They espouse a lack of belief in your as yet completely unevidenced claim a deity exists, is possible, and caused stuff…
Your ball, Bullwinkle…
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I’ve already cited the electromagneteic spectrum as an example of this. Is he going to engage in honest discourse for once in his miserable life?
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Press E to doubt.
Oh dear, I broke my E button, whelp time for a new keyboard.
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO READ?
As previously stated, and as you have unwittingly agreed to in your post above, this has been discussed.
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Since @Sid clearly won’t engage at all over his relentless use of known logical fallacies we will examine them with out him, for our own edification.
Here is his first post:
We saw after much prevarication that he was here using a false equivalence fallacy, where he dishonestly equated the subjective meaning that humans attach to their lives, with the notion the universe itself has or is even capable of having meaning. NB the universe containing meaning is very different to the universe itself having meaning. He deliberately ignored this difference, using a false equivalence.
NB Worthy of note here he posted this in a thread asking what is the biggest lie, despite no one here ever claiming that the universe didn’t contain meaning. So was also of course using a straw man fallacy in conjunction with the false equivalence fallacy.
His very first post, and two known logical fallacies used. Had he been honest about what he meant, then this argument would have been exposed immediately as irrational, but note the first question I asked, and his response here:
So when I ask @Sid directly for clarification, instead of honestly addressing his irrational false equivalence, he evades it with dishonest obfuscation. Note also that he also shifts the burden of proof to his claim immediately, and yes it was a claim as no one has claimed what he is calling the biggest lie.
Just a few posts later he skirts close to another obvious argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy:
Note the addition of word life, he is shifting the goal posts already to his final false equivalence, and he has already asserted that it is “the biggest lie” that the universe has no meaning, now he is implying the notion is unfalsifiable. So though this is still a false equivalence to where he eventually leads, which is just that human beings (have evolved) to attach subjective meaning to their lives, it is also a straw man since no one disputed that as yet hidden claim, he is now implying that not knowing the universe can’t have meaning validates his claim the universe has meaning, which of course would be an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. I don’t think he’s posted more then 10 times and that is three known logical fallacies. The arguments by the way are as relentlessly dishonest at this point as they are irrational, evasion, equivocation, misdirection, ignoring question that sought clarity on his position, responding with vague appeals to mystery as questions, asked of straw man claims no one has made, etc etc…
More to come on this, as some posters will understand and see the inference for claims and beliefs that are based on such relentlessly irrational and dishonest arguments.
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So here again I clarify, as have other posters, the logically significant difference between disbelieving a claim, and making a contrary claim. Here we see another use of his earlier false equivalence fallacy, where @Sid shifts the goal posts closer to a different claim, from his original claim that it is “the biggest lie” that the universe has no meaning, to people seeking subjective purpose or meaning in their lives.:
Please note, I also offered some objective evidence against his shifting position, that human life has some overarching meaning, you will observe that @Sid offers no acknowledgment of this, simply ignores it and repeats his original false equivalence. Though now he has shifted almost completely from his original claim; that “it is the biggest lie the universe has no meaning”, (note this differs from my continuing assertion that I don’t believe the universe has meaning, not that it doesn’t contain meaning, which is where he is heading, by shifting the argument), to “we know” that (subjective) meaning is sought and exists in people’s lives. Who ever denied this?
So since no one has denied this it is another straw man fallacy, and of course the now complete transition from @Sid’s original claim, demonstrates the original false equivalence he was making. I shan’t labour this point anymore, but several posters myself included, explained the significant difference between the universe having meaning, and the universe containing a species that subjectively adds meaning to their own lives. Anyone who read beyond this point will witness the handwaving that has been a common tactic of @Sid’s posts.
Here @Sid is asked again for clarification from a poster, since as explained above he’s gone from the universe “having meaning” to humans seeking or creating their own subjective meaning for their lives. Note this would include religious beliefs, since they are entirely subjective, as @Sid has tacitly accepted himself of course by rejecting even the idea that his superstitious beliefs in the supernatural need or could have any objective evidence to support them.
Note the false equivalence is now complete, and we arrive at the straw man fallacy that replaces his original claim, since no one has denied that humans attach a subjective meaning to their own lives. Note also he twisting this to “life asking you what is the meaning” and again nothing in the way of evidence or rational argument to support this supposition he makes. It could as easily be claimed to be an emergent property of the evolved human brain, who would deny that life is more bearable with some subjective purpose than with none, a survival benefit if ever there as one, quod erat demonstrandum.
That was response, even in retrospect of the shifting goal posts it seems unequivocal.
One of the many times I repost evidence that @Sid has asked for, and then goes on to entirely ignore. Worth noting here, since @Sid uses this throughout, he is using what is called an argumentum ad lapidem fallacy also known as an appeal to stone fallacy.
