We continue now with our basic examination of logical fallacies most often committed by theists and their fellow travelers, particularly of the fundagelical persuasion.
4) Slippery Slope:
Those who invoke slippery slope arguments want to convince you that cultivating atheism, or having an unbelief mindset, will launch the most stupendous catastrophes in the history of humanity or the cosmos. Biblical plagues of locusts, diseases, famines…not to mention terrorist attacks, will rain down on one and all. Families will be torn asunder. Homosexuality will reach new heights, since ethics or morals will be “neutralized.” Abortions will be performed on a whim, since parents will feel (under an amoral atheist value system) that it’s okay to off the fetus if the odds appear to show s/he won’t be a future Pamela Anderson or Einstein. Porn and sex predators will metastasize like cancer everywhere with nothing to stop them, not even the most exacting civil or federal laws.
The fragile minds of the young will be contaminated non-stop until they won’t be able to function at all, as the whole populace ultimately becomes porn “addicted”. The base thread in all slippery slope arguments is the assumption, or perhaps more accurately the false assumption, that some despised outlook or behavior will lead inexorably to a vastly worse outlook or behavior. Although these tactics are insipid on their face, since no concrete evidence is ever presented to support them (or if it is, it’s specious), they’re invoked because people can be so easily misled. All that’s required is a preconceived negative image (and the atheist has this in abundance) and the recipient of the disinformation will be ready to accept just about any claim.
History shows, time and time again, that appeals to slippery slope reasoning often do much more harm to innocent people than they do to advance a case for some agenda, far less win any rigorous arguments with atheists.
5) Rigid Either–Or Reasoning:
Just as slippery slope tactics work because humans have the uncanny ability to extrapolate negativity and dire consequences beyond the support of the facts at hand, so does rigid either-or reasoning work because most human are conditioned to binary responses. Yes-no, 1 or 0, either this or that. Of course, the “Crossfire” syndrome, which cultivates only two sides in some attack format, prospers for this reason. See also my earlier blog on the perils of black and white thinking:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/08/perils-of-black-and-white-thinking.html
You have one side, call it A, versus another side, call it B. These sides, A and B, are assumed from the outset to be the only two available for discussion. This may be correct if one is confined to a “sound bite” format wherein time is at a premium, and opinions can’t be fully analyzed.
In the real world, this is seldom the case. For example, there may be only one side that carries any validity. Thus, the Holocaust was real and actually occurred. There are not “two sides” to the issue and either-or reasoning about it is inapplicable. Global warming also has a scientific consensus and hard evidence to support it, so it isn’t a case of “either global warming is occurring” or “global warming isn’t occurring”. It is, full stop.
At the same time, there might be issues that do have multiple positions. For example, in between the extreme positions that the U.S. must remain in Afghanistan come hell or high water, or abandon it immediately, there is the third or mean position of a phased withdrawal. This is done over a defined length of time, say two years.
In the case of the abortion debate, there are also nuanced positions between the two extremes of absolutely no abortion ever at any time, and abortion on demand. Thus, one may hold to abortion only in the first trimester, as was the Catholic Church’s original teaching, until 1869. Or, one may modify this too by limiting it to the first trimester and only in cases of rape or incest.
Even the case of unbelief is not as open and closed an issue as it appears. For example, there are some who profess unbelief for any personal God, but yet embrace a wholly impersonal one, say based on energy. Such people can’t technically be called atheists. Einstein, in this light, always professed belief in “Spinoza’s God” which he identified with the inherent harmony of the cosmos as demonstrated in various natural laws and mathematical regularity.
George Smith[1] notes that the most vernacular usage confuses the meaning of agnostic, usually asserting it is “somewhere between belief and outright unbelief.” The way it is usually framed is that the agnostic “isn’t sure whether or not God exists.” In fact this is an erroneous interpretation of the term.What it actually, technically means, is someone who asserts there is not yet adequate evidence to make a decision if one were possible. In other words, the issue must remain open-ended and unresolved until such time evidence appears. Thus, true agnosticism is not some dithering or fence-sitting between belief and unbelief, but rather acknowledgement of the impossibility of knowledge as it pertains to any ability to address the question in the first place.
