In the course of the debate involving Matt Slick and Aron Ra, it was clear that both sides were guilty of not abiding by various, generic protocols that need to happen in order for a debate to be ideal, and in order for the productivity of a dialogue to be at its maximal ideal.
At a minimum, emotion should be minimized, civility needs to be maximized, terms need to be clarified, premises need to be proven (or argued for), and arguments need to be valid. If all of that is a success, you have a sound argument. That's the purpose of argument, as far as I can tell.
