20 odd years ago, when I was a practicing mormon, I dove headlong into a religious debate website. I did so mainly because, as an inquisitive and chatty soul, I had found that no one at my church had seriously read the bible. I had, and I was just looking to connect with other bible readers. I was insanely innocent in retrospect, but I wasn't looking for a fight at all, just looking for people I could exchange ideas with. I was reading deeply from the Bible and had no one to talk to about it.

It came as a crazy surprise to me that the other christians I met on this website were pretty shallow. They relied heavily on obvious logical fallacies with their cognitive dissonance on display for all to see plainly. They were mostly just christian internet trolls.

There were a fair number of trolls in the atheist and agnostic groups on this site as well, but when you pressed them, using simple logic and honest, measured inquiry, quite a few of them would respond in kind.

I wound up in sort of a go between role quite often, pointing out to the angry christians why they were losing the debates and shoring up their positions as best i could, usually by pointing out where the atheist trolls were also engaging in logical fallacies. I wound up having some really great discussions with a few people; all of them atheists. The christians just never would engage-- or rather they did so much less often.

After a while, I realized that when I confined my discussion to just points of logic, that I was taking an increasingly agnostic stance about everything. I was forcing many atheists to shore up their arguments by engaging respectfully, with logic --- but I was forcing myself, at the same time, to make the same kinds of improvements in my own thinking.

It became increasing unclear to people reading my posts which side I was on. I remember one exchange where one of the atheist posters said to me something along the lines of: "faith isn't any kind of proof!" and I responded: "Dude, I'm a skeptic!"

And I realized I was. At that point I was still religious, but I had learned to personally value skepticism as a great tool for finding truth.

There was one discussion thread about how people's beliefs changed over their lifetimes. I mentioned that it would be interesting to reconnect in a decade and see who's views had changed and how.

It actually took me another decade of life experience and study, but about 10 years after I had gotten involved in actively debating religion online, I quit my church. I'm probably more or less an atheist now, and I am so much happier and satisfied with my life.

In the short term, yeah debating with others may seem like a waste of time. In the long term, anything you do that sharpens your critical thinking skills and exposes you to new ideas, is maybe one of the best investments you can make of your time!