Religious debates are boring

Your position is central to my main contention that religious "debates are pointless, wastes of time and not useful""a superior rephrasing to the original I admit. For this round, and likely the rest of the debate, proposition two is where we fundamentally disagree. Climate change provides a perfect counterpoint to proposition two. Here is what we know about climate change: Human activity, specifically the release of carbon into the atmosphere is changing the climate [1], its effects have severe, negative repercussions for everyone, and the effects are largely irreversible. [2] Moreover, peer reviewed studies reveal 98% of scientists studying anthropogenic global warming agree on these basic facts. [3] This is straightforward: climate change occurs, will have catastrophic consequence, and even if tremendous effort and resources are allocated to mitigate its effects, it is largely irreversible. Moreover, virtually all scientists, with the exception of 2%, a statistical anomaly, agree on these facts. Here we can use the first or the second proposition but slightly reworded: 1. Climate change exists and it is of grave importance to understand it to prevent [insert terrible scenario] volatile, unprecedented floods, tornados, the extinction of our species, and so on. 2. Because of these grave consequences, it is essential for everyone to inform others who deny climate change that their beliefs are not only misplaced but also false in an objective sense. In addition, they are wrong and are complicit in preventing the worst consequence of climate change. Notice that I did not use "if" or "would be" but "is" and "because. " So, with climate change we know that scientists agree, evidence exists, and a person could literally travel to the north and south poles and watch icecaps melt. Yet only half of Americans believe human activity contributes to global warming and less than half think it poses a threat. [4] Let us imagine that tomorrow afternoon 98% percent of cosmologists, astrophysicists, astronomers, and general experts on the universe say because of [invent a scenario] mathematical models demonstrate that God does not exist and did not create the universe and every faith is objectively false. And people like Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking collaborate and present an easy to understand case, with charts and graphs, use the second season of the cosmos to address the issue and even create picture book for kids. What would be the response do you think? Americans across the country and people around the world who subscribe to a religion will think, well irrefutable evidence demonstrates the falsity of my beliefs, maybe I should reevaluate how I think, plus the picture books and explanations are so simple and convincing. Even in this hypothetical situation where these ideal conditions existed, it might move the 90% of American who believe in a God [5] to"in the best circumstances"a 50/50 split, somewhere around where climate change is currently. I accept climate change, understand the consequences, and could spend the rest of my life sending links to peer reviewed research on climate change to people I"ve met who deny it exists and deny it is a threat. But I wouldn"t do that. Why? Because it would be frustrating, would require talking to people who are ridiculous, and would almost certainly lead me to think "man, I have wasted an incredibly amount of time and accomplished more doing basically any other activity. " And this is my same take on engaging in the religious debate and is even more worthless to pursue. Notes: [1] America's Climate Choices: Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change; National Research Council (2010). Advancing the Science of Climate Change. Washington, D. C. : The National Academies Press. [2] Susan Solomon, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Reto Knutti, and Pierre Friedlingstein (2009). "Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) 106 (6): 1704"9. [3] Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature John Cook et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024 [4] . http://www.gallup.com... [5] . http://www.gallup.com...