Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm unaware of any such book by those authors ... ? I'm pretty sure they haven't written anything like. And, no, their Fallacy book doesn't contain any overtly Christian content or arguments that I recall. You can see the table of contents at Amazon to know what topics the book covers.
An article from their website may give you a taste of their writing:
"As you can see, it isn’t enough to notice when someone else is using bad logic. Logic is about learning to recognize fallacies in our own thinking as well."
I'm unaware of any such book by those authors ... ? I'm pretty sure they haven't written anything like. And, no, their Fallacy book doesn't contain any overtly Christian content or arguments that I recall. You can see the table of contents at Amazon to know what topics the book covers.
An article from their website may give you a taste of their writing:
"As you can see, it isn’t enough to notice when someone else is using bad logic. Logic is about learning to recognize fallacies in our own thinking as well."
The other books were being offered along on Amazon (plug). No other needful connection.
logical fallacies are used by people that don't understand how conclusions are drawn. Formal logic is like math class. A bunch of theoretical formulas that we practice on. When we have to use the math learned in a real world environment it has physical limits that apply. Logic is the same way. We have to plug in what we do know, or we plug in we don't know.
There is no "personal meaning" tossed in as "facts we know". Using "personal emotional needs" into formal logic is Like punching numbers into a calculator, a result will be shown, no matter how wrong the numbers are. Obviously one can see the limits when we apply logic theory to real world when the starting "if's" are not real.
Its sort of like asking someone how many grams are in 6 inches. Punch in any numbers you want, write a long azz post justifying your answer. its junk.
Its the exact same when we say "he had to die for our sins", pages of convoluted logic must follow.
Apparently you are unaware that formal and informal fallacies, and logic and rhetoric, are the province of philosophy. These things are formulated, classified and argued by philosophers, not scientists. Of course they are USED by scientists, one would hope, incidental to their work within the framework of the scientific method.
Since logical fallacies are a subset of the topic of logic and that is a subset of philosophical inquiry, I was simply speaking more broadly than the OP. And my point to you, was that what fits the scientific method is a question of science, not of philosophy -- though it may use logic to make that determination.
If I offended, my apologies.
Yes. I bought a book on philosophy as a teen and my mediocre mind gave up in despair. But I did get one thing - semantics is a basic tool or subset of philosophy. Until you know what you are discussing in terms of agreeing the meanings, you are like trying to fight Trafalgar with gunners who brought grapes instead of "grape".
It wasn't until I knew I was an atheist and started taking Cliff Walker's (1) course in apologetics that I came across informal logical fallacies (or false arguments commonly used in discussion) and how you need to be able to spot them as they are pretty much the basic weaponry in the religious apologetics arsenal. That is why we tiny minory atheists do so well, because the facts are actually generally on our side and the religious side can only make a case with deception. We all know the basic ones - starting with God as a given, if we don't have an answer 'God' must be the answer, investing faith in one unlikely or undisprovable possibility rather than putting provisional reliance on the more probable conclusion. And the discussion became so very tactical, because we have all the guns and ammo and the Other side has to use position to nullify it.
'Why are you arguing about it if you don't believe it?', 'Many scholars all believe this - you think you are smarter than they are?' 'You can't be 100% sure- you can't explain everything - science has been wrong before'. These are all tactical arguments to stop us using the arguments we have. It's pretty vital that we be be honest and logically sound in our arguments as they will jump on any slip and indeed will claim we slipped when we didn't ...'I suppose you think that we...' 'The hate comes through in your posts...'. But if you can detect such a feint, it is possible to turn a rhetorical flank.
Oh yes, and "word-salad" aimed at a post that goes right over their head. Clearly this is in the world of rhetoric rather than logical thinking, but then Rhetoric was once considered a branch of philosophy. Thankfully it now isn't and is properly placed in the world of Common -sense' thinking, Legal tricks and political bamboozlement. Oh, and religious and cult -think, of course.
(1) "Positive Atheism". My debt to him is profound.
P.s I checked up on him just now and was appalled to find that his style and title has been Hi -jacked by a theistic polemicist called Ken Ammi. This tosser gets himself and his putrid site popping up by adding the 'Cliff Walker -positive atheism' keyword to his "Atheism is dead" title. Tactics.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 10-15-2016 at 05:49 AM..
Yes. I bought a book on philosophy as a teen and my mediocre mind gave up in despair. But I did get one thing - semantics is a basic tool or subset of philosophy. Until you know what you are discussing in terms of agreeing the meanings, you are like trying to fight Trafalgar with gunners who brought grapes instead of "grape".
Yes, I don't know how many times I've argued with someone for hours or days only to discover that the core of their argument or mine was misunderstood.
Specifically I remember a conversation I had with some guy who was saying evolution is stupid because:
1. Information is always lost in mutations
2. There's no transitional fossils
3. There's no example of DNA going from one species to another
I explained essentially the same thing in many different ways with many different sources and he would not accept it. In the end it turned out he was meaning "kinds" when he said species. He was meaning "I've never seen canine DNA end up in felines" and "I've never seen a hairy fish with legs".
