Why I Argue

I spend some of my time on the net arguing with CT's and Creationists. I do like a good argument though, but I think that I have come across the same revelation that pretty much all skeptics come across (actually I figured this out a while ago, but I want to write about it now).

We argue and debunk not to convert the person making the claim, but to prevent other people from falling into stupid beliefs.

We are the ones who present the counter arguments to stupid claims.

We are the ones who are labelled by those that we oppose.

• We are government shills to CTs that involve any government
• We are soulless Atheists to the creationists
• We have "closed minds" for alternative theories and medicine.
• We are generally attacked when we present the "other" view, or disprove theirs.
  

And yet we persevere and continue to argue. We wade through the never-ending layer of shit that people consider to be rational and we don't know how well our efforts are doing. All we know is that we are helping to keep these people in check, and to lessen the damage that they cause.

I think that deep down we all know that for many of these people we can never defeat them in an argument, but we certainly can show others that they are the thieves, liars and charlatans that they truly are.