The Debater

by Kevin O. Hunking

angry-man4As you travel along your path towards spiritual enlightenment you will come across a rather unique breed of individual that will attempt to derail your efforts should you ever let your guard down. I am speaking, of course, of the character known as “the debater”. I am writing this particular Blog Post in an effort to prepare you for this amazing character that makes our journey a little more challenging than it really needs to be.

Most of the time these people are no more than a nuisance and their actions can be laughed off and/or ignored, but always bear in mind that all people are worthy of love and respect despite the fact that they are sometimes a pain.

I had the joy of running across one of these characters several days ago on the Spiritual Core Theory Facebook Page. I opened the page up to the general public for a couple of days just to test the waters and get a feel for the level of interest in this type of information. The response was wonderful and there were some great interactions among the visitors; however a couple of hard-line atheists found their way in as well. How or why they came to find the page totally confuses me, but I guess they had their own motivations. Now as most of the regular readers of this blog know I’m not a big fan of atheists and especially not a fan of the followers of Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens. Again, this is not a result of their beliefs, or lack thereof, but rather their approach to matters relating to religion or spirituality. In this particular case the individual involved (let’s call him Stan H.) came out swinging, as is often the case with debater personalities. Stan was very pro Dawkins and systematically went through every posting on the Facebook page and made derogatory comments about the messages within the posts. When confronted Stan immediately resorted to name-calling and comments that indicated that he was much smarter than any person foolish enough to be on a spiritual journey. After I made several failed attempts to open a mutually beneficial dialogue Stan basically called me an idiot and said that he would not be back. Due largely to the rather over-sized egos of Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens the atheistic community has come to the conclusion that atheists have much higher IQs than people with spiritual beliefs. In fact they even have a name for themselves; “brights”. This belief, unfortunately, does in fact have some basis in truth as studies have shown that higher IQ levels within a culture does lead to a higher incidence of atheism within the culture. What tends to be ignored though is that these same studies show that agnostics have even higher IQ levels and that higher IQ levels are also associated with dominantly left-brained individuals. But I digress…

The debater is someone who believes that they have absolute knowledge in a particular subject matter and have long since lost the ability to be open-minded. They come in all shapes, sizes and religious affiliations as well.  They love to “win” arguments and make others look foolish rather than openly seek to learn. They will deliberately bait others in conversation in an effort to get the debate going. They freely use insulting language, innuendo and condescension as their favored weapons of war. As a spiritual seeker you need to be very wary of these people as you will never gain any valuable insights or seeds of growth from a debater.

It is important to recognize that, as a spiritual seeker, you’ll never gain absolute knowledge by listening to or being involved in any debate. The fact that one individual is better at arguing that another does not make that individual “right”. A highly skilled debater has stopped learning “new” information and is fixated on defending the beliefs that they currently have. While some of these debates can be amusing to watch or listen to, the spiritual seeker is far better served by listening to spirited discussions between individuals who hold each other in high regard and show respect for one another despite what can be very polar opposite viewpoints. A very good example of such a discussion is the one that took place between Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow on the topic of spirituality versus evolution. While no one “won” the debate many valuable insights were presented on both sides.

Also be alert to the fact that you yourself, as you become stronger within your spiritual knowledge along your path, may be tempted to take on the role of debater at times. Resist this temptation at all costs. You gain nothing by beating someone into submission with your superior knowledge and in many cases will discourage others who may see YOU as being the “bully”.

Seek out spirited discussion wherever you can on any subject in which you feel that you can grow. There are many blogs, forums and websites specifically for this purpose and many like-minded spiritual seekers within these communities. A simple word to the wise; learn to recognize the debater quickly and do not fall victim to their manipulations. Simply move on to those who are with you on your journey to a higher level of spiritual awareness.

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