Debate, the art of using reason and clever wording to persuade an audience of one's personal opinion regarding the interpretation of facts and ideas, has long been held as one of the greatest institutions of man, revered by some and loathed by many, but likely ignored by few. Debate aspires to many noble purposes, and yet maintains, among some, a sort of nefarious reputation. Examining both sides of debate may shed light on it.
Pro: Debate Sharpens Reasoning Skills Regarding What People Believe
When you debate, you are forced to give an accounting of the reasoning behind your opinions. It's not enough to say "just because." Debate challenges people to identify the reasons why they believe the way they do. it forces them to get beyond what they are taught, or what their religion says, or what their family history tells them. It forces them to use reason to explain their position. In doing so, they often find that previously held opinions are weakened or strengthened. Questioning personal beliefs is the surest way to maintain a firm grounding in who you really are vs. who you wish to be.
Con: Debate Lends Itself to Giving People Tunnel Vision
One of the problems inherent to debate, on the other hand, is that because debate typically is between two parties, this medium of thought justification tends to close down thought, making an issue subject to just one or two points of view. There might be thousands of points of view available, but the nature of debate is to pick opposing sides, then argue both until exhausting the evidence for each. Arguing viewpoint A vs. viewpoint B generally precludes the option of deciding that viewpoint J, M, or Q may be a better view.
Pro: Debate Makes Viewpoints More Clearly Discernible for Fence-Sitters
It is rare that debate will result in a shift in the minds of those debating, but for listeners, debating is a powerful tool. Ideas that may at first appear inconsequential or non-controversial might show themselves to be of great significance to an undecided audience. Political debates, for example, are not geared toward swaying the base believers on either side. Rather, they are geared toward swaying undecided voters to make a decision, getting them off of the fence and clearly into one camp of thought or another. This is how elections are won. Indeed, it's the concept behind "swing" votes.
Con: Debate Limits Information From Mere Facts to Only Those Germane to Each Side
Because debate relies on an interpretation of facts, often, those debating will decidedly negate or marginalize certain facts germane to the process of objectively discerning one's own opinion on a matter based on all available knowledge. In the debate over creationism vs. evolution, for example, one side might debate that all matter tends toward entropy, precluding the possibility of evolutionary processes, while the other side might argue natural selection as a logical conclusion from a world in competition for survival. Both sides might wax eloquently about their prospective sides, but when debating the answer to the question of man's origin, certain facts never come to light, facts that might lead to the conclusion that both sides are asking the wrong question and therefore are doomed to come to the wrong conclusion. Furthermore, even if the question were the right question, the creationist is unlikely to concede that science proves that evolutionary processes are existent in nature, while the evolutionist will fail to concede that Occam's Razor dictates that there likely is a creative force at work regardless of the random factors involved with evolutionary theory.
Debate's Real Value
So then debate has a value, but its value is, itself, debatable. The indisputable fact is that the result of debate is that humans are forced to use their brains for something other than information retrieval. Justifying beliefs through humans' ability to reason is an excellent way to develop thought and the capacity for reasoning. It is, in many ways, that which sets us apart, so far as we can tell, from the more instinct-driven animal kingdom.
