What's the best way to win an argument?

You might think it would be to discredit your opponents’ facts or undermine their logic but, in fact, the best way is simply to deny them a voice in the first place.

Although few people openly seek to silence their adversaries, when those adversaries happen to be religious (as has often been the case with the HFE bill this week), it is so much easier to deploy the “religion is private” card than actually to engage with their arguments. Hence Jackie Ashley in Monday’s Guardian: ‘There is no sensible conversation between the opposing views to be had… live according to your beliefs, but don't try to impose them on the rest of us.’

This will not do. Christian and other religious opinions should be permitted to engage in public debate, no matter how fruitless some people think that debate is. Moreover, who is the ‘us’ here? If Jackie Ashley imagines the rest of the population thinks the same way she does, she should think again.

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