Hah, good topic.

 

There are two answers, one relates to how you respond factually to specific arguments.  As in, He said A, I said B, I should have said C but I didn't know better at the time.  I think that process is a long path of education and we all make lots of mistakes.  The trick is only making those mistakes once or twice instead of making them over and over.

 

The other answer is basically your tone and delivery, this one is less about education and more about attitude.

 

.I'm more dissapointed in how I've reacted in non atheist websites.  When I'm outnumbered I think I try to respond to everyone, even the people who are just heckling.  In hind site the better way to handle it is just to ignore anyone who isn't making a genuine effort since the others aren't going to accomplish anything but getting you riled up.

 

I've learned to avoid sarcasm or any kind of verbal showing-off.  They'll simply focus on that when they reply, and ignore any actual arguments I made.

 

(Unfortunatly, I have since encountered theists who will accuse me of "mocking" them, even when I went out of my way not to. *sigh* )

 

I was also painted with the "mocking" brush recently.  I think in that case I was "mocking" them when I asked a question for which I honestly wanted an answer.  And they didn't have one.

I get impatient with people who won't face up to contradictions within and lack of supporting evidence for their opinions and beliefs.  We are all self-contradictory at times and we are all ignorant about a lot of things.  Big deal.  Grow up.  Admit it, move on.  Probably not a good thing to say out loud.

Yeah, that happens to me too.

Another bad habit of mine is that when someone says something I find incredibly stupid or offensive, I often can't help but lob an insult at them. Usually, it's some kind of veiled insult or sarcasm, which probably makes it even worse... 

Let's add up a few more mistakes on top of that. I welcome any feedback or comments. In my opinion, these things can be worse than any direct insults, but everyone's got different buttons to push.

Assuming belief or faith
This can be really annoying. Some atheists presume, that all theists operate on the basis of faith. Quite oppositely, they may avoid belief just like atheists, seeking for evidence. It takes global effort of scientists and journals to magnify evidence in such a way, that it becomes universally accepted. Because their evidence is poor, for one reason or another, they have to settle for small-scale evidence that is really hard to document. It is personal, multi-personal or local, but for the people involved it's rock solid, as is anything you can see and touch. Here you can not succeed by providing negative evidence, it would not cancel out their positive evidence. When irresistible force meets immovable object, what happens? In this case, nothing at all. At most, one can wildly hypothesize of conspiracies that cause that mysterious difference.
It has also a brighter side, such theists well realize limitation of their evidence and will not blame you for not accepting it or think you're a baby eater because of that.

Assuming the worst possible scenario
Seriously, chill out. Just because the theist seems highly irrational, it doesn't mean he's going to poison himself, blow himself up, lose all money to quackery, hurt someone, indoctrinate children, get enslaved by a sect, be of a low intelligence or make such a logical errors in thinking process as a stupid person would. Life is highly adaptable and it can get accustomed even to deadly poisons, temperatures or radiation doses, so theists can get too adapted to their respective risk factors. Assuming that the theist is incapable of avoiding or mitigating these dangers can be highly insulting and underestimating.

Assuming the non-natural, non-testable nature of theism
Most of theists will be happy to admit that they take certain things purely on faith, they are not ashamed of being believers. But there are exceptions.
If the theist has any respect to reality and truth whatsoever, he will always hope and strive for testable, material evidence for the object of faith. Therefore, projecting it into some philosophically dualistic world, unreachable by any consistent natural laws, is not what he wants. From his point of view, "supernatural" is just a temporary technical term used for some real, though currently elusive phenomena for a lack of a better word. If you declare that "supernatural" inevitably means "intrinsically untestable" therefore "as good as non-existent" therefore "necessitating belief" (see paragraph 1), you're asking for trouble. From the theist's point of view it's just a dirty playing with words and it will only hurt your cause.

Unanswered important points
If the theist makes an argument that he thinks might score a point or get an idea across, and you don't react on it, it will be very bad for communication. Similarly, that argument might require a little bit of good will to sink in. If you brush it away by mocking or the mentioned foul play with words, you'll become jerk. Your fellow atheists might find it perfectly normal or even funny, but not the one you're arguing with.

 

My "that" was getting bog down in the particular interpretation of a particular sect of a particular religion. I tried debating a YEC on exegetical issues concerning Genesis. At the end of the discussion, I was like, "what am I doing?" Christians debate this internally--what business or good am I doing trying to add to the fray?

Isn't your psi ball stuff like a variation of the No True Scotsman fallacy?

 

Although we've all been over this before.  It isn't hard to design a cheap, falsifiable and rigorous test to see if your woo is really woo-tastic, as opposed to....woops.

 

Mell, you're a mod ?

Does that come with great powers and greater responsibility ?

This^ i usually mock when i want to end the conversation after getting no answers 

Factually, with regards to philosophy and religion, I've only been stumped once (it was in a discussion about evolution)- and I have a good answer to it now.

 

With the spiritual new-age types, it's more problematic because they'll ask questions like:  What do you think of X miracle/pseudoscientist/mystic.

