Every one of us have opinions on just about everything, that's what makes us who we are. In this thread you can take part in debating various issues and let your thoughts be known.

I will choose a topic and any member is free to air their thoughts on it. All members are invited to join in.

We all know debates can get heated so remember, personal attacts and discrimination of any kind is not permitted and will not be tolerated. Foul language is also not permitted.

When I feel the topic has been debated in full I will invite a member to choose another subject to debate.

First Topic

Abortion

Should abortion be allowed? Does someone have the right to decide the fate of a child who cannot speak for itself?

depends on the circumstances the abortion is called for.
is the mother or child `s health an issue?
what about as a result of rape?.

I'm only a guy so my opinion doesn't count as much as those of the ladies, but I have always been in favour of the right to choose.

hard one but as a mother of three unless there are extenuating circumstances i would chose right to life personally. But as a mother of three girls i wouldn't pressure them to continue with a pregnancy if they didn't want to. There are so many children born to unfit parents that it is a subject i wouldn't want to rule on definitively

Unwanted children could always be put up for adoption. There are lots of couples out there who are unable to have children and would love to be able to adopt a new born.

I do understand why some women decide to abort. I thnk if there are no complications with the pregnancy then the child should be carried to term and given the chance at a ful life.

Also in some cases, conflicted would be mothers won't know exactly how they feel until the child is there in front of them. Surely it is better to carry and adopt than it is to live with the guilt that I assume comes with abortion.

I know of two persons who have had abortions and neither felt
guilty more relieved that they did not bring an unwanted child to term. Although I suppose it is possible they may regret it in the future.

Taking this debate to it's full extreme even contraception should not be used and thus the world's population would increase at an even more exponential rate than it already is. After all spermatazoa and eggs are natural life awaiting creation by the natural method. Not to mention the expansion of STDs.

Situation

Candice is pregnant. She wants to abort but her boyfriend Chris wants her to have the baby. He tells her he will take care of the baby when it is born. Candice still says no.

Should Candice respect Chris's wishes and have the baby?

Should Candice go ahead and abort regardless of Chris's wishes?

Discuss

With respect what is there to discuss.

It is her body, not his, that has to carry and give birth to the child. Therefore she must have the final say and do what she wants.

A fertilized egg is not a child, or is a fetus. Abortion as birth control might offer fewer health risks than the pill.
Answer part one YES.

Part TWO - irrelevant

[This Post has been removed by a ShareTV Moderator]

Seems it is time for a change. Next poster please choose a new topic for debate.

OK Thor as you invite I'll try one. (Not my personal view but worth discussing I think)


Space travel by any nation is a waste of money.

I dunno Quark - The way we have a talent for wasting things and our planet being one of them - and the fact that we will one day over populate our planet - we're going to need new places to live and maybe if we get started sooner than later we may have a chance - at least our children and grandchildren will - and who's to say that all those "little gray guys" that people have claimed to have seen, aren't us from the future trying to fix or guide us in some way. None-the-less, this planet won't last forever and then what? Easter Island on a planetary scale?

"and who's to say that all those "little gray guys" that people have claimed to have seen, aren't us from the future trying to fix or guide us in some way"

I like this idea.

I also believe it is a good thing to get out there. It is human nature to explore. Who knows where it could lead.

On the other hand some would argue that we may bring attention to ourselves and attract undesireale beings.

Yeah, thats always something to worry about - the more dominate lifeforms usually do dominate and most of the time change things for their better interest regardless of costs. But - it seems that this topic has changed from man in space to aliens, something I've never seen but considering the size of the universe I do believe ANYTHING is possible. Besides if there were "little gray guys" I don't believe that something like that could be kept a secret - us humans love to tell what we know as much as what we think we know and our governments can't keep secrets either. Like you said, it is has always has been our nature to explore - and conquer. As much as I believe that we should persue space exploration I also believe that if we want to find life elsewhere we might spend a lot of that money exploring our own oceans. There are new lifeforms there that we are discovering all the time. And it is also a good place to train for space exploration not to mention all of the valuable new living space we could use if we could just develope it. And - lots of food and thats hard to find in space. We could send it up but at what price. Growing things in space should first start in airtight green-type-houses underwater.

I'm not sure if I can plug a book here but I'm gonna give it a try - It has an unusual title but the things it talks about are absolutely amazing and its all common sense and easy to understand. If you can get through the first chapter you'll be hooked. And don't let the title fool you because its not all about coloning space. It tells us how to first develop what we have on earth so that we can begin to really live in space. Its called - The Millennial Project : Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps..........Author Marshall Savage 1992 - Libraries have it and if they don't they can order it - or, of course it can be bought.
In space, in a large enough globe, with wings, you can really fly.