I stopped responding after that, but I tend to find the biggest problem with people who incorrectly use words with the intent to trick people.
Yes, I don't know how many times I've argued with someone for hours or days only to discover that the core of their argument or mine was misunderstood.
Specifically I remember a conversation I had with some guy who was saying evolution is stupid because:
1. Information is always lost in mutations
2. There's no transitional fossils
3. There's no example of DNA going from one species to another
I explained essentially the same thing in many different ways with many different sources and he would not accept it. In the end it turned out he was meaning "kinds" when he said species. He was meaning "I've never seen canine DNA end up in felines" and "I've never seen a hairy fish with legs".
I stopped responding after that, but I tend to find the biggest problem with people who incorrectly use words with the intent to trick people.
Good post and points. In fact there is denial based on Faith that evolution is false - it has become like a doctrine. But those points are not logical fallacies. Even "kinds" is not, because ..well, the idea of Kinds and Species is basically the same. And it is true of course that 'species' is not as watertight a pigeonhole as we might like. The misunderstanding and perhaps wilful misunderstanding there is that 'species' is more of a handy label for telling us something about the critter involved. The wilful misunderstanding and false argument (scientifically, rather than logically) is that change of a critter though evolution into one that has changed so much tat it has to be given a different label cannot happen because Genesis says they were all made pretty much as they are and there doctrinally cannot be that much change.
Evidence that there is or was s simply dismissed. No transitional fossils is stated and if you show them they are denied.
"Information' is misunderstanding for sure, on many levels. If a rock rolls down a mountain and smashes 'information' has been added. And on the atomic level is as complicated as DNA. It is a wilful misunderstanding to use the Computer program analogy. In fact it sounds to me like they fell into the usual pitfall. They really mean 'Information cannot be added without a god to do it', but as in the I/C debacle, they used that argument as though it meant evolution cannot happen - which really removes the evidence for a god. IF you needed I/C -beating I/D, you'd prove God with evolution. By denying evolution, you argue away God.
But that was never the agenda. the Agenda was 'Kinds were made unchangable, as Genesis says'. It is not Evolution denial or even I/D, but Genesis literalism.
There a point to all this: understanding their arguments - even if they don't understand them themselves (and they don't - the arguments are ad hoc objections to anything the other side says, without a coherent system of their own) enables us to identify the flaws in their argument - scientific or logical.
.....high school back in the mid 60's....catholic, jesuit priests..had four years latin, four years french, not only did we study the logical fallacies they were interwoven into all of the curriculum...
man talk about logical fallacies, check out the windbag feedback loops.
If you draw conclusion based on only what is known, logical fallacies never show up. They show up only when the people talking don't know what they are talking about or are intentionally trying to deceive people to follow personal needs/meaning and not how it is.
If you draw conclusion based on only what is known, logical fallacies never show up. They show up only when the people talking don't know what they are talking about or are intentionally trying to deceive people to follow personal needs/meaning and not how it is.
You can definitely have a few knowns and create a logical fallacy out of it. I have friends who do it with pretty good consistency.
"We went to Flint, Michigan and it was not fun, Therefore Michigan sucks"
"That's a logical fallacy, therefore Michigan doesn't suck"
They know they went to Flint, they know it sucked, so they drew the "logical" conclusion that Michigan sucks. Obviously, this is a low hanging fruit, but it happens all too often. It's about how you draw the conclusions more-so than what you start with, I'd think.
Yes. One of the logical fallacies is arguing from the particular to the general, which covers biased sample, and the black swan fallacy. And one I did get from the book is that a perfectly logical construct based on a false premise (e.most relevant g, the a priori assumption that a god exists) is never going to lead to a logical conclusion, which is why Lane Craig's Kalam fails.
That is why such effort is made to ger a god of any kind accepted a priori. Even if it gets down to the grubbily dishonest ploy of sticking the 'God' label onto something that isn't 'God' in the sense that anyone would accept.
That's why I pinpointed the factor of intelligent forward planning as the minimum you need for anything that isn't just the workings of natural matter ("God" as used by physicists and cosmologists), because to just apply 'Creator' to the natural origins or 'Something greater' to the natural cosmos is just using equivication fallacy to wangle the 'God' label into acceptance.
One of these days I'm going to pretend to accept this trick with a new poster, and I bet my pension that as soon as we get the "God" label used to describe nature, we'll be getting claims about the Plan this 'natural' "God" has for us.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Clearly this is in the world of rhetoric rather than logical thinking, but then Rhetoric was once considered a branch of philosophy. Thankfully it now isn't and is properly placed in the world of Common -sense' thinking, Legal tricks and political bamboozlement. Oh, and religious and cult -think, of course.
