(August 23, 2010 at 1:22 pm)NoGodaloud ? Wrote: And secondly, its not wrong to cite authorities, when they are specialists in their fiels. What Hawking undoubtly is.It is when you use that authority to somehow make a statement of truth on something. It doesn't matter if the authority is a specialist in the field they are talking about; it is a fallacy to say "because X says Y, and X is an authority on Y, Y is true".
It might be more likely to be true, but you cannot use it in an absolute sense.