"Appeal to the stone, also known as argumentum ad lapidem, is a logical fallacy that dismisses an argument as untrue or absurd. The dismissal is made by stating or reiterating that the argument is absurd, without providing further argumentation. This theory is closely tied to proof by assertion due to the lack of evidence behind the statement and its attempt to persuade without providing any evidence."
This of course has been true of almost all, if not all, of @Sid’s posts and responses to objective evidence. Handwaving is the usual response, note he dismissed @Calilasseia’s peer reviewed evidence demonstrating emotional attachments in other species with precisely this fallacy, I urge anyone interested in understanding the fallacy to go look at the response.
Here is ample evidence that @Sid thinks calling a claim a lie is not in fact a contrary claim it is true, as absurd as the notion seems, that is his position here:
Note also a reiteration of the original false equivalence, and the none too subtle dropping of the word universe to just the word life, which as we have seen he shifted to from his original claim, it is quoted at the start of the previous post for anyone to see. Again if he meant what he finally went on to claim, that humans attach a subjective meaning to their lives, then the why was the word universe in there, and why not simply just say that, and avoid the merry-go-round of shifting goal posts from his original claim, indeed why not have the integrity to acknowledge he alone was culpable for using this fallacy?
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In short, he’s peddling repeatedly destroyed canards, and continuing to do so even when they’ve been destroyed again here.
He obviously thinks that if he repeats this shit often enough, it will magically become fact.
Except that’s not how reality operates.
This thread is possibly a masterclass in the vacuity and duplicity of mythology fanboy apologetics. Though it’s not surprising that people brought up on apologetics think that this conduct is legitimate, because the purpose of apologetics isn’t to determine the truth value of propositions, but to generate ex recto fabrications in a vain attempt to make reality conform to an equally fabricated doctrine. It’s the fine art of making shit up, in order to pretend that previously made up shit constitutes fact.
The idea of paying attention to what reality is telling us, is completely alien to those who think they can use apologetics to produce magic spells to conjure their cartoon magic men intn existence. Instead of judging propositions about the world in the basis of their accord with observational data, these people define “truth” as “that which conforms to doctrine”.
I’m reminded here of a famous “wait, he said what?” moment that’s been immortalised graphically, viz:
There’s an entire industry devoted to selling this garbage, and in some parts of the world, that industry is malign and venomous to an extent warranting its treatment as an existential threat to the planet. Yet mythology fanboys think that this sort of warped perversion of the process of genuine thought, constitutes some sort of “virtue”.
Yet again, I make no apologies for regarding religion as a disease, and its pedlars as ideological Typhoid Marys.
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While that occurred to me, I think a more probable scenario is he is looking to “separate the weak, the old and the sick from the herd”. I premise that he is deluding himself that the less directly confrontational responses indicate the people posting them are more suggestible to his unevidenced superstition. Which is why he is limiting his responses to them, which ironically (even though he’s mistaken about them) is about as close to sound reasoning as he’s shown. I imagine he also wrongly thinks his inability to sway the direct refutations of his unevidenced subjective anecdote and irrational argument, somehow donates a closed mind, it’s astonishing how many suggestible people who base beliefs on an uncritical and un-sceptical acceptance of unevidenced and poorly reasoned arguments, think open minded means lowering the bar for credulity to the point where one accepts unevidenced claims without challenging them. Whereas to those who understand it, open minded simply means treating all ideas without prejudice for or against.
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In short, the individuals in question never learned the proper rules of discourse, and have no intention of doing.
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Appeal to the stone , also known as argumentum ad lapidem , is a logical fallacy that dismisses an argument as untrue or absurd. The dismissal is made by stating or reiterating that the argument is absurd, without providing further argumentation. This theory is closely tied to proof by assertion due to the lack of evidence behind the statement and its attempt to persuade without providing any evidence.
So I touched on this earlier and offered an example of me presenting evidence and @sid ignoring it and simply restating his own unevidenced opinion. Here are some more examples of @Sid using this fallacy:
So here is part of the evidence presented by @Calilasseia, and the link will take anyone to where they can read what was presented in full.
Here’s the fallacious response from @Sid , an unevidenced dismissal without any explanation to support it.
It’s ironic he doesn’t see the own goal as well in his assertion, and I am not referring just to the fallacy of course, but the obvious bias in accepting what is written in a book supporting his unevidenced beliefs, without any supporting evidence for the claims, while using this fallacy to dismiss what is written in other books, that has satisfied the rigour of scientific peer review, using experiments to support conclusions that are testable repeatable and falsifiable.
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If they did they would have to recognise the irrationality of their arguments, and this might undermine the beliefs that can produce only such arguments.
