I love a good online discussion. The challenge is often keeping my comments short. I’ve learned a lot from reading other people’s conversations and debates. I’ve learned a ton from articles and memes. I love memes, because they are often short and to the point and can be powerful ways of conveying complicated arguments. Memes have challenged me to go on and do a lot of research on my own and change my mind on many things. I’ve often heard people say that no one ever changes their mind because of an online debate/discussion. I don’t know, but maybe that person is not open minded or is so pompous as to think they’ve got it all figured out. That has certainly not been my experience.

I’d say I started debating online around 2007 or 2008. I loved the way Youtube used to do their comments. There would be great debates there. Blogs also used to be great, but no one really does much of that anymore. The comment system on Facebook is terrible, but it’s good enough, and it’s where people are right now.

One of the problems I had when I started was being able to tell when I won an argument. It seemed I would say A, they would say B and then it would go on, and as long as the conversation would go on, as long as they continued, I must not have won the argument. After reading “Always Ready” by Greg Bahnsen (who was a genius), I learned that whenever anyone used a self-contradictory argument, their position was untenable, and they had lost. Also, if they can’t be consistent with their argument, whether that’s from topic to topic or even in the same discussion, they’ve also lost.

But over the last few years, I’ve noticed that people also indicate the loss of their argument in a couple other ways. They will delete all their comments, or they will start attacking me personally. In Facebook, if you reply to someone’s comment, and go on to have a long conversation with them, you can lose the whole conversation if they delete their first comment. You can take screenshots if you start to worry about someone deleting the conversation. At least you won’t lose everything you typed that way. Another way is to not reply to their comment, but to make a separate comment and tag them in it. Then, they may do the same or they may reply to your comment.

I’ve had people insult me personally. Atheists will hurl all types of filth at me personally, but even Christians will insult me personally or say I’m judgmental or change the subject to me or talk about something I might be doing. Here’s an example of that from the woman from my previous post.

Here’s the meme she was referring to. You can see it in yesterday’s post, but it might be too small to read. It is one of my favorites, especially for this individual.

My initial comments are on yesterday’s post, and maybe I’m the biggest jerk in the world, but I presented, rational, logical arguments. Those arguments are either right or wrong, regardless of where I live or how beady my eyes are.

I have recently found most people to be utterly incapable of responding to an argument in a rational way. Even people from my former church want a safe place, and desire safety over truth.

As I said yesterday, Karen is a principal at an elementary school. People send their kids to be educated by this woman who probably hasn’t had a rational thought pass through her head since the late 80s. What results do you expect from public school when the principal is a moron?