The amazing debating “skills” of the common fundamentalist
Everyone who ever tried to discuss anything with a fundamentalist knows that the fundie just doesn't get it. Like a M$ Windows PC being told to run a Linux executable file, anything not 100 % compatible with fundamentalist dogma just “does not compute” (you often see this in usenet or discussion forums where a fundie gets his arse handed to him by a rational person and, instead of trying to continue, just disappears for some days or weeks, only to claim the same refuted nonsense again upon his return. I guess a fundie brain needs that looong time to reboot...). Part of this, of course, is due to the thorough brainwashing of the fundie hordes, leading them to immediately dismiss anything from a potential “enemy of the faith” as the work of Saaaaataaaan (busy little fellow, no? Considering how mindbogglingly much material disproving fundie dogma is out there... but I digress). But is that all?
Let us examine how the common fundie (I guess the proper Latin name would be “homo idioticus”, paying tribute to how they act) thinks and tries to debate.
First, he doesn't really think – mindless obedience to whatever superior is available is one, if not “the”, high ideal of fundyism. It doesn't matter whether this authority is the preacher, the wholly babble, the war criminal in the White House, or whoever else. Being unable to wrap his mind around the possibility that others might act differently, the fundie “knows for sure” that the non-fundie also bends over unconditionally, just to different authorities. For that reason, fundie cretinists and IDiots ceaselessly attack Darwin, Dawkins, and whoever else they perceive as the ultimate authority of their “enemy”. They believe that if they can make “the unbeliever” think negatively about Darwin, for example, he will then “of course” join or re-join the fundie's cult immediately.
This leads on to another idiotic fundie dogma: The goo' ol' false dilemma (where would fundyism be without it?!). The fundie “knows exactly” that there are but two choices for everyone – either the fundie's cult or The Enemy(TM). With his few working braincells the fundie just doesn't realize that, for example, an atheist who starts thinking that there must be something Divine out there after all could join deism, agnosticism, islam, hinduism, wicca, druidism, Asatru, you-name-it – there's a myriad religions out there, of all shapes and colors. The fundie pats himself on the back if he manages to sow doubt in someone and declares victory, when in fact victory is only his if, and only if, the doubter already sees the fundie's cult as the only alternative there is. Granted that at least in western civilization most people automatically think of christianity when they hear the word “religion”, but that is of course just an effect of the centuries of theocracy with their constant attempts of killing off all competitors. I dare say that pretty much is the case in “the Arab world”, just with islam instead of christianity.
Next on the list of typical nonsensical fundie beliefs is that of inerrancy. To the fundie, not only is the written dogma of his cult the absolute literal truth from beginning to end, but the very possibility of some tiny little error hidden in there is dismissed out of hand. As has been stated as an “argument” by fundies for many times, “if we cannot trust the bible regarding the origin of life and the world, then how can we trust it regarding salvation?”. What this really means, of course, is that the fundie doesn't really have any faith (watch how every fundie goes ballistic if you tell him that!). Faith tolerates some disagreement and/or contradiction and counters it with the trust that the core of The Message is still valid, even if the details are found to be incorrect. But if you don't have faith in what the book says, any proof or errancy in it might easily shatter all your “safety” - and thus the fundie has no choice but to combat any possible source of such proof by any means available. Can you say “inquisition”? This belief, projected upon The Enemy(TM), usually leads to the amusing situation of a fundie endlessly pounding on one of the (usually long-outdated and corrected) errors in the enemy philosophy, like the typical cretinist / IDiot babbling on and on about the infamous Häckel charts (never mind that Häckel did enhance the details on those images, but not forge something out of the clear blue sky) or about Piltdown man. It keeps making me grin... of course “the non-believers” also make mistakes every now and then. They are only human after all. But the rational person, upon realizing a mistake, says “oh well, things happen”, corrects the mistake and works on from the correction, instead of (like the fundies keep dreaming) immediately screaming “Oh no! It was wrong! All of it was wrong!” and abandoning it all. That latter behavior in fact is what a fundie does when he finally cannot ignore the countless holes in his dogma any longer... and it usually scares the nonexistant Hell(TM) out of him!
