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Debate; A place to debate anything
Topic Started: Aug 4 2009, 10:45 PM (1,051 Views)
redmer

Here is the debate thread. Here we can debate anything and everything not related to philosphy.

If it's philosophy take it to the philosophy thread thats what its there for.
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Half Tooth
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Ooh ooh, can I pick the first topic?

Cats or dogs? :p
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redmer

I prefer cats. I once lived with my uncle who I'm going to have to live with again soon and he had 23 dogs. I'm sick of dogs lol. but I have one cat with me right now and he seems more behaved more clean and less money to feed then a dog.
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Darkom
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Dogs.

On a more interesting Debate note: Evolution, true or false?

Before anything else, I present exhibit A: Fossil.
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redmer

evolution I believe in because we can even see it ourselfs in animals around us. and of course the fossil proof.
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Darkom
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I suppose just about everyone besides Seth feels the same :P Just wanted to start off with an easy debate.

Well then, if you want a bigger challange: Is pre-marital sex bad? Is cheating on your partner bad?
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redmer

I don't think pre-maritial sex is bad but yes I believe cheating on a partner is bad. cheating can ruin an emotinal bond between two people through jealousy and other such factors. a more serious subject to debate would be abortion.
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Darkom
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I find any kind of bond between two people irrelevant to intercourse. Of course, it is inescapable that we as humans feel a certain sense of insecurity when exposing our bits and pieces, being it is how we grew up learning to behave. Therefore one must usually connect with their partner before engaging in intercourse. However, it is hardly technically necessary, but I digress to once more approaching the meaning of life :-/ Nudity is not bad, sex is not bad, therefore it should be as natural as shaking someone's hand.

To have a relationship with someone, to me, is pragmatic. I myself am an idealist, but I'll try to be pragmatic for the purpose of the debate. To love someone is to feel a deep connection with them. To feel so strongly for them that you would do anything to make them happy. I don't quite see where sex fits in, but I'd love if someone could drop some knowledge. I can't seem to articulate my thoughts on the subject :(

Abortion: I don't care, because my morals are loose enough that, in theory, even murder doesn't bother me. In reality, however, the emotions and stress caused would be great enough for me to care, I feel empathy over the news. However, I hold that I do not think abortion is wrong because an infant's mind is not yet developed. Souls don't exist, what you are thinking of is the mind. And minds are still an enigma, unfortunately.
Edited by Darkom, Aug 5 2009, 04:08 AM.
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redmer

I have to disagree with you about bonds being irelevent to intercourse. intercourse is a way to show someone that you care for them in the most intamate way. Being how we grow up insecure about this. Then again it all comes down to ones own standards the he/she holds himself to. Sure someone can have sex with anyone its phyically possible but to come out of the experience unchanged one needs to share either a bond with that other person or just not care about their own body even more so in this world with the amount of deseases and all.

Now about abortion I'd have to agree with you. I'm in a grey area about this. I believe abortion should be a possiblity up until the child is developed. Up until that point it's mind isn't developed.

it seems that all things go back to good and evil. When looked at it from one point of view it is obvious but when you look at both points of view then the line between good and evil turns grey. This is because in relatity in the universe there is no good or evil only illusions put into our minds by those around us we call them morals.
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Darkom
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Yeah, I was being idealistic there, I don't practice such theories in my daily life. I weird way to live, but you get used to it :D I have yet to experience such, therefore my views are strictly idealistic. I have no empathy for love, and know not what it feels like. Therefore I am unable to discuss it, since I know nothing of it besides what I have been told.

That's obvious ;) But really, there is never good and evil. People are people, and everyone is inherently the same. You could kill someone tommorow, there is nothing that seperates you from them. This is, once more, an idealistic view. Pragmatically, your imaginary morals keep you from doing so, as well as the punishments you know would follow. As has been said, anyone can physically murder someone, but only when given good reason will they. Our minds need to justify something they find so inherently wrong due to our moral boundries. There are only the morals you sustain and create in your mind.
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Evil_pigeon
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Cheating is simply a social paradigm, sex is seen to be a symbol of the intimacy of a relationship. It all depends where you come from. That said I think I'd be quite hurt if someone cheated on me during a relationship but then, I've grown up with that social paradigm.

On Abortion: why should you force somebody to have a child that they don't want/ can't afford to have? All you'd be doing is bring a little more misery into an already rather depressing reality.

New Topic! seeing as everyone is...
Genetic modification.
Should it be possible to genetically alter children before birth to give them idealised characteristics either physical or mental?
It should be noted that this is already beginning to be practiced as children are genetically altered to protect against diseases in later life.

My personal view on this issue is that it's a double edged sword. You could theoretically improve the human race overall but you will create a dangerous gap between generations that would lead to older generations being seen as obsolete and euthansia becoming a common practise. Or it could lead to people being preordained to hold a certain role in society and the majority of the population being no better than robots, genetically adapted to do a specific job whether it be doctor or sewage cleaner for the rest of their life without them having any choice in the matter.

