I'll bother if life isn't commanding my attention. Usually though, I'm the one with less time to discuss and I'll end up leaving things unfinished. Better to lurk than start what I can't finish and in so doing hurt my position. With family, it's a batshit thing. We aren't going to convince each other of anything. Even if I manage to light a fire or two their pastor or Bible study will correct them next Sunday. What I get in return are messages about "evolution disproved" or other god-in-the-gaps silliness. And anyway, they're family. I don't _want_ to push their buttons even if they've been told it's their responsibility to push mine.
I read a blog a week or two ago that touched on this topic. It had to do with tolerance. That tolerance can be like a bad parent in allowing the nutballs free reign to screw with social and scientific progress. I know I don't have the time to get into that one.
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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195
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