I don't know why people find it hard to believe that there may be other life out there. If we exist, then surely it's possible that we are not alone.

I agree with you on sea exploration. I read somewhere that we know more about space than we do our own oceans. Imagine what could be waiting to be discovered in the deepest parts of our ocenas.

Maybe secrets about alien life are being kept by governments. Officials could have leaked information only to be disbelieved. All the stories we hear about places like Area 51 could be a mix of fact and fiction. People tend not to believe what they hear until they see it for themselves. Governments could use this to their advantage, and brand those who have seen as delusional or mentally unwell.

Governments are sittin' back laughing letting UFO sightings cover their top secret experiments. Always have. I applaud the Virgin Company for moving on private owned space enterprises. I hope we are raising a generation of young people who are not afraid to try something new.

Hmmm, Have I been muted or is there a bug in the system?

All UFO sightings we see on video & photos mimicked the designs of the time i.e, fins on cars were seen on UFO's, sharp edges moving through to smooth sleaker designs on cars were mimicked by the UFO hoaxers in photo & video, look back at old photos and you will see what I mean...

I don't believe there are UFO's (Alien spacecraft) flying around our skies.

First of all I think the subject is branching off from Quarks original "Space travel by any nation is a waste of money" to "UFOs" because I mentioned "little gray guys" and he would probably wish we would get back on the original post.
UFOs would maybe be another subject we might consider. Don't take me wrong - I wouldn't mind a "UFO" debate if it comes up but maybe we could focus on the original.
However I would like to respond to:
@gedmen
I believe your right about UFOs - I believe they are hoaxes too. Like I said before, something like that couldn't be kept a secret - 2nd - the cost to even travel to the nearest star (with our present technology) would cost about the entire monetary funds of the whole planet, but whose to say that another advanced civilization is a million years ahead of us and could do it without too much problem. But like I also said - there is an unbelievably large universe out there and I do believe that life in many forms are out there. Now weather or not they are intelligent enough for space travel has to be questionable. Carl Sagan once said something that I thought was interesting and that was, "ants are very intelligent and if they thought they had the NEED to fly of into space, they could evolve enough do it". Some people believe that because of the things man has invented, it must have come from alien technology. Myself - I kinda take that as an insult to our own intelligence. We are perfectly capable of inventing anything we have and a lot more and I also believe that if man can think of something farout there in his imagination, he will one day make it come about. Sort of like television. I'm sure many people in the past thought how nice it would be to watch a live play or a story being told, shown on a little box in their living room by the fireplace. And one day it happened. Same with telephones. Pony express, yelling and smoke signals were probably a whole lot like work. It took hundreds of years but it eventually happened. We are smart enough to travel to other planets and even make an uninhabitable planet, say Mars maybe, inhabitable. Our Sun will one day swallow Earth making it a lot like Venus and Mars would be in the right place. Or maybe capture a large asteroid, stop it, mine it and grab all the iron and other metals we would need to build spacecraft or anything else we might need to build better space stations instead of spending tons of money sending that stuff up by-way-of rockets. Not to mention, most of those asteroids have gold, silver, nickel and even water which can be, believe it or not squeezed of of the rock. Where water is concerned, capturing a comet would be better. Thing is - we will one day over-populate Earth and drain it and unfortunately, kill it along with our greatest of grandchildren. I don't believe we should wait til the last moment to do it and we should start sooner than later, because if someone pops a nuke or two or we get hit by some unexpected asteroid or comet or lets not forget about global warming, and the worst and most likely - biological, as in diseases. At any unexpected moment some thing could bring most everything to an abrupt halt taking us back to cave-people or worse - extinction, and we will have lost the best chance we have ever had in all of history to keep evolving. We have always been explorers and experimenters. Aliens should be the last thing we should worry about and we should leave that stuff for Hollywood.

me thinx the subject got lost - or everyone falls asleep cause I type too much :o) - shame - good subject.

Not you icarus, not very many participating

Shame - at the risk of others throwing virtual rocks in my direction - it seems a shame that with all the members we have who watch all this great stuff for free, more can't stop in at any of the many forum topics, even for just a couple of minutes to say something. Its kind of a way of saying thanx in a way. I appreciate all those who do and think of them as friends.