Smith himself (page 9) splits and parses the agnostic position even further, according to whether one is an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. The first avers that all supernaturalist propositions or claims are inherently unknowable (because they are untestable) by the human mind, and so not worth discussing any more than pink elves, unicorns or fairies. In this sense, unbelief isn’t really even necessary, since who would actually believe in a pink elf or unicorn? Well, then there’d be even less merit to arguing over an invisible Being! Thus, without any capacity for knowledge about it, it’s redundant.
The theist agnostic meanwhile, maintains a firm belief in the existence of God. But asserts the precise nature of this God is unknowable. On this basis, no attributes are assigned to try to define God’s nature. We cannot say that any divine nature is “eternal”, or “omnipotent” or “omnipresent” because one simply doesn’t know. Thus, it makes no sense to use words to try to describe a deity. Belief is as far as one can go. In his superb 1923 essay Ich und Du(I and Thou), Martin Buber put his finger on the inherent flaw of all binary thinking.
"Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them. They like to be told that there are two worlds and two ways. This is comforting because it is so tidy. Almost always one way turns out to be common and the other one is celebrated as superior."
In the same essay, Buber goes on to show how this binary constraint on thought lends itself to a destructive ‘Us against Them’ dynamic. This makes possible a simple division of humans into two groups: “sheep and goats.” One blessed and imbued with all positive attributes: selflessness, courage, nobility, honor, decency etc. and the other “damned” and imbued with all the most vile attributes a human can possibly possess.It isn’t difficult to predict on which side the avowed atheist falls, if he or she is constrained to a binary debate.
Indeed, just argue for a few minutes with any devout and orthodox Christian, and I promise you’ll be propositioned along salvation lines. And there’s almost no greater insidious insult than this obnoxious and arrogant position since it assumes all atheists, as “goats”, are ipso facto bound for the eternal microwave unless salvaged by your nearest friendly Christian do-gooder and would be "savior" of the heathen from "Hell".
Philosopher Alan Watts in his magnificent monograph, The Wisdom of Insecurity, noted that the path for peace on Earth is paved by cultivation of benign passivity as opposed to neurotic and paranoid ostracization and demonization of the “other”. In achieving this, the attitude of "live and let live" is cultivated, and not changed unless one is directly attacked. One never acts merely upon speculations or even "possible threats". As Watts notes[2]:
"For all the qualities which we admire or loathe in the world around us are reflections from within...Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps' nests and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains"
In other words, the aversion to the (metaphorical) “snakes” and “wasps’ nests” of the world (identical say to ‘atheists’ or some other out group that embodies the ‘demon’ of the moment) is a reflection to an aversion existing within ourselves. Perhaps, just perhaps, the atheist arouses our fear and ire because, left to our own devices with no authorities or outside influences to manipulate us, we might choose that path too! Rather than acknowledge that unpleasant awareness, many choose to paint the atheist as an aberration or even abomination. Just as many people in real life choose to exterminate snakes or wasps’ nest rather than live in co-existence with them.
Thus, at another level, either–or logic is a perversion of our own awareness and psychological realities therein.
6) Affirming the Consequent:
During more than one debate I’ve had with religionists over the years, I’ve been informed by them at some point:
“God is real, It interacts with us regularly, and sometimes leaves corroborating evidence in Its wake. Your problem is that you have refused to acknowledge it or even look for it!”
In fact the assorted believers invoking this have committed the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. They start out by stating ab initio that which they still need to prove or demonstrate. In addition, they commit another logical error in assuming humans are "manifestations" of a deity. This is a trick often trotted out, particularly in the course of heated debates, and many times an unwary atheist will fall for it. By that I mean he will continue the debate without halting it and pulling the Xtian violator up on "affirming the consequent". Look, Sir, either back up what you just claimed or forfeit right here and now!
Here’s the deal: the laws of deductive logic used in an argument, prevent a person from affirming that which he must prove. It doesn’t matter if what’s being affirmed happens to be visiting aliens from an advanced civilization on a planet of Tau Ceti, or some vague “intelligent designer” presumed to be responsible for the intricacies of the inner ear or the human eye, or an invisible, all-powerful and eternal Being - that manifestly refuses to act on behalf of any good in the world.
