Monday, September 13, 2010

Another example of the atheist argument from incredulity: From CARM by M.Ph.D

I recently challenged the CARM atheists to show anything "convoluted" about my logic. They say that all the time when I challenge them they usually demonstrate that they have no concept of logic at all. What they really mean by logic is "this challenges my likes and dislikes." Logic is supposed to be a self contained set of objective rules that are always true and having nothing to do with personal likes and dislikes.
A guy on calling himself "Michigan Ph.D."
leaves this as a parting shot:

You believe in an unbelievable being for which there is no empirical evidence. Just because your arguments appear reasonable, they are nothing more than a fancy version of the "I told you, therefore it is so," argument that is so prevelant among theists.

As I say above, this is about his likes and dislikes, not about logic. His statement is invalid and violates logic in many ways, but it demonstrates that he thinks of logic as a set of likes and dislikes. Saying in answer to "what's wrong with  my logic?" "you believe in God" like if a capitalist economist was challenged by a Marxist to prove the superiority of free market economy and his only argument was "free market economy is the best because its' free market economy." He's saying "the logic of God argument is wrong becuase it supports belief in God." That's a circular reasoning. Argument from incredulity is a form of circular reasoning. It says "this is what I believe so it must be true becasue I believe it; therefore, whatever violate my beliefs must be wrong becasue I don't believe it." That's what he's doing here and in fact it's most atheists do most of the time. Of course there exceptions, there are smart atheists who argue intelligently. Most atheists on message boards, however, argue from incredulity and thinly disguise their assumptions.

Of cousre this statement above he basically admits my arguments are logical he says they "sound reasonable." Yet he refuses to believe them and his flimsy reasoning is "they are nothing more than fancy versions of 'I told you so.'" that's ludicrous. I have no arguments that based upon anything like "I told yous so." I am constantly harping upon 200 empirical studies on religoius experience. He thinks 200 studies in peer reviewed psychology journals is the same as saying "I told you so." Of course the atheits have heard this for about five years now not one of them has ever read any of the studies, or if one or two have looked up one or two studies they didn't actually read the studies but tried to base arguments upon the first few lines. There is actually a great deal of empirical evidence. See my God Argument List.

In spite of all of this I wish M.Ph.D the best.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of the problems with the brand of comments like that of Michigan Ph.D's, is that they are vague.

You've got to really press at certain internet atheists to have them specifically point out where one's logic erred.

Otherwise, they'll place theists' arguments under the vague category of "irrational".

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

I think I did say where it erred. Sometimes fallacies fit more than one category. So you probably have an other category in mind.