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How NOT to Argue on RF...

Erebus

Well-Known Member
There are a thousand variations on the above sort of argument, but I estimate that at least half the arguments on this board are either purely semantic disagreements -- or are at least compounded by semantic disagreements.

Discuss.

One of the joys of a religious forum is that nebulous terms crop up on a routine basis. God, worship and spiritual being some of the classics. None of those words have a universal definition that everybody agrees upon. As you pointed out, the really fun part is that people often don't even realise they're using different definitions until the argument has become nice and heated. When somebody eventually gives their definition and it becomes clear both parties have been wasting their time, that's when people can get very snippy about others using the "wrong" definition. Thus the argument continues and another forum member turns to drink.

There's no easy solution to this as far as I know. People can provide their definition when creating a thread if there's a specific interpretation they're aiming to discuss. That's particularly helpful with discussions on gods since I see that as perhaps the biggest source of confusion. There will always be somebody who won't play ball though.

Now one thing I can clear up for people is how capitalism and socialism are defined. Those two are actually quite straightforward:

If you're a right-winger, everything good in a society is capitalism and everything bad is socialism.

If you're a left-winger, everything good in a society is socialism and everything bad is capitalism.

See? Simple.
 
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