Lately I've been revisiting the question of whether there is any point at all in debating religious claims. For awhile (a very short one) I'd "closed the book" on the topic, taking to heart Daniel Davies' wisdom: "[A] sensible man does not spend his precious and decidedly finite waking hours talking or thinking in any great depth about that in which he does not believe."
But this is obviously glib. (I'm sure Davies would agree.) If the systematically false beliefs of religion create externalities (a small 'if'), and if there are persuasive strategies that might remedy the relevant epistemic defects (a much bigger 'if'), it would certainly be "sensible" to pursue them. (And of course this pursuit may well require careful attention to religious claims at the object level.)
The question, then, is whether there is any reason to think cooperative, careful forensic scrutiny to religious claims and counterclaims has any desirable persuasive effect on anyone. [1] I haven't begun the inquiry, but at the outset I suspect the answer will sometimes be 'yes', sometimes 'no', and will vary predominantly along two dimensions, viz., (1) the level of abstraction at which the inquiry is set, and (2) the psychology of the interlocutor. Along the first dimension, we would be dealing with something like (1.1) ignorance about rudimentary facts that simply needs to be corrected, (1.2) moderately intricate, but still jargon-free, statements of the standard "classical" arguments, or (1.3) vast, sprawling, semi-formal proofs that incorporate fancy conceptual and symbolic machinery from modal logic, quantum mechanics and the like. Along the second, we would be dealing with someone (2.1) who is "religious" mostly due to social or psychological inertia (roughly, Dennett's "believer in belief"), (2.2) someone who has inherited fairly robust religious beliefs from their childhood environment but hasn't thought about the arguments that much and is prepared to engage in serious critical reflection about these beliefs, or (2.3) someone who's looked at all the arguments on all sides, genuinely understands the issues, but simply opts for faith out of consolation (or some other therapeutic motivation).
A priori, we'd expect persuasion to become less likely the more abstract our arguments become (most people aren't going to be epistemically moved by Quentin Smith's proof of atheism here or by Gödel's proof of God's existence here) [2] and the more settled the beliefs are (I'm sure no examples are needed). If that's so, we'll nonetheless want to identify the strategies that work best for each given category (if any work at all).
There's another, sort of wild-card factor that figures in the discussion, which is the possible legitimation effect that certain kinds of formalized debate might have on religious belief. What I have in mind is the phenomenon Richard Dawkins warns about in the context of debating creationists:
The question of who would "win" such a debate is not at issue. Winning is not what these people realistically aspire to. The coup they seek is simply the recognition of being allowed to share a platform with a real scientist in the first place. This will suggest to innocent bystanders that there must be material here that is genuinely worth debating, on something like equal terms (220). [3]
This argument seems right on its own terms, but also fails to reckon with the possible public relations costs of ceding the intellectual territory to creationists. In any case, I'd say the situation in the evolution-creationism conflict is in at least several respects analogous to that in the nontheism-theism debate -- including the relative merits of the respective arguments [4] and the emotional valence of the issues -- so I'll be considering some of the same, meta-level arguments from that field as well.
Okay, that's all for now...
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NOTES
1. I presume that "persuasive" strategies grounded in mocking or shame are net counterproductive, though this category ultimately shades into the sort of pointed humor and light-hearted ribbing that might well appeal to many potential apostates.
2. I might as well flag my suspicion that (a)theological arguments cast at the highest levels of abstraction are utterly inert as a matter of persuasion, though they may play some sort of role in belief maintenance.
3. Dawkins, R. 2004. A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. New York: Mariner Books.
4. Yes -- them's fightin' words.
