How to Have an Argument

A friend and I got into a discussion about global warming recently at church, and I am glad because it helped me to clarify my thinking and, at the same time, demonstrated that we really can have civilized disagreements about these issues.

I don’t remember now how it got started. But I said something supportive about global warming, and that was when he interrupted me.

“Well, we are at polar opposites there because I think global warming is a big, fat lie!” He looked straight into my eyes and added, “Who is really in charge of the temperature of the earth anyway?”

My heart sank, because I sensed his answer would be the theistic God that I no longer believe in, and I wasn’t entirely sure how I could get out of this one without really getting into an argument. Global warming is a safer argument in church than your interpretation of God! (Even if we do each have our own interpretation of God, mine is off the charts in a farm town. Fewer people are more conservative than farmers.) “That’s okay,” I said, “but then how do you explain the melting glaciers? How do you explain the fact that when they talk about the 10 hottest years or summers in the last 100 years of record, around half of them are in the last 15 or 20 years?”

He went on to explain his belief that the earth’s temperature has always fluctuated and it is just doing that now. And “they” will slap the taxes on us to fight global warming when human beings have absolutely no control of global temperature. And all this debating will achieve is to throw a lot of money at the problem without doing anything to solve it. (I can’t deny that is often the way these things turn out!) He thinks that, while the earth may be warming, God is in control and man can’t do anything about it.

So what he really doubts isn’t the warming itself, but the belief that we cause it and can do something about stopping it.

At that point I sensed the beginnings of common beliefs, and I was able to proceed with an open mind. “I will agree that no one really knows what is causing the warming,” I replied, “and I honestly don’t think anybody really knows if we are the cause or not. But I do think we should do whatever we can.”

That was the point of clarification in my thinking. I believe in global warming, and I think we should do what we can to slow it down (I doubt we can stop it entirely). But whether it is a fact or a myth, there is a real issue underlying it.

“I think the real issue is the environment,” I went on.”We are poisoning our water, our soil, and our air. We have to get that cleaned up. We can’t spoil our home; we have nowhere else to go.”

My friend, a farmer, agreed entirely that the environment is the real issue. We spent a few minutes agreeing on various aspects of that, and then went off toward the parlor, and he was saying, “Now, see? We found common things.”

I grinned. “Of course, you’re either a bad American or a bad Christian because you disagree with me. And that is the kind of talk we need to get rid of. People should be able to have civilized disagreements.”

“I agree wholeheartedly!”

That is the way to have an argument. Try to be open-minded, try to have respect for the other (not hard in this case, I think the world of this man and his wife), and find the things that are common. You might even learn something. What I learned is this: While I do believe global warming is a genuine issue, the total environmental picture is the issue I’m really concerned about, and whether the globe is warming or not, whether we can do anything about it or not, we still need to be cleaning up our pollution.

When I saw this friend at choir practice a couple of days later, we got to talking about our conversation on Sunday, and it turned out that we both had given it a lot of thought. We both concluded it was a very positive and constructive discussion.

Now that is a really spiffy way to have an argument!