My favorite is “fundie probability”. They will “cite” a “probability” from somewhere in their arguments, but often times:
- They can’t tell you how it was calculated.
- The probability is greater than 1 (or 100%, which means it isn’t a probability).
- They introduce additional errors by improperly copy/pasting a probability written down by someone else, but can’t spot/fix these ridiculous looking errors because they don’t understand it in the first place.
I’ll address #3 as I think it is the most telling:
How do they manage to mangle probabilities by copy/pasting? Easy; when you copy/paste a number with an exponent, often times it gets mangled.
For example:
If you copy/paste the following number: 105
It will often show up as 105 (try it!).
Want a great example? William Lane Craig (or at least his website):
WLC:
- “…one part in 10100…” [should be
]
- “…one out of 10 10 (123)…” [should be
]
- “…1010 (123)…” [should be
These specific 3 errors have persisted for more than 4 years on that site. Similar errors have been up on that site for more than a decade.
What I’ve learned from dealing with these kind of people is that details don’t seem to matter to them (at least not when it comes to religious claims). Why worry about details when you think you know the mind of god?