In each and every case the claim has to be presented as a conclusion to rigorous propositions or deductions, not stated as fact from the outset. Even the lesser claim that “evidence is left in its wake” amounts to an affirmation of the consequent. How did this evidence get there? What is its precise nature? How does one discriminate it, say from evidence bound to the natural order? (Since we are presuming evidence left by a God would be supernatural in character).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Intelligent Design (ID) arguments. ID’s core problem was once articulated by astrophysicist Carl von Weizsacker who observed:
“It is impossible to understand rationally a god whom one did not believe in already.”
The problem is that spiritual second sight cannot be passed off as any kind of scientific process, nor as any valid conclusion for a deity. The observed effect or material marvel, no matter how wondrous or incredible or beyond human conception, cannot be fobbed off as evidence for a “designer”. Thus, if ‘ID’ is to be taken seriously it must compete on the same level playing field as bona fide scientific theories. That means first establishing a base of facts and evidence unique to itself. Then, formulating testable predictions which can be made – and that turn out to be more accurate than those of naturalistic evolution. Until ID’s proponents accomplish that, preferably in the context of publishing in established scientific journals, it will remain rank speculation along the lines of little green men surveying the Earth in flying saucers.
In the end, intelligent design inevitably amounts to an argument from ignorance. Because a structure (e.g. eardrum) or process (origin of life from inanimate matter) appears difficult from the inferior vantage point of the percipient, it’s automatically assumed that no scientific appeal can be made. No model, however remotely probable, can be offered. Thus “intelligent design” is latched on to as a “god of the gaps”. But history shows how absurd and premature such an approach is.
7) Personal attack:
When all else fails, personal attack or ad hominem is most often invoked. Can’t attack the arguments because they’re airtight? No problem! Attack the man making them. Get the audience to believe he’s the next thing to the Devil, if not the spawn of the Devil and maybe a cousin of Hitler or Stalin! Otherwise, less vile - assert he's a spoiled "brat" merely for firmly defending the atheist position. Such disgusting tactics work because humans haven’t fully left their reptilian brains behind. Those primitive regions (Carl Sagan once referred to it as the ‘R-complex’) remain in play and also, perniciously, capable of hijacking language to use as hateful rhetoric.)
The way to neutralize such tactics comes in one of two strategies:
a) Point out the violation(s) to the detractor and demand he cease and desist in any further ad hominem attacks,
b) Disengage entirely, and assert no future debates will be fortcoming until the miscreant eschews his ignoble personal attacks!
Other Logical Fallacies:
i) Contradiction of claim in different contexts:
This is not well known, but is often used by extreme fundamentalists when their backs are against the wall. The typical strategy involves contradicting claims they already made in one sphere or argument, to try to advance in a new venue. For example, they will have condemned all other believers to "Hell" because their belief systems don't include their magic recipe of "believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior". But then, in an argument against atheists, they will attack atheists as "unsaved" as if they are the only ones ever deemed so by the fundies. Ignoring all the other Christians they deemed "unsaved"!
Or, in another variation, they will invoke the words of a Newton or Einstein to try to advance a specious argument that Xtianity "is compatible with science", despite the fact in any other venue or basis for debate, they'd condemn them (i.e. Newton was involved in occultism and denied the divinity of Christ, while Einstein denied a personal God, afterlife of reward and punishment, as well as free will - all in his book, Ideas and Opinions).
ii) Post hoc ergo proper hoc
This is quite common and easily exposed. It basically means a person has connected some event in a causal fashion with an event that has gone before – though there is no proof whatever of causal nexus.
It is often observed after disasters, when there are few or only one survivor, and they claim that they “experienced a miracle” by escaping alive. In fact no connection exists between the plane crash or whatever, and their survival. They were merely lucky – to perhaps be sitting in the right seat at the right time, nothing more.
The most common example, however, concerns prayer and alleged “effects”. Someone prays for ‘X’ and ten minutes or ten hours or ten days later something happens that was “prayed for”. (E.g. someone recovers from a bad cold or flu) Because the event, although a coincidence, occurred after the prayer it is believed that prayer caused the manifestation.
iii) Non -sequitur:
This fallacy is based on assuming or asserting that some proposition is validated based on a prior claim. One clever one used is that religionists can’t violate “real logic” because “God is the author of logic and reasoning”. A non-sequitur. Also, no proposition since it's not founded on any a priori true statements of or demonstrable facts. As Scott Soames notes (‘Understanding Truth’, Oxford Univ. Press, 1999, p. 18) a sentence or utterance cannot be true potentially (or subjected to belief) if it says nothing or expresses no proposition.
