Reply #91: I once wasted several hours on the phone...

[InvisibleTouch]

...with a high school classmate arguing against creationism and for evolution. I was a voracious reader and budding biologist, and she was a fundie raised in an uptight and forbidding church; needless to say I didn't enlighten her one iota, but I wasted several hours of my time and stressed myself out. After I finally hung up, I realized that all of my passionate and well-studied debate had been useless and stupid (stupid because it caused me unnecessary stress that wasn't worth it), and I would never make that mistake again. But it was a mistake that had to have been made, in order to learn from it.

When this girl did still call (for some reason she had latched onto me as a "fellow high school outcast," I suppose ... though I wasn't at all unhappy to be an "outcast"), and would try to broach the subject of her religious belief, I made it clear to her that I wasn't going to discuss the topic. I wasn't going to change her mind, and she wasn't going to change mine. As a result I never spoke to her at length again, nor ever again argued logic with a fundie creationist wacko.

Debating in an online forum is a little different, though. There are more people in the mix than just the person you're arguing with. There are lots and lots of lurkers, registered or not, who are reading the debate. And even if they never chime in to say so, it's very possible and even probable that you gave someone a new perspective. I've had that experience too: after a heated debate with someone who would never budge from their position (nor I from mine), I've had people e-mail me, sometimes years later, to say "You gave me a whole new view on the matter, and my outlook has never been the same."