I try not to engage in pointless argument, often pre-emptively giving up on what looks hopeless from the start. The metric for “pointless” has to do with the possibility that either arguer could possibly get through to the other, that neither’s mind is jammed shut on the topic at hand.
I would like to think that I am capable of listening to a well-reasoned argument for a position that I disagree with, but I don’t know whether I would be brave enough to submit to a weekly serious challenge to my religious beliefs, as Rev. Lamblove suggests here:
A sermon should always contain in it elements of destabilization. Any truth claim made should contain the seeds of that which will deconstruct itself. After all this is God we are talking about—any understanding we may come to will eventually be undone. [...]
Why would someone want to have his or her beliefs reinforced? That is only pretending to want to know God. It ceases to be anything like God that one continues to preach about or believe in.
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