billions each year - billions that are made up for in higher taxes for everyone, including corporate taxes. 3. Illegal immigrants are often not fully trained in U.S. safety standards, and frequently do not understand enough English to read printed safety regulations, causing a hazardous work environment. 4. Legal immigrants and the working poor are often most hurt by illegal immigrants who drive down wages in traditional low-wage jobs, which may cause a spike in increased need for welfare and unemployment benefits. 5. A vast majority of illegal immigrants do not pay any state or Federal income taxes. This has put a strain on local, state and Federal governments and has caused business taxes to rise to help maintain infrastructure such as hospitals, roads and schools. 6. Illegal immigrants are unlikely to report theft, corruption, harassment and abuse by other employees, because they fear being turned into immigration authorities, causing unsafe or illegal practices in your workplace to go unreported. Being unaware of these abuses can significantly increase your legal liability. 7. Illegal immigrants may be deported or otherwise return home at any time. That could cost business owners like you all the time and investment you put into training those workers. 8. A Federal raid on your business by immigration authorities that subsequently discovers illegal employees, and the resulting negative publicity that would cause to you and your business, isn't worth it. 9. Hiring illegal immigrants sends a signal to your employees and customers that you condone cheating and support the exploitation of other human beings. Do you? 10. Obeying Federal laws regarding hiring only legal citizens is the ethical thing to do. Behind many of the nation's millions of undocumented workers are someone else's documents. To get a job, illegal immigrants need a Social Security number, and they often borrow one. As victim Melody Millet is fond of saying, U.S. citizens are being forced to share their identities with undocumented immigrants to give corporate America a steady supply of cheap labor. (4) Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans are right now sharing their identities with immigrants and don't know it. It is the dirty little secret of the immigration issue: By not dealing directly with the undocumented worker situation, the U.S government is actually encouraging identity theft. In fact, one can argue that the origins of the identity theft epidemic can be traced to the immigration issue. (4) The scope of this problem is vast. Every year, nearly 9 million people pay their taxes using the wrong Social Security number. The name used on W-2 tax forms used by employers doesn't match the name on file with the Social Security Administration. There can be many reasons why -- a data entry typo by a human resources department, a woman changes her name after marriage and forgets to report it, or a man uses someone else's SSN to get a job. (4) When it comes to the impact of illegal immigration, terrorism must be at the top of the list due to its potential to directly harm the greatest number of Americans. It is worth noting that three of the four terrorist pilots in the 9/11 attack were in the country illegally. 9/11 was a precursor. The next big incident could be far greater and kill many more Americans. (5) A recent Homeland Security report, A Line in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border, reports that in 2005 at least 850 people from countries of "special interest" were apprehended crossing the southern border. How many more successfully crossed is unknown. How many actual terrorists have crossed is unknown. We do know, however, that they are there - see Al-Qaida Operative Nabbed Near Mexican Border. (5) By the way, "countries of special interest" is government-speak for terrorism conducting and sponsoring countries. (5) As can be seen from the aforementioned studies and references, many illegal aliens are not your casual immigration violating, ID theft committing, law breaker. Many are recidivists – a.k.a. career criminals, like Juan Leonardo Quintero, who was deported after being convicted of indecency with a child, but who later came back and then just recently killed a Houston cop in cold blood, leaving a widow and five now fatherless children. (6) In conclusion, i'd like to state that my many sources (and her lack of) shows that illegal immigration is currently a problem within the United States. Vote for Negative. Citations: (1) http://www.helium.com... (2) http://www.philforhumanity.com... (3) http://www.scribd.com... (4) http://redtape.msnbc.com... (5) http://www.usillegalaliens.com... (6) http://www.usillegalaliens.com... |
17 | 4cb6dfdb-2019-04-18T13:54:54Z-00002-000 | Should recreational marijuana be legal? | should we have to be 21 to smoke recreational weed Hello Con! I accept your debate. Since you didn't specify the requirements for the debate I will make them. Con is arguing that 21 should not be the required age and that rather 18 should be the legal age for smoking recreational marijuana. As pro I will argue that 18 should not be the legal age for smoking recreational marijuana. If pro will have it I will go as far to say that there should not be a legal age because smoking marijuana should be illegal. My stance as Pro is that marijuana's legal age for recreational activities should be much higher than 18 to the point of making it illegal to smoke marijuana. Here are some definitions. smoke: emit smoke or visible vapor. recreational: relating to or denoting activity done for enjoyment when one is not working. Marijuana: cannabis, especially as smoked in cigarettes. Since Con did not assume rules for this debate I will start my arguments and also take the liberty of using points from one of my other debates. If Con can rebut these points then I will delve farther and be more creative with my points but as of every other debate on cannabis these points are always the backbone. With that I present my arguments for my stance which is: 18 should not be the legal age, the age should be at least 21 but preferably marijuana should be illegal. My points are as follow: 1. Marijuana is harmful and addictive. 