RE: Please correct me where I am wrong
May 20, 2015 at 2:30 pm
(This post was last modified: May 20, 2015 at 2:32 pm by Simon Moon.)
(May 20, 2015 at 1:14 am)nicanica123 Wrote:(May 19, 2015 at 8:34 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: If someone points out that I have a belief based on faith, not evidence, you know what I will do? I will stop believing it. That is what rational, critical thinkers do.
Here is a an interesting point though, if you believe that you're a rational critical thinker then you can rationalize why you're not guilty of a fallacy or cognitive dissonance, etc.
Because logic is a formal system for evaluating the validity of an argument.
There is no guesswork. If there is a fallacy, it can be demonstrated without too much ambiguity. If someone points out a fallacy in my thinking, I will happily accept the critique, and modify or drop the argument. And I have done it many times in my life.
I care more about having more true beliefs, and as few false beliefs as possible, than being right in an argument. I thank people that correct me, and integrate the new info into my thinking.
Quote:And I am not saying that you do this and attacking you at all personally. I just think that absolute statements on unknown/unknowable things seem to be irrational in the first place. And we would all agree with it but when you start adding ad hominem attacks, straw men, red herrings, or just being ignorant to what someone really believes then you're just bringing down the dialogue and encouraging cognitive dissonance on the other end. I think that even when we don't know the name of a specific fallacy, we still can sense when someone says something that kind of makes sense but something is missing. WLC, who i know is beloved in this community, often points out in debates that his counterpart avoids answering to certain refutations and points that he has made. And I personally don't believe that is to be minimized. I just find it humorous that a lot of the comments in this thread have gone straight to ad hominem attacks on christians and theists.
Please point out any fallacy you see me making in these forums. I will go out of my way of acknowledging it, and drop the argument.
As far as WLC goes, he tends to get a lot of criticism in atheist forums because he is intellectually dishonest.
His arguments, that contain physics in particular, have been demonstrated to be false many times, yet he continues to use them.
One of the best example is on his debate with Sean Carroll (Ph.d in physics, research professor at Cal Tech). where WLC attempts to support one of his arguments by quoting physicist Alan Guth, and in Carroll's response, he shows a video of Guth saying that WLC is wrong about his (Guth's) position. The debate is on youtube.
WLC does not apologize for misrepresenting Guth, and he still uses the same argument in his debates. If that is not being dishonest, what is it?
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
