November 18, 2011, here on slacktivist: Dueling dogma isn’t dialogue
Another part of my complaint about “debates” … is that I think such point-scoring face-offs wind up replacing the conversations that ought to be happening instead.
Such debates are framed as having something to do with persuasion, but there’s little reason to think that really has anything to do with what’s going on in such forums. No skeptic has ever left such a stage saying, “Gee, an uncaused cause … I’d never thought of that.” And no religious believer has ever been brought up short, saying, “Why, yes, an impersonal, not-at-all transcendent tea kettle in space also can’t be disproved and thus is a perfect analogy for belief in God. How silly I’ve been.”
A debate forum, in other words, tends to produce the opposite of what people with radically different perspectives need from each other, which is a mutual openness to learning what might be seen from the perspective of another.
Again, a main reason I’m committed to pluralism is because I think it’s necessary to protect freedom of conscience and to prevent coercion. A duel of dogmas suggests that one dogma will, or could, “win” and thus, triumphant, become the reigning dogma. I don’t want there to be a reigning dogma.
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