Welcome to the serious discussions and debates forum.
You're welcome to start a discussion or a debate on pretty much any topic - politics and spiritual stuff tend to come up most often, but anything is allowed.
Because these sorts of threads have a nasty habit of turning into flamewars instead of discussions or debates, we are more strict in moderating this forum than we are elsewhere on this site.
Please follow these ground rules:
1. Attack the idea, not the person.
2. If someone creates a topic that's dependent on assumptions, accept the assumption for the sake of discussion. For instance, if the topic is "assuming aliens were to land on Earth, what kind of welcome would you expect them to receive and why?", then don't argue about whether or not aliens exist and whether it'd even be possible for them to get here - although both of those are perfectly fine topics for their own threads.
3. Discussing whether something should be legal is welcome, telling people how to break the law is not. For example, feel free to argue the case for legalization of marijuana... but don't point people to dealers.
4. Flaming isn't acceptable. Period. If you're about to make a post in anger, save a draft, wait 10 minutes, then come back and edit it when you're calmer. Not only will you avoid attacking someone, but your argument will be much stronger.
5. Respect others' spiritual beliefs. This doesn't mean you can't attack a belief if you can logically invalidate it... but most spiritual beliefs really can't be proven or disproven.
6. Sometimes people specifically want a DISCUSSION, but NOT a debate. Someone might for instance, make a "what happens after we die", open-ended discussion, where they simply want as many people as possible to post their views on the matter. If this is the case, please follow the requests of the topic starter.
7. Sometimes a thread splits naturally into 2 discussions, and we'll simply split it if this happens. If you notice this occurring, feel free to PM a mod and ask for a split. That being said... please try not to intentionally create a split. It's quite common for a discussion to spark another discussion, but it's better to create that as a separate thread to begin with... and it's much easier for new people to join the discussion.
8. Respond to flames or trolls with the report button, and nothing else. 1 flame or troll is annoying, but 1 flame + 30 replies to it = dead thread.
