Why So Angry?

[Ryft]

I've read quite a number of debates in this forum and, though they are excellent debates, I notice some people getting worked up. ... I'm just wondering why that is? ... I just think we ought to keep our emotions and words in check. I think even though the debate is rational, throwing in cuss words here and there really kills the maturity.

Getting worked up is emotional, not rational—by definition. Those who are engaged in genuinely rational discourse do not get worked up, because rationality in itself has no emotional dimension or investment; it follows logically the course of sound reason wherever it leads, not angry or smug, etc., which are products of emotion, not reason. There are two contemporary mythologies I sometimes draw people's attention to in order to illustrate the point: the Vulcans of Star Trek on the one hand, and the Jedi of Star Wars on the other, both of which disdain venting passions as contrary to mature enlightenment. Being rational cannot prevent you from being emotional, but being emotional can prevent you from being rational.

That is not to say people cannot or should not get emotional. It is to say only that "getting worked up" is a product of emotion, not reason. One can be emotionally invested in something, but reason in and of itself has no emotional dimension or investment.

Religious debates never do go anywhere—and never will. And nobody is going to convince anyone. Yet we still get so worked up.

This is obviously a gross generalization, which fails to square with reality (as generalizations tend to do) because religious debates are often productive. Religious debate can, and has, led some people to greater religious maturity, some people from religion to atheism, and some people from atheism to religion. Religious debates do not go anywhere only for those with bigoted closed minds, where bigotry is "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." (Or as G.K. Chesterton put it, "Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.")