ad hominem

Wow. It's not often you get called a moron by an atheistic chemical determinist. But that happened to me tonight. I was interacting and responding to a comment stream on the Richard Dawkins Foundation, who is a well known evolutionist and atheist, and had been explaining in short version of what I think are some evidences for God. And then this person who goes by the handle of Tyler Durden, from the movie "fight club," tried to point out why he thought my arguments or I was wrong. In the process he attacked me over and over again, personally. In this last response he said, "You, sir, are a moron." And did not answer my responses to him.
When someone reaches a level of attacking you, or you are tempted to do it to someone else because you don't like what they are saying, it shows you probably have run out of good arguments for your position. Or you just are falling into bad argumentation. This type of illogical argument is called ad hominem. It means "to the man" and involves attacking the person as though that would prove their argument is wrong. If a person is a known liar and the issue involves an eyewitness account of something and this person is a witness, their truth telling problem is relevant. Most of the rest of the time, it isn't in terms of ideas people discuss. What is relevant is the ideas or truth or evidence a person brings to the table, not whether they have 1 degree in college and you have 3. Or they went to Oxford and you are from lowly Alabama, Or Illinois, etc. But that was exactly how this person attacked me, saying he refused to talk to me anymore until I got an education. The reality was he hated my position about the existence of God, and therefore saw me as a moron. But I and he are not the issue, and he should have stuck to the topic.
So don't go ad hominem when you disagree with someone, it's logical fallacy and just out of place. Stick to why you think something or don't think something, and demand the other person do it too. And if they go ad hominem on you, call them on it and point out it is irrelevant.