Logical Fallacies (church, atheist, faith, Catholic)

[Mearth]

Someone tried to start what might be called a "meta-debate" thread not too long ago, and it devolved into primitive argument, like many C-D threads.

My goal in starting this thread is to simply collect examples of logical fallacies from around C-D, on any topic, and discuss more effective debate tactics.

This thread is NOT for debating content and ideology, rather, it is for working out where logic takes a wrong turn.

Reference:
Fallacies

[Randomstudent]

The most common ones I think are Ad hominem, Hasty generalization, straw man, and basing a conclusion on assumption. If I had a dollar for all the, (s)he is a liberal/conservative or religious/atheist troll accusations, allegories, straw men, and X says Y therefore because of Y Z is true (conveniently ignoring that X is an assumption in the first place) I'd have enough money to pay a year's worth of rent in only a few weeks. I think all of them have these fallacies have occurred at one point or another and I am sure most posters have engaged in them on occasion to my embarrassment I certainly have.

[Bunjee]

Wow. You realize this is like herding 12 dozen white cats in the snow, right?

First on the table, biblical literalism is to me, by and large, logically indefensible. On the other hand, there are atheists who are just as married to biblical literalism as fundamentalists, for argument's sake, perhaps from their own background in Christianity. But there are other rather long traditions of interpretation, apparently unheard of. So from the outset we're not on the same page, or actually we're looking at the same page differently, and that's the point. But it's frustrating.

Second, conceptualizing "proof". Philosophically, there is the matter of what can be known as empirically real. That goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, from which the Catholic Church cobbled its metaphysics--for which, by the way, later Christian branches condemn it for its pagan influence. Personally, I believe there is no bridge from logic to reality except faith. That's classic Kierkegaard. Address the logic with him; he expresses it much better than I could.

Third, there's a rhetorical tendency to cast the Purpose of Life in prosaic human terms, whereas I, personally, am actually very reductively binary about it. "Why does God want me to alphabetize this file cabinet?" I suppose that could be baffling if one were to create an argument around it. But I prefer not to characterize the subject in such superficial terms for argument's sake. The fact that a seed wants to live is miraculous. Nevermind the mechanics of evolution, this inert collection of cells wants life. Is it to fulfill a goal mandated by God? I can't know that. That's the mystery. Being a mere human, I'm OK with not knowing.

[Mearth]

Originally Posted by Bunjee

Wow. You realize this is like herding 12 dozen white cats in the snow, right?

LOL, I do. Maybe I just want to attract the cream that rises to the challenge.

I don't want to ignore the rest of your post, (though frankly, it may have been a bit too much for just one post - people are less likely to reply to those...) but I had the opportunity to defend and correct a logical fallacy on the board today. Check it out:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/8144910-post32.html