Anyway enjoy folks, I am off out for Sunday lunch…
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While you’re enjoying your Sunday lunch, I’ll note that a driving force behind his peddling that fallacy, lies in the fact that he thinks his goat herder mythology, instead of being yet another book written by human beings (and badly informed ones at that), is “special” and “anointed” because he thinks it emanates from his imaginary cartoon magic man, which, in a classic piece of circular reasoning, has only ever been asserted to exist in the same mythology.
But he dismisses summarily works written by people who exerted the effort to obtain direct observational evidence supporting their postulates, on the utterly fallacious basis that because their results don’t genuflect before the assertions of his favourite mythology, they are “flawed”. The hypocritical level of double standard running through this line of pseudo-reasoning stinks like a blocked drain.
Even when the evidence presented to support various scientific postulates is conclusive, he still seeks to try and twist that evidence to fit his apologetic convenience, or if he can’t do this, dismiss said evidence summarily.
We see variations on this tactic all the time from mythology fanboys, frequently by appealing to a mythical “Satan” purportedly misleading those of us who don’t accept unsupported mythological assertions uncritically as fact. I’ve been dealing with one member of this ilk, who tried peddling the tiresome and boring “evolution is a lie” bullshit on FB, but who won’t dare read the scientific papers I’ve pointed him to, because he doesn’t want his smug, complacent and ignorant bubble bursting.
Now I’ve already mentioned Ole Seehausen and his experimental test of sexual selection in Cichlid fishes, a test that can be replicated by any tropical fishkeeper with half a dozen fish tanks and the requisite perseverance. There’s also the Mavarez et al paper on speciation via hybridisation in Heliconius butterflies, which again can be replicated by anyone who knows how to rear these butterflies in captivity and breed them. Then there’s the incipient speciation paper by Diane Dodd, describing an experiment that can be replicated in any modestly equipped high school laboratory.
Indeed, it’s been one of those “light bulb above the head” moments for me, that enough of the scientific work documented in the evolutionary biology literature, can be replicated by determined amateurs, to render any doubt about the veracity of the contents of these papers null and void.
It’s possibly one of the biggest indictments of various education systems, that they don’t replicate these results in the relevant classes. You don’t need hideously expensive laboratory apparatus to replicate these results, as would be the case for the RNA experiments by the team of Japanese scientists I mentioned elsewhere. All you need is basic amenities that are within the reach of anyone who, for example, keeps guinea pigs as pets, or grows tomatoes in a greenhouse.
Mind you, that paper by Seehausen provided me with an exquisite moment of comedy over at FB, when my mentioning this test of sexual selection led to one mythology fanboy calling me a “dickhead” for talking about sex change in fish. The idiot in question didn’t know that the term “sexual selection” is the label used to encapsulate all of the processes involved in mate choice, and has nothing to do with the mythical “trans ideology” so many of these peons whinge and bleat about. Needless to say, the idiot in question quickly deleted his post once I schooled him on the matter, especially when I told him he could see sexual selection in action in any nightclub on the planet, watching horny males trying to get into the knickers of picky females, who have no hesitation in giving the finger to the males they deem inadequate.
Though I’m minded to note that the specimens who exhibit instances of the above comedy, are probably going to blow their arteries, when they learn about Seahorses, a clade within which the males are the ones that become pregnant, or the various invertebrates I’m familiar with, whose reproductive antics are truly a voyage into the Twylight Zone in terms of wackiniess.
Indeed, on that note, I’d really like to see what “explanation” these people have for Acarophenax tribolii, a species of mite whose reproductive cycle is probably every mythology fanboy’s worst nightmare come true. Any appeals to the mythical “fall” I’ll simply point and laugh at, given that these mites have been engaging in this behaviour for something like 10 million years before humans arrived on the planet.
For that matter, in relation to another invertebrate that pushes the enveolope of sexual weirdness, namely Xylocoris maculipennis, a species that introduces us to the wonderful world of hypodermic insemination, what I’m waiting for is an announcement in the scientific literature, that a similar Hemipteran species has been “frozen” in the act of hypodermic insemination in, say, Miocene amber. I’d probably be motivated to buy a train ticket to London specifically to visit the Natural History Museum, and photograph any specimen of this sort that winds up in their collection. That one will be a prize photo if ever I take it!
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Whoever claimed it did? No atheists! Of that I am fairly certain.
Humans create ideas of justice and law ourselves as a way of governing our societies and because it suits us to do so. There is no evidence of any ultimate arbiter and the existence of one would, given the harsh realities of the universe we observe around us, likely create significant moral and scientific problems.
Your remarks imply you believe there is such an arbiter, a god… your beliefs are entirely your concern.