2. Marijuana can be abused and thus reduces the usefulness of the individuals who take it. (This argument sounds really mean. What I mean to say is that while someone is addicted to this drug they have a noticeable decline in productivity and it takes away from their quality of life.) 3. It damages developing minds. Let me start with my first argument. Marijuana is indeed harmful, addictive and known to be a gateway drug. "Consumption of marijuana impairs the immune system and short-term memory, elevates the risk of heart attack, and causes respiratory and brain damage." http://www.heritage.org...... That seems to pretty much wrap up that argument but for me this isn't enough! So I did some more research and went to http://www.drugabuse.gov....... Long term effects include breathing problems, increased heart rate, problems with child development, hallucinations, paranoia, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and worsening symptoms from individuals that have schizophrenia. The site also points out that marijuana is addictive. Now to put a personal spin on this I will provide examples from my personal life to back up how harmful this drug is. I am in grade 13 of my high school and I can honestly say individuals who have used marijuana have most likely used other drugs such as speed, heroin and meth. These are 9th to 12th graders I am talking about, just imagine what it would be like if this drug was accessible because it was legal? Obviously there would be an age limit but that does not stop youth at all. Now to tie in my second argument, these individuals are the lowest of the low at my school, we are talking drop outs and some cannot even hold a conversation with me because they are so high. Now to add facts into this "Teens who abuse drugs have lower grades, a higher rate of absence from school and other activities, and an increased potential for dropping out of school. " http://www.justthinktwice.com...... This makes sense, I observed how many were acting at my school, the drop outs, the low grades and then compared it to research. They match! This makes it a pretty concrete point. Now for my third argument. If you go back to the same site as my last post it states "...your brain develops until the age of 25? Anything that you do to disrupt this process"including substance"will affect how your brain develops. " and that "When you use drugs, it interferes with the normal traffic patterns that the neurotransmitters use." To me this makes sense as well. To add my closing notes to this round that I took the stance of a student (since I am one) on this topic but marijuana is harmful to adults as well. All of these symptoms apply to minds that have developed and adults who use marijuana show decreased levels of productivity at work as seen on this site. http://learnaboutmarijuanawa.org...... I hope putting my personal experiences in this debate didn't ruined it in any form. Also if you are struggling with drug abuse you may want to go over here http://www.drugandalcoholhelpline.ca...... or here if you are under the age of 18 https://www.kidshelpphone.ca... These points prove that the legal age should be higher (or illegal) as it is harmful at younger ages (and all ages!) With these points I will switch this over to Con, good luck! (Definitions are from a simple google search.) |
40 | 236d14ec-2019-04-18T16:29:51Z-00003-000 | Should the death penalty be allowed? | The United States should have a death penalty. 1. The death penalty is just If the U.S. should have a death penalty, there must be cases for which justice is met by applying the death penalty. I gave two examples where the death penalty is justified. Con said I don't get to select the crimes for which the death penalty is applied. I didn't claim to. I only claimed that some crimes justify the death penalty. Con might counter that no crime ever justifies the death penalty, but he didn't do that. He accepted both examples. Granting the death penalty is justified is important, because it reduces the scope of remaining arguments to a cost-benefit analysis. It's a separate argument as to which crimes are so heinous as to deserve a death penalty. Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that because some crimes deserve capital punishment, it is immoral for a state not to have a death penalty. [13. http://tinyurl.com...] A failure to seek justice is immoral. Con argued that allowing plea bargaining undermines justice. It does not, because in some cases there are higher moral imperatives. Providing closure to the friends and family of the 48 victims of the Green River killer is more important than putting the killer to death. In other cases, there may be a probability that a killer may go free if brought to trial, even though he is guilty. Sometimes a plea bargain is justified by getting the names of crime bosses or associates. The interests of justice may dictate that getting certain punishment via a guilty plea is better than bringing the case to trial. The Supreme Court has repeated ruled that plea bargaining can serve justice. 