Converting a creationist: worth the bother?

[Darth Wong]

Message to Arthur Dent: stop being an asshole and quoting people line-by-line. By nitpicking every individual sentence, you make your posts intolerably long and you commit the red herring fallacy of attacking minutae rather than the main points, which are all obscured and diluted by your practice of ripping paragraphs apart into the tiniest pieces possible.

[Nick]

I don't mean to be rude, but I couldn't be bothered to quote and answer everything you said.

I think distilling something and answering the main points is a courtesy, rather than a reason to take offense (*glares meaningfully at Arthur Dent*)

Mostly, I think we're actually on the same page now, although I would still insist that the statement "creationists are stupid, irrational, or ignorant" cannot be considered bigoted just because some people don't know what "creationist" means. The statement is completely valid when using the dictionary definition of "creationist", and the fact that some people don't know this definition is their problem, not ours.

*nods* Not recognising this point was a significant mistaken assumption in my original reply to the ongoing 'discussion' between Dent and CSS.

Personal abuse is not always a debating tactic.

I think my definition of debating tactics is more inclusive than yours. I see the tactics as covering both the relevant arguments and the way they are phrased. But the point that being impressed by good style laid over crap logic is, by definition, falling victim to the 'style-over-substance' fallacy - we definitely agree on that

I have always felt that if someone is irrational enough to subscribe to the "style over substance" fallacy, then he's a lost cause anyway, so the fact that my debating style bothers that person is of little concern to me.

Unfortunately, I think this perspective is all too likely to be true . Rational people, once the fallacy is pointed out to them, are generally able to get over it - they may not like it, but they will be able to accept it as a difference in style. Now that I think about it, I suspect it would be possible to object to the way I will sometimes string people along, merely granting them sufficient rope to hang themselves with their own irrationality. . . (You listening, Priesto?)