Favorite Fallacies—of the Very Informal Kind

Originally posted by vistesd
And we are content to leave it that way...

🙂
Okay, now I'm laughing out loud.
Kelly

Originally posted by tomtom232
You used spelt wrong. Spelt is a hexaploid species of wheat.

That would be spelt as a noun. As a verb it is the past tense and past participle of spell. So he used the term correctly.

Originally posted by KellyJay
🙂
Okay, now I'm laughing out loud.
Kelly

🙂

Argument by Accusation of Evasion:

This argument occurs when any reference to a transcendent mystical realm of human life has to indicate evasion for lack of rationale.

"Hmm. You say God's ways are higher than man's ways. This can only be evasion because you cannot think of an explanation for thus and such."

The assumption is that evasion could be the only possible motive of mentioning something which in the mind of the other cannot be true simply of itself. Or is at least unlikely because whoever believes something should understand everything.

"Hmm. Because you do not know everything you evade answering and hide behind a divine and mystical dimension."

Yes, one may evade to answer by appealing to the transcendent mystical. But one also may simply mention the mystical realm because it in fact does exist whether to his debating advantage or not.

The best response to the accusation is simple honesty. If a question is too difficult because of a transcendent and mystical characteristic, admit it and ask for a simplier one.

Originally posted by twhitehead
[b]Argument from Disagreement
"Well I don't agree, so well just have to leave it here." (implying that we are on equal ground, regardless of how much has been presented by either side).[/b]

This reminds me of the
Argument for Agreement

"Let us agree to disagree."

Originally posted by whodey
Arguement against faith

Those who have faith are foolish, however, I do not place my faith in anything, hence, I'm not foolish.

Argument of superior logic

"My logic is more logical than yours, hence, I am right and you are wrong."

Argument of provability

"Everything I believe is provable. Anything that cannot be proved I do not believe."

I hate to burst your bubbles Whodey, but none of these are fallacious arguments.

Ok, the faith one might be a bit false - it's certainly possible to lack faith and still be foolish.

Superior logic is always a winner though, as is provability.

Originally posted by jaywill
Yes, one may evade to answer by appealing to the transcendent mystical. But one also may simply mention the mystical realm because it in fact does exist whether to his debating advantage or not.

I disagree. The only reason you could have for inventing a 'mystical realm' or 'supernatural realm' or 'transcendental realm' is to effectively say 'it follows different laws, that cannot be questioned'.
OK, maybe you don't realise you are doing it, but evasion is what is going on. You do not want to be pinned down to reality.

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
I hate to burst your bubbles Whodey, but none of these are fallacious arguments.

Ok, the faith one might be a bit false - it's certainly possible to lack faith and still be foolish.

Superior logic is always a winner though, as is provability.

Not so.

After all, what have you actually "proven" that you believe? For example, have you personally proven that the planet Pluto exists? No, you take other peoples word for it that they have proven it exists based upon others that you trust. You may even have seen a photo or two of the infamous Pluto, but is it really Pluto? You lull yourself into an intellectual sleep by saying that you trust in science thinking that trusting in scientific claims is close to being bullet proof as anything there is. Even if science is 99.99% correct, for the sake of arugment, then you have incorrectly placed your faith in something that is 0.01% false.

Of course, the kicker is that what we proport to "prove" that we prove on our own is only based upon our five senses. We believe that they are always telling us correctly the truth about our existence even though we all know they are not always reliabe and are very limited in detecting what is around us.

I think, therefore I am. 😛

Originally posted by twhitehead
I disagree. The only reason you could have for inventing a 'mystical realm' or 'supernatural realm' or 'transcendental realm' is to effectively say 'it follows different laws, that cannot be questioned'.
OK, maybe you don't realise you are doing it, but evasion is what is going on. You do not want to be pinned down to reality.

I disagree. The only reason you could have for inventing a 'mystical realm' or 'supernatural realm' or 'transcendental realm' is to effectively say 'it follows different laws, that cannot be questioned'.
OK, maybe you don't realise you are doing it, but evasion is what is going on. You do not want to be pinned down to reality.