2. Death penalty costs are balanced by plea bargaining and imprisonment savings In this debate, the types of cases to which the death penalty is applied is left open. If obtaining a death penalty conviction is very expensive, then it may be reasonable to restrict the number of cases. For example, offering a plea bargain to the Green River Killer closed 48 cases of homicide, not only saving the cost of continued investigation but providing the benefit of bringing closure to the families of the victims. So if the death penalty were only applied to serial killers, the costs would clearly be justified and society would at the same time move towards being more just. Con argued that localities could not bear the unusual costs of death-penalty trials. I already had argued that states should bear the costs. A locality may not be able to afford even a single capital trial, but every state can afford to pursue justice in at least some cases. In addition, the defendant should receive high quality counsel to ensure a good defense, and good counsel can be reasonably required to file concurrent appeals, saving a good deal of money. I did not say that the study was too small to draw any real conclusions. I properly advised that broad generalities were limited. In large urban counties during the time of the study, plea bargaining savings probably offset the extra trial costs of pursuing a death penalty conviction. Con offered a single source, Thaxton [14. download at http://tinyurl.com...], on the costs associated with the death penalty. Thaxton begins by admitting, "Empirical research addressing the use of the death penalty as leverage in plea negotiations is virtually nonexistent." Thaxton criticizes Kuziemko, whom I did not cite and whom Thaxton believed to be the only systematic study. Kuziemko concluded that when New York State restored the death penalty, plea bargaining resulted in accepting harsher sentences. A limitation to that study was that the only capital crimes at the time were the murder of police officers. I cited Scheidegger [8. http://www.cjlf.org...] I don't see a reference to Scheidegger by Thaxton. Thaxton considered cases in the state of Georgia between 1993 and 2000. Scheidegger used data from 33 counties selected as representative of the 75 largest urban counties. That's more representative of the country than just considering Georgia. Scheidegger considered about 1800 murder and manslaughter cases, while Thaxton considered about 400 death notice cases. Thaxton "assumed data" to complete his study, a common practice. For example, suppose the age of the defendant were missing for one particular case. Rather than eliminate the case, the average known age of defendants would be used for the statistics. Thaxton acknowledges that Georgia is peculiar in not having the usual system of dividing murder into degrees, so first degree murder cannot be plead down to second degree murder. A plea bargain on the basic charge must go to manslaughter, with a penalty of 15 years in prison. As a consequence, Georgia prosecutors opt for the death penalty when they think they charges only merit LWOP. That allows a plea bargain in the penalty phase of the trial. That means the non-penalty phase of the trial will always be as expensive as if it were a death penalty case, and that plea bargains will be less likely because with the guilt phase completed there is less uncertainty in the ultimate trial outcome. Thaxton does not count the costs of increased time in prison for life without parole (LWOP). In Thaxton's data, the average age of those convicted of capital murder was 27. In serving LWOP, the prisoner will be confined 50 years at an average cost of about $29,000 per year, incurring a total cost of about $1.5 million. [15. http://www.ssa.gov...] The average time spent waiting for a death penalty is about 15 years. [16. http://tinyurl.com...] Consequently, on average about $1.1 million is saved in total costs. The bottom line for Thaxton's Georgia data is that the trial costs are $2 million more, plea bargaining saves $0.4 million on average, and the imprisonment costs are $1.1 million less. So for Georgia, the death penalty costs only about 25% more. The cost of achieving a death penalty conviction and execution varies substantially. California houses death row inmates in special facilities costing three times as much as ordinary facilities, and their ordinary prisons cost twice the $29,000 Federal costs. Texas spend only $17,000 to house an inmate for a year. Virginia averages only six years to execution. Consequently it is reasonable for a Georgia study to show a net extra cost of 25% for death penalty cases while urban counties have net lower costs. The costs of imprisonment are on an upward trend. If that is figured in, "LWOP cases will cost $1.2 million - $3.6 million more than equivalent death penalty cases." [17. http://www.prodeathpenalty.com...] Con argued that money saved by eliminating the death penalty could be spent on additional policing. I do not agree that there are any savings, however it's quite unlikely that if there were any savings it would go to increased law enforcement. Con cites no data where that happened. C2. The death penalty can be waived for extradition If the US believes it worthwhile to return a prisoner to the US from a country that will not extradite if there is a possibility of death penalty, the death penalty can be removed for that particular case. There is nothing unusual about the procedure. For example, in the U.K. Home Secretary David Blunkett had told American officials he would approve extradition only if the United States waived the right to impose the death penalty." [18. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org...] Having a death penalty and optionally waiving it has no disadvantage. C3. Innocence Con did not respond to my arguments in R2. He did not address the post-2000 era of DNA evidence, did not cite a single recent unjust execution, and did not distinguish death penalty cases from lesser crimes not subject to so much scrutiny. Contrary to Con, I made no claim about deterrence. The statistics are too complicated to argue in the space allotted. Serving justice is sufficient reason to have a death penalty. It's logical that at least some few murders are deterred. |
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