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God is an AI. You can't prove otherwise.

Argumentum ad Ignorantiam: Your argument is invalid.

Magazine of the John Birch Society. Yep, I need to hear from them.

Ah, the argumentum ad hominem! Always strange to see a logical fallacy modded up...

because of their credentials, regular everyday people put alot of creedence into what they say, even if it is way out of their discipline

Yeah, they even have a name for this phenomenon: Argumentum ad Verecundiam.

It's not. An ad hominem works like this:

1. Chris Mattern says ad hominems are equal to insulting someone without refuting their assertion.
2. Chris Mattern is a dick face.
Conclusion: since Chris Mattern is a dick face (2), the statement (1) must be false.

ctrl+f 'Informal Structure of ad Hominem'

The point of mixing the fluids is that you cannot otherwise impart enough heat to flash boil the water.

That begs the question, can you not otherwise impart enough heat to flash boil the water? Why not a big metallic thermal load, made out of recycled popcans?

That's not begging the question.

That begs the question, how is the original statement not an example of the petitio principii fallacy?

a) and b) can give you results in "barometer-length" units. "The building is 234 barometers tall"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometer_question

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/barometer.asp

This is a nicely written account:
http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/introbook2.1/x874.html

here are a bunch of ideas (most involve extras beyond the barometer)
http://www.esmerel.com/circle/question/building.html

that was "Ford Prefect" from HHGTTG.

Well, to be fair, if you knew what a Ford Prefect actually was, you'd never confuse it with "perfect." XD

As to the use (misuse?) of "stock phrases" like "beg the question", I assume that some people use those phrases idiomatically (i.e., no literal meaning intended) because they heard someone else they thought worthy of emulating doing so. Because of this, they don't consider if the literal phrase makes sense ("How do I do... what?").

In the specific (and hilariously controversial*) case of "beg the question", it's possible to torture a nearly-sensible literal meaning out of the phrase ("This begs the question" == "This begs someone to ask the question"), so the correct use derived from the original Latin phrase (and only sensible in light of Latin's vocabulary and grammar) will die out within a couple of generations, except in philosophical specialist material.

*Case in point

I can't believe this got modded +5; moderators, shame on you. This post is the oldest logical fallacy in the book: Argumentum ad Hominem . Rather than attacking the source, you're supposed to attack the argument! And quite frankly, the tests look rock solid and statistically accurate. If you can't raise the level of the argument, just don't say anything at all. You make the rest of us look bad.

Your two digit ID be damned...

Look up Argumentum ad Ignoranitam. Look up other logical fallacies too, not only because they are interesting, but because they will also help you solidify your beliefs.

For satire to work, it has to work well.

Blatantly nonsensical. "For XYZ to work, XYZ must work well" cannot be true, for it begs a definition of "work" that is loaded with a non-objective quality judgement.

and move straight on to the ad hominem attacks.

Mark down "ad hominem" as something else you'll need to get explained in your remedial education.

Here's some help: it means an attack targeted at the speaker, not what he says. I don't know anything about you, and didn't use any personal information in my post. It was solely based on what you wrote. That is not ad hominem.

To create ad hominem abuse, I would have to follow your killingmachines URL and look for offtopic, personal details to twist into insults. Dig up someplace where you made a mistake once, and, and create the implication that nothing else you say can be trusted either. That would be petty and uncomfortable, and I'm not into that.