Dr Rick

...I agree; dismiss was a poor word choice.

I would replace it with, believe or find

Rick

xian

nice try at coming to your atheist friends defense, but you will fail.

every one of those are questions. Those questions in themselves are not strawmen. With the exception of "Who are you to stand on a pedestal of reason looking down on people that conclude other than you? " they are not loaded. The only fallacy in those questions is #3 which is a loaded question.

"you think that theists do not examine the evidence as objectively as you?

Dr. Rick didn't say that, and you have no idea what he thinks. Hence it's a strawman. "

This is a fallacy of sytle over substance. I never accused Rick of thinking anything. Do you know what the symbol "?" means? It means that the person is being given the opportunity to speak his mind, hence I am not speaking for him.


"
You think your logical processes are more "tuned" than a theist?

Ditto.
"

same fallacy. Again, I am not speaking for Rick, but asking him a question.

And that question remains. No matter how many "fallacies" you want to ascribe to it, I pose the question yet again (now dodged by Rick twice, dodged by you once)

"Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"


That question will remain. And if you and Rick want to tag-team logical fallacy accusations while avoiding it, I'll simply just continue to ask it.

Repetitively until someone answers it.

Mageth

"Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

Read my deconstruction and interpretation of Dr. Rick's post. None of your questions, including this one, are warranted, or necessary, as you could answer them yourself just from the content of his post (and they were all loaded questions).

As his post was a response to your original strawman:

atheists who dismiss every theistic scientist as irrational have some personal, emotional problems with theism that are apart from logistical problems with it.

and your questions were all loaded questions, in response to his post pointing out why the above was a strawman, and which you grossly misinterpreted as made obvious by your questions, I can only conclude that, if the questions don't individually qualify as strawmen (which I think they do), they most certainly do qualify as handsful of straw stuffed into the pre-existing strawman you'd already constructed.

(Sorry if I'm guilty of commiting a "run-on sentence fallacy")

xian

second dodge. Review fallacy: Loaded Question.
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphi...om/loaded.html



I now re-ask the question again.

"Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

Mageth

OK, I reviewed the site you posted. Now I'm convinced that all your questions were loaded. Thanx.

"Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

Answer Yes - "Aha, I told you so! You're arrogant!"

Answer No - "See, I told you so! Theism is a rational belief!"

Loaded question. Either response benefits you, can be used to support your position.

xian

lol, hardly. If you really think those questions were loaded, you truly do not understand the fallacy. A complex question MUST contain C two or more questionable terms--present a special problem, if they are constructed in such a way that agreement or disagreement with one term seems to imply agreement with the second.

To accuse me of asking a loaded question, you must break it down into its two components.

"Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

is fully neutral.


To load this question, I would ask it like this:

"Why do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

Or

"Is it satisfying to think that your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

Now, no matter how he answers, he is trapped.
THOSE are loaded questions.

Asking questions like "Do you think you are better than him?"....."Do you think your judgment is better than my judgment"..........."Do you think you are God?" are NOT loaded.

none of them are. And neither was my original question, which I ask again that you dodged now for the third time.


I literally am stunned you are going to maintain I asked a loaded question, when it is nothing of the sort. You should review logical fallacies a bit more. Now, let me continue quoting from that link:


"The solution to this fallacy is simple: A complex question or claim requires a complex response. "

so if you think the question is so loaded (when it is not)...then simply give me your complex answer.

And furthermore, why don't you give me a non-loaded version of the question. (we will see just how much you are able to back up this claim that it is loaded).

What I am trying to ask is whether or not an atheist thinks his logical processes are more accurate than a theist. Please give me a non-loaded version of that question.

Dr Rick

The strawman fallacy is when you misrepresent someone else's position so that it can be attacked more easily. It's a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made. A strawman can be presented in the form of an interrogative. The interrogatives you presented misrepresent what I posted, and from this misrepresentation you spewed an irrelevant conclusion; "this is the problem I have with some atheists. They have the sort of cocky arrogance that flagrantly flaunt around like they are rationally superior to a theist..."

You have presented a classic strawman argument.

Rick

xian

sorry, but the argument that is being made is MY argument!

