I generally agree (a lot) with this principle, especially during direct, in-person discussions. Though I still remain persuaded that there is a place for contradiction—and even explicitly ridicule of ideas in argument.
I’m thinking specifically of my experience with religion. You mentioned the example of lurkers being able to access direct arguments. For some large chunk of the fundamentalist theist lurker crowd out there, polite, Socratic-styled arguments against their religion may not do the trick. This, I think, is because (1) theists are super good at out-politing others and (2) the (especially childhood) indocrination into the meme of theism is designed to survive these sorts of encounters.
Upon reading a polite, Socratic-exchange online, a sufficiently indocrinated believer can just say, “Well, the atheist is really smart and his position sounds okay. But he obviously just can’t see the Truth because he won’t submit his stubborn heart. And it is clear from the discussion that he really respects the theistic point-of-view, since he seemed to engage with most of the theist premises during the debate.”
What most stands out about those conversations is Borghossian’s patience. He politely keeps asking questions as the conversation seemingly goes round in circles, sometimes even shutting up and listening as his interlocutors spend several minutes basically repeating themselves, or going off on a tangent about the leadership structure of their church.
This paragraph stood out to me as an example of what I mean. A theist “interlocutor spending several minutes basically repeating themselves, or going off on a tangent about the leadership structure of their church” is called a “sermon” where I grew up, and theists are used to them being delivered by the authoritative member of their community (i.e. pastor) to whom they defer for their knowledge about what is True.
In fact, many people I know would view such a “redundant tangent” as a valid argument that fully rebutted anything the atheist said, even if it contained nothing substantial in regard to the topic at hand, just because it was kinda long and sounded Christian-y enough to be True (i.e. it sounded like something the Pastor would say in his sermon...and so applause lights would go off).
As an alternative, I think someone like Christopher Hitchens can be effective (Richard Dawkins is good example, too). He doesn’t tend to grant bad premises or emulate Socrates or even follow the format of the debate. He instead uses humor and strong polemics to attack the absurdity of the premise that a more polite opponent might allow for the sake of discussion.
He calls certain ideas “dangerously stupid” and tells people their favorite charity (i.e. the church) is wasting their donations. He ridicules bad ideas instead of engagaing with them. He did make lots of enemies. And I think he tends to take things too far once in a while. But I also think he (and his style) won some (de)converts that Dale Carnegie’s style (or Peter Boghossian’s) might never reach.
I generally agree (a lot) with this principle, especially during direct, in-person discussions. Though I still remain persuaded that there is a place for contradiction—and even explicitly ridicule of ideas in argument.
I’m thinking specifically of my experience with religion. You mentioned the example of lurkers being able to access direct arguments. For some large chunk of the fundamentalist theist lurker crowd out there, polite, Socratic-styled arguments against their religion may not do the trick. This, I think, is because (1) theists are super good at out-politing others and (2) the (especially childhood) indocrination into the meme of theism is designed to survive these sorts of encounters.
Upon reading a polite, Socratic-exchange online, a sufficiently indocrinated believer can just say, “Well, the atheist is really smart and his position sounds okay. But he obviously just can’t see the Truth because he won’t submit his stubborn heart. And it is clear from the discussion that he really respects the theistic point-of-view, since he seemed to engage with most of the theist premises during the debate.”
This paragraph stood out to me as an example of what I mean. A theist “interlocutor spending several minutes basically repeating themselves, or going off on a tangent about the leadership structure of their church” is called a “sermon” where I grew up, and theists are used to them being delivered by the authoritative member of their community (i.e. pastor) to whom they defer for their knowledge about what is True.
In fact, many people I know would view such a “redundant tangent” as a valid argument that fully rebutted anything the atheist said, even if it contained nothing substantial in regard to the topic at hand, just because it was kinda long and sounded Christian-y enough to be True (i.e. it sounded like something the Pastor would say in his sermon...and so applause lights would go off).
As an alternative, I think someone like Christopher Hitchens can be effective (Richard Dawkins is good example, too). He doesn’t tend to grant bad premises or emulate Socrates or even follow the format of the debate. He instead uses humor and strong polemics to attack the absurdity of the premise that a more polite opponent might allow for the sake of discussion.
He calls certain ideas “dangerously stupid” and tells people their favorite charity (i.e. the church) is wasting their donations. He ridicules bad ideas instead of engagaing with them. He did make lots of enemies. And I think he tends to take things too far once in a while. But I also think he (and his style) won some (de)converts that Dale Carnegie’s style (or Peter Boghossian’s) might never reach.