This is an interesting topic and post. My thoughts following from the God exists / priors bit (and apologies if this is an obvious point, or dealt with elsewhere—e.g. too many long comments below to read more than cursorily!):
Many deeply-held beliefs—particularly broadly ideological ones (e.g. theological, ethical, or political) - are held emotionally rather than rationally, and not really debated in a search for the truth, but to proclaim one’s own beliefs, and perhaps in the vain hope of converting others.
So any apparently strong counter-evidence or counter-arguments are met with fall-back arguments, or so-called ‘saving hypotheses’ (where special reasons are invoked for why God didn’t answer your entirely justified prayer). Savvy arguers will have an endless supply of these, including perhaps some so general that they can escape all attack (e.g. that God deliberately evades all attempts at testing). Unsavvy arguers will run out of responses, but still won’t be convinced, and will think there is some valid response that they just happen not to know. (I’ve even heard this used by one church as an official ultimate response to the problem of evil: ‘we don’t know why God allows evil, but he does (so there must be a good reason we just don’t know about)’.)
That is, the double-crux model that evidence (e.g. the universe) comes first and beliefs follow from it is reversed in these cases. The beliefs come first, and any supporting evidence and reasoning are merely used to justify the beliefs to others. (Counter-evidence and counter-arguments are ignored.) Gut feel is all that counts. So there aren’t really cruxes to be had.
I don’t think these are very special cases; probably quite a wide variety of topics are treated like this by many people. E.g. a lot of ‘debates’ I see on Facebook are of this kind; they lead nowhere, no-one ever changes their mind, and they usually turn unpleasant quickly. The problem isn’t the debating technique, but the nature of the beliefs.
This is an interesting topic and post. My thoughts following from the God exists / priors bit (and apologies if this is an obvious point, or dealt with elsewhere—e.g. too many long comments below to read more than cursorily!):
Many deeply-held beliefs—particularly broadly ideological ones (e.g. theological, ethical, or political) - are held emotionally rather than rationally, and not really debated in a search for the truth, but to proclaim one’s own beliefs, and perhaps in the vain hope of converting others.
So any apparently strong counter-evidence or counter-arguments are met with fall-back arguments, or so-called ‘saving hypotheses’ (where special reasons are invoked for why God didn’t answer your entirely justified prayer). Savvy arguers will have an endless supply of these, including perhaps some so general that they can escape all attack (e.g. that God deliberately evades all attempts at testing). Unsavvy arguers will run out of responses, but still won’t be convinced, and will think there is some valid response that they just happen not to know. (I’ve even heard this used by one church as an official ultimate response to the problem of evil: ‘we don’t know why God allows evil, but he does (so there must be a good reason we just don’t know about)’.)
That is, the double-crux model that evidence (e.g. the universe) comes first and beliefs follow from it is reversed in these cases. The beliefs come first, and any supporting evidence and reasoning are merely used to justify the beliefs to others. (Counter-evidence and counter-arguments are ignored.) Gut feel is all that counts. So there aren’t really cruxes to be had.
I don’t think these are very special cases; probably quite a wide variety of topics are treated like this by many people. E.g. a lot of ‘debates’ I see on Facebook are of this kind; they lead nowhere, no-one ever changes their mind, and they usually turn unpleasant quickly. The problem isn’t the debating technique, but the nature of the beliefs.