Saturday, April 7, 2007

Atheists Win High-Profile Debate? - Part II

A recent debate, held in the Methodist Central Hall in London, covered the motion "We'd be better off without religion." The arguments were presented by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Professor A. C. Grayling vs. Nigel Spivey, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, and Professor Roger Scruton. It had originally been given positive coverage by the atheist crowd because of a 'winning' vote taken after the debate -- 1,205 for, and 778 against. My opinion on the matter was that the numbers were meaningless without comparitive statistics.

Now, another article covering the debate has been released by the Telegraph, and has offered more insight into these numbers. Specifically, it provides votes from the audience from before the debate. Before: 826 for, 681 against, and 364 don't knows. After: 1,205 for, 778 against, and 103 don't knows. Time to analyze!

The first thing that stood out is that the totals don't match. There were 1,871 votes before the debate, and 2,086 after. This might mean that there were more than 200 walk-ins, leading to a larger audience at the end. Or it might mean that the passionate debate had stirred more of the audience to vote afterware. Or something else entirely, or all of the above. So let's look at these as percentages. Before: 44.1% for, 36.3% against, 19.5% don't know. After: 57.7% for, 37.3% against, and 4.9% don't know.

Both for and against votes gained ground! The theistic point of view by 1%, the atheistic point of view by 13.6%. The "don't knows" dropped by 14.6%. This means that both sides were being very persuasive. The fact that the theistic view netted a gain (ignoring any side-switchers we don't know about) means that this isn't the big atheist victory we were hoping for. Because in my opinion a big victory would be theistic converts.

But since the atheistic point of view gained more ground, I will say that it's a small victory for atheists. Convincing those corresponding to the agnostic viewpoint still means putting more numbers into the atheist crowd.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

I disagree. Theistic converts wouldn't be the only successful outcome; it's not even the likely outcome. Believers are gonna believe, no matter what -- that's how faith works. Notice how nearly the same percentage voted "against" in both the before and the after polls? -- I take this to mean that the believers went in as believers and nothing they heard swayed them, or could have swayed them.

But the "don't knows" dropped, either because they agreed with the "for" side's arguments from the outset and needed only to hear their views put into forceful language, or because they genuinely didn't know what to think until they heard those arguments.

Atheism isn't likely to get large numbers of converts out of the churches. Those people aren't going to be persuaded. It's the people on the sidewalks -- the ones who know they don't want to be in the churches but may not know why -- who are going to increase our numbers.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't go as far as to say that theistic deconverts can't be won, but I would expect them to be few and far between. More importantly, I wouldn't expect any theist to deconvert in the space of one evening, after having listened to one debate. The most you could hope for is planting the seed of doubt, which may lead to cracks in the foundation of faith, which may one day crumble altogether.

David W. said...

I do agree that it's unlikely to find completely deconversion after a few hour debate. But that doesn't mean there wouldn't be theists that would accede to the atheists being the more persuasive debaters. I'm thinking more of the Dawkins / Archbishop of York debate, after which a clergyman concluded: That was easy to sum up - Lions 10, Christians nil. That's what I would call a "big" win.

Anonymous said...

David,

When you put it like that I see where you're coming from. I love that "Lions 10" quote! Always cracks me up.

Yulacu said...

I'm reminded of something Sam Harris said about never being able to see the results of your argument in real-time. It's seldom that you are able to convince someone of the merits of your arguments in real-time. People do not want to admit they are wrong in front of you, but you can place the seeds of doubt in their brain that may later lead to deconversion of sorts.

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