Logic, reason and its derivatives – the articulation of propositions and conclusions which are demonstrated by consistent experience and verification in the material world, are neither germane nor relevant to an entity presumed “infinite” and also “omniscient”. Such a deity would neither have any use for logic or be able to appreciate it, far less originate it – since the necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence obviate it. (Note: these are conditions the believers always fail to provide)
Consider: Logic requires the isolation and separation of objects in order to relate them to propositions. In this way both generalizations and deductions can be made.
A logical sequence might be (give propositions p, q, and r):
If p, then q
If q, then r
Hence p-> r
(Hence, p implies r)
However, to do this necessitates that the objects connected to the propositions p, q, and r be isolated from each other by category.
Now, let’s associate each in a concrete way with a proposition:
p = A hydrogen nebula forms dense with dust
q = The hydrogen nebula experiences gravitational collapse
r= a proto-star forms
Thus, each proposition is associated with separate (discrete) object (p (H-cloud), q(denser cloud via collapse), r( proto-star)
The problem is that an infinite entity would not be able to discern separate objects, hence not make propositions – since its “omniscient” perspective would see everything nonlocally at once and inseparably. (According to Philosopher Henry Margenau.) Another way of saying this, is that it would have to render itself finite to craft propositions or even the simplest logical syllogism.
Logic and reason therefore arise as facilities emergent in the neocortex of the brain itself, and thus are part and parcel of its own evolution. The peculiar aspect of this is that the brain’s neocortex evolution (which appeared some 100,000 years ago) is exactly what makes possible conceptions of God - not the other way around.
In a solid, logical sense then it is more true to say or assert Man created God than the converse.
[1] George Smith, Atheism - The Case Against God, 1989, Prometheus Books, p. 9.
[2] Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, p. 111.
4) Slippery Slope:
Those who invoke slippery slope arguments want to convince you that cultivating atheism, or having an unbelief mindset, will launch the most stupendous catastrophes in the history of humanity or the cosmos. Biblical plagues of locusts, diseases, famines…not to mention terrorist attacks, will rain down on one and all. Families will be torn asunder. Homosexuality will reach new heights, since ethics or morals will be “neutralized.” Abortions will be performed on a whim, since parents will feel (under an amoral atheist value system) that it’s okay to off the fetus if the odds appear to show s/he won’t be a future Pamela Anderson or Einstein. Porn and sex predators will metastasize like cancer everywhere with nothing to stop them, not even the most exacting civil or federal laws.
The fragile minds of the young will be contaminated non-stop until they won’t be able to function at all, as the whole populace ultimately becomes porn “addicted”. The base thread in all slippery slope arguments is the assumption, or perhaps more accurately the false assumption, that some despised outlook or behavior will lead inexorably to a vastly worse outlook or behavior. Although these tactics are insipid on their face, since no concrete evidence is ever presented to support them (or if it is, it’s specious), they’re invoked because people can be so easily misled. All that’s required is a preconceived negative image (and the atheist has this in abundance) and the recipient of the disinformation will be ready to accept just about any claim.
History shows, time and time again, that appeals to slippery slope reasoning often do much more harm to innocent people than they do to advance a case for some agenda, far less win any rigorous arguments with atheists.
5) Rigid Either–Or Reasoning:
Just as slippery slope tactics work because humans have the uncanny ability to extrapolate negativity and dire consequences beyond the support of the facts at hand, so does rigid either-or reasoning work because most human are conditioned to binary responses. Yes-no, 1 or 0, either this or that. Of course, the “Crossfire” syndrome, which cultivates only two sides in some attack format, prospers for this reason. See also my earlier blog on the perils of black and white thinking:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/08/perils-of-black-and-white-thinking.html
You have one side, call it A, versus another side, call it B. These sides, A and B, are assumed from the outset to be the only two available for discussion. This may be correct if one is confined to a “sound bite” format wherein time is at a premium, and opinions can’t be fully analyzed.
