Don't take advice from anyone whose grasp of syntax is as poor as the debate maker's.

Dude, Martin Luther was really not Catholic.

However, I agree with your argument. It seems to me that if the school argued: these two girls are spreading views that go against the religious tenets of our institution, and produced some kinds of testimony that they'd been promoting the joys of lesbianism to the world, fair enough: they're disrupting the social climate that the Christian parents've chosen to raise their kids in. But saying they "exhibit a bond charactistic of a lesbian relationship" is no statement of crime. Private schools have the right to be more selective than state-funded ones, but expelling teenagers at a time when confused sexuality will be enough of a problem for them already? Shouldn't be within their rights.

Depends on what it's a manual for. For software, generally no. On the other hand, I will look up how-to guides and the like when I don't know how to do something with Linux.

I'd say yes - institutionalised discrimination, resentment against immigrants and hate crimes are all still major problems. Are racist jokes are indicative of strongly held racist beliefs? I'm not sure, but I don't think they're either a new problem or evidence that racism's unimportant nowadays.

Like... what, exactly? Wind turbines are easier to mass produce, but they also take up a larger area of land and are 'unreliable' in that they're dependant on the weather. Hydroelectricity is also arguably difficult to mass produce.

The main problem with nuclear reactors is not only the risk of a meltdown - "when [it] blows up - but the highly radioactive waste they produce. Much of this has a half-life longer than ten thousand years: it will need to be stored securely during this time or it will irradiate living things, causing cancer and other problems.

Nuclear power isn't the only option, but the reasons you put forward are inaccurate.

Portal, and, in fact, everything Valve's made. The Half-Life games and the Source engine they're built on raised standards for games everything, Team Fortress is funny and original, and all their games work well and are interesting and clever. But Portal neatly demonstrated that video games don't need violence to be awesome, so it gets my vote. (Not to mention, it has delicious cake!)

I don't it's at all true that "almost every marriage has had at least one half of the relationship have an affair" - I know a lot of happily married couples who haven't. While there are more and more people who are choosing not to get married because they don't agree with the idea of their relationships being religious contracts, that doesn't affect whether people who are married are monogamous - if anything, it means those who don't want to be tied down don't marry, which leaves those who do marry as the people who will value the sanctity of that marriage.

Your argument rests upon the idea that the FSM is created to be a straw man fallacy and therefore belief in Him is offensive. Why is that belief offensive, though? Why is it a matter of "ultimate reality and importance"?

The creator of the FSM website, Bobby Henderson, says this: "I don’t have a problem with religion. What I have a problem with is religion posing as science." In other words, it's pointing out the absurdity on imposing beliefs on other people as if they were truth. You talk about the offending the "sacred beliefs of others" and ridiculing people, but you're missing the point. FSMism is poking fun at fundamentalism, maybe. But it's not laughing at believers, Christian or otherwise. It's asking for religious freedom and tolerance, and for all believers to be able to believe what they want, without having Creationist dogma thrust upon them.

Why does that make them "a liar, a heretic, and someone insensitive to the sacred beliefs of others"? Using the FSM as an argument to rebut the teaching of Intelligent Design is no different from using any analogy; it's not "lying", it's demonstrating a point. And as to the charge of 'heresy', I can't see how you can call either someone of another faith or an atheist a heretic. That's religious totalitarianism and it's obnoxious.

Diplomatic relations: pretty important. How will you ever find a common ground with someone if you won't meet with them; how will you ever establish peace and make agreements and win them over if there isn't communication.

But I don't understand what you mean by anti-American. That the leader's country has been known to criticise America, or what? I'm not really sure what you're getting at with it. I also don't know what the conditions of a conditional meeting with these anti-American people would be.

However an interesting parallel to this is that Mugabe came to a UN talk about food shortages. Is it OK to meet with leaders who're ruling undemocratically and who've committed human rights violations? When their presence at a summit of that nature is hypocritical? I'd say there's no reason they shouldn't be allowed to come if they're still recognised as leader of their country; if their presence is hypocritical, that'll be noticed and commented on and will highlight the problems that exist with them. So I don't really see a problem with meeting with any foreign leader, unless there's a risk they'll assassinate you or something.

Yeah, I guess limiting people would be counterproductive.

I think, Borme, that the 'report' thing seems more like it should be reserved for spam or offensive stuff, not just "another boring clone debate". Voting on a debate to say "this is good" is would be a feature more people'd use and it'd help point to interesting debates, as well as just getting rid of bad ones.