Ultimately however, it is a religious claim. No currently accepted explanation requests or requires the action of deity and, as a result, such a claim is extraordinary. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
It’s that simple 
UK Atheist
Hi @UKAtheist, @Sid hung around for a few weeks spewing logical fallacies like the straw man fallacy you have pointed out there. In the end he was banned (if memory serves it was for 3 months?), as despite being cut an enormous amount of slack, he clearly didn’t want to engage in honest debate. From the start he based his religious spiel on argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies, insisting others disprove his unevidenced beliefs. Nothing we haven’t seen before to be honest.
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It’s the way they always are… the only one’s that stick around are (text removed by mod) they’re beaten before they start. I wrote about the way theists debate many years ago and I’ve seen no sign that their arguments or methods have changed in any real way.
UK Atheist
*so far.
We have to start with the assumption of intellectual honesty, until demonstrated otherwise.
Otherwise, we are just presuming and not giving everyone a fair shot.
Or dishonest enough to not care, whatever the motivations for this may be.
But yeah, I understand that it is more probable that they aren’t going to be honest, due to prior experience.
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Ok, firstly edit that two to a too, or prepared to be mocked by visiting theists.
I have known some who kept posting on a range of topics for some time, but often it ends in enmity anyway. I can sympathise to a certain extent, as it can’t be easy to see the irreverent way most of us treat their cherished religious beliefs. I’ve known only one who came back and said that after the exchanges here he’d had a crisis of faith, and abandoned his beliefs, he was a Muslim, but his username escapes at this minute. I liad into him pretty hard tbh, and felt a little guilty, until he came back and said it had caused him to rethink his beliefs of course.
It’s not easy to go over the same claims again and again, as if it’s the first time each time a new apologist shows up though. Maybe some of them read a few threads, and don’t even bother?
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(Text removed by mod)
A recent Facebook encounter is typical.
The x in question started off with the usual one-line bullshit about “atheistic beliefs”. This was quickly followed by an entirely typical strawman caricature of prebiotic chemistry, along the lines of “you think life came from a rock”. (Duh). Along with the usual snide comments about various other topics, including infantile dismissal of tetrapod ancestry with the cretinous “a fish growing legs and walking is a fantasy”.
So, I inform him about the reality of prebiotic chemistry, and show him video footage of Mudskippers, which are fish that are alive today and which walk on land.
This resulted in bluster and summary dismissal. No surprises there. Then he tried engaging in playground taunts, to the effect that because I didn’t supply him instantly with a raft of photos of tetrapod fossils, I had “nothing” to establish my claims.
So, after asking him why didn’t he do his own homework, given that it takes all of ten seconds to type “Tiktaalik” into Google and be presented with a link to the scientific paper describing the fossil, he then engaged in more bluster (and the usual ad hominem). So, I presented him with the scientific paper in question (which, of course, includes detailed photos of the fossil in question).
Cue more summary dismissal, and a lame complaint to the effect that the explanatory drawings accompanying the photos somehow didn’t count. Apparently this individual hasn’t heard of the concept of schematic diagrams.
Then, came the typical creationist bullshit about Tiktaalik being “deformed”. Yes, he dredged the barrel to that extent. Comparative anatomy being another subject he is apparently totally ignorant of (oh wait, there are Sarcopterygian fishes alive today with recognisably similar fin morphology to early Tetrapodomorphs).
An Illustrative scientific paper covering said fin morphology is this one:
Characteristic Tetrapod Musculoskeletal Limb Phenotype Emerged More Than 400 MYA In Basal Lobe-Finned Fishes by Rui Diogo, Peter Johnson, Julia L. Molnar and Borja Esteve-Altava, Scientific Reports, 6: Article no. 37592 (2016) [Full paper downloadable from here]
Though I suspect the moment I drop that in his lap, he’ll hand-wave it away again with “Lalalalala I can’t hear you”.
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Rats! Normally gets picked up by PWA but everyone makes mistakes and grammar checkers ain’t perfect. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up
Everyone makes mistakes. I have known some who kept posting on a range of topics for some time, but often it ends in enmity anyway. I can sympathise to a certain extent, as it can’t be easy to see the irreverent way most of us treat their cherished religious beliefs. I’ve known only one who came back and said that after the exchanges here he’d had a crisis of faith, and abandoned his beliefs, he was a Muslim, but his username escapes at this minute. I liad into him pretty hard tbh, and felt a little guilty, until he came back and said it had caused him to rethink his beliefs of course.[/quote]
Yeah, I had one success … a young scientologist. Long time ago. My view is that we don’t (or shouldn’t) do it to persuade them, we do it (or should) for the lurkers.
That’s why places like Talk Origins was so useful because theists only ever had some twenty or so questions (the so called FABNAQs: “Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions” that we actually “frequently asked and repeatedly answered questions”) and every other question was some variation on one of those. I always meant to write a book on them but I’m lazy so I never got round to it
UK Atheist
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