DEBATE GAME TRICKS

DEBATE GAME TRICKS

These were some of the games they liked to play that convinced me that most of them just liked to attack other people's cherished beliefs for entertainment and really were not interested in discovering the truth.

Piling On - One of them would make a point, and then one or more would chime in with agreement, trying to create a feeling of peer pressure, as if I was the only one in the world who could possibly believe what I was saying

Accusing me of what they were doing - They changed the subject while accusing me of changing the subject.

Shell Game - Instead of talking about their own beliefs and comparing them to mine, they would want to compare the beliefs of some third party, who was not part of the discussion with my beliefs. See examples.

Omniscience - They claimed to be able to read my mind by saying that I knew they were right about this and that and I was just pretending to not understand.

Annoyance - Christian was abbreviated Xian in order to annoy. They called Christianity a fairy tale, a myth, a lie, all without evidence.

Evidence switch - they accused me of having no evidence while answering my evidence with unsupported assertions. On several occasions I replied to this with, "I like evidence, too. Do you have any?" Perhaps I should put this on the unanswered questions list.

Impugning my integrity - I suppose this is really just an insult but they would use questions about my honesty as an excuse to discount my evidence even when they had no evidence of dishonesty.

Political red herrings - they would try to draw me into a political discussion. No matter how many times I told them that there are Christians and Atheists all over the political spectrum they would constantly bring up their little political pet peeves.

Trying to use quantity instead of quality - they liked to use dozens of the same fallacious argument as if that helped it be true. They liked to paste long winded articles about various points apparently because they were incapable articulating their view points. One of them got me to agree to read one of their books. I should have been more careful before I agreed. It was awful.

Presenting the work of others as their own - the first time they sent me an article written by someone else the guy tried to pass it off as his own work. It was a pretty good presentation of the synoptic problem. I answered it point for point and the guy just started babbling in his response. I went into google and found where it had been written by someone else. It was pretty pathetic. After that they started sourcing their stuff. They still may have passed off someone else's writing as their own but I checked the longer stuff and never caught them at it again. I did not want to waste my time arguing with phantoms.

Transposing the argument - in our lengthy discussion about miracles, it started out with them saying the Bible was unreliable because it mentioned miracles. As we discussed it they tried to transpose it into me claiming I believed in the Bible because of the miracles. Then they wanted me to explain why I did not believe every crackpot in history who ever claimed a miracle. No amount of evidence was able to dissuade them from that view. They were simply unable to escape their anti-supernatural bias. In their view I was required to believe every miracle claim if I believed one.