Everyone wants to argue effectively, and Dave Barry wants to help. “I argue very well,” Barry says, “Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don’t even invite me.”
There are five golden rules to being a great debater:
1. Drink liquor.
….But if you drink several large martinis, you’ll discover you have STRONG VIEWS about the Peruvian economy. You’ll be a WEALTH of information. You’ll argue forcefully, offering searing insights and possibly upsetting furniture. People will be impressed. Some may leave the room.
2. Make things up.
DON’T say: “I think Peruvians are underpaid.” Say instead: “The average Peruvian’s salary in 1981 dollars adjusted for the revised tax base is $1,452.81 per annum, which is $836.07 before the mean gross poverty level.”
3. Use meaningless but weighty-sounding words and phrases.You should memorize some Latin abbreviations such as “Q.E.D.”, “e.g.”, and “i.e.” These are all short for “I speak Latin, and you don’t.”….Suppose you want to say, “Peruvians would like to order appetizers more often, but they don’t have enough money.”
You never win arguments talking like that. But you WILL win if you say, “Let me put it this way. In terms of appetizers vis-a-vis Peruvians qua Peruvians, they would like to order them more often, so to speak, but they do not have enough money per se, as it were. Ergo, ipso facto, case closed. Q.E.D.”
4. Use snappy and irrelevant comebacks.
You need an arsenal of all-purpose irrelevant phrases to fire back at your opponents when they make valid points. The best are: You’re begging the question; You’re being defensive; Don’t compare apples to oranges; What are your parameters?
5. Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler.
This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly. Say, “That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler might say,” or “You certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler.”
It seems our creationist friends’ secret playbook is the advice of Dave Barry! Well, except for the first one, which is a shame, because it would make them even more amusing.
Erp: Interesting. Many years ago I helped my aunt sort out some of her late mother-in-law’s... 
Peter Cross: The Age of Reason is sometimes published and sold without Part 3: Examination of the... 
Mark D: Let Ed sell his plane and give the money to the Red Cross 
nomad: You’d love it, Custador. It looks and tastes just like it sounds. Nomnom. 
Matt: I find it very interesting that there are so many people out there with such sad lives as to sit... 
Tyrrlin: Wow… I’d like to buy apostrophes for most of those commenters. Apparently belief in a... 
Mathurine: I’m not so sure that they wouldn’t have. The father in the case is... 
JonJon: I agree. 
18 Comments
Oh I don’t know have had some good yell fest when christians are drinking. Of course they seem to forget that getting drunk isn’t seen as a good christian principle.
Um, I don’t know what you’re talking about; Jesus got trashed every weekend (that whole crucifixion thing? A drunken dare that went a bridge too far).
so that whole three days before he arose from the dead was just him sleeping off his hangover? yea, that makes more sense.
How about about throwing in the occasional mindless, groundless charge of committing logical fallacies that one understands little, if at all.
Don’t forget to use strawmen. It’s much easier to argue agaisnt your own strawmen than an opponent’s actual argument.
against
You need an arsenal of all-purpose irrelevant phrases to fire back at your opponents when they make valid points. The best are: You’re begging the question; You’re being defensive; Don’t compare apples to oranges; What are your parameters?
I think the author is begging the question about what the parameters of relevance actually are.
^ Tu quoque.
You know I was kidding around, right? :)
No, YOU. Ha ha ha. :)
Hee.
I was going to say that that characterized the vast majority of internet debate.
(especially the first one.)
(and I also appreciate the reference to Godwin’s Law)
NO U
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/NO_U
You seem to have forgotten “In sonitus veritas” – There is truth in loudness. This goes along with alcohol but is not entirely dependent on any chemical aid. As arguments get weaker (or more desperate) the volume goes up.
1. Drink liquor
Jesus did not turn the water into wine. He turned it into grape juice.
2. Make things up
When the bible said in the book of Joshua that god made the sun stand still in the sky, the bible is being poetic not literal, like when you talk about a sun set. Also Darwin denounced evolution on his deathbed and got saved.
3. Use meaningless but weighty-sounding words and phrases
Intelligent Design
4. Use snappy and irrelevant comebacks
Stalin was an atheist and he killed more people than god did in the bible.
5. Compare your opponent to Adolph Hitler
Actually compare your opponent to Larry Flint. God used Hitler to punish the Jews for no living in Israel, where they belong.
Talk about a lack of education. LOL I shouldn’t even be saying this.
When I was in high school in the 80s I actually found a little book called “Ersatz Erudition” at the library that was all about bullshitting your way through arguments (and term papers). One piece of advice I remember was to quote either very esoteric people from the distant past or made up people from the past who agreed with your argument to give you the “odor of authority,” as the author put it. I have tried to find that book since then because it was so funny but have been unsuccessful.
(1) I don’t drink, except for being drunk on the Lord’s love. (Don’t confuse me with the concept that “lord” is a title of nobility or landed gentry or social status, and that I’m projecting human ASSumptions on the rest of the universe, whether real or in my frightening imagination. I’m too drunk. Besides, I’ll use #2 thorugh 4 and other christian tricks, devices, ploys and manipulative tactics on you.)
(2) Science keeps discovering new things and changing its theories – that proves it’s wrong! Scientists have merely proved that evolution works only on prokaryotes and unicellular eukaryotes. They have definitively proved that human limbs can be regrown, but that God wants amputees ot have stronger faith. Besides, the time I saw it happen in Brother love’s Traveling Salvation Show, I didn’t have a camera.
(3) Intellect and reason and intuition are prima facie valuable for balancing a checkbook, but all that abstruse eggheadery is blown out the wastegate of divine progress, and cannot plumb the depths of God’s mysterious formulation for the eventual glory of a human race He fucked up all on his own in the first formation of chordates.
(4) Prove God doesn’t exist. (Don’t confuse me with burden-of-proof resting with me.) You atheist morans need to grow a brain. Jesus is YOUR Get-Out-of-Hell-Free Monopoly ticket. You are irredeemable – God is the answer. Nothing will ever shake my faith.
(5) There are no known atheists in NASA. All of the world’s worst despots and abusers of humans and manipulators of the masses were atheists: Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Saddam, Cotton Mather, Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford, George Bush… the Taliban, the ones in charge of the Inquisition and the Mountain Meadows Massacre… all atheists. Your challenging me on my lack of reasoning or facts is suspiciously reminiscent of Hitler.
“In Sonitas Veritas” : I am being very, very certain I’m right at the top of my voice. Don’t talk when I’m interrupting!
Master debater!