Atheists evoke fallacies as defense while demonstrating they don't understand specail pleading

I made a post on CARM the other day arguing that atheist miss the point about eye witnesses. This came after a couple of threads where they argued that eye witnesses are unreliable. here's my post:

 In that discussion in the previous thread the emphasis got off on the unreliability of eye witness testimony. I think the salient points were lost.

The major point that is far and away the most important to make is not that the Gospels are backed by eye witnesses so they are trust worthy but that history itself is ultimately backed by eye witnesses. The great historiographers of the nineteenth century who laid down the rules for making history a social scinece, such as Benedetto Croce, made documents the basic stuff of history. Yet documents are compiled by people, that means eye witnesses.

the real issues are:

(1) If we decide to ignore eye witnesses testimony completely then it's also curtains for history.

(2) It's not that eye witnesses are so accurate but given for what we need to know we need their specific input.

a) calcification

b) resurrection

c) miracle working.


there's no way to know these things just from documents removed from eye witness accounts, especially not in the ancinet world.

(3) The fact that the eye witness testimony was safe guarded and kept intact.

(a) they had an oral tradition

(b) they didn't have to guard it very long because it began to be written while the witnesses were still alive.

witnesses functioned as a check and they didn't have to do that very long.

here is my page proving they began writing only about 18 years after the events.

http://www.doxa.ws/Bible/Gospel_behind.html

 Every single response was arguing from  guilt by association.



 Drugstar says:

book of mormon has eyewitnesses too.

 Originally Posted by Metacrock

that's guilt by association. did you read the post? what did I say?you must know that guilt by association is a fallacy, why do you use it? do you know understand that fallacy means it's illogical?

Drugstar:

so is special pleading
why are the early xian eyewitnesses any more believable than the early mormon eyewitnesses?

 My response has nothing to do with special pleading. Saying that my witnesses are better is to special pleading. That has to do with  arguing that I shouldn't have to live up tot he same rule,which I did not argue.

When I pointed out they were using guilt by association I get this:

Originally Posted by Whatsisface

Just saying stuff like this doesn't make it so. In fact, its not an argument.

it's obviously so. Just read the matairal. Its' plalin to see they are brigning in things that dn't aplly

Meta:

you seem to have gone astray form the concept of logical thinking. you are still willing to accept logical fallacies and think that it's valid to bring in old things as long as it sticks it to religion. that's just not valid. that's not fair. you can't have a discussion it's totally diagnostic it' sjust lynch mob mentality.

It's very very telling. I can't think of a more frank admission that your view point is bankrupt and cant' be defended by logic.

Just saying it's a logical fallacy doesn't make it so? what else would it be but guilt by association when one argues "other eye witnesses are bad so these must be too?"

Frank admission because they don't even attempt logical defense but evoke fallacious reasoning while trying argue that move are fallacious, demonstrate that they don't understand what special pleading is.

How to Deal With Atehist Fallacies: atheists trying to defend appeal to poularity

 Sylar, the same idiot who argued that Bayes is mathematics, therefore, its a mathematical fact that there's no God, and that prison populations must mirror the general population, is at again. Now he's making a sophisticated version of appeal to popularity. This argument is obviously not aimed at demonstrated that atheism is a logical position, but asserts that because the majority of philosophers are atheists that in itself is reason enough to be an atheist. Well that's partly appeal to popularity although it bleeds into appeal to authority; he says these are the guys who understand the God arguments and they are atheists then it must be the God arguments are bad.

Sylar

If your proofs are so watertight, why are 87.4% of professional philosophers non-theists? Compare that to the 10.3% of the adult general population of the US that are atheists. What gives? If the god arguments are so awesome, shouldn't we have more theists in our philosophy departments rather than fewer?

Meta: That's not where it gets really stupid, (not yet, just wait). Then he starts saying that 70% of those in philosophy of religion are atheist! I point out that is statistic of 10% is inflated its 3%.

 Sylar:

 Fine, let's go with 3%. Why are professional philosophers of religion over ten times more likely than a randomly selected US adult to not be a theist?

 I show that 70% of philosophers of religion are theists, only 20% are atheist, he asserted the 70% were atheist. He's trying to say that the increase in likelihood of being an atheist philosopher of religion is over being an atheist in the general public is so much greater that it warrants being an atheist just because of that. I say that with 70% theists then being a theist as a philosopher of religion is even more likely. He argued that Philosophers are in the know, so we can say that the God arguments are no good or as he put it "lack efficacy," becuase they dont persuade those in the know. Philosophers of religion are looking at the God arguments more than just regular philosophers so they are more educated audience even then secular philosophers in this area and they tend to be theists much more so than not. No we can only look at the difference bewteen atheists in the general public and in philosophy of religion not the difference between theists and atheists sin the field.

