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These are pretty poor examples. Try to be more specific.
It's not clear from this excerpt what Dawkins' premise is, and what his conclusion is. In fact, there's only one statement. So there's not enough information here to tell whether it's a non sequitur or not.
The fact that simultaneous belief in the doctrine of creation and the scientific theory of evolution is possible, does not prove that the ideas are in fact compatible. All it shows is that humans are capable of entertaining incompatible beliefs simultaneously. Here it is you who are making conclusions that do not derive from your premises.
Man, a theist accusing an atheist of "wishful thinking" is pretty rich with irony, don't you think? If Dawkins had taken the opposite position, would you be making this complaint? But you have a small point, he should qualify that with an "Our best explanation is..."
P.S. What evidence is there against abiogenesis?
I'm not sure it is possible to completely misunderstand Dredd seeing as he can be what the story needs him to be. He has been the caricature of the strict law enforcer, the questioner of authority, the tireless pursuer of justice, the bloody avenger, the super-soldier, etc.
I agree with your stance in general, but I believe that many people have forgotten that freedom of religion in some cases implies a freedom from religion. If your religion forbids a caricature of your profit, er, prophet, that should never be even considered being supported by the legal system. You're free to not draw pictures of your prophet, but you have no right to forbid other people from doing so.
Others have done so many times over.
5. The Non Sequitar â" âComments or information that do not logically follow from a premise or the conclusion.â(TM) [24]
Stephen M. Barrâ(TM)s review of Dawkinsâ(TM) Unweaving the Rainbow is spot on:
It is not often that one can find exactly the point where an author goes off track, but here one can. It is in the fifth sentence of the preface of the book, which begins, âSimilar accusations of barren desolation, of promoting an arid and joyless message, are frequently flung at science in general.â(TM) However, what people object to in Dawkins is not the science but the atheism. Because he cannot see the difference, he writes a book that is a 300-page non sequitur.
3. The False Dilemma - Two choices are given when in actuality there are more choices possible.
When it comes to explaining biological reality, Dawkins asserts: âThe only thing [William Paley] got wrong â" admittedly quite a big thing â" was the explanation itself. He gave the traditional religious answer [that life was created by God]. . . The true explanation is utterly different, and it had to wait for one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all time, Charles Darwin.â(TM) [14] Dawkins fails to point out that belief in the doctrine of creation and the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection are in fact compatible. Michael Poole explains why the choice between creation and evolution is a false dilemma:
7. Wishful Thinking - âa fallacy that posits a belief because it or its consequence is desired to be true.â(TM) [28]
Discussing the theory of âchemical evolutionâ(TM) or abiogenesis [29] (the supposed naturalistic appearance of life from non-life), Dawkins says: âNobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying â" a replicator.â(TM) [30] Dawkinsâ(TM) belief in abiogenesis is wishful thinking in that he wants it to be true because it is necessary for an atheistic account of origins, despite there being a large body of scientific evidence against the theory. [31]
9. Straw Man Argument - âa type of Red Herring that attacks a misrepresentation of an opponentâ(TM)s position. That is called to burn a straw man. It is a surprisingly common fallacy, because it is easy to misunderstand another person's position.â(TM) [36]
According to Dawkins: âScience shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.â(TM) [37] But as McGrath responds:
Dawkinsâ(TM)s caricature of Christianity may well carry weight with his increasingly religiously illiterate or religiously alienated audiences, who find in his writings ample confirmation of their prejudices, but merely persuades those familiar with religious traditions to conclude that Dawkins has no interest in understanding what he critiques. . . The classic Christian tradition has always valued rationality and does not hold that faith involves the abandonment of reason or the absence of evidence. Indeed, the Christian tradition is so strong on this matter that it is often difficult to understand where Dawkins got these ideas. [38]
10. Ad Hominem â" the fallacy of attacking the individual instead of the argument (Ad Hominem is Latin for âagainst the man.â(TM))
According to Dawkins: âFather Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three.â(TM) [39] Dawkins implies that anyone who believes in God is childish be
But most Mormons do. They are a fairly conservative bunch on the whole. The story is about a conservative, Republican, Mormon dominated legislature trying to get the internet to play by corporate rules. The "mormon" tag is just as appropriate as a "republican" or "conservative" or "corporations" tag on the story.
Meh. Speaking as a Mormon who's lived a good chunk of his life in Utah, I'd say that while you're correct, any of the tags you mention are problematic. The source of this kind of mistake isn't really any one of those influences, it's an intersection of all of them. The Utah Republican party, particularly on certain regional levels, has its own special brand of cultural crazy that's a product of religiosity applied to conservative "philosophy" mixed in with some provincialism and mercantilism.
And I think the combination deserves no small measure of criticism. The problem comes when in examinining the intersection, someone decides that each of the influences alone is worthy of the same level of blame of all of them. Or just picks their favorite influence to axe-grind against.
People can legitimately object to stereotypes and prejudices. But sometimes those stereotypes are things that are legitimately true and that need to be said, even if they do offend.
The problem tends to be that the stereotypes tend to be caricatures that offer no subtle or genuine understanding of what's going on.
For example:
Tell that to the people living in Utah, or Saudi Arabia, or Italy, who have to put up with prohibitions imposed on them in the name of the silent religious majority.
Yeah, the unavailability of tea and coffee is a real bitch in Utah.
No, socialism would be having the government demand that programmers write software for the greater good or be jailed.
No, that's a caricature of Evil Red Communism.
if it's FOSS, that just means it isn't exclusive. That doesn't make it any less capitalistic or free market.
It precisely makes it less capitalist. "From each according to ability to each according to need"
The problem is the knee-jerk reaction to the word "socialism". Nobody wants to accept that maybe some aspects of socialism aren't all that bad. Similarly not all of capitalism is all that bad ( or all that good either ). The most healthy systems employ elements from both
Your post amounts to one very long winