I spent many, many internet hours a few decades ago having such circular “debates” with creationists. Too many hours. I’m pretty sure I never convinced a single one of them and eventually lost interest. Even formidable and patient intellects like Dawkins won’t win these discussion… it’s too late for the Wendy Wrights, the Ken Hams, the Duane Gishs, their damage is total and irreversible.
The real fight is much earlier, in education and upbringing. Not just in giving kids a deep and thorough understanding of science (though that is important), but in giving them the ability to discern good sources of information from bad sources of information. Sadly, this is the very thing that the likes of Wendy Wright fight against…
There’s a telling moment in this debate, where Wright dismisses science as a “kind of religion”. It’s like deep down she knows that religious thinking is sloppy, unreliable, built on shaky foundations. And yet…
Some years ago there was a debate between Bill Nye (aka The Science Guy) and Ken Ham (a young Earth creationist). One of the questions was “what piece of evidence might make you change your belief about creation?”.
Bill Nye’s answer was “a rabbit fossil from the pre-cambrian”.
Hamm’s reply was telling. It was “nothing”. Nothing, no piece of evidence, no matter how compelling, would change his mind.
Despite this I still believe it’s worthwhile to debate them. We might not change their opinions but we can at least show others how ridiculous they are.
To put it succinctly: you don’t debate a fanatic to convince them, you do it to convince the spectators.
Unfortunately, I do not remember who the debatees where, but I once watched a debate about the existence of the Christian God in which the moderator asked both sides the most important question: what it would take for them to accept the other position as true and the atheist answered something like 'irrefutable evidence of the existence of God", while the theist said that nothing could ever make him belive that.
You do not argue with them for their sake of convincing them but to not let them spout their nonsense unchallenged and thus give other people who are not as yet set in their beliefs the impression that these “arguments” have any value.
I think the mere act of debating them gives them credibility. They’ve developed a particularly effective tactic of throwing out claim after claim which can’t easily be refuted by the rational debater. There’s just too much nonsense to cover, and precise answers require time and thought.
None of the claims have merit of course, but they stick in the mind of the sympathetic observer as something that simply couldn’t be argued against. This tactic used to be called the “Gish Gallop”, and it works very well for them. Unfortunately, the only effective way of countering it is to not engage in the first place.
Some of the most convincing arguments for a god are for a general creator of the universe. That is step 1 to proving their religion. Step 2 is proving the events and ideas in their holy books are true. If a god or gods do exist, maybe they exist as part of the universe and had no hand in creating it?
I think next time I’ll ask, “Suppose god appeared to you and told you how wrong you are about almost everything. Would you change your beliefs then?”
Agreed. I have no idea how Dawkins can be that… patient.
For example? I’m pretty sure when they were getting set up she was clocking his junk. (She glanced down and smirked.) the. Immediately goes into taking about how only with a loving god can people really learn to respect each other.
Which raised some other questions. Like, then, why are the most disrespectful people nearly always religious zealots?
I guess they would reply “define disrespectful”.
It’s the old alternative facts thing again, right? We can throw out examples of Christian disrespect all day long - oppression of women, being against bodily autonomy, mistreatment of gays, conflicts and wars against other religions over some nuance of an ancient script. But they would just shrug and say its all moral because its all in the bible, and slip right back into citing the USSR or the Nazis.
They’re working with different definitions.
Like how Wendy Wright constantly talks about a “loving god”… but probably believes in the concept of hell, an eternal torture dimension that her loving god willingly created.
Religion makes you so fucking dumb