In the mean time he's said nothing about why they believe as the do. He's done nothing to prove that any of them read a single God arguemnt. He's said nothing about what their reasoning processes are. So he's just basing the idea on the mere fact that they are as they are without regard to way. That's what he thinks is a valid reason for holding a particular position. My argument is that this is an appeal to popularity and to some extent authority (given that it's the popularity among an authority group).

There are a lot of reasons why philosophers might be atheists. They may not ever think about it. It's been popular among liberal arts people in the past to question authority and be radical and even be atheist. Before the net came along, when I was an atheist, all atheists were people you met in college. Atheism in the working class was very rare. It was a truism in popularity society that professors are atheists. So it could be that atheists just naturally sought out areas like philosophy to go into. Philosophers of religion might all be atheists before they were in that field and they went into it hoping to destroy it. That's not so hard to believe. See my confrontation with Hector Avila on Metacrock's Blog where he admits that that is his motive for staying  in his field.

He denies that it's an appeal to popularity but clearly it is becuase he doesn't even seek to know the reasons why they think as they do. He doesn't want you to decide the issue on any kind of knowledge of ideas, it's all about who else thinks so. His defense is it can't be polarity if it's about the specialized group that's in the know. Ok so that means it's a hybrid fallacy, it's bleeding into appeal to authroity. Who says Philosophers are the authorities to guide us to or away from God? who says Philosophers are the gatekeepers of all truth? He's just appealing to the authority of a group that he thinks supports his ideology and that in itself is the reason to make the decision not becuase of how they arrived at their views. That is a fallacious way to reason.

This guy wound up arguing that Bayes theorem is mathematics, it proves there's no God so it's a mathematical fact that there's no God. So if you believe in God you are going against mathematics. There's no analysis about the prior or how we arrive at the conclusion. I said atheism=mathematics. Of cousre I was being sarcastic.

Here's what's going on, atheism is a cult. That's why this guy wants you to make your decision based upon the authority of some group and not even consider why. It is ironic for an atheist to appeal to authority becuase they are only 3%. Then try to inflate their numbers all the time. He always wants to do away with the thinking part and arrive at a formula (like Bayes) that settles the issue with the fortress of facts and you don't have to think you just obey. That's the cult.

another example of atheist privilging their position.

I'm arguing about the 8 levels of verification for historicity of the Gospels. This ans theist comes and starts talking about the existence of God. He says this can't prove the existence of God. As though that's the issue.

he says this:
Originally Posted by troxel

That's great if you trying to discover a person of historical interest or a human event... but a God? Inconceivable that God would leave a trail equivalent to a mere human.

Looking for human historical evidence reveals a human historical god.

Meta:
now you doing a bait and switch. you admit it's ok for historical research on the actual group that started believing in Jesus but can't be used to prove God. That's a bait and switch because I didn't say it was proving God.

atheists like yourself use a childish silly and straw man understanding of what believe means and how to defend it. Big proofs are just accumulations of a lot of little proofs. No one thing by itself proves anything. Enough little things together prove bigger things, enough bigger things together prove still greater things. It all fits together in a scholarly life.

you are treating belief in God as though ti's just a matter of a single fact, you are just adding a fact to the universe. It's much more than that.It 's a value system a way of life it's an approach to learning, and much more all at once. You can't just slap it on with one fact or beat it up with one fact.

Troxel:

Asking the binary existence of nonexistence of a god to be anything other than a single statement is special pleading, no matter how 'special' you say your god is. You can add traits to this god, but there's no magical point at which it becomes a way of life and is no longer subject to logic.

In other words he's begging the question. He expects the privileged nature of his position (he wises) to be so strong that the non existence of God is a fact. He can thus assert that fact to beat any Christian argument automatically.

Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning and still a fallacy.


Asking the binary existence of nonexistence of a god to be anything other than a single statement is special pleading,

what? What is this load of cobblers? binary existence of non existence? This is worthy of the Derrida award.

Old Atheist Fallacy "you can't make the argument until you prove it:" Form of circular reasoning.