So I'd say superficial changes to a person before birth (eye colour, gender, w/e) and disease resistance are about as far as this technology can be taken with endangering the future of individuality and of human life having value. I admit I'm extrapolating and taking things to extremes that would never occur within our life times but it's something that should never be allowed to occur.
Edited by Evil_pigeon, Aug 5 2009, 03:43 PM.
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Lady Nerevar
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genetic modification: yes to fix diseases etc, no to choose hair color etc.

cats, evolution (with possible divine link, ala BSG), sex ok, cheating not ok, abortion ok.
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Darkom
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Make me a clone, that's all I want genetics to do. And make my kids clones so they always have someone to talk to. If you married your clone, could you have kids if they were opposite gender clones?

As far as changing features, they don't care. They'll be happy no matter what hair color they get. And who needs individuality? It only leads to depression.
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Lady Nerevar
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if it was opposite gender it woudnt be a clone ;)

new topic: if you had a clone who was exactly the same as you, would you shag it? :P
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Evil_pigeon
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@ Lady:it would be like fucking a mirror O.o

Individuality also leads to creativity and new ideas, compassion, not being drones. Also it wouldn't really be a clone if they were of opposite genders. Also they can clone humans now it's just banned for religious reasons -.- Hell they're nearly there with cloning individual organs which would be a huge step for medicine.
And wouldn't it bother you that somebody else decided what you look like? You'd have parents looking for people with similar looking children to try to meet people with the same interests, people might be able to stereotype certain features to judge your family and then there would be the problem between those who could and couldn't afford the treatments, rich people really would be better.

(playing devils advocate is fun)
Edited by Evil_pigeon, Aug 5 2009, 06:43 PM.
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Shades
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I don't see how people can be against abortion really. It's such a good idea. I lean conservative, but abortion is too good not to support. People who generally don't agree with me politically, economically, etc, are offering to kill their own children and expecting me to say no? What? They're mostly going to be filling the prisons, welfare lines, and white trash circuses anyway. Lets stop the problem before it starts. We should be on the streets handing out coat hangers. The government starts debates and crap, but we don't need that. Government should have no say in a parent's decision to kill their kid at any age. The parents still have the mould, they can try again. Someone mentioned earlier about children having souls at this time or that, but really; children having souls? No. You want to school and raise them? Fine, see to it. Don't charge me taxes for that shit. This is the tragedy of the commons all over the place. And with the mother on welfare to support the children, we're pissing away money with no return. When in doubt, Abort! Abort!

;)
Edited by Shades, Aug 5 2009, 10:40 PM.
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Half Tooth
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Hmmm this is pretty deep stuff. In regards to topics already discussed;

- I like both cats and dogs equally, cats are more elegant and less messy but Dogs are way more fun and usually extremely loyal. They're always overjoyed to see you too which makes being friends with a dog so lovely.

- I believe evolution to be true. It makes sense in my head, even if god exists or not evolution still makes sense, it is possible to have evolution and a god of some description.

- Sex before marriage.... I think marriage is a wonderful thing, but still kind of irrelivent. If you love someone you love them, and having sex with them can make you love them more and create a greater bond between the two people, marriage is completely irrelivent to this. I do however think that sleeping around, with anything and everything spreading STI's and creating accidental children as well as sharing intimacy with someone you don't truely love to be... not quite wrong, wrong is too strong a word. slightly less than wrong I guess since I can't think of a better word.
As for the whole cheating on your partner issues. I think it's a delicate situation. There's no doubt that it's wrong but at the same time there must be a reason for that person to cheat in the first place and aside from those people that will cheat just because they can, teh reason for cheating is more important than the actual cheating itself.

- Abortion, I think that abortion should not be used as a birth control, contracapetion kind of thing. Ignoring the emotions that go with it all, Abortion seems like an extra safety blanket for people, so before they sleep with someone it almost doesn't matter whether they use protection or not because you can have an abortion if you want afterwards. I think this is wrong, abortion shouldn't be a common thing.
As for aborting the baby, If having the baby endangers the mothers life, then I think the mother has the right to decide whether she would like to take that risk or not as she is an actual person not a potential person like the baby is. If the mother is perfectly healthy, I think she also has the right to decide if she wants to bring a baby into the world or not, if her living circumstances are not so good or she is young herself I think she has every right to decide if a baby should be bron into that world.
And the abortion itself... I thnk that aside from everything I've just said, abortion (to me anyway) all depends on the point when it changes from being a clump of cells to a potential person. In my own head after much debate I decided that the point of that switch should be when the heart starts beating. Aborting a clump of cells with no heart beat is hardly murder, but aborting something that has it's own heartbeat seems very wrong and unfair.

