Deliberate use of fallacy

[bennyboy]

If you're dealing with a debate that is going to be available on the internet, then no matter what your opponent and the live audience think about who "won" the debate, the internet viewers are the ones you should be trying to reach. So by remaining honest, you will hopefully gain credibility and respect from those viewers and ultimately change the most minds.

If that's not the case, then cheating back at the cheater is more appealing, since it will expose the fraudulent nature of the opponent to the audience, hopefully.

Not that I've ever been in any formal debates! So I'm just putting forward my opinion

You know, I think I'd enjoy doing one though.

Oh, in a formal debate, if you have any fallacy at all, it is likely to be caught, I'd think. You don't want to have your opponent shouting Latin words at you.

[Pizza]

Random thought, I wonder if other forms of reasoning besides argumentative reasoning are important and should not be neglected. Like reasoning that isn't straight up deduction or induction.

Like what?

Like appeals to gut feelings, and intuition.

[Mudhammam]

Like what?

Like appeals to gut feelings, and intuition.

Or how about "self-authenticating experience"? On the reasonablefaith.org message boards a few years back, I posted a challenge regarding evidence for God's existence, and I shit you not the first reply was:

"I, like WLC, believe based on my personal witnessing of the holy spirit. I previously believed that Zoroastrianism was true based on my personal witnessing of Ahura Mazda. As it turns out, one self authenticating internal experience can be more self authenticating than another."

(I stumbled upon it today when I decided to Google myself--- http://www.reasonablefaith.org/forums/pr...1269317531 ---oh, the memories. Good times).

Now that I reread it, it's entirely possible that guy was joking. But it's sort of sad that with believers it's impossible to tell.

[Pizza]

Self-authenticating experience and intuition are an open door to naturalism that's why apologists try desperately to show naturalism to be self-defeating with bullshit like EAAN and transcendental arguments.

[robvalue]

If you're dealing with a debate that is going to be available on the internet, then no matter what your opponent and the live audience think about who "won" the debate, the internet viewers are the ones you should be trying to reach. So by remaining honest, you will hopefully gain credibility and respect from those viewers and ultimately change the most minds.

If that's not the case, then cheating back at the cheater is more appealing, since it will expose the fraudulent nature of the opponent to the audience, hopefully.

Not that I've ever been in any formal debates! So I'm just putting forward my opinion

You know, I think I'd enjoy doing one though.

Oh, in a formal debate, if you have any fallacy at all, it is likely to be caught, I'd think. You don't want to have your opponent shouting Latin words at you.

Oh sure yeah. [In my imaginary debating career] I wouldn't ever knowingly use a fallacy, except as a way of pointing out the stupidity of someone deliberately using their own fallacies to waste time and take things off track. But a last resort of course.

I take that approach in here sometimes, as a last resort to someone entirely refusing to be reasonable. I claim to be God and such, they don't like it. They tend to ignore me.

[emjay]

The one that gets to me most is when people claim an argument against their own argument which they then rationalise away as stupid, which it is, but that argument was never made. I see it all the time in apologetic religious books: "Atheists say this" ("no we didn't") "but clearly it is nonsense" ("we agree but we never proposed it!"). Then they come out looking as if they have won the argument.

[The Grand Nudger]

How could they not (win)...they're talking to themselves.  lol?  I totally kick my own ass /w a yoyo...like a bawss.

[emjay]

How could they not (win)...they're talking to themselves.  lol?  I totally kick my own ass /w a yoyo...like a bawss.

I suppose that's the pity about it: they're not really aimed at convincing us but at convincing them, and at that they succeed.

[Polaris]

No. Atheists use too many fallacies and it harms their intellectual integrity.

[Iroscato]

I use hyperbole, but I usually try to avoid other pitfalls. As long as you have a strong, solid argument and the linguistic skills to put it across clearly, and stick to your guns...you shouldn't need to stretch the truth.