[split] Critical Thinking Skills

[jstrodel]

In which case it would be fallacious.

No. It is not categorically fallacious. It is an argument from authority. Life is not all black and white.


You guys don't know what you are talking about. A picture of a fossil is not the same as the journals and labs and tests that verify the object is what it says it is. There are plenty of pictures floating around about UFO's, do you believe them because of a picture?

That is not the same as the argument from authority, because there is some evidence, but you are essentially trusting them and also relying on the authority of their judgement in making the claim as well as whatever they depend on.

Practically, people depend on authority all the time. You all are just brainwashed into believing that when you see a picture of a fossil, you are doing "critical thinking" instead of what you are really doing which is trusting in the scientific establishment and making an argument from authority. It is not necessarily fallacious, but it is not different from trusting in a church, if the authority is legitimate. If you wanted to say that it was legitimate to trust in scientific research but not in a church, you would have to demonstrate the validity of scientific research over theology, which would be extremely difficult to do. I have never seen anyone seriously take on this question, because it is not an arguable point. How do you prove that nuclear weapons are necessary for the moral development of society, or napalm, but the sermon on the mount is not? Atheists approach's to this will always hinge on the epistemology of religious belief, but they will neglect the fact that reasoning is not based only epistemology, it is based on other factors such as the practical value and traditional role religion has played as well as personal experience.

Atheists are typically shrill, childish and proud when they talk about Christians reliance on authority to make judgements (trusting the church which has been around for 2000 years as the main anchor of western society is the same as believing in the tooth fairy), and are completely ignorant about their constant use of the argument from authority to justify things that they will likely never be able to see the truth of with there own eyes, as most people cannot.