Arguments move the world, just as sure as gravity and whatever force keeps Cher and Celine Dion locked in eternal battle at the Earth’s core. Ideas are without question the primary cause of human progress. People love to argue because once we find answers the tendency is to protect them – even in the case of Walter Gerber, the heartless monster who invented processed cheese.

Ideas define; a Muslim from Riyadh is going to have a very different set of ideas than a sexually ambiguous agnostic from Saskatchewan – which could make a great fish-out-of-water sitcom:

“…this week in a very special episode of The Big Bang Theory, Penny is brutally slain in an honor killing… [Cue laugh track]”

But is there even a point? Have we all argued so much that it’s just noise in the echo chamber? I pondered this last week as I finished a three hour screaming match with my wife about where to sit in the food court.

Ideas are very hard to split from the person (even with axes and fire) how could you expect to ever really win an argument? If you can’t get your best friends to agree that Watchmen was a crap movie, how likely are you to convince a Tea Bag protester that universal healthcare isn’t a form of fascism?

The first problem is that people don’t mean what they say; most of us are from the generation that first witnessed The CNN Effect. So in addition to wanting to finally surrender to the smoldering sexuality of Larry King, we have all become spin doctors.

For example, when former Miss California Carrie Prejean said:

“I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

What she certainly meant was, ‘I don’t think gay people are equal to straight people’, but she can’t just come out and say despite her apparent imbecility. As a result, what you know of her position on gay marriage is useless. But as a responsible humorist and commentator I’ll let you know precisely what Prejean’s position on masturbation if the tape is ever released.

Secondly, there are also groups that are simply argument-averse.

1. Children: Children are stupid and this state often persists well into their twenties. There is no point in arguing with them; they are engines of want who, at the first available moment, will get pimples, opinions and spill a milkshake in your car.

2. Normal Religious People: Mostly this is just dull because they’re looking to be all reasonable and not plunge the world into some new Christendom – no fun! I had an argument with a Jesuit about the truth of miracles and he proclaimed that miracles were exaggerated. God did not part the vast Red Sea, for example, but rather a big marsh called the Reed Sea. I said that it’s still preposterous for god to intervene in amazingly unimpressive ways – he didn’t like that. Yahweh spins the entire cosmos on his finger, but can only muster a feeble breeze over a swamp and I’m the jerk? For all you ‘serious’ theologians just let me point out that this is only 2 steps removed from “God didn’t make the ice cream, but he made you for me to enjoy it with…”

Religious folks have really powerful opening arguments that ends in people riding dinosaurs…

And no, I’m not picking on them – if you wear a Thriller jacket, expect people to point (at least).

3. Severely Religious People: If you argue with them they will let Ben Stein be in another movie – ugh. Alternatively they might just stare while they wait for god to kill you with lightning.

4. Skeptics: We will nickel and dime the shit out of you. Skeptics generally assume that they are right and we are. We are always open to being proved wrong but we sure as hell aren’t planning on it and there’s no possible way it’s coming from you.

5. Anti-Vaccine People: This groups has Jenny McCarthy as their leader, a woman whose  sole attribute is that she has special breasts that apparently need a lot of fresh air. Going topless as a way to becoming credible seems difficult, but it did work for Christopher Hitchens. Also, the anti-vax argument sucks. Vaccines caused autism, then they didn’t. Vaccines are toxic, then not so much. There are too many vaccines, but we don’t know why. I’m just as worried that the needle might let all the air out of my kid.

6. Conspiracy Loons: There’s always enough people to cover up anything, and they just can fathom how you are so naïve to not know about the Apache attack helicopter that fired lasers from the grassy knoll.

The folks on either side are just as committed and the chance of them budging is about the same as Jay Leno giving up The Tonight Show while not entirely dead.

I see Leno returning as a talk show wraith like the Black Riders from Lord of the Rings…he would open his mouth and a soul-rending shriek would come out, reducing all onlookers to pure despair.

Oh wait, he does that already.

So, you won’t deconvert anyone, and maybe you’re a jerk if you try. But if you’re lucky, maybe the person three seats over will hear you let some things roll around in their brain. If you’re very lucky, they might even think it over and realize too, that Letterman is way funnier.

I don’t think that was even my point…never mind.

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