I disagree. This sounds to me like the blind man suspicious of the seeing man who discribes a rainbow.

There is a divine and mystical dimension to human life. Man did not "invent" it.

Man may abuse the idea. But I would be totally lying to say that such a realm of the transcendent, knowable only by experience, did not exist.

A person may say that no realm exists. Her may feel this will safe guard him against all kinds of foolish and unreal things. That may indeed be true. But the baby should not be tossed out with the bathwater.

But I wager that the same skeptical one knows that SOMETHING in his life feels like it is missing. He is a three dimensional being functioning on two dimensions. Part of his humanity seems not to be there.

That is the realm approached by his human spirit.

Originally posted by jaywill
There is a divine and mystical dimension to human life. Man did not "invent" it.

I concede that there may be more to this life that I am personally aware of.
But the moment you label it with words like 'divine', 'dimension', 'mystical', 'supernatural', 'transcendental ', there is only one purpose for such labelling - and that is to separate it from the 'real world' and essentially say 'it cannot be questioned because it follows different rules'.
Now if you had said: "there is more to life than you realise, and I am calling it 'zeta theory' and we are going to discuss it and study it etc'" then I might say you are not evading. But the moment you start, from the very definition, by trying to build barriers to anyone else knowing about your invention, then I say 'evasion'. Already you have stated that you can only know about this 'dimension' through experience. Why do you say this? How do you know this? Why do you separated it from the rest of reality into a different 'dimension'? Evasion. No other reason.

Originally posted by whodey
Not so.

After all, what have you actually "proven" that you believe? For example, have you personally proven that the planet Pluto exists? No, you take other peoples word for it that they have proven it exists based upon others that you trust. You may even have seen a photo or two of the infamous Pluto, but is it really Pluto? You lull yourself into a we all know they are not always reliabe and are very limited in detecting what is around us.

Ah I see, then you have simply phrased your fallacies poorly. If something is provable, it's provable. You presumably are referring to 'facts' which people believe are provable but in fact are not, which is a quite different kettle of fish from
"Everything I believe is provable. Anything that cannot be proved I do not believe."

I assume you're also referring to logic which is falsely believed to be superior rather than logic which is actually superior.

edit - Incidentally, get with the programme! Pluto's not a planet any more.

Argumentum ad Groupthink

"Six billion people can't be wrong."

Originally posted by avalanchethecat
Ah I see, then you have simply phrased your fallacies poorly. If something is provable, it's provable. You presumably are referring to 'facts' which people believe are provable but in fact are not, which is a quite different kettle of fish from
[b]"Everything I believe is provable. Anything that cannot be proved I do not believe."

I assume yo ...[text shortened]... superior.

edit - Incidentally, get with the programme! Pluto's not a planet any more.[/b]

edit - Incidentally, get with the programme! Pluto's not a planet any more.

Yea! Science had it wrong before.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I concede that there may be more to this life that I am personally aware of.
But the moment you label it with words like 'divine', 'dimension', 'mystical', 'supernatural', 'transcendental ', there is only one purpose for such labelling - and that is to separate it from the 'real world' and essentially say 'it cannot be questioned because it follows diffe rest of reality into a different 'dimension'? Evasion. No other reason.

I concede that there may be more to this life that I am personally aware of. But the moment you label it with words like 'divine', 'dimension', 'mystical', 'supernatural', 'transcendental ', there is only one purpose for such labelling - and that is to separate it from the 'real world' and essentially say 'it cannot be questioned because it follows different rules'.

I don't know about saying "It cannot be questioned". I have plenty of questions.

While it bores you to hear the Scripture I think what has been revealed to man is that we are a three part being = spirit and soul and body - First Thessalonians 5:23).

It is actually a rather simple concept -

The body assists us to substantiate the physical world.
The soul helps us substantiante the psychological world.
The spirit helps us substantiante the spiritual world.