Outright
lies are another thing typically encountered accompanying
fundies. The normal fundie you might meet on the street may not even
know that what he presents to you is a lie – he has been
brainwashed into automatically believing everything his cult führers
tell him and dismissing everything else, regardless of what it says.
Good examples of those lies are things like the cretinist “The 2nd
law of thermodynamics disproves evilution!” or “The Soviets
drilled down into Hell(TM) accidentally! This proves the
babble is true!”, and of course the goo' ol' “Did you know that
Noah's ark has been found in Turkey?”. These lies are sometimes
created on the spot to support current fundie views about something
in the real world, like the infamous email still running around in
fundie circles that claims that verse 9:11 of the koran talks about
“the wrath of the eagle cleansing the lands of allah” - an
obvious piece of fundie propaganda aimed at deceiving people into
supporting shrubbenführer's current crusade for oil
freedom and democracy. Oh right, before I forget – each and every
claim about the babble containing an amazing number of “prophecies
come true” belongs into the same category. Now this could be
excused in the case of the common fundie because he probably meant
well (I'll leave that to your own decision)... but those who continue
to spread the lies to their cultists even though they know that it's
bullcrap are to be found and punished. You know who I mean... suffice
it to say that one of the best examples is the infamous cretinist and
wannabe science teacher (Ha!) “Dr.” hoover, err, Kent Hovind.
Finally (at least for now – it's the last point that occurs to me at the moment) there's the love of the True Fundie for ad hominems – attacking the person making a claim instead of the claim itself. Of course in any decent debate the fundie has no choice but to wield the ad hominem club because he has no valid reasonable arguments for his dogma... but it is amusing, I think, to see how the fundamentalist (who routinely ignores all evidence for or against something, arrogantly thinking that he has The Truth anyway, so who needs some silly reasons?) keeps trying to “convince” others of the supposed error of their ways by attacking the person who first had some idea, instead of trying to debunk the idea itself as false. Everyone who ever got into or watched a science-vs-cretinism debate will know what I mean. It's usually degenerating with near-lightspeed into the fundie screaming nonsense like “DARWIN HATED GAWD!!!111!!!!!” or “HITLER WAS AN ATHEIST!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!!1111!!!!!”... and of course not understanding why his opposition just laughs and mocks him, because even if Hitler or Stalin or Genghis Khan or whoever else had a good idea, the immorality or cruelty of the person would not invalidate that idea as long as it is clearly supported by evidence and/or logic. What's next – fundies demanding to throw maths out of the window, based on the claim “HITLER BELIEVED INTO 2+2=4!!!111!!!”? I trust that fundies don't eat because Stalin ate too?
Hey, that might be a solution to the fundie problem... “Fundies remember: All the evil unchristian dictators in the world were breathers! Obviously breathing is from Saaataaaaan, so stop breathing now!”
One can try, can't one?
(Note that personally, I don't call something an “ad hominem” if it's basically a true claim, even if the strict definition makes no such exception. If a person acts like someone who never saw a schoolbook, let alone read it, I will call that person an uneducated twit no matter whether one calls that an ad hominem or not. This is also the reason why I don't hesitate to call fundies morons – if it looks like an idiot, talks like an idiot, smells like an idiot...)
Now, considering these funny little facts, I trust that many questions about fundie behavior will be answered (if you didn't at least guess the answers already...). Where to go on from here? Well, as I see it, debating with a fundie only serves one purpose – to show fencesitters of the idiocy and madness of fundyism. Don't try to convince a hardcore fundie of anything – you won't. But someone who listens to the fundie's mad babbling and your sound refutation of same has a chance to realize how wrong-to-the-bone and utterly dishonest the whole of fundie doctrine is. Hey – every mind saved from willful braindeath counts! So do a good work today – reveal a fundie's idiocy to some common people! If fundies haven't deserved it, then who ever had?