Several exchanges followed. On each exchange, my interlocutors moved the goalposts. They didn't just disagree with my point, they refused to acknowledge what the first of them actually said. I stayed on point. Finally, they left the conversation because they thought I had changed the topic from sin to politics. But the original commenter's comment had been about sin and politics.
The end result of several generations of increasingly bad schooling is a plethora of smart people who can't keep to the point. Their posts are a series of denials of what they, in fact, have just said, interspersed with various non sequiturs. They think they are cultured because they've had a lot of school; but they've not really mastered much in the way of anything.
Now, I like talking random froth and piffle as much as anybody, but I also believe that conceding obvious points, even against yourself, helps everybody get on and clarify where they were going in the conversation. Real sharing is possible among people who genuinely want to know what the others think and who are willing to share what they really think.
But I think most people just talk to hear their heads roar, as my old Mother would have said.