Occupy Religion: Don’t Let Religion Occupy You

[skepticscott]

34. Exactly where did I "declare victory" or "mock you"?

And exactly how does mentioning that you demonstrate a lot of the same posting traits as your father here impugn your character, in your mind?

You seem to think that the only purpose of a debate/discussion (or whatever word you choose) is to make everyone involved feel all warm and fuzzy about each other, and to find common ground. I maintain that the main purpose is to clarify issues, expose unreliable claims and invalid or unsupported arguments and to get closer to the truth. To the extent that a discussion does that, everyone wins. When it fails to, when it leaves falsehood and misinformation unchallenged for fear of dispelling the warm-fuzzies, everybody loses. Agreement on what is really true and what isn't is the most important common ground you can have with anyone. Without that, it's all sham and pretense.