Is debating with theologists pointless?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

It's not fancy language, it's two starkly different epistemological foundations.

No, it's believing in what isn't there. There's no fucking difference, you prance.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

A match will help you light a smoke. A particular articulation of why a match works won't get you anywhere.

It will allow you to make matches; it will also allow you to make more effective matches and to improvise when you don't have matches. Can the Holy Ghost do that?

I love the perverse irony of "materialists" who consistently imagine narratives and ideologies not only precede but ultimately determine material relationships.

Who has claimed that they do? The only thing that is "perverse" here - I usually avoid the term, but the religious definitely embrace it and all of its implications - is this ultra-left notion that the only consistent materialism is their sort of mechanicist epiphenomenalism where ideology is simply some qualia-stuff that floats above the material world, and not part of the superstructure.

Of course, the ultra-lefts imagine that we should attack the base (usually at some indeterminate point in the future when the workers spontaneously decide to do so) without engaging the superstructure in order to weaken bourgeois ideological hegemony; so it really isn't surprising that you aren't concerned about the concrete impact of religion on oppressed groups.

Also, it is highly amusing to see someone that apparently thinks science is on the same level as "god" as far as explanations go accusing people of not being materialist enough.

[Willin']

Pretty much its pointless,so its better to just let it slip away.

[Vanilla]

Debating with Christian fundies can be pointless as they are absolutely dead set in their ways, although debating with your average Christian who is only religious on Sundays can sometimes be fruitful (in my own experience). As long as you aren't one of those new atheist douchebags that treat all theists as braindead morons, I've noticed that the person you are debating actually will listen to you.

To be fair, I've never actually debated someone other than a Christian on an issue that can be related to religion, so I have no idea if debating Muslims, Jews, etc is pointless or not.

[one10]

I've never gotten through to a single theists with whom I've debated/argued with.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I've never gotten through to a single theists with whom I've debated/argued with.

Yeah, but what were you arguing about? I've heard committed Christians say that the police are armed thugs of the bourgeoisie, that private ownership of property is inherently unjust, that the immediate task of Christians ought to be the destruction of capitalism and its states. Hell, beyond discussion, I've goddamn blockaded things with Christians. Probably what you were debating/arguing about was pretty damn irrelevant.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yeah, but what were you arguing about? I've heard committed Christians say that the police are armed thugs of the bourgeoisie, that private ownership of property is inherently unjust, that the immediate task of Christians ought to be the destruction of capitalism and its states. Hell, beyond discussion, I've goddamn blockaded things with Christians. Probably what you were debating/arguing about was pretty damn irrelevant.

Of course. A consistent, materialist revolutionary theory, ideological hegemony leading to a cultural revolution after the social one, protection of women and sexual minorities, this is all "pretty damn irrelevant".