There is a line in the Nolan Batman trilogy when an attacker claims to be the devil, to which Batman replies "You're not the devil--you're just practice." Those who practice invitations to greater truth will find an abundant source of God's addition teachings in all of their interactions with others. Each provides an opportunity to learn: from the other person, from subsequent research, and from God directly. The more you attempt to refine your ability to persuade and grow in wisdom, the more effectively God can use you to reach his children.[1] It is often appropriate to take notes on these occasions in order to accelerate your progress. Electronic communications are a handy assistance to this, since you can copy/paste text into files for refinement and reuse.
Too many people think of preaching the gospel as blurting out what you believe. It's infrequent that this will match with what anyone listening is looking for. A better approach is to look for needs that people know they have, sharing with them what you know that might help them, in terms that they understand. One thing I have suggested but not seen anyone do is for people to search the internet for religious questions asked by those sincerely searching for truth. YouTube has a search tool accessible to anyone with a channel where you can easily see what people are searching for. Well-prepared shorts addressing these questions would result in reaching many people with very little effort.
In our interactions with all people, we have the duty to analyze where that person is, assess what the next increment of truth would be from where they are to something better, devise something we could say or do to help them get there, and then execute. In doing so, we quickly find out if we are the teacher or the learner, as those who do this will often discover that the person they are trying to help will actually have something better than they do. However, the more you follow this prescription, the less often that will be the case over time, as God gives more wisdom to those who use what they have as he intended.[2]
These interactions can result in a lot of progress in the formulation of our arguments in just a little time if we use them as they occur with that end in mind. Consider the following example of what I wrote over about twenty minutes during an interaction with someone on YouTube over the last two days:
A little information in the hands of a fool is worse than none at all
There is a certain kind of person with whom it is unlikely to be worth arguing with who, possessing a little information, completely remove themselves from the access of further teaching. Supposing themselves learned, they think they are wise. The modern world makes these people more numerous than ever through modern abundance that cushions the consequences of their stupidity. Their confident ignorance grows like a cancer unchecked, as almost all people are either too unintelligent to see the problem with your argument or too cowardly to bother to try to help them.
They will continue to present irrelevant or ill-interpreted information as if they were making counterarguments much in the same fashion that a pre-speech toddler will babble with a parent with mimicking intonation but without the words that actually provide the meaning in conversation.
Conversation with such people is inherently exhausting, as the internet provides them with unending their unending and instantly-available pseudo-arguments that will make them feel satisfied that they have squashed your position when they have not even actually addressed it. You can anticipate that they will claim that you are not willing to be wrong or that you are arguing in bad faith—projections of exactly what they are doing.
A key to understand why you are forever talking past these people is that these arguments are never actually about the topic at hand. Instead, they are proxy wars where the other person is defending their self-image against a perceived attack. As such, even in the very unlikely event that they acknowledge any of your arguments, they will never yield, until and unless they are willing to change their possession of or attitude toward whatever underlying character quality that is the actual cause of their argument.
These people are not harmless. Their existence is much more than a mere annoyance. The public perception of the world’s evils being perpetrated by evil people is incorrect. Overtly evil people are rare, easy to spot, and easy to contain. It is seemingly normal people like those discussed above that are the real root of evil. These people have no awareness of their own underlying motives. They are extremely emotional, but believe themselves to be rational, and as such, while they are almost impossible to persuade toward good, they are remarkably easy to manipulate in support of evil. They will frequently support what harms, rarely support what helps, and will often stand by idly while those rare creatures that fight for good are crucified—if they aren’t actually in the crowds calling for it.
The only solution for these people is to live the instructions of Jesus: to lose themselves in order to find themselves. Only by transcending the petty perspective of filtering all information and interactions through the constraints of your presently-perceived character can they learn to attach their self-worth to the search for truth, rather than to whatever they think they already know.
[1] And he shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men. (Mosiah 3:6)
[2] A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: (Proverbs 1:5)
Grant Nielsen • 644/644 | 412/412 • Sat, March 29, 2025
That makes a lot of sense now. Thank you! I've learned that many arguments stem from personal quality differences. Differences in beliefs that seem insignificant to others can have incredibly deep origins, and when you go directly to the depth of the issue, people will frequently get quite scared and defensive as they are not comfortable with that level of depth. Luckily, because that character quality is so deep, there are likely so many fruits of it in their lives and therefore many many highways to approach it. Until every highway has been visited in every available way, there may still be a way to reach them in a way they can and will accept.