Reductio ad Absurdum: How to most efficently communicate with theists

[Pat Mustard]

In my opinion your arguments and your dialectical strategy are as good as tools for a especific purpose.

So if you are (like Hitchens) trying to make a point against religious harmful practices on a live debate (his natural habitat), then you should by all means apply the same agressiveness as he does, on the other hand if you are talking to one person only, and you are really interested in making that person think critically you should never do the same.

The problem its that an argument or tatic its only as good as it is efficient on changing someone perception/perspective/stance, so it will wildly vary depending on your public type and your public predisposition/stance...

When dealing with someone's else belief, if you really are trying to do anything good for the person, would be a stupid strategy to mock the person or be condescending, regardless if the idea deserves or not to be mocked.

The aim of the conversation would be to induce critical thinking on the listener, and yes for starters on rethoric or whenever you don't know how enthralled someone is with their belief, the maieutics its a excelent "to go" strategy to induce the critical thinking (it was developed for that purpose)

Arguments and dialectical stances/strategies are your tools for comunication and the right tool must be used for the right purpose.

As a new forum user, came to me as a bitter suprise how dick can some of you guys be when trying to say something, to the point it becomes irrelevant to the listener what exactly you were trying to say in the first place.

But as a rule you should always leave your jerking off to your own brilliance out of the debate if you want your listener to really think about what you have to say.

As a new forum user, let me remind you that you're not on christian forums any more and we don't evince the same reverence for unevidenced bullshit they do over there. Go to a country where you're belittled and discriminated for your belifs before you start giving out about angry atheists. A little humiliation might make you realise why sometimes we get narky.