What has come of years of debate in this forum?

[Igel]

19. Debate has come of the debate.

That is the purpose of the forum. The goal is the debate.

I've learned a lot here. Has it shifted my opinion or faith? No, not really. But some of the articles posted have been informative in their own right, but those aren't necessarily always the heart of the matter.

In some cases, debates show me ways of being wrong that I hadn't really considered. "Oh, so that's the mistake they're making" or "you know, I never realized somebody could be wrong in that particular way." One should understand the opposing arguments. The whole "you're not hearing what I'm saying" to mean "you haven't come around to accepting that I'm right" is insane: It's possible to understand another argument and reject it. In seeking to understand error there abides a certain wisdom.

In other cases, things have been pointed out that I believed true but really hadn't given much weight to. In a world with 10k things that I think valuable and worth considering, it's easy to overlook, um, most of them. It's like what a lay preacher said during services last week--he says the topic of his piece and I think, "Oh, right, I can see that but hadn't really thought about it" ... Then I watched how he developed the idea. At times, it's moved a matter closer to things that matter; in other cases, meh.

In other cases, I have shifted what I thought, think of it as microconversion (since we're into microeverything, from microaggressions to microcomprehension and microempathy ... only 'micro-outrage' is outre these days). But when I've shifted it's been in ways that either left most of what I considered right untouched or, in some cases, reinforced it. Because it's not like there are just two sides, atheist and believer. There's atheism of various stripes, there's various approaches to religion, and that to various religions. Those for whom it's a battle to be won, with conversion being the spoils of victory, leave.

And in a few cases that "microconversion" didn't lead in the direction you'd think: The debate was a point of departure for a line of reasoning that didn't belong here, but certainly, I thought at the time, belonged.

The terms of the debate have shifted slightly over time, of course. We're not cloistered. And those who lack respect find themselves left (in the same bit of linguistic trickery that produced words like "he was disappeared&quot .