I mean that as a completely serious question. I’ve been mulling it recently, ever since I got tangentially involved in an argument in a comment thread on another blog. The blogger in question seems to spend the largest part of his time going after atheists, and it would appear that there are many who rise to the bait. I’ve never quite understood that behavior, really; I’m happy to debate issues with people who comment here—as long as the conversation seems to me to be productive, and an actual conversation—but I don’t generally have a great deal of interest in going to other people’s blogs just to tell them they’re wrong.
I know there are vast numbers of people out there who believe very differently from me, including on issues on which I hold deep and strong opinions, but I simply don’t feel the compulsion to go fight with any of them about it simply because of that fact. Yet some people do. The commenters with whom I briefly argued (on a point of historiography, not faith) seemed to have a sort of long-standing relationship with that blogger which consisted mostly of them being offended by him believing differently and expressing that fact in what seemed to me to be an intentionally provocative manner. I don’t see the point in that, and I don’t see the justification—on either side, really.
Sure, I have no doubt provoked people on this blog, and over the years in real life, but not with the intent of being provocative; I’m looking for something different. If you try to pick a fight, you’ll get one, but you’ll usually get one with people who just like fighting; if you try to generate an argument because you want to have an argument, you’ll usually end up dealing with people who fight you because they’re offended that people could actually be so stupid as to believe something they find completely unacceptable. That is what we’ve come to call (in a manner unfair to the folks who first stood up to argue for the fundamentals of the Christian faith) the spirit of fundamentalism; and while it’s no doubt partly temperamental, personally, I don’t have a lot of interest in arguing with diehard fundamentalists, be they conservative Christian fundamentalists, atheist fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists, liberal fundamentalists, or whomever. I tend to think of that in the spirit of the old Texas judge who advised, “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It can’t be done and it annoys the pig.”
The key here, I think, is that folks who have that sort of attitude seem to view the purpose of argument as winning. That’s why they argue, and it’s what they see as the value of argument, as far as I can tell. I don’t know if it’s a matter of ego gratification in triumphing over other people, or if it’s a defense mechanism against insecurity in their own beliefs, or what, but there really does seem to be that sort of attitude that the reason that you argue with people is to get them to admit that they’re wrong and you’re right.
I have a problem with that—or maybe two, but they’re related. The first is that that sort of approach is all about the self—it is, at base, selfish. It’s all about aggrandizing the ego, building up the self at the expense of others, and so it is not concerned about others except insofar as they provide an opportunity to show one’s own superiority (because the reason for wanting to demonstrate the superiority of one’s position is to prove that one is superior for holding it).
The second is that it’s about the self instead of being about the truth: if you go into an argument with the goal of proving yourself to be right, then you’re showing that what really matters to you is not knowing the truth, but being seen to be right and being affirmed as right. With that sort of attitude, it wouldn’t really matter what you believed—indeed, you could change beliefs like some people change clothes, so long as that put you in a position where the beliefs you professed were applauded by those around you as correct. (And indeed, there are people who do exactly that.)
It seems to me that the purpose of argument ought to be to help us together to find truth. This is not to say that it ought to be timid, or half-hearted, or accompanied by qualifiers that really, whatever you believe is fine, and it doesn’t matter that you and I disagree; quite to the contrary, actually. If you and I disagree, then it could mean that both of us are wrong, or it could mean that one of us is wrong and one of us is right—or even, depending on the subject, that both of us have perceived an aspect of the truth but have drawn some false conclusions from it. Whichever is the case, this is profoundly important, not as a threat to either of our egos, but as an opportunity for our growth. If I believe something which is not true and you come to me with the truth, then I need to know this information—and how am I going to learn it, except by you demonstrating it to me? And how will you demonstrate it to me except through reasoned argument?
Of course, it will never be true in this world as we know it that everyone will be selflessly concerned to know only what is true; our own sin, and particularly our pride and our selfish fear, make that impossible. I certainly can’t claim it to be true for me; I want to believe only what is true, but I know that I don’t always act accordingly. Scientists will tell you that this is how science works, but it isn’t, not by a long shot—the desire for wealth, the desire for success, the desire to win approval from the establishment by conforming to the dogma of the day (in science, the technical term for dogma is “paradigm”), all corrupt the process, just as similar considerations corrupt it in every other discipline and every other part of society. That said, the fact that we can’t perfectly reach a standard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth setting, and it doesn’t mean it isn’t worth disciplining ourselves in that direction. The purpose of argument, I believe, ought to be to discover truth—which will inevitably mean sometimes discovering that we’re wrong, and learning to accept that fact not only with grace but with gratitude. May we all get better at this.