In the real world, this is seldom the case. For example, there may be only one side that carries any validity. Thus, the Holocaust was real and actually occurred. There are not “two sides” to the issue and either-or reasoning about it is inapplicable. Global warming also has a scientific consensus and hard evidence to support it, so it isn’t a case of “either global warming is occurring” or “global warming isn’t occurring”. It is, full stop.
At the same time, there might be issues that do have multiple positions. For example, in between the extreme positions that the U.S. must remain in Afghanistan come hell or high water, or abandon it immediately, there is the third or mean position of a phased withdrawal. This is done over a defined length of time, say two years.
In the case of the abortion debate, there are also nuanced positions between the two extremes of absolutely no abortion ever at any time, and abortion on demand. Thus, one may hold to abortion only in the first trimester, as was the Catholic Church’s original teaching, until 1869. Or, one may modify this too by limiting it to the first trimester and only in cases of rape or incest.
Even the case of unbelief is not as open and closed an issue as it appears. For example, there are some who profess unbelief for any personal God, but yet embrace a wholly impersonal one, say based on energy. Such people can’t technically be called atheists. Einstein, in this light, always professed belief in “Spinoza’s God” which he identified with the inherent harmony of the cosmos as demonstrated in various natural laws and mathematical regularity.
George Smith[1] notes that the most vernacular usage confuses the meaning of agnostic, usually asserting it is “somewhere between belief and outright unbelief.” The way it is usually framed is that the agnostic “isn’t sure whether or not God exists.” In fact this is an erroneous interpretation of the term.What it actually, technically means, is someone who asserts there is not yet adequate evidence to make a decision if one were possible. In other words, the issue must remain open-ended and unresolved until such time evidence appears. Thus, true agnosticism is not some dithering or fence-sitting between belief and unbelief, but rather acknowledgement of the impossibility of knowledge as it pertains to any ability to address the question in the first place.
Smith himself (page 9) splits and parses the agnostic position even further, according to whether one is an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. The first avers that all supernaturalist propositions or claims are inherently unknowable (because they are untestable) by the human mind, and so not worth discussing any more than pink elves, unicorns or fairies. In this sense, unbelief isn’t really even necessary, since who would actually believe in a pink elf or unicorn? Well, then there’d be even less merit to arguing over an invisible Being! Thus, without any capacity for knowledge about it, it’s redundant.
The theist agnostic meanwhile, maintains a firm belief in the existence of God. But asserts the precise nature of this God is unknowable. On this basis, no attributes are assigned to try to define God’s nature. We cannot say that any divine nature is “eternal”, or “omnipotent” or “omnipresent” because one simply doesn’t know. Thus, it makes no sense to use words to try to describe a deity. Belief is as far as one can go. In his superb 1923 essay Ich und Du(I and Thou), Martin Buber put his finger on the inherent flaw of all binary thinking.
"Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them. They like to be told that there are two worlds and two ways. This is comforting because it is so tidy. Almost always one way turns out to be common and the other one is celebrated as superior."
In the same essay, Buber goes on to show how this binary constraint on thought lends itself to a destructive ‘Us against Them’ dynamic. This makes possible a simple division of humans into two groups: “sheep and goats.” One blessed and imbued with all positive attributes: selflessness, courage, nobility, honor, decency etc. and the other “damned” and imbued with all the most vile attributes a human can possibly possess.It isn’t difficult to predict on which side the avowed atheist falls, if he or she is constrained to a binary debate.
Indeed, just argue for a few minutes with any devout and orthodox Christian, and I promise you’ll be propositioned along salvation lines. And there’s almost no greater insidious insult than this obnoxious and arrogant position since it assumes all atheists, as “goats”, are ipso facto bound for the eternal microwave unless salvaged by your nearest friendly Christian do-gooder and would be "savior" of the heathen from "Hell".
