Marauder

You dont like that history example then heres another one for you to make the same point. Why did Slavery explode in the south and last beyond when the rest of the world was doing away with it?

The dumb answer that would cause you to fail a history examn woul be "it happened cause it did and not as it didn't".

The correct answer would involve bringing up the cotton gin, reliance on agriculture, cultural differences and isolation from northern culture as they industrialized. Developed systemic radicalized racism over time. Take your pick.

Massive cultural changes over a relatively short period of time in the span of all history warrants more sociological explanations than just "it happened to happen that way"

For Isreal for example they didn't just get synagogues worship in their culture,  that was a socialogical response to the exile and the temple central to their faith being destroyed. Isreal only had people in the role of "prophet" during the monarchy years, and a secular religious historian would teach this is because that social role existed to keep the king in check in that culture. 

Sorta. With the exception of Christianity its completely located in the end of the age of Aries. But that's still really interesting. 

Unless a whimsical God exist and that's what you believe in, you dont get to luxury of closing off your brain and saying "things occured cause things in general change"

"Things" occurring do so because of socialogical cause and effect. 

The Bronze Age Collapse happened because of food shortages and over reliance on top down governing structures and a prevalence of very nuanced specialized jobs, so that when something shook the house of cards, it all came tumbling down. The answer "the bronze age collapse occured because things happened as they did and not as they didn't" would be a meaningless and dumb way to answer that question by any history scholars standards.

You NEED a systemic sociological cause and effect explanation for changes as dramatic and in synch like these cultural revolutions that took place across the world. 

So I've learned I can't just make a topic with any resolution I want a find interested opponents here, so i'm going to test the waters and get a feel for what people think and believe on this next topic before I construct a debate resolution around it.

How many of you have heard of the Axial Age? a designation given to a part of history by a academic named Karl Jaspers.

What are your thoughts about it? Do you deny that it occurred (a hard sell if you do) and if you don't then how do you explain the Axial Age, what do you make of it?

How can for thousands and thousands of years religion across the globe basically take one of two shapes exclusively (Animism and Polytheism) then all of a sudden across the globe, every religion as we know it today was born? Isn't that just a little mind blowing? If you had a time traveling private jet, you could theoretically go to a single year that's roughly around 500 B.C. and pick up Siddhartha, Confucius, Lao Tsu, the author of the Upanishads, Daniel and Jeremiah, Xenophanes and Anaximander, and bring them all to the same room and hold a religious summit with the founders of every major religion and schools of thought in western and eastern philosophy.

Industrial Revolutions are pretty easy to explain because they just hinge on a breakthrough in some kind of technology and how fast that tech can spread. But a diverse religious renaissance across the globe in relatively isolated cultures?

"well it was a turbulent time in history, people needed to turn to new ideas to help them through it. The Waring States Period was going on in China, the Temple had been destroyed in Jerusalem and their people sent into exile, the Persian and Peloponnesian war was going on in greece." Yeah but it's not like war and significant social disrupting events hadn't occurred before in history. The Bronze Age Collapse ended the written word, and sent multiple advanced developed kingdoms back to the stone age and to barbarianism. Yet for the most part, with the exception of Israel (and even they were not much of an exception) the whole world stuck with animism and polytheism like they always had.

What was different during the Axial Age? and is "it was just a coincidence" a good enough explanation for you in explaining why it happened everywhere all at once or is their a systemic social and cultural historic explanation for this religious renaissance that satisfies you? I'd love to hear it cause this is interesting stuff.

What do you make of this if you are a christian in terms of your faith? does it challenge your faiths notion that Jesus is the only way if it seems God was inspiring religious thinkers across the world all at once, or do you have a way to view these religious awakenings in a somewhat positive light without giving them the same degree of credit and status you do your own faith? or some other explanation for all this?

If your an atheist what you make of the Axial Age? do you find it interesting at all?

Donald Trump is not a people person, but he's made a career out of turning that part of himself into something charismatic. Shapiro likewise has gotten to be the voice of the right wing knowing how to use his skills for his own kind of charisma.

Shapiro would be electable. Some antisemetics would oppose him but their not very dominant in the party.

In the primary anyway, I'm not as sure about the general. 

Some names Id be pretty happy with: Rand Paul, Ron Paul, Ben Shapiro, Mike Huckabee, Nikki Haley.

and my preferences between them are listed in that same order.

If I could create the perfect politician though, Id create a fusion between Rand Paul, Shapiro, and Huckabee. I'd take Paul's Integrity and backbone, Shapiro's sharp mind, and Huckabee's religious and compassionate heart. A perfect trinity of the heart, mind and soul of conservative politics. Someone whose pragmatic, wise, and just. A politician who could equally appeal through Pathos, Logos and....I guess Pneumos would be what you would call the third thing to complete that triangle. 

But that doesn't exist and honestly if its not possible for any of these guys to win anyway they would be better off turning their resources to make an impact where they are at.

Hi, I recently migrated from DDO after having returned from years of inactivity their their. I was shocked to see what had become of the website but heard many DDO people moved to here. I'm eager to give this site a chance and am curious how many DDO faces I will recognize. It's possible I want know any of you, if the DDO members here are a generation removed from the active ones that were around when I was active.

Not all debate criticisms against Wikipedia are valid though. If you use it to set the terms of your debate,  Your opponent should not have grounds for saying they should get the source point because you used Wikipedia and they didn't. 

Sources for a definition when your setting the terms of the debate are not sources being used to back up or support claims they are not part your arguments, they are merely the terms of the debate.  If I'm not going to write out what DNA is for debate where DNA is in the resolution but I don't care to write out a full scientific summery on it and Wikipedia's page seems adequate enough at defining what needs said about it when setting the terms of the debate, then Wikipedia should be considered as valid a source to use IN THAT CONTEXT as any other source, because round one definitions are not arguments or claims, they are the terms of the debate.

But yeah as a source for making claims or supporting arguments during the rest of the debate, Wikipedia and blog posts should be avoided if at all possible. Don't directly source them unless your prepared to spend time arguing why you are justifying Wikipedia as your source in this context.  For example "Falcom has a passionate fan base for the trails series" might be your resolution or the point your making to support some other resolution, and to prove the passion of the fan base, show the Wikipedia page to demonstrate the level of effort and detail fans have kept together for the Trails series  on Wikipedia. Suddenly even though Wikipedia is a secondary source to the facts you find collected together on it and is not reliable because its subject to heavy community editing and user mistakes, in the context of trying to make a point about the people who ARE using and editing Wikipedia, Wikipedia can become a relevant form of evidence in and of itself.