I am claiming that I believe that SOME atheists summarily dismiss theists as irrational, and I believe such actions are arrogant.

a strawman results when a deviation from the original argument occurs such that the deviation is a weaker version of the original argument.

but this is the original argument: that I believe that SOME atheists summarily dismiss theists as irrational in their conclusions for theism.

therefore no strawman occurs. A strawman cannot possibly occur because this is the original argument. This is my belief about some atheists. I am not making a claim. I am stating my belief. It is not a strawman, it cannot be a strawman; for it is the original argument: MY argument.

ANd now, once again, I pose the question that has been repeatedly dodged by you, and by mageth. At this point, I do not suppose an answer will be forth coming, I only expect more logical fallacy mud-slinging:

""Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"


I hereby predict you will dodge the question. I predict this with 70% accuracy.

Mageth

Let's back up to how this started. Note that when you first posed the question, there was no "Do":

You think your logical processes are more "tuned" than a theist?

To me, that reads more like an accusation or assertion than a question, IMO. Compare "You support terrorism?" with "Do you support terrorism?" and you can see what I mean.

You seem to have added the "Do" later for some reason, and in the original form the question definitely appears to be a strawman. Your changing the question without stating why or even calling attention to the change appears a bit disingenuous on the surface, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

There was no reason to assume you meant the missing "do" in the original question. One might just as well assume a missing "So," or even "Why do..."

And remember the question was followed by:

Who are you to stand on a pedestal of reason looking down on people that conclude other than you?

That further makes the "You think...?" questions appear more as accusations than as honest "Do" questions.

As your comments are, I assume, all related and follow some sort of logical pattern or flow, the presence of this admiteddly loaded question "loads" the questions posed just prior to it. If you didn't intend the first two questions to be loaded as well, you did a poor job of it. Your post-hoc separating of the question in an attempt to "unload" the first two appears a bit disingenuous as well.

...

In any case, answering "yes" could be used by you to support your accusation of "arrogance", and answering "no" could be used by you to support your stance that theism is a rational position, just as rational as any position held by non-theistic scientists as neither can claim superior rationality. That's what makes it a loaded question - you can use either response to it against the answerer to support one of your points.

In any case, as I have previously pointed out, Dr. Rick's answer to your question was in his post that I deconstructed and explained to you above, and to which your questions were in response to, so your accusation that Dr. Rick (or I, since I implicitly agreed with his post) have "dodged" it is unfounded. The answer was given before the question.

...

All that aside, let's consider the question:

"Do you think your logical processes are more accurate than a theist?"

is a poorly formed question to begin with. Do you mean a particular theist, a theistic scientist, any old theist, some theists, or all theists? Do you mean non-theistic scientists vs. theistic scientists? Do you mean me and Dr. Rick individually and personally or atheists in general?

To illustrate, I can safely answer "Yes", meaning "Yes, I think there is a theist whose logical processes are less accurate than mine."

I'm not "dodging"; that's my honest answer to the question.

I'll await your response.

xian

that is all fine and dandy, but I admitted the loaded question in my next post, rephrased the question adding a "DO" making it more harmless, and clarified it without the loaded context, and then re-asked it in a much more objective fasion....

And you still dodged it.



this is all irrelevant. If all you had to go on was my original post, then I would agree with this. But since I spent several subsequent posts making it abundantly clear that no loaded question is intended, added a "DO" to the question to make it more objective, then clarifying my intentions....only to have them continually dodged.....i do not see that as a reasonable excuse. Maybe to dodge it the first time, but not the 8th time.

well of course! That doesn't make the question a fallacy. It makes the person an arrogant supremacist. lol!

Bob: Do you think you are a supreme being...better than all other humans, such that they should bend their knees before you?

Jack: Yes, I do.

Fred: Hey! Thats a loaded question, Bob! Since Jack secretly thinks he's better than everyone else, it isn't fair to ask him because that kind of information, though true, should be kept quiet. Thats a fallacy!!




If i ask a quesiton that exposes arrogance or bigotry with a truthful answer, then I don't think I'm the one with the problem.



I mean you. And I'll clarify it even more.

Do you think your rational processes & abilities are more accurate than ANY theist's rational processes who concludes that the universe was created by a supernatural being?

(any as in all theists...scientists, philosophers, laypeople....it doesn't matter....all we know about them is that they concluded in theism)