Caustic Ramblings

Here is a note I recently sent off to a Christian upset about a series of "Christian-bashing" posts from fellow Westerners on a certain internet platform. This poster made the common error of assuming that people taking issue with Christianity must have pent-up psychological issues or a lack of understanding on what the Christian faith really is (more like what this person believes it to be).

You might want to ask about people's specific backgrounds before assuming the reasons and motivations of why they might harbor certain opinions. For example, you might discover that a lot of "Christian-bashers" may have been raised in staunchly Christian households and thus know the faith quite intimately. And of course others may have not. Everyone has a slightly different situation and place they are coming from.

A major reality you have to face is that we now have free choice in terms of what we can believe and disbelieve. Christian institutions in the West no longer enjoy the exclusive power of violently forcing their ideology onto the masses and thus making Christian beliefs and practices compulsory for everyone. Now that your religion's monopoly has eroded, it has to compete in the ideological free market just like everyone else's has to. Heretic-hunts and inquisitions will no longer keep people in churches. Ham-fisted and fear-based tactics will simply scare people off and they'll go looking elsewhere for spiritual answers. My own prediction is that spirituality in general is going to move away from sectarianism and become more personal and individualized in terms of practices and beliefs people take on. Take a look at how pluralistic Eastern spiritual traditions are, for example.

Some soul-searching and introspection might be in order among you and your co-religionists. If you guys can re-tool your Jesus cult to fit emerging paradigm, then Christianity is some form will survive and may even thrive. But to double down on the old ways will simply mean you get left in the dust. You guys do have quite fertile ground to work with. Despite the decline of institutional Christianity, the image of Jesus Christ is still one of the most potent and righteous light-bearing thought-forms in the Western psyche.

I'm quite curious to know where this exchange might lead. The cynical/realist side of me says this person will probably just double down and nothing productive will come out of this. But I do really like unexpected surprises and I always have my hopes up, even if it's just in the form of a faint glimmer.

Confession time: I have mildly relapsed into my old habit of arguing with people on the internet. Only in this case now, it's on Twitter, since my Facebook profile still remains happily-deleted. It's a bit less addictive for me on Twitter, since Twitter comments are poorly organized and easy to get lost in the fray of people flinging e-poo at each other form all directions. Add that to the fact that most Twitter users have anonymous handles, so there's only so "personal" a spat there can get between anonymous noboides (people with low follower counts). Basically Twitter can be rather fun for the occasional foray into light-hearted trolling and piss-taking.

But my most recent exchange on there reminded me again of how pointless nearly all internet arguments are. The topic we were "debating" is inconsequential and thus won't be mentioned here. But the exchanged followed a very common progression I've experienced many times over in my many years of online interactions. Basically:

1. Person A makes a statement; Person B (in this instance, me) finds that statement to be nonsensical and expressed that he or she thinks such.

2. Person B offers a detailed response (within the tiny bounds of Twitter character limits), challenging Person A's central point.

3. Person A responds to something Person B said that's peripheral to their main counterpoint.

4. Person B responds back, trying to get the discussion back toward the center point of contention.

5. Person A keeps nitpicking over the aforementioned peripheral point, while continuing to steer clear of the central point of contention.

6. Person B replies again, still trying to get the discussion back on track, only this time in a frustrated tone.

7. Person A keeps hammering on with the same rhetoric, and by this time the nitpicking has devolved into obtuse word games that have nothing to do with the original purpose of the discussion.

8. At this point Person B can break this circular impasse by either, (x) respectfully bow out of the discussion and send his or her interlocutor off on their merry way, or (y) escalate the climate of frustration and eventually break down and start flinging personal attacks in Person A's general direction, which may cause the entire discussion to crash and burn in a haze of back and forth insults.

9. In both scenarios, Person A "wins" the argument, even though it's Person B who was more likely to be arguing in good faith. In scenario (x), Person B gives up and cedes the debate floor to Person A, who effectively has the last word. In scenario (y), Person B looks like they're losing their composure, and thus by casual appearances, cedes the moral high ground to Person A, granted Person A has maintained their composure during the entirety of the exchange.

So we can deduce from all of this that: if an argument or debate is all about winning or losing, then the debate itself is a servant to popular appearances (appeal to the crowd), which means the ultimate purpose of this argument is something other than truth-seeking. A Sophist always "wins" those arguments. A Sophist is a verbal craftsman; their art is deploying language that can convince a crowd that their rhetoric speaks to what is most desirable to the crowd. However, the truth is simply the truth; it is not a popularity contest.

An internet argument between anonymous or semi-anonymous participants seldom has any set of rules or standards that both parties agree upon before commencing the debate. These debates almost always happen on a whim and with very little (often zero) preparation or due diligence performed prior. And usually there's no way of vetting each participants level of expertise or reputation prior to the argument commencing, which would require a neutral third party anyway. So we can see that with zero standards or rules, it's a total crapshoot when it comes to what sort of people are going to show up to these debates. It's usually a combination or no-nothings, emotional tantrum-throwers and amateur sophists (if lucky). Participants who act in good faith will almost always find themselves trampled underfoot by the first three types I mentioned. With those types, the emotional reasoning and Dunning-Kruger Effect are always common occurrences.

Finally, about debating in general:
(1) It's hard work and requires quite a bit of homework and the practicing of rhetorical skills.
(2) There always needs to be a firm set of rules, guidelines and standards all participating parties can agree upon, and of course a moderator to enforce these standards during the debate.

Thus, we can state:
(3) The above two cost time, money, practice and expertise to execute properly;
(4) People arguing on the internet are generally doing so for their own pleasure and leisure; internet use in general is something people do in their downtime as an escape or distraction from their actual work. The moment people on the internet are required to start applying the rigors of hard work to this activity, it ceases to be pleasure and leisure, unless the person gains pleasure from doing structured, long-form debates for free. There are well-moderated internet forums where structured debating does take place, but they are vastly outnumbered by casual forums and comment sections where anything goes.
(5) From all of this we can generalize that it is almost a total waste of time for genuine truth-seekers to engage in impromptu internet debates.