Soul Invictus

Over the course of my membership here, on a few occasions I've seen the phrase "straw god"

What would this term mean? I haven't had the experience to need to know the meaning, however I'm tired of not knowing what this means!

Rational BAC

You mean straw man? ======== Probably not. I suppose we all know what a straw man is.


I am also curious what Strawgod would mean------although I have never noticed that word on this forum.

Soul Invictus

Actually straw man is the term. What does that phrase mean?

Family Man

A straw man is when a person misstates another's position in such as way as to make it easier to refute.

In a real life example, I claimed that had Christianity developed in the power vacuum that Islam had, it may not have been as peaceful of a religion as my opponent was claiming. He then claimed that I was equating Jesus with Mohammed (whom he apparently thought was a blood-thirsty warlord or something). Of course, I had said no such thing.

And you get 50 bonus points if you can guess who my opponent was. (Hint: he doesn't post here anymore, thankfully).

Soul Invictus

Have no clue....I'm fairly new IMO (almost veteran status though!)

Who was this obnoxious character and why did he leave? Was he banned?

Where did this phenomenon get the name straw man? Because a straw man would be easy to knock down?

Biff the unclean

A strawman is a debating foul. You claim that you opponent made a claim that they did not and then you refute the false claim.
I saw a good one not ten minutes ago. A Theist on another board claimed that evolutionists say that people are descended from gorillas. But they are wrong because there are still gorillas in zoos.
This is a classic strawman. Evolutionists say nothing of the sort. No one has ever claimed that people were descended from gorillas. The claim that is made is that gorillas and humans are descended from a common ancestor.

Common ancestor descent is the actual argument. It's very hard to refute because it's backed up by tons of evidence.
Descent from gorillas is the strawman argument. It's very easy to knock down because it isn't backed up by anything.

When you refute a strawman argument you are refuting an argument that wasn't made.

It is very easy to do a strawman in a church setting where you are up there on a pulpit. When you pronounce "Evolutionists say we occurred by mere chance" and it makes the Evolutionists sound pretty stupid. But it almost never works in a debate setting like this where the victim of the strawman only has to say that they never said what the offender was claiming they did.

Doctor X

Biff gives a great explanation.

"In the pulpit" one has an audience that can cheer and drown out attempts to correct the error.

Part of the problem with fallacies is that "they make sense." The audience of a Creationist--and perhaps the Creationist himself--really thinks the Evolutionist believe "man descended from gorillas."

When he calls him "Godless" or some other ad hominem, he feels that such a person simply has no credibility, period.

This can be hard to argue against from a practical standpoint in a forum where most of the participants have a particular viewpoint.

--J.D.

Lobstrosity

A straw god could be a god you invent just to knock down--you know, a straw man of biblical proportions.

crocodile deathroll

I find the most common strawman argument is used is when your opposition is in the habit of answering his own questions, like stating "evolutionists say that people are descended from gorillas? of course not" and continue preaching on like they have substituted you, (who would never of asked such a stupid question in the first place), with an imaginary strawman who would. Rather like it is an imaginary strawman ventriloquist dummy they a holding. So the ventriloquist dummy asks "evolutionists say that people are descended from gorillas?" and you answer back to him "of course not!".

fundies use this technique frequently, they frequently find it much easier to continue to preach on from the pulpit as though they are having a conversation with an imaginary strawman, then in a situation where the people in the congregation are permitted to put up their hands and ask questions the will leave him totally stuck for words. But is is much easier if they subsituted a potentially very critical congregation with a strawman that they can easily knock down.

Spaz

I'm rather new too, and the only person I know that doesn't really post here, AFAIK, is Old Man (That crazy guy that wanted all the homosexuals to be killed :banghead: ), and although I do believe he'd say something like that, I dunno if it was him.

But yes, for something of relevance, a straw man is a false representation of somebody's argument that is more easily refuted.