-Oh god Genetic modification, it's all wrong. In my eyes anyway. Changing anything about someone not even born yet means you're not happy with that person the way they should be. I think if I found out my parents genetically modified me to look like this I would be very upset and forever wonder what on earth I was meant to look like. My very life would be a lie because I wasn't me.
Genetically modifying for diseases is also wrong to me anyway. It all comes down to Evolution and mother nature. Mother nature intended it to be a survival of the fittest. However Human beings no longer have any 'survival of the fittest' If say this was a group of wild horses and one of them has a disorder or disease that made it weaker than the others it would die. I believe that the survival of the fittest/evolution theory is not so that some people can put themselves higher than others or so that some animcals can be put higher than others, I think it's like crowd control. It controls the numbers of a species so that there aren't too many.
Because there is no crowd control for humans, there are just far too many of us, which brings me back to sayig that genetically removing diseases and disorders, gets rid of this crowd control scheme mother nature put in place and there will be a breaking point. A point at which the planet really cannot cope with any more humans and we either start running out of food or one reasource or another and we all start killing each other, or some huge disease will spread over the planet to get human numers down.

In short... I think it's very wrong to tamper with nature because the consequences will be terrible. Nature has the power to wipe every human out whenever it wants to with earth quakes or floods or something, planets could collide, we could all get sucked into a black hole. We like to think we control nature but it's just biding it's time.
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Darkom
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Evil_pigeon
Aug 5 2009, 06:42 PM
And wouldn't it bother you that somebody else decided what you look like? You'd have parents looking for people with similar looking children to try to meet people with the same interests, people might be able to stereotype certain features to judge your family and then there would be the problem between those who could and couldn't afford the treatments, rich people really would be better.
Except rich people get better treatment now anyway, and I wouldn't know the difference. There might be one generation of unrest, but after that it would be so common place, no one would care. I don't get mad because I don't have a tail.


And as to Half Tooth, everyone is doing it. You don't care because that is what life is like now. If they didn't do that, you would be ugly and inferior compared to the status quo. And if you are, then there is just another way people get to be elitist.

And nature isn't sentient. It can destroy us, technically, but the chances of it happening are low. Which is why we are still here. It won't destroy us because it's mad about genetic engineering. And so long as we do it right, nothing would go wrong.
Edited by Darkom, Aug 6 2009, 03:00 AM.
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redmer

On the subject I don't belive genetic munipulation would be a good thing like has already been said some people would abuse it. whether that be to make their children look like models to the extream case that darkom mentioned. It is in no way a good long time thing. Even for just desiseases its not a good thang more people would live longer and we already have enought people on the earth. This leads to too more debateable questions. Overpopulation how we should deal with it. and global warming.

Overpopulation is a big problem that just seems to be growing more and more people are being born each day and our resourses won't be able to sustain our numbers. I am one that thinks that drastic steps are in order to help stem the growing population something like mass seriliazation. But I wouldn't only reconmend that if we don't find another way to deal with population growth. we're not there yet but we're getting close.

On global warming. I believe its just something the earth naturally goes through. There is even evidence that it has happend before in the past around the time the poles switch. And I'm sick of this save the earth talk no matter what we do the earth is going to be here for a very very very long time and is bound to still be around when where gone. We aren't worrying about the earth we're worrying about our own asses so why they admit that?
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Evil_pigeon
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Phew big post

Alright first off, WE ARE contributing to global warming, no matter what you say there is proof that we are releasing a huge amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and there is proof that said gasses do in fact stop heat from being radiated back into space therefore making the planet warmer. Yes the planet has warmed up before and almost every occasion where there has been a large change in global temperatures there has also been mass extinction.

But you're right who gives a shit about the Earth, the animals etc ? I've never understood the whole problem with our actions making other species go extinct. It seems to me that pro biodiversity argument is along the lines of 'aww but da birdie is cuutte I dun wannit to die' At the same time, Global warming is going to cause mass human death, especially in the third world and I'd like to think that I at least tried to stop half my species from dying.

Anyway given your attitude towards Global warming you're going a long way towards solving overpopulation, congrats.

@ Darkom except rich people now simply get better healthcare, education etc, and there are still a lot of people who resent them this, depsite most of them having earnt their money through merit rather than inheritance. If the differences became physical - people could pay for their children to be more intelligent... harder, better, faster, stronger :P At this point you are seeing a physical superiority of the richer parts of society so those born into a poorer family wouldn't have as much of a chance of keeping up. It would encourage discrimination and segregation and I doubt it would go away after a generation, I mean imagine just how expensive it would be to do this kind of procedure and, as with all technology you'd be able to purchase better upgrades for larger amounts of money.

And @ Half tooth: who and what circumstances any individual is born into is complete chance we are all lucky in that we weren't born in a tiny village in Africa or with some kind of crippling genetic disorder. Wouldn't you say that it is therefore our duty to do what we can to improve the odds for others of being able to lead a life like ours?
Through genetic manipulation you can transcend natural selection by making the weak stronger. Without this kind of technology, natural selection would likely cripple humanity because the weak aren't dying off, which is why genetic diseases are becoming more commonplace.
Edited by Evil_pigeon, Aug 6 2009, 10:31 AM.
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