@icarus7z7

If you wish you may choose a new topic for debate

I don't think its about topics. Out of approx. 191,375 Registered Users - most times theres anywhere between 40 and 60 on the site at any given time and maybe a 1/4 or less drop into the forums before or after watching something. True the site gives a lot and doesn't ask for anything back and true no one says anyone has to say anything - I'm thinkin' that its human nature to take and not give back. Thats what bugs me the most. If there suddenly was a charge for watching or the topic was about charging, I'll bet the forums would be packed with about 191,000 complaints.
No, really, its not about the topic, probably too deep for most anyway, ABC-123 stuff doesn't take all that much brain power. I think that what bugs me the most is what human nature has evolved into when it comes to taking and not giving, but then again this is the internet. I don't mean to offend anyone by what I've said, I think that maybe I just put sharetv pretty high up there on my lists - sorta like not wanting to watch yur little brother get hit - if that makes any sense.

It does

Well said.

The more members who would be involved with the site the better it would be for all to use and enjoy.

@icarus7z7

I think there is a topic for debate in there.

Is it human nature for people to take without giving back.

Lads and lasses, I missed the boat here - I didn't realise the topic had changed from abortion :-(

I'd like to take a crack at the new question, but before I do, my 2 cents worth on space exploration. (1) I am certain that other intelligent life exists, has existed and will exist in the universe, simply because of the math (with billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars, even the unusual circumstances that created the Earth/Moon/Sun system must be replicated many times, quite aside from the question of non-carbon-based life etc). (2) I doubt that we will ever meet any intelligent life because of the math (assuming C as the limit of propagation speed, our race will die out long before such a meeting would become likely - and though I love SF talk of FTL drives and folding space, these are still in the realms of fantasy). (3) If we don't get off-planet as a race (not just moon bases etc) then our civilization will not survive beyond a few hundred more years max (see The Limits To Growth, published by the Club of Rome in 1970ish).

"Is it human nature for people to take without giving back?"
This question kind of assumes that there is only one set of behaviour that can exist, and all humanity exhibits it. I believe otherwise. Man carries with him the seeds both of his own salvation and of his own damnation. Everyone is unique, and some (perhaps many) are rapacious and selfish in nature. But equally, some (perhaps many) are giving and selfless. I challenge anyone to read the last paragraphs of "The Grapes of Wrath" and fail to believe that some people are giving by nature. The capitalist system encourages selfishness, but it has not succeeded in eliminating the art and practice of lovingkindness.

he-he....told ya thor. They see "Abortion" and runnnnnnnnn.......

I disagree with what I myself might have implied unintentionally which was "what human nature has evolved into when it comes to taking and not giving", and agree with softwizz on alot of what he said. True, there are some who give so much that they have nothing themselves and they like that way. Those folks, I believe, will get their reward 10 times over - somehow and in some way. They have something inside them that I could only wish I had.

I also said that "but then again this is the internet". At most times it can be a pretty hostile place. Go to any other chatrooms and, good lord, they verbally beatin' the hell out of each other. I commend Quark on his job at keepin' the peace and at the same time, I don't think I could do it. It can be a tough job.

But then, you get what you go lookin' for and there is a lot of good on the internet as well. Its staggering to have all of this infomation at our fingertips. Less than a hundred years ago this thing we call the internet would be viewed as a miracle - too amazing to even comprehend.

But there is a a dark thought that doesn't involve the internet that I hate to think about -getting back to greed- what if everything we know and take for granted most times came crashing down in the world. It would be like the worst horror movie, where it would seem better to be gone than to fight for life or just a little bit of something good. I could go on but I just don't want to go there.

I think it would be better if we could just for once change our natures now before we cross that last line, but we humans have a bad habit of learning things the hard way. Sort of like - someone has to get killed before they put up a stop light. I sleep better at night thinking the best of people, but sometimes its hard.

So whatta we do? We keep tryin' right?

Which brings me back to space exploration - GO softwizz! Thats what I'm talkin' about. Lets prepare for the inevitable because we multiply like rabbits and consume more than we give back - Lets go to Space! But maybe we should go to our own oceans first. Yeah there's life out there in the universe, but its unlikely we'll ever meet anything intelligent. Its scary to think that we're the only intelligent life because we keep swayin' back and forth on that throughout history.

Its up to us grow-ups to instill a love of learning into our children and give'em something good to look forward to. We're already bringing alot of little geniuses into the world. The future is in all our hands. Too late is no fun at all, never has been.