Philosopher Alan Watts in his magnificent monograph, The Wisdom of Insecurity, noted that the path for peace on Earth is paved by cultivation of benign passivity as opposed to neurotic and paranoid ostracization and demonization of the “other”. In achieving this, the attitude of "live and let live" is cultivated, and not changed unless one is directly attacked. One never acts merely upon speculations or even "possible threats". As Watts notes[2]:
"For all the qualities which we admire or loathe in the world around us are reflections from within...Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps' nests and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains"
In other words, the aversion to the (metaphorical) “snakes” and “wasps’ nests” of the world (identical say to ‘atheists’ or some other out group that embodies the ‘demon’ of the moment) is a reflection to an aversion existing within ourselves. Perhaps, just perhaps, the atheist arouses our fear and ire because, left to our own devices with no authorities or outside influences to manipulate us, we might choose that path too! Rather than acknowledge that unpleasant awareness, many choose to paint the atheist as an aberration or even abomination. Just as many people in real life choose to exterminate snakes or wasps’ nest rather than live in co-existence with them.
Thus, at another level, either–or logic is a perversion of our own awareness and psychological realities therein.
6) Affirming the Consequent:
During more than one debate I’ve had with religionists over the years, I’ve been informed by them at some point:
“God is real, It interacts with us regularly, and sometimes leaves corroborating evidence in Its wake. Your problem is that you have refused to acknowledge it or even look for it!”
In fact the assorted believers invoking this have committed the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. They start out by stating ab initio that which they still need to prove or demonstrate. In addition, they commit another logical error in assuming humans are "manifestations" of a deity. This is a trick often trotted out, particularly in the course of heated debates, and many times an unwary atheist will fall for it. By that I mean he will continue the debate without halting it and pulling the Xtian violator up on "affirming the consequent". Look, Sir, either back up what you just claimed or forfeit right here and now!
Here’s the deal: the laws of deductive logic used in an argument, prevent a person from affirming that which he must prove. It doesn’t matter if what’s being affirmed happens to be visiting aliens from an advanced civilization on a planet of Tau Ceti, or some vague “intelligent designer” presumed to be responsible for the intricacies of the inner ear or the human eye, or an invisible, all-powerful and eternal Being - that manifestly refuses to act on behalf of any good in the world.
In each and every case the claim has to be presented as a conclusion to rigorous propositions or deductions, not stated as fact from the outset. Even the lesser claim that “evidence is left in its wake” amounts to an affirmation of the consequent. How did this evidence get there? What is its precise nature? How does one discriminate it, say from evidence bound to the natural order? (Since we are presuming evidence left by a God would be supernatural in character).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Intelligent Design (ID) arguments. ID’s core problem was once articulated by astrophysicist Carl von Weizsacker who observed:
“It is impossible to understand rationally a god whom one did not believe in already.”
The problem is that spiritual second sight cannot be passed off as any kind of scientific process, nor as any valid conclusion for a deity. The observed effect or material marvel, no matter how wondrous or incredible or beyond human conception, cannot be fobbed off as evidence for a “designer”. Thus, if ‘ID’ is to be taken seriously it must compete on the same level playing field as bona fide scientific theories. That means first establishing a base of facts and evidence unique to itself. Then, formulating testable predictions which can be made – and that turn out to be more accurate than those of naturalistic evolution. Until ID’s proponents accomplish that, preferably in the context of publishing in established scientific journals, it will remain rank speculation along the lines of little green men surveying the Earth in flying saucers.
In the end, intelligent design inevitably amounts to an argument from ignorance. Because a structure (e.g. eardrum) or process (origin of life from inanimate matter) appears difficult from the inferior vantage point of the percipient, it’s automatically assumed that no scientific appeal can be made. No model, however remotely probable, can be offered. Thus “intelligent design” is latched on to as a “god of the gaps”. But history shows how absurd and premature such an approach is.
7) Personal attack:
When all else fails, personal attack or ad hominem is most often invoked. Can’t attack the arguments because they’re airtight? No problem! Attack the man making them. Get the audience to believe he’s the next thing to the Devil, if not the spawn of the Devil and maybe a cousin of Hitler or Stalin! Otherwise, less vile - assert he's a spoiled "brat" merely for firmly defending the atheist position. Such disgusting tactics work because humans haven’t fully left their reptilian brains behind. Those primitive regions (Carl Sagan once referred to it as the ‘R-complex’) remain in play and also, perniciously, capable of hijacking language to use as hateful rhetoric.)
