[split] Critical Thinking Skills

[jstrodel]

You gotta be kidding me. I am reading what I am writing in the post. You have very serious character vices that prevent you from being able to acknowledge when you are wrong.


What about this statement is false?

It is not fallacious to appeal to authority, people do it all the time.

It is not intended to read that there are no fallacies involving arguments from authority, obviously.

[Darkstar]

You are so proud. Why can't you listen to others? You are so ideological biased. If you were humble, you would check on yourself because you are making the most basic error of undergraduate atheism. This is why people are atheists, because they are proud, they won't listen to people that think differently from them, they aren't really curious, they are curious about liberalism, they don't care if they are right, they care about winning arguments.

Okay, now that we have your (as usual, unsupported) anti-atheist propaganda out of the way, let's see what you are arguing.

Jump to: navigation, seach
Look up ad verecundiam in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam), also authoritative argument and appeal to authority, is an inductive-reasoning argument that often takes the form of a statistical syllogism.[1] Although certain classes of argument from authority can constitute strong inductive arguments, the appeal to authority is often applied fallaciously: either the authority is not a subject-matter expert, or there is no consensus among experts in the subject matter, or both.[1][2][3]

Fallacy labels have their use. But fallacy-label texts tend not to provide useful criteria for applying the labels. Take the so-called ad verecundiam fallacy, the fallacious appeal to authority. Just when is it committed? Some appeals to authority are fallacious; most are not. A fallacious one meets the following condition: The expertise of the putative authority, or the relevance of that expertise to the point at issue, are in question.

Example, a chemist rejects evolution. A chemist is not a biologist, nor an evolutionary biologist. Scientists can provide mountains of evidence in favor of evolution. Therefore the appeal to authority is fallacious.

But the hard work comes in judging and showing that this condition holds, and that is where the fallacy-label texts leave off. Or rather, when a text goes further, stating clear, precise, broadly applicable criteria for applying fallacy labels, it provides a critical instrument more fundamental than a taxonomy of fallacies and hence to that extent goes beyond the fallacy-label approach. The further it goes in this direction, the less it need to emphasize or event to use fallacy labels. (Schwartz, 232)

If you want to understand the world, don't just screen out the stuff that doesn't agree with what you say.

If I did, how would I be responding to it?

Look, when I am typing stuff on here, probably 85-95% of the stuff I am typing is true. I can promise you that.

---

---

I havn't told a lie in 6 or 7 years.

But by your own definition of lying, making a mistake it a lie, even if it is unintentional. Which is why you said I was lying.

I can be wrong, but most of the stuff I say, is from direct experience from God. I am not saying that I am better than anyone else, or I am smarter than anyone else, I have average intelligence. I am not a genius. But I know what I am talking about.

Are you sure? \rhetorical

You aren't even prepared to accept the possibility that someone who disagrees with you could know something that you don't.

Sure I am...if you ever gave me evidence that didn't ultimately amount to "just take my word for it".

I hope that you can escape that. I am saying this because I want you to have what I have, the knowledge absolutely that God exists.

Good links on fallacies (including some interesting stuff on fallacies theory, good to know what exactly fallacies are and how it isn't necessarily that easy to apply them. The difference between a significant atheist philosopher like Daniel Dennet or Bertrand Russel and an undergraduate atheist who accuses and defames Christianity by using logical concepts and informal logical concepts falsely because he is too lazy to actually spend the time to understand how they work):

What authority were you appealing to again? Was it an argument ad populum? Or was it Christian scientists? (Or something else)

[Ryantology]

I am saying this because I want you to have what I have, the knowledge absolutely that God exists.

So much for not being a liar.

[jstrodel]

Darkstar you made a post criticizing something that I wrote saying that I was making a fallacious argument from authority. I looked at and I took one look and realized you didn't even have an undergraduate level knowledge of atheism.

Why can't you just admit you are wrong?


Just think about what you are writing here. Let me ask you, how does what you are writing prove my point?

Example, a chemist rejects evolution. A chemist is not a biologist, nor an evolutionary biologist. Scientists can provide mountains of evidence in favor of evolution. Therefore the appeal to authority is fallacious.

[Joel]

You gotta be kidding me. I am reading what I am writing in the post. You have very serious character vices that prevent you from being able to acknowledge when you are wrong.


