(November 11, 2013 at 3:01 pm)Walking Void Wrote: I am somewhat confused regarding 3 of the logical fallacies. The ones I am talking about are Special Pleading, Cherry Picking and Red Herring.
Maybe someone with professional experienceon these 3 fallacies is available to help?
To summarize, the Red Herring fallacy is about covering for faults in an argument, mainly using distractions. The Special Pleading fallacy is about ignoring faults in arguments, whereas Cherry Picking concentrates on only proper logic in an argument.
Is this all correct? And if so is this not redundant to refer to slightly different variations of same attitude towards a bad argument in much the same way?
I mean, can I not just reference 1 of the 3 and the other 2 should be implied, correct?
Special Pleading is making a supposedly universally applicable statement, then exempting something from it, as in:
"Everything has a cause! The first cause must be God!"
"What caused God?"
"God has no cause!"
"So when you said EVERYTHING has a cause you meant everything EXCEPT God."
Cherry Picking is selecting evidence which backs up your claim while ignoring evidence from the same source which challenges it. As in citing Leviticus to condemn homosexuality while ignoring the verses which condemn the eating of shellfish or shaving one's beard off ...
