A couple of days ago, on someone else’s videos entirely, a belligerent theist approached me and challenged me to a debate. He was cocksure and obnoxious, saying he’d never lost a debate against an atheist so I said sure. Go right ahead. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Except what he had was nothing he ought to have been proud of. Let’s take a look.Now let’s be perfectly clear, this is by no means a new occurrence. Tons of theists try to pull this and it never ends well. The fact is, they’re not looking to debate any actual atheists, they just want to debate their own straw man versions and insist that we have to meet their expectations or somehow, we’re doing it all wrong.

First, he told me what an atheist is. He didn’t ask. He didn’t care what I thought, he told me exactly what I believed. When I protested, he told me that I was wrong. I’m sorry, but there is no possibility that I could ever be wrong about what I, personally, think. No one can conceivably be a bigger expert on my own thoughts than I am, but the religious seem sure that they know us better than we know ourselves. The religious love to insist that we deny the existence of god, or worse, have blind faith that gods do not exist and no matter how much we tell them they are mistaken, they can’t admit the truth. Why? Because they don’t care about the truth. They have set up a straw man and they’re doing everything in their power to knock it down. Sorry, that’s not how reality works.

Next, he insisted that I prove to him, based on his nonsensical definition of atheism, that gods don’t exist. When I told him that’s not what I thought, he again told me I was wrong and that I had to follow his script. I suppose this is why he thought he’d never lost a debate, because he’d never actually engaged in one honestly. I turned around and said that, not only do I not make that claim and as such, bear no burden of proof for proving it, he actually is making claims about the existence of his god, his posts were long, rambling affairs proclaiming that everything he believed was absolutely true and therefore, he’s the one who had to back it up.

He told me I was wrong and to prove gods don’t exist.

This is what happens when you try to debate dishonest interlocutors. It’s no wonder he doesn’t think he’s ever lost a debate because the only debate that’s going on is in his own head. This is, unfortunately, very common. It’s people who clearly don’t know how the burden of proof works, desperately running around with the goal posts and then, when people get frustrated with their dishonesty, they declare victory and pretend to be undefeated.

No, these people are morons. Eventually, I gave up and he, as expected, declared triumph, took his undeserved victory lap and started throwing insults at anyone who would listen, saying he was still undefeated. It was an example of why you don’t argue with idiots.  As they say, they’ll just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience, except in this case, because I never engaged, they just dragged their imagination down and pummeled their straw man. It’s one thing if they could actually argue their points. It’s quite another when they’re just talking to themselves and pretending to punch out Mike Tyson.

Is it any wonder the religious never get anywhere useful? They’ve got an emotionally comforting faith they have to maintain and when it looks like their beliefs are in trouble, they just invent victory and play make believe. Honestly, what the hell else is new?