There are two really silly debate ploys that people sometimes use. I don't say they are peculiar to the atheist camp, but since I am more familiar with their arguments, than those of creationists, for example, I will use them. My aim is to raise consciousness about these fallacies in an attempt to get people to stop using them.

these two fallacies exist in an interchange, a sublational interplay where one builds upon the other.

The two fallacies are:

(1) privileging one's own position

(2) Truth by Stipulation.
As it turns out the kids who offer the $500 to prove Jesus existed employ no. 1 fallacy in spaces. They have erased the comments but before they did so they informed one commentator that he could not use Raymond Brown as an authority because Brown was a priest. It's just so obvious that a Priest is not objective, and they said explicitly that no one with a theology degree could be used. What's really buzzer is that they themselves use religious thinkers all the time, and they use them to support their own views? It has not yet dawned on them that they are quoting liberals and that liberals have the own faith. One striking example of this is their use of Bualtmann. They even declared "Rudolf Bluesman is a non Christian." The reason they thought he wasn't a Christian is because he doesn't take the Bible literally. So they know so little about theology they domt' even know that there is a liberal wing of the theological world (and thought his name was "Bluesman"). All they know of Christianity is the funds, and yet they are so sure they know all about it, so much so that they can dims Ray Brown as "subjective." Rayon Brown is one of the top textual critics in the world, or he was before his death (1998). But they wont allow him in the discussion because he was a priest. As though this immanently rational scholar just goes gaga when he sees the Bile, but he can still learn Greek, decipher manuscripts in ancient script, do hard textual criticism, but somehow his judgment is so impaired that he's just out of control.

I made the same mistake in my youth, so I cannot judge these guys too harshly. Stung by an encounter with a preacher who taught at a local preaching school, who wiped me out in a debate with the use of Josh McDonnell (I was fresh out of high school and McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict was still pretty new), I went in search of Biblical scholars who would counter McDowell. I discovered Brunet Hillman Strutter. Strutter published The Primitive Church in 1924, he was killed in a plain crash in India in the 40's. He was the cancan reader at Cambridge in the 20s-40s. One of the finest scholars of the early part of the 20th century. Streeter was a liberal of his day, meaning, a ninetieth century style liberal. He did, however, have a strong faith which manifested itself in mystical consciousness. He even found Saudi Sunder Sing, an interesting case of Christian mystic who had grown up a Ski in India and had a Damascus Road experience in which Jesus spoke to him out of a great light. Streeter was very impressed with Sing and cultivated a friendship. I was heartened to find his book on the Primitive Church. He seemed to tear the Bible to pieces. Little did I know he loved the Bible, he was not tearing it at all but merely preparing the reader to read it intelligently. The Primitive Church rapidly became one of my favorite books.

One day as I read Streeter I came across a statement he makes in which he declares his faith and speaks in a devotional manner about "our Lord." I was stocked! he was a believer after all! How could this be? He tears the Bible to pieces. He even say it has mistakes in it. He must be mad. That was when I realized there's a lot more to the theological world than I realized. It's not all just a matter of Christians are stupid fools with simplistic little zombie brains and atheist are all smart little bastards like me (as I was then). That realization was truly shocking to me, and it was one of the first stepping stones that put me on the a path to conversion. But some atheists, the less adapt at argumentation, have learned to privilege their position, and they do so in such a way that the create a simplistic formulation along the lines of their own ideological conceits: objectivity is good, our side is objective. Subjectivity is bad, their side is subjective. We good, they bad. That privileging is seen at work creating a king's x to rule out the use of any epistemic authority of scholarly expertise that would count against their position. In this sense fallacy 1 bleeds into fallacy 2 as it becomes truth by stipulation. The privileging of the position works itself into truth by stipulation.

We can see this dichotomy of privilege at work in the exclusion of the NT as any sort of artifact in evidence of the historical Jesus. The atheist community (SEC Web, infidel guy) have it down to a point where the New Testament, especially the Gospels are almost irrelevant to any discussion of the historical Jesus. Once the potentates of mediocrity at the SW decided to declare the Gospels fictional (truth by stipulation) they just wiped out any need to use them. Any references to them are just met with the magical king's X, this is wiped away because we declare it to be fictional and end of comment. A snowball effect occurs whereby the privileging leads to stipulating and the stipulating undergirds the privileging. Before long they just ignore anything any Christian has to say. We see this already happening in the exclusion of any priest or anyone with a theology degree. Of course their ignorance binges theologians back into the picture but only because they are haplessly unaware of their own fumbling. How cod anyone logically fight such a syndrome? If we try to play the same game and stipulate our side it's just mattress taste in conflict. If we try to remain steadfast to the scholarship they have that ignored and it doesn't matter to them. So little by little they cut themselves off from any rational discussion. How ironic for the children who call themselves "The Rational Response Squad." Those are the one's offering money to prove that Jesus existed. They could save their money and read my historical Jesus pages, but we will let them find that out for themselves.

