Is atheism just a "true for me" thing.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

We also have the advantage here of having some.........excellent fallacy-spotters.

Yes......... particularly in other people but not their own Ha Ha Ha
 

[Gordon]

Yes......... particularly in other people but not their own Ha Ha Ha
 

The floor is yours, Vlad: cite some fallacies committed by, say, me and then we can critique your allegations of fallacies.

Go for it!

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The floor is yours, Vlad: cite some fallacies committed by, say, me and then we can critique your allegations of fallacies.

Go for it!

Most of the usual atheist suspects are prone to:
Frequent use of appeal to ridicule. Certainly in most posts concerning my Good self which brings us to the various ad hominem, playing the man not the point.
This thread recently is a study in that. Your big thing though, in my opinion, is your apparent equation of atheism with logic and reason.

Circular argument is another biggy.

Certainly, argument from modernity. References to ancient books, bronze age, bronze age goatherders, Some of these are appeal to modernity and appeal to ridicule.

Then there was the NPF craze on this forum where there was a craze in accusation where in fact nobody was making it...nobody was actually saying 'you can't disprove it therefore it's true'. As I recall Bluehillside's coining of the phrase ''shaking hands with the NPF'' seemed the only thing that moderated the NPF accusation craze.


So Gordon as far as you are concerned.....if any of these caps fit......wear them.

[BeRational]

Most of the usual atheist suspects are prone to:
Frequent use of appeal to ridicule. Certainly in most posts concerning my Good self which brings us to the various ad hominem, playing the man not the point.
This thread recently is a study in that. Your big thing though, in my opinion, is your apparent equation of atheism with logic and reason.

Circular argument is another biggy.

Certainly, argument from modernity. References to ancient books, bronze age, bronze age goatherders, Some of these are appeal to modernity and appeal to ridicule.

Then there was the NPF craze on this forum where there was a craze in accusation where in fact nobody was making it...nobody was actually saying 'you can't disprove it therefore it's true'. As I recall Bluehillside's coining of the phrase ''shaking hands with the NPF'' seemed the only thing that moderated the NPF accusation craze.


So Gordon as far as you are concerned.....if any of these caps fit......wear them.

You actually have to point out the fallacy used in an argument, not just claim so e people have used them.

[Maeght]

Any position held not established as knowledge

Gordon states that God is an incoherent mess.
He must reach that conclusion. Which is a belief based on at least one other belief or assumption and at least a belief in ones own grasp of the term logical coherence.

I think he said that the arguments for the existence of God is an incoherent mess - which is not a belief about God but about the arguments for the existence of God.

There are other beliefs that could result in the atheist conclusion scientism, materialism, naturalism etc.

Yes, they may be part of an atheists 'world view' but they are not beliefs about God.

[Maeght]

The question is now....is Bluehillside right in saying there are two types of atheist.Atheists through ignorance and atheists through reasoning where at some point beliefs must have been applied.

I don't think so. I don't think my lack of belief comes from either of those things.

[Gordon]

Most of the usual atheist suspects are prone to:
Frequent use of appeal to ridicule. Certainly in most posts concerning my Good self which brings us to the various ad hominem, playing the man not the point.
This thread recently is a study in that. Your big thing though, in my opinion, is your apparent equation of atheism with logic and reason.

Circular argument is another biggy.

Certainly, argument from modernity. References to ancient books, bronze age, bronze age goatherders, Some of these are appeal to modernity and appeal to ridicule.

Then there was the NPF craze on this forum where there was a craze in accusation where in fact nobody was making it...nobody was actually saying 'you can't disprove it therefore it's true'. As I recall Bluehillside's coining of the phrase ''shaking hands with the NPF'' seemed the only thing that moderated the NPF accusation craze.


So Gordon as far as you are concerned.....if any of these caps fit......wear them.

Nice rant - so how about some examples where a fallacy has been cited and you contest that a fallacy was being committed.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gordon,

Nice rant - so how about some examples where a fallacy has been cited and you contest that a fallacy was being committed.

Don't hold your breath – he never will. I've never worked out whether he genuinely doesn't know what fallacious reasoning entails or he does know but he gets something from misrepresenting it but either way it contributes nothing to this mb.   

[jeremyp]

Jeremy,

Yes. In ordinary discourse we say things like, “this is a true statement” and people know what’s meant by it. In a discussion about epistemology though precision is essential. When you said that “true” means describing reality “accurately” the problem is that there’s no way to know what “accurately” means. We can say things like, “most congruent with explanations derived from the methods and tools available at this time” or some such but claiming accuracy in the sense of certainty is necessarily to overreach. 

I'm sorry, but if you can't accept the normal use of the word "accurately" you have a problem.

My point is that those things too would have been thought to be true before they were falsified. Thor making thunder was “true” for the people who believed it inasmuch as it accorded with the best reasoning available to them.   

No. Thor making thunder was never true. No amount of people believing it made it true. It doesn't matter how much the people who believed Thor made thunder or how certain they were, they were wrong.

You are conflating our ability to discover truth about the World with the actual truth about the World.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Jeremy,

I'm sorry, but if you can't accept the normal use of the word "accurately" you have a problem.

Not when the discussion is about the nature of truth I haven’t. Colloquial use of terms is fine when done in a colloquial context, but it fails quickly when the conversation is an epistemological one. 

No. Thor making thunder was never true. No amount of people believing it made it true. It doesn't matter how much the people who believed Thor made thunder or how certain they were, they were wrong.

Yes. You’re not getting it. We know now it was never true because now we have more a robust explanation for thunder. Thus we can say with some confidence that a statement (“Thor”) that was true once for the people who believed it because it was congruent with the tools and methods available to them can now be shown to be false. There are also lots of things we think to be true now because they too are congruent with the tools and methods that we have, but that that does not mean though that people 500 years hence using the tools and methods they will have will not find some of those truths to be as false as Thor.

That’s the point. Your confidence about what you think to be true now can be no more certainly true that Thor was certainly true then. Truth is probabilistic, solution verified, malleable as new data and methods emerge – it’s not some sort of universal, out there quantity that we can be certain we have the means to verify.       

You are conflating our ability to discover truth about the World with the actual truth about the World.

No I’m not. You’re conflating “the actual truth about the world” with our ability to identify it. All truths are narratives we derive – we don’t have some sort of unmediated access to reality, so we can’t ever be certain about them. “Best fit now” is the best we hope for, for the reasons I’ve explained.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Gordon,

Don't hold your breath – he never will. I've never worked out whether he genuinely doesn't know etc,etc

Hillside...………...


L      is fine

Le     is ok

Lep   is borderline


Lepr  is decidedly iffy


Lepre is argumentum ad ridiculum AKA appeal to ridicule AKA horse laugh fallacy.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Gordon,

Me:

Don't hold your breath – he never will. I've never worked out whether he genuinely doesn't know what fallacious reasoning entails or he does know but he gets something from misrepresenting it but either way it contributes nothing to this mb.

Vlad:

Hillside...………...


L      is fine

Le     is ok

Lep   is borderline


Lepr  is decidedly iffy


Lepre is argumentum ad ridiculum AKA appeal to ridicule AKA horse laugh fallacy.

QED

[Gordon]

Hillside...………...


L      is fine

Le     is ok

Lep   is borderline


Lepr  is decidedly iffy


Lepre is argumentum ad ridiculum AKA appeal to ridicule AKA horse laugh fallacy.

All you've demonstrated here, Vlad, is that you probably know little of fallacies and are afraid to face up to this when pressed: the irony being that a post like the above, which you no doubt regard as clever, just confirms that behind all your buffoonery there is indeed a buffoon.