I love this forum, and like 99% of the people on it, but…

[Mark Fulton]

...sometimes some people piss me off and waste my time, and neither of us learn anything.

I don’t mind ignorance or stupidity so much, but these are some of the traits of people that destroy a good discussion.

1. An emphatic belief in their own bullshit

2. A burning need to be right

3. A refusal to ever admit a mistake

4. An inability to acknowledge an alternative view

5. The automatic dismissal of others' opinions

6. A need to repeatedly make the same point

7. A habit of ignoring a central issue to talk about something peripheral

8. A superficial (at best) understanding of context and history

9. An over reliance on the appeal to authority, (argumentum ad verecundiam,)

10.usually with their unlearned selves as the authority (The Dunning-Kruger effect)

11. A patronizing attitude to others, and

12. A readiness to make assumptions about them

13. A lazy reluctance to use the Google button to check out facts

14. An inability to adequately express themselves



I would like anyone interested to add to them or change them.

Now, I’m not perfect. I have some of these faults.

I’m going to put them somewhere to remind myself how to behave.

Oh…and I might just pull them out when someone’s really pissing me off LOL.

[Logica Humano]

The purpose of our debates, at least for me, is not to convince the opposition. It is to convince those who are on the path to atheism, but require some form convincing otherwise. Very rarely is the target my competitor, and only ever slightly do I believe I can actually change their minds. For many, they view these debates as polarizing. There has to be two sides, and one has to be complete and correct, at least for them.

Now, that being said, we're all humans, aren't we?

[DLJ]

I plead guilty to:
2, 3, 7, 8,

and above all 11... cos it's what I'm good at.

I would add:

15. Not reading earlier posts and then making the same point that someone else made only one page ago.

16. A patronising attitude towards others.

[Dom]

I don't see discussions as something that is won or lost.

It's a way to learn and expand one's thinking.

[Vera]

(03-12-2012 08:49 AM)Dom Wrote:  I don't see discussions as something that is won or lost.

It's a way to learn and expand one's thinking.

It is as simple as that.

[Erxomai]

(03-12-2012 08:10 AM)DLJ Wrote:  I plead guilty to:
2, 3, 7, 8,

and above all 11... cos it's what I'm good at.

I would add:

15. Not reading earlier posts and then making the same point that someone else made only one page ago.

16. A patronising attitude towards others.

I see what you did there.

[houseofcantor]

How about, not posting in the correct forum section?

[Free]

Mark may very well be referring to me as being the point of this thread, because I was giving him a hard time on a theory of his in another thread.

I agree with the other posters here, it's all about what we can learn from each other.

Mark doesn't really know me outside that other thread, and does not know that at one time as a very young man I considered the Bible to be 100% total myth and laughed at it until I would nearly pee my pants.

Yet over time I overcame my disdain for religion and decided to take a look at it from a historical perspective. The result of those years of historical research has lead me to my current holding pattern on the subject.

Mark, we may never know the truth. The best we can ever do is to approximate it with the best explanation possible. History is not so unlike the scientific method where we postulate a theory and then attempt to discover if there is any truth to it.

Like the other posters here have said, it's really not a matter of who wins or loses, or who is right or wrong. It's all about learning and accepting new knowledge. I cannot count how many times I have had to abandon old concepts because new ones were more tenable.

It's been a very long road for me to come to the current state of my knowledge on history, and other things that I do in real life. But I would not have ever gotten here if not for the contributions of those who went the hard yards to educate me.

To them I salute, and also to many of the great thinkers and awesome people on this forum, I am indebted to you for simply being yourselves.

We have a great forum here, and an awesome group of people.

[lucradis]

Hoc beat me to it.

On topic I'd add: An unwillingness to see any faults in ones own arguments and debating method.

[houseofcantor]

Yeah, Free, it's all about you...




I kinda thought that way myself, and it may be, but it looks more like Egor.