We are opened to THREE realms - the physical world of matter, the psychological world of other human selves and minds, and the spiritual world of mainly the Holy Spirit of God.

The mind is in the middle and helps interpret what is touched and substantiated in the human spirit. Usually people draw back and fear that we are saying that the mind is useless in spiritual things. We are not saying that. We are saying the mind, renewed, healed, and submissive to the regenerated human spirit is useful to interpret things sensed in the human spirit.

You must use the right organ to touch the appropriate reality. You cannot HEAR the taste of food. You cannot TASTE the colors. You cannot SEE the sound of music. We have organs which are appropriate to substantiate different realities.

There is a realm that needs our human spirit to substantiate it. The mind in this is not useless. But it needs to be renewed and made submissive to the human spirit.

Sin has damaged the human mind.

Now if you had said: "there is more to life than you realise, and I am calling it 'zeta theory' and we are going to discuss it and study it etc'"

First off I do not mean to imply that ALL one senses is missing in life IS of a divine nature. So that generalization we can put aside.

A single man may sense the missing of the enjoyment of marriage. That may not be necessarily DIVINE absence.

But there is another sense deep within of the missing. And I say it often is the sense of the non-functioning of a man's divine sensing facility, his human spirit.

I suspect your reactions to this before you even reply. One defense will be that "Oh that sounds like thus and such ...". Or "How is your missing realm different from the Hare Krishna's missing realm ?"

Anyway, in my belief, at no point is the human MIND useless. And by refering to the divine and mystical realm or the spiritual I emphatically am not saying that in that realm the human mind is useless.

Suffice it to say that the unfallen man had a higher organ in himself which is deeper than the mind and higher than the mind. In the fall of man that facility was damaged and made comatose. The soul of man ascended to the highest part of man. The human spirit became deadened and the human soul, including the mind, became man's practically highest facility.

An analogy - You have a building with three stories. Something has happened on the third story to render it damaged and vacant for a while. The second story becomes the practical top story. One day the THIRD story is RESTORED to normal and the whole building now functions as it was designed.

We have an "UPPER STORY" in our human building. We have to learn the ways of that upper story. For shortage of human expression I borrow words like divine and mystical.

John says "In Him was [ZOE] life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4)

That greek word we translate into English "life" is particular. It means a divine life. It is not "in Him was SELF [english soul or life] and the SELF was the light of men" .

Neither is it "In Him was [ BIOS ] [as in physical life], and the physical life was the light of men."

The Greek says that the light of men is this Divine ZOE life which is in Jesus Christ. John is not talking about a physical light. He is talking about a light though - a divine inward light which causes man to see things are they really are.

After the incident of the attempted stoning of a woman caught in the act of adultery Jesus said something to touch the conscience of every one there. He said let whoever was without sin cast the first stone at her. From the older ones to the younger ones, they all began to walk away. Eventually NO ONE was left to throw a stone at the woman. He convicted their consciences.

Then it says " ... Again therefore Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall by no means walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)

This "light of life" is a non-physical light of divine life showing man the REAL situation, convicting his conscience before his Maker. This is something of the divine realm. It is not that the mind is useless. It is that the mind must be submissive and come UNDER the enfluence of a deeper sense in the human spirit.

You cannot measure this light with a scientific instrument. But you can "measure" its growth and the encrease of its shining.

then I might say you are not evading. But the moment you start, from the very definition, by trying to build barriers to anyone else knowing about your invention, then I say 'evasion'. Already you have stated that you can only know about this 'dimension' through experience. Why do you say this? How do you know this? Why do you separated it from the rest of reality into a different 'dimension'? Evasion. No other reason.

We are trying to REMOVE barriers and not invent and erect barriers.

We are trying to help people CROSS barriers which we found CAN be crossed. We are not trying to erect barriers so that one CANNOT cross.

This is like the suspicion of the man born blind at one who has had his sight restored explaining to him that the colors of the rainbow DO indeed exist. You greatly misjudge our hearts in this and our motives. I think you start by misjudging the motives of God Himself and of Jesus Christ Himself.