Obviously, no matter how much I keep up on the woo, I can't know every single copycat or hoaxter- I ask them to explain the experimental setup/circumstances, which they can never do well.  It's much harder to explain the scientific method, and peer review, and how that without that, the anecdote is useless than to just address the woo one by one.

 

I've gotten better at it, though; even with a vague explanation I can make an accurate guess as to how the hoaxters are defrauding people and express it with enough confidence for them to accept it as a possibility.

For example, the monks who supposedly die and don't rot; I accurately surmised that they were chemically mummified and their skin covered in wax and makeup.  On further research, it turned out to be the case.  I could have been wrong on that (though unlikely), but I wasn't (despite that I had never heard of it before)- and that I had confidence in my explanation is what got the person to accept it as a possibility.

 

Confidence in debate, I think, just comes with time and experience, as mentioned earlier.

 

Expanding one's knowledge is never a waste of time.

 

No, I got it.  And I have to disagree.  It is the trivia that leads you to being able to make the connections and so to being able to generalize.  At least that is how it works for me. 

You knew about wax - why would you know anything about wax?  Have you ever used wax paper?  Do you make your own cheese?  Candles?  What possible use would you have for knowing about wax?  How would you know it would preserve bodies?  Have you read up on embalming procedures?  Why would you do that?

See?  All of our knowledge starts with bits of trivia we pick up along the path of our lives.  And if we happen to have two brain cells to rub together, we can then generalize the bits into useful concepts to solve future problems.  So learning odds and ends is useful and not a waste of time.

 

That was what he was talking about, learning - what was to him - science trivia so he could refute the theist's claims.  And knowing science trivia is always a good thing.

Maybe, here I mean a perception of very subtle sensations that most of people probably don't notice at all. With proper training you'd be able to feel a direct etheric hit at face or whatever, but otherwise probably not. Yeah, I think I could make you feel something, but I'm only sure it would require your personal presence and a lot of effort on my side.

Yes, but we don't know yet for sure if it's there, testable and how. This is something that funding can help with. Even if people like me are just hallucinating, it's so unusual that it would surely push the research of consciousness and neurology a great deal forward.
Such knowledge might elude science simply because people like me are so rare or they keep a low profile. Academic science is not trusted among general population. It is precisely because they rather declare myriads of people of today and millenia into past fools or conmen instead of considering that these people of might be up to something and academics might be wrong for all their brief history. Here I mean mainly old people that don't do a research themselves but unite in clubs against "mass epidemic of irrationality" that they see today. Loud mouths, important offices, but out of progressive work for decades.

Well, that was not exactly how I imagined a victory. There should be some sign of recognition that in this case UFO means an object, that resisted all attempts for natural, non-scandalous explanation and therefore things must be seriously considered that could change our very worldview. You know, open-minded people are supposed to change their opinion when presented with evidence. I know that people aren't really open-minded unless they're small children, but it's still a little disappointing. In fact, changing the worldview means changing the structure of our neurons and it's often a long and painful process, as the de-conversion stories show.

Metaphorically speaking, I don't know almost anything objective about Scotland to be able to tell who's a true Scotsman and who isn't or how exactly can one become a Scotsman. I was born a proverbial true Scotsman, therefore I have only vague idea how to become one. I can only tell it retrospectively, after someone achieves that.

 

No, designing tests isn't hard. But you've got two options. The "cheap" option is to get at least two people with this psi-ball ability together, that includes paying for plane tickets, housing, food and so on. The expensive option needs just one person and it means to do some thorough brain scans and activity mapping. Lots of highly qualified people will require salaries for that. Either way, I can't do it alone. Ideally, I'd prefer next holiday as a test participant with modest salary but very decent in local measures and influence on decisions of the team.

Yeah, I meant "Scotsman" as a definition, this is why there are all these "proverbial" and "metaphorical" words. I don't yet have an objective, substantial definition on that topic. Better understanding requires better  definitions, so change is necessary. Before you can actually falsify something, you have to define it and test it. If the test didn't hit the target, you know what to do.
Complete falsification of existence is obviously unacceptable for me, I think at least this woo might be pinned down as a special kind of brain activity.

 

I have yet to debate with an intelligent theist. They do not understand the words I am using and feel belittled when they realize I am bringing myself down to their level when I use more layman like wording. They do not know anything about their own bible yet will argue points and context. I have decided pursuing debate with stupid people is pointless, they deserve what they have and if that seems cruel too bad. A few of my christian friends are just christians in name, they are not "real" christians because they seem to not know what it means. They think they can "pray" for everything while thinking jews are the same religion, they just wear a funny hat and are a different race.

 

Well, one thing that I tend to fall into is assuming that the other person in a debate knows certain things when in reality, they may not.

 

The great example is when someone commits a fairly specific fallacy and I call them out on it. However, I may assume that they know basic terminology for logical discourse and tell them that they just pulled a strawman or whatever.

 

If they really are clueless, they with then devolve into denying the matter as whatever they said was spot on it their head.

 

On the other hand, if I say “hey, you did not really answer my point but rather some point that you made for the purpose of demolishing it as if that had any bearing on what I said”, then I may just get a concession from them on the matter. Too bad that I really don't like spending time explaining every fallacy as it comes up.