Fallacy no two I have seen employed in many ways at many times. It was most recently employed at CARM in arguing about religious experience studies. But I have it used a lot in every God argument. I called this "truth by stimulation" but it works in a particular way. It works out to be truth by stipulation, but it begins with the assertion "you can't make that argument until it is proven." I first encountered it in making a God argument. The atheist says 'you can't start an argument by referring to God because that's assuming God exits.' I say "but this argument is an argument to prove God exits. So how do I speak of God in order to prove he exists," "you can't, you must first prove he exists, otherwise you ear begging the question." I swear that's what he said. It destine' take a rhetorical genius to see that if this is taken literally or seriously one can never make an argument. To make an argument one must first make it, then the making of it proves something. But how can you prove an argument before you make it? But the fact is, that's what these guys want. They want a cheap way to shut up talk of God because they know they can't go toe to toe on the logic of God arguments. That's why God arguments are back. So this position works itself out to be a stimulation, "there is no God" period, no need for proof, that's just the way it is. That means you can't begin a discussion about God becasue even to prove God that would beg the question.

Both of these fallacies are arrived at from a basic starting point in the subject/object dichotomy. That starting point is one of fear. These people fear anything subjective, so much so that they have to plac themselves in a strict position of stimulation that no subjectivity must ever cross their path. Of course they privilege their own guys as good and objective. That means that they use their own subjective taste to affirm the objectivity of their camp. AS it turns out their critical principle is nothing more than supreme arrogance. This kind of atheist, I shall call them the stipulationists, assert their view point based upon the assumption that all knowledge is empirically derived and inductive. Thus only objective observation can be used to understand knowledge. Subjectivity has no place in knowledge, because knowledge must be absolute. There is no room for error.

Of course the amusing part is, they have no objective data for any of their views. They are so horribly subjective they don't even know that there are liberal theologians. They are so horribly subjective that their basic myther position is made up almost entirely of an argument form silence, lacks any kind of objective data. The Christian potion on historical Jesus has a lot data behind it than the myther position does. We have sources from the first century that at least assert that Jesus was a guy in history. But the mythers have not one single source that denies this, not until the eighteenth century! The reason the stipulation must privilege their position and wipe out all evidence that counts against them by stipulating it under the King's X is becuase they are afraid to actually argue honestly.

Examples:



Rex our on loyal oppoent has provided us with prime examples of these truth by stipulation and the old "you can't make the argument until you prove it:"

I'm with Hermit. Your recent statements on the existence of god are all well and good, the only problem is that they are very involved and detailed rationalizations for someone who starts with the flawed assumption that a supreme being exists. Then you try to weave a very nice story to convince yourself that your opening conclusion is correct.

The real issue is that you begin with the assumption that a god exists, and I don't.

Actually not true because my argument (see last post) does not begin from a premise that God exists. It argues from the premise that God concept is more elegant solution, not that God exists. What he's talking about is actually much more fundamental error that stems form not understating the nature of debate. He's arguing that his position should be privileged and mine unprivileged becuase likes his and not mine. But arguments are not experiments. They are not open ended investigations they are designed to prove a certain point, so to have a valid argument you have to know what you are arguing for. He's confusing knowing what you are arguing for with resting the conclusion on the primes.

To say "you can't argue for that until you prove it" is circular reasoning becuase the purpose of an argument is to prove something. If you can't argue for X until you prove X how will you prove X? This whole truth by stipulation thing is just symptomatic of a cult-like propaganda rather than real thought. These people are going to websites being told what to think and the spitting it back without really understanding it. That's the basis of he whole atheist movement. They have no arguments, they can't prove anything, all they ever do is privilege their doubt and mock and mock anything that doesn't fit the template of their propaganda.

He start by asserting that the true convictions I'm arguing for are premises of the argument, ignoring what I give as the true premise and then mocking the actual logic of the argument by dismissing it as "a nice story." Notice he didn't answer a single argument, he sweeps it all aside because its' not his thing.

That's just as cult-like as you can get.