A Beautiful Compilation of Rhetorical and Logical Fallacies

I think the “appeal to ridicule” as a rhetological appeal to emotion is interesting. I think ridiculing absurd beliefs is valid. If I recall correctly, isn’t it recommended by some prominent nonbelievers?

Also the example for the “appeal to incredulity” seems out of place given that assuming god exists based on complexity would require more assumptions (namely that a superbeing exists) than accepting evolution. Perhaps the example is just poor. Outrageous claims should require very good evidence.

I think there are far too many of these and some of them do not apply very well in practice.

“Appeal to ridicule” is acceptable if the argument is ridiculous.

In the example a comparison with other things that the person does not believe in is also acceptable.

“A faith in Yahweh is like believing in Alah, Bigfoot or the Tooth fairy”

There is no evidence for any of these things, and the claimant disbelieves Alah, Bigfoot and the Tooth fairy for the same reason the rational disbelieve in Yahweh and other gods

This is wonderfully helpful!

 By claiming that their beliefs are absurd, and then comparing them to things that are noted children’s tales at the /start/ of your argument, it seems as though you are insulting them. They could do the same to yours. Perhaps as a “wrap up” note, but engaging in appeal to ridicule as a reason or basis for an argument is quite unkind.

“Appeal to Ignorance
A claim is simply true because it has not been proven false (or false because it has not been proven true).
“Nobody has proved there is a God. So there is no God.” ”

Yeah, that’s not at all what most atheists say. Most say they’ve looked at the claims and evidence, and found no evidence of the god(s) claimed by most religions: no evidence of ones who actively interfere in the physical world and who communicate to mankind, and certainly not evidence for the all-powerful, perfectly good, and all-knowing god(s) claimed by some of the most popular religions. Then they ask the religious for their supposed evidence, and no one brings anything forward that’s worth considering.

It’s the religious who try to shift the burden of proof and rely on ignorance. 
“You can’t disprove God, therefore he exists.””You weren’t there at the creation of the Universe, but God was, therefore science is wrong about the Big Bang.””You weren’t there at *any historical time period to verify their claims*, therefore our religion’s claims about the period are true.”

“As far as we know, the Universe/life is a rare occurrence, therefore God is the only way it could have happened.”

They shove their God of the gaps into every hole of ignorance they can.

Going the other way (something is false until proven true) is like presumption of innocence in the legal system, or not arresting someone without a reason, or not believing things without evidence; it’s a common sense thing.

To call that skepticism “Appeal to Ignorance” is just….mind-bogglingly dumb (appeal to ridicule, I guess).

 If the primary intent is to ridicule, it is perhaps unkind. But comparing one thing that a person might believe in (God) with other things that he does not believe in (unicorns, Santa Claus) is certainly a valid argument strategy, and does not necessarily represent an appeal to ridicule fallacy at all. I believe the example here confuses reductio ad absurdum , a valid logical argument, with reductio ad ridiculum, a logical fallacy.

It is misused burden of proof that I think it is talking about.

We should use these as templates for an Easter Sunday Bingo game lol. Of course, I’m not going to church or to my family’s thing after church. I told them all I was working.

These are really more of logical fallacies. In rhetoric or debate, where you don’t have the luxury of making a full proof, many of them are useful and valid. Many could be used as a valid rebuttal. The fallacy is when you try to use them to make an assertion yourself.

For example, if a study on media consumption is funded by Disney, it can still be a valid study. If Disney tried to secretly fund it and manipulated the data in some way, you’d be right in declaring the study uninformative. You’d be fallacious to declare some other results based on that study, though.

 “They” in this case are people who believe in these things, though. Someone who holds an opposite position to you on how the universe was created, things evolved and whether or not someone “intelligently” guided these processes would view your naturalism on the same level as… well, anything they don’t also hold true. “You’re just a believer in science”, or something like that.

Not that it’s a particularly /good/ come back, but you’re never going to get anywhere by kicking off a debate by saying “your beliefs are as valid as a child’s”.

There are plenty of Christians who see no problem between faith and science, why not pick on them? You could actually have a conversation because you at least have something in common.

I think there are far too many of these and some of them do not apply very well in practice.

If you actually study critical thinking, such as at the university level, you find that most experts seem to agree that being able to identify or name specific logical or rhetorical fallacies is a pretty useless skill. If only people put the same effort into developing skills for understanding exactly what the other person is saying (which is more than half the battle in evaluating an argument critically), we’d all be better off as a society.

Here’s a not horrible place to start: 
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/whatarff.html

If you need more detail on specific fallacies, a google search might lead to illuminating examples. If you prefer videos, this is the start of a decent set of videos for some basics: http://youtu.be/iSZ3BUru59A
If you prefer books, “How to Win Every Argument,” by Madsen Pirie, is a fun little book that teaches 50(?) ways to use fallacies to win arguments (in other words, it’s a satirical way to teach fallacy recognition, and where the hell did my copy get to??).

I support this sort of thing because it gives people a quick-and-dirty guide to proper debating conduct. (Not that it matters, if all you’re doing is trying to win without any regard to truth, honesty, or validity of inference.) However, I’m not sure about the presentation here. Some of these seem a bit…off. For instance begging the question is presented as:

Making a claim while leaving out one or more major contributing factors that may affect the conclusion.

That’s entirely incorrect. Begging the question is using the conclusion as a premise in its own supporting argument. Or more colloquially speaking “begging the question” some times refers to using a premise in your argument that, while not being exactly the same as your conclusion, nevertheless would only be conceded by someone who already agreed with the solution. For instance: “Taking a human life is murder. Abortion is taking a human life. Therefore, abortion is murder.” The argument is valid and obviously “abortion is murder” is not just a restatement of “abortion is taking a human life,” but only people who’re already anti-abortion would concede the premise.

Anyway, that was just an example. There is a lot of impreciseness and inaccuracy in that fallacy-list. It could even be argued that some of the examples constitute a fallacy in and of themselves. But it’s still a worthwhile list if you take it with a grain of salt. Just don’t let semantic taxonomy get in the way of your sound inferences. If you can explain why something is fallacious you don’t have to slap a label on it.

As I was reading this list I had a strong positive reaction to some and a strong negative reaction to others.  For instance, Appeal to Popular Belief, Appeal to Tradition, Burden of Proof are examples of fallacies I call out often, while Appeal to Ridicule seems like a reasonable rhetorical device, especially if, you know, you’re opponent’s argument is ridiculous.  (Though I get why it’s a fallacy.)

But what I was wondering was if there would be any patterns in how people ranked these on, say, a Likert scale (strongly agree | agree | neither agree nor disagree | disagree | strongly disagree) of the form: “My rhetorical opponents often commit this fallacy.”  Some of these I see used all the time, even after having them called out.  (Hmm, maybe there should be a fallacy of rhetorical non-participation for those [ahem, ad hominem, cough cough] who just want to spew meaningless babble at you without regard for intelligent dialogue.  Trolls.)  I suspect skeptics & atheists would tend to cluster around certain fallacies (also depending on the topics they end up debating), compared to our opponents (christians, ID creationists, yadda yadda).

 Good on them, yes, but the description is still completely wrong.