Saturday, July 6, 2013

Why Do They Repeat Defeated Arguments?

As Cephus pointed out in a recent post, there is this phenomenon that most atheists will have seen if they have spent much time arguing with the religious. The theist will present an argument and it will be completely destroyed, perhaps they will be shown to have a faulty assumption, have faulty logic, or just be factually incorrect on some point. Nevertheless, on a later date that same theist will present the exact same argument which you debunked previously. No revision of the argument to account for your correction, no admission that there could be some flaw, nothing, it's as if your conversation with them never happened. It's infuriating, but what is really going on here? There are a few possibilities as I see it.

One which seems easy to jump to immediately is that they are lying. They know that their argument is flawed and they don't care, they think repeating it as if there are no flaws will be effective for the general population. I definitely think this is true of (most of) the professional apologists. They know the arguments extremely well and they generally seem to be intelligent. Certainly they can see the enormous glaring holes in them. They are either true believers who are only interested in converting people (or keeping their flock), or they are profit motivated. Either way, fuck those guys.

pic source
Another possibility is that they didn't really understand your counterargument. It might have looked to you like you were convincing them, but really they didn't follow you and didn't feel like having you repeat yourself or clarify, perhaps they were bored with the argument, or embarrassed that they don't follow and didn't speak up. It might have even seemed reasonable to them during the argument, but later when they were reviewing the confrontation in their own mind they couldn't remember some key step. At any rate, things weren't communicated as properly and that is the source of the problem here. In this situation we need to be patient and explain once again the flaw in their logic. Ideally it will be explained in a slightly different way, but simple repetition might be enough.

But a third possibility is what has really interested me and has been rolling around in my brain going for the last few days. These are people who are bouncing back and forth between what they can see through logical argument and the indoctrination that is embedded deep within their minds. I find this the most interesting because I was in this state for a number of years. To be fair, it was mostly internal argument that I was having with myself on long car trips, but I'm pretty sure it would have been similar if I had a regular debate partner.

pic source
I'd be driving home from college to visit my parents and I would be thinking about something I learned in church that had been bugging me. I had a few hours here, and I would run through all of the reasons I thought the church was feeding me garbage. It would either be various messages that conflict with each other, or the problem of evil, or the existence of hell, or whatever. I'd run through all of the reasons I thought it was nonsense, and I would completely convince myself I was correct. But then a few days later I'd be driving back home and I would consider everything from the opposite perspective. What would the church have to say about my points? Is there anyway I could explain those things away from their perspective? Usually I could, especially near the end, it took some pretty extreme mental gymnastics, but I could justify some pretty crazy stuff. My indoctrination was deep and implanted at an early age, counter arguments were installed in my brain, and I knew how to make new ones if necessary.

Even when I thought I had a perfect argument against Christianity on one day, I was able to convince myself on another day that there was a flaw in my previous argument. Now, imagine if I had been arguing with atheists rather than with myself. How would this have played out? The atheist would have produced an argument against me, and perhaps even convinced me that they were right. I would have thought about it the next day and convinced myself that the atheist had been incorrect, then I would have gone back to my original argument as if my conversation with that atheist had never happened. I wouldn't be lying, and I understood the atheist's argument (at least at the time), but nevertheless I would have been back to square one. Indoctrination is a bitch!

So I ask myself, how did I break out of this? It's all about repetition. Each time I had to do the mental gymnastics it was a little bit harder. There's a new wrinkle to the argument, a new aspect I had to get around.  I was able to do it for a long time, but eventually the house of cards came falling down. I've always been a detail oriented person, so I was only able to push my concerns to the side temporarily. Eventually they would push themselves to the forefront of my mind and I would have to admit to myself that my patchwork to explain them away wasn't quite adequate. I did this mostly on my own, but I think a lot of people could use a push to keep considering their arguments. They aren't going to reevaluate their patchwork themselves, they need someone else to keep poking at it. Every time they present their poor argument, someone needs to point out the flaws. It's that repetition that is necessary to get through the indoctrination.

19 comments:

  1. Good post. I consider religion to work pretty much as some sort of mind virus. That is religious content and representations have evolved insidious adaptations that make that content more virulent and contagious, more memorable and easy to transmit to other minds. So the believer is not in control anymore, but he or she is being controlled by this virus. A virus as such is good at passing itself onto new victims. And a way to do so, is to try those insidious adaptations in the form of arguments. Some of us might have created antibodies for those arguments, like when you mention that you find those arguments flawed. But those mind viruses don't care. The believers are not concerned about the truth value of the arguments. In fact they're not concerned about anything, because they are not even in control anymore. Those mind viruses are still gonna want to pass themselves onto other minds, whether some have created antibodies or not. You cannot ask them to stop replicating just because they're flawed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello Ciro Galli, and thanks for stopping by :)

      I like the analogy of a virus, it seems like rational thought and logic make up the immune system against it. I was indoctrinated for so long that the virus had quite a foothold on my mind. For a long time, every time my immune system made headway the virus went dormant and then came back later with a vengeance.

      Delete
  2. They do it because they are totally disinterested in truth, only emotional comfort. If a belief makes them feel good, they will do everything they can to defend the belief, even if that defense has been proven to be invalid. I think there's a lot in common between religious fanatics and abused women. Both will do or say anything to support and defend their "master" and neither are open to having their beliefs or claims questioned.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think this is true for some people, maybe even most people that we argue with, but it's not everyone. I can say this with confidence because I was in this position. The difficulty is, I was interested in emotional comfort, and I would do everything I could to defend the belief, and yet a part of me was also looking for the truth. I was absolutely interested in truth, but the truth also scared the hell out of me.