What about this statement is false?

It is not fallacious to appeal to authority, people do it all the time.

It is not intended to read that there are no fallacies involving arguments from authority, obviously.

Everything! It is fallacious, because it's not a way to prove anything! Why is that hard for you to understand?
It is always fallacious to use that method of reasoning.

[Tonus]

You are so proud. Why can't you listen to others?

I'd like to point something out here, because this is the... hundred billionth or so time that you've ignored a question or comment and tried to psychoanalyze me or guess at my motivations or even determine what I think.

The name-calling and put downs don't bother me. Hey, I tend to be a pretty snarky asshole a fair amount of the time, and I'm sure it irritates people, so they fire back. That's cool, doesn't bother me. You theists take a good amount of shit here, and I think it's completely fair that you fire back. Heck, I admire that any of you visit forums like this at all- I didn't have the nerve to do so when I was a believer.

Even the fluff is pretty fair. I wonder aloud at why theists might believe as they do, mostly because I am a snarky asshole. So it doesn't bother me that you spend so many paragraphs trying to create some kind of FBI-worthy profile of me. But if you lose sight of the discussion, you get very very BORING.

To me, the discussion is prime. Your motivations mean exactly jack and shit to me. The important thing is whether the discussion leads me to learn anything new. Paragraph after paragraph explaining what is wrong with me or with atheists in general is useless, but if there is at least an attempt at discussing the topic, I'm willing to read through it.

Now, if you think that it's not worth discussing the topic with me and all I deserve is for you to go all Sigmund Freud on my ass, that works. Since I have no interest in reading page after page of you being spectacularly wrong about what makes me tick, you can fill your spew quota of the day without worrying that I'll make fun of your big brother in the sky. If you've actually got something that's on topic, I'll be happy to consider it.

[Darkstar]

Darkstar you made a post criticizing something that I wrote saying that I was making a fallacious argument from authority. I looked at and I took one look and realized you didn't even have an undergraduate level knowledge of atheism.

But atheism is just a lack in belief in god, I didn't realize you needed to go to atheism ed...

Why can't you just admit you are wrong?

Because I'm not...unless you can show otherwise.

Just think about what you are writing here. Let me ask you, how does what you are writing prove my point?

Example, a chemist rejects evolution. A chemist is not a biologist, nor an evolutionary biologist. Scientists can provide mountains of evidence in favor of evolution. Therefore the appeal to authority is fallacious.

It doesn't. If it does, then why not explain it? How is a chemist an authority on biology?

[jstrodel]

Pride is certainly on topic, not only is it on topic, it is the topic of the day.

You have two people here that both are saying that arguments from authority are fallacious. Neither has ever written a book, probably neither has graduated from college.

They are presented with compelling evidence that they are wrong from several sources, and they refuse to actually defend the ideas, and then you have another guy who would rather post an image than correct people for fallacious reasoning.

The issue is pride, absolutely. Humility and truth go together. Pride and deception and manipulative behavior and psuedo-logic to advance atheism, which is not belief, it is non-belief, goes along with pride.

[Darkstar]

Pride is certainly on topic, not only is it on topic, it is the topic of the day.

You have two people here that both are saying that arguments from authority are fallacious. Neither has ever written a book, probably neither has graduated from college.

They are presented with compelling evidence that they are wrong from several sources, and they refuse to actually defend the ideas, and then you have another guy who would rather post an image than correct people for fallacious reasoning.

The issue is pride, absolutely. Humility and truth go together. Pride and deception and manipulative behavior and psuedo-logic to advance atheism, which is not belief, it is non-belief, goes along with pride.

Thanks for the non-argument and strawman. Who said that without exception arguments from authority are fallacious? Can you explain why your own argument from authority wasn't fallacious?

[Joel]

Neither has ever written a book, probably neither has graduated from college.

What the hell does this have to do with anything?

Someone has to write a book to be correct? This is why you aren't understanding small things.

The issue is pride, absolutely. Humility and truth go together. Pride and deception and manipulative behavior and psuedo-logic to advance atheism, which is not belief, it is non-belief, goes along with pride.

Rather than spewing pseudo-psycho-preachybabble, you might want to actually demonstrate that you are correct. What you have shown so far, is nothing of the sort.