Can you hold down a debate?

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I am not able to hold on a debate at all. I'm already having a hard time saying two sentences in a row. So I just listen to what other people are saying for a moment, then I start thinking to completely different things.

I have never been able to have decent debates with someone, even online. I don't know if it's possible to learn to hold on debates ?

There was a time when I could do this, but after high school I became unable to connect points and structure verbal arguments in front of someone else. Now I avoid any kind of debate or conflict because I have no confidence in my position and I don't feel that I can handle it.

Definitely not.

This is one of the things that I've known about myself long before I knew that I had ASD. For the last decade or so I've had a pretty steadfast rule for myself that I don't discuss sensitive topics, such as politics or religion, with pretty much anyone (though sometimes excluding my wife).

The problem is that I can't listen to what the person is saying, process that, and formulate my own response in real time. So what I end up doing is thinking about what I'm going to say while they're talking. We end up talking past each other, instead of with each other. That leads to frustration, which exacerbates my issues, because now I'm trying to process an emotional reaction as well. From there the conversation just devolves in a cycle of frustration and anger.

Personally, I think this is exactly how it should be.
Otherwise you would be letting the other person control the conversation by manipulating you - forcing you to only respond to what they are saying closer to real-time. This type of manipulation is how NTs operate. It is completely independent of that actual applicable logic flow of the subject at hand. They interject emotion and identity into a debate that should be about real things involved in some functional process.

Of course it devolves and causes frustration if you do not play along and allow them to control and corrupt the debate.

I've never had a problem debating someone; in fact I actively enjoying engaging in intellectual debates on the internet often. I'm almost always correct as I argue from a logical point of view, rather than arguing for a more subjective personal of mine.
Funny you mentioned religion; I'm an atheist and I debate theists often, especially Christians.

What about on forums or via e-mail? You would have time to read what's been posted and think about your response.

Yeah, I don't seem to have as many problems if it's in a written form. Although, I do still have some trouble getting too attached to "winning" the debate, rather than having a constructive dialogue with someone though. I'm not certain how much of that is ASD though.

What I really mean is that I often get lost in debates, even with terrible debaters. But it seems like every NT has something to say, even if they are far from being right, they can at least keep the debate going with new ideas. I wan't necessarily mentioning their tactics.

Yes, though my online and offline styles are very different.

Offline, I deliberately speak slowly and gradually lay out a chain of reasoning leading to a conclusion, and tend to rely on leading someone from point to point until the conclusion I want is reached, while keeping things on topic and moving in my direction. I never really get into heated debates offline because I prevent them from getting that way, using more soft persuasion and leveraging my own personality ("you know me, I'm a good guy, do you really think I'd support X just to be a dick?" etc) to deflect typical bad faith arguments, and take a self effacing position to keep the other person from getting defensive and hostile. It's very effective, especially as most of the time I'm not so much trying to change someone's one position on something as to correct their misconception about my positions, or more likely, the types of people who hold opinions like mine.

Online, I'm a heat seeking missile for unsupported statements, contradictions, hypocrisy, bad faith, fallacies, etc, it's a talent/curse, they literally jump out of the post at me, much as I imagine spelling errors and such do for grammarians. How I respond depends on a number of factors, such as the subject at hand, the particular posters involved, the attitudes on display, any history I have with the topic and the participants, and whether I'm in a "convert anyone on the fence" mood" or more interested in taking down someone who is saying a bunch of false/misleading/malicious things, with my response to the later being far more aggressive. Of course, there's still no quicker way to draw my strongest attention than to attack another member for doing something you yourself do regularly, hypocrisy is probably my biggest single button, I just have no tolerance for it at this point. Straw manning may be a close second.

Stylistically, I rely way more on citations, supporting statistics, articles, etc, that would be awkward to integrate into a face to face argument, and take full advantage of the written media to parse out what has been said, attacking point by point to dispute individual assertions that may be buried in the larger statement, and am quick to demand support for any assertion made that appears to be pure opinion. Basically, I take a scientific/legalistic approach, which works well both with by ability to detach, and with my fondness for providing supporting evidence for the claims I make.