The way to neutralize such tactics comes in one of two strategies:
a) Point out the violation(s) to the detractor and demand he cease and desist in any further ad hominem attacks,
b) Disengage entirely, and assert no future debates will be fortcoming until the miscreant eschews his ignoble personal attacks!
Other Logical Fallacies:
i) Contradiction of claim in different contexts:
This is not well known, but is often used by extreme fundamentalists when their backs are against the wall. The typical strategy involves contradicting claims they already made in one sphere or argument, to try to advance in a new venue. For example, they will have condemned all other believers to "Hell" because their belief systems don't include their magic recipe of "believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior". But then, in an argument against atheists, they will attack atheists as "unsaved" as if they are the only ones ever deemed so by the fundies. Ignoring all the other Christians they deemed "unsaved"!
Or, in another variation, they will invoke the words of a Newton or Einstein to try to advance a specious argument that Xtianity "is compatible with science", despite the fact in any other venue or basis for debate, they'd condemn them (i.e. Newton was involved in occultism and denied the divinity of Christ, while Einstein denied a personal God, afterlife of reward and punishment, as well as free will - all in his book, Ideas and Opinions).
ii) Post hoc ergo proper hoc
This is quite common and easily exposed. It basically means a person has connected some event in a causal fashion with an event that has gone before – though there is no proof whatever of causal nexus.
It is often observed after disasters, when there are few or only one survivor, and they claim that they “experienced a miracle” by escaping alive. In fact no connection exists between the plane crash or whatever, and their survival. They were merely lucky – to perhaps be sitting in the right seat at the right time, nothing more.
The most common example, however, concerns prayer and alleged “effects”. Someone prays for ‘X’ and ten minutes or ten hours or ten days later something happens that was “prayed for”. (E.g. someone recovers from a bad cold or flu) Because the event, although a coincidence, occurred after the prayer it is believed that prayer caused the manifestation.
iii) Non -sequitur:
This fallacy is based on assuming or asserting that some proposition is validated based on a prior claim. One clever one used is that religionists can’t violate “real logic” because “God is the author of logic and reasoning”. A non-sequitur. Also, no proposition since it's not founded on any a priori true statements of or demonstrable facts. As Scott Soames notes (‘Understanding Truth’, Oxford Univ. Press, 1999, p. 18) a sentence or utterance cannot be true potentially (or subjected to belief) if it says nothing or expresses no proposition.
Logic, reason and its derivatives – the articulation of propositions and conclusions which are demonstrated by consistent experience and verification in the material world, are neither germane nor relevant to an entity presumed “infinite” and also “omniscient”. Such a deity would neither have any use for logic or be able to appreciate it, far less originate it – since the necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence obviate it. (Note: these are conditions the believers always fail to provide)
Consider: Logic requires the isolation and separation of objects in order to relate them to propositions. In this way both generalizations and deductions can be made.
A logical sequence might be (give propositions p, q, and r):
If p, then q
If q, then r
Hence p-> r
(Hence, p implies r)
However, to do this necessitates that the objects connected to the propositions p, q, and r be isolated from each other by category.
Now, let’s associate each in a concrete way with a proposition:
p = A hydrogen nebula forms dense with dust
q = The hydrogen nebula experiences gravitational collapse
r= a proto-star forms
Thus, each proposition is associated with separate (discrete) object (p (H-cloud), q(denser cloud via collapse), r( proto-star)
The problem is that an infinite entity would not be able to discern separate objects, hence not make propositions – since its “omniscient” perspective would see everything nonlocally at once and inseparably. (According to Philosopher Henry Margenau.) Another way of saying this, is that it would have to render itself finite to craft propositions or even the simplest logical syllogism.
Logic and reason therefore arise as facilities emergent in the neocortex of the brain itself, and thus are part and parcel of its own evolution. The peculiar aspect of this is that the brain’s neocortex evolution (which appeared some 100,000 years ago) is exactly what makes possible conceptions of God - not the other way around.
In a solid, logical sense then it is more true to say or assert Man created God than the converse.
[1] George Smith, Atheism - The Case Against God, 1989, Prometheus Books, p. 9.
[2] Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, p. 111.
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