Pedro de San Patricio
Gold Member
It's always fascinated me even more than the typically low information quality of their arguments and the zealous rage they tend to fall into when those arguments fail to convert the "enemy". To explain what I'm talking about, let's take the common scenario of him approaching you and bluntly asking your position on feticide. You explain why it's wrong. He simply tries to educate you about the political fact that a fetus isn't alive until it's born. You try to educate him on the scientific facts of how pregnancy works. The argument suddenly stops ever having been that birth is the beginning of life and it's made clear to you that his position the whole time has been that we don't know when life begins at all and so it's on every doctor to decide that for himself. You realize you didn't go into enough detail and try to give them the birds and the bees talk, secretly wondering how he made it to 35 without ever getting sat down for it previously. He concedes that, biologically, conception is the origin of "life", but that still doesn't make the fetus a "fucking person" because personhoood is a philosophical concept that cannot be defined by science. You go into the subjectivity of personhood and the historical effects of denying personhood to certain humans and dehumanizing them as animals or parasites. He takes this as a personal attack and launches into his own against you. You either take it personally and allow the situation to continue escalating (possibly to violence if he's armed or has nearby friends) or wander off and accept that this person and his entire network now permanently believes and probably discusses the opinion that you're a scientific illiterate, hate women, and are probably racist.