      Furthermore, even though there was a part of me seeking truth, there was another part that was scared of change and scared of being wrong. I think that part showed through much more than the truth-seeker. I think it would have been very easy for someone to have written me off back then. I think there are definitely some people who are lost-causes and some people who are not. I'm not convinced it is possible for us to tell the groups apart.

      Also, I think the comparison between religious fanatics and abused women is very apt. When it comes to the women, many times if you help them they will just go back to their abusers. While this can be frustrating and demoralizing, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to help, and it doesn't mean that all battered women are impossible to rescue.

      Delete
    2. See, I remember being in just that position, I told myself I cared about truth and in most things, I did, but with regard to religion, no matter how much I told myself I wanted to know the truth, I really didn't. It wasn't until I was actually out of religion that I retroactively realized this. It just took one event to make me decide that truth was more important than emotional comfort, but had that event never come along, I'd still be a believer today, supremely convinced that I was after the truth.

      I really don't think it's worthwhile to try to rescue theists anymore. Most of them are self-deluded and will never accept anything that goes against their heartfelt beliefs. So long as religion is seen as a socially acceptable view, they will hold that view, come hell or high water. The secret, I think, is to stop religion from being socially acceptable and we are doing a good job of that in recent years. Lots of people are realizing that religion isn't the panacea that they thought it was and leaving on their own.

      Delete
    3. "but with regard to religion, no matter how much I told myself I wanted to know the truth, I really didn't"

      I feel like this is partially true, but it's not quite that simple (at least that's how it was for me). I think there was part of me that wanted the truth no matter what, and part that wanted the comfort no matter what, and I would kinda oscillate back and forth. The fear of hell kept me from staying on the "seeking truth" mode for too long and the problems with the religion kept me from staying in the "comfort" mode for too long.

      "Most of them are self-deluded and will never accept anything that goes against their heartfelt beliefs. "

      That's probably true, and yet it's not all. And I don't think it easy to tell who are the rare people who might change beliefs.

      Delete
    4. While you're right, you can never really tell who might change their mind, if we limit this to only people who are true believers, the ones that really buy into these beliefs wholesale and not the ones who are doing it for primarily social reasons, then I'd say that there are an exceedingly small number of people who are actually going to change their minds. People like us are outliers. We're the exceptions to the very powerful rule. Yes, it's great that we got unhooked from the Matrix, as Morpheus said, most people just can't handle the truth.

      That's sad.

      Delete
    5. I agree with you here, it is an exceedingly small number of people, and it is sad.

      Delete
  3. Some theists will never learn. There's this fundie that I spar with from time to time and he confidently proclaims that evolution is a hoax and that there are no transitional fossil records.

    So I link him a list of transitional fossils and he says he can't refute them because he's not a scientist. Then he goes on proclaiming there are no transitional fossils again. It's dishonesty at heart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That kind of crap I find really frustrating. Have you ever gone a slightly different route and shown him ring species? It looks like a speciation event in progress. Not that these things seem to convince those people, obviously God just created these creatures this way. But ring species are neat and it's fun to take the conversation down alternate paths.

      Delete
    2. I'll look into it. But from now on, when it comes to fundies, I only debate them when I'm bored and want to expose their insincerity and special pleading.

      Delete
    3. Agreed, I think it's best to debate them when you are bored, or want to get a little debating practice in, or in the case of things like ring species I use it as an excuse to look into something interesting that I would probably not dig into otherwise.

      Delete
  4. When they argue with me on Friday I think they just forget that they used the same argument on Wednesday.

    To some degree, I think they frame their understanding in such a way that our counterarguments are actually invalid. Apologists use definitions that no one else use. This isn't to say their arguments aren't fallicious, they are just fallicious in a different way than atheists normally point out--at least from their skewed point of view. It almost always comes down to circular reasoning.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's interesting, do you have any examples of them using different definitions that we do? The only thing that really comes to mind for me is them using a different definition of atheist, claiming that I'm not an atheist unless I proclaim with 100% certainty that God does not exist. I've had some people try to derail a different conversation I was having with them by going down that road.

      Delete
    2. I would not say it so much a definition problem as a word game they like to play. They will argue something is not green when it is light green, or its not black as it has a hint of grey. It seems to me to be a case of I know I am wrong so I will weasel my way out of it by disagreeing over something irrelevant to the argument.

      Delete
    3. Sure, haven't you run into theists who use an all-encompassing definition of "faith"? Everyone has faith, therefore their own use of faith is perfectly justified.

      Delete
    4. That's a good point, faith is a perfect example

      Delete
  5. I haven't run into this much, other than with one long-time sparring partner, who I can easily forgive for forgetting given the time span. I can imagine how infuriating that must be.

    My guess is that it is more like what Grundy is suggesting, but I hold out hope that the experience you had would be common as well; realization through repetition.

    What I do run across is finding nearly the exact same argument used by multiple people. Fending of the same thing over and over can be tiresome...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've definitely seen this type of thing a few times, but I do much more often see the same argument being used by multiple people. In fact, a few months ago I had a couple of Euthyphro dilemma conversations going on two different Christian blogs. If I wanted to, I probably could have just wrote comments on one blog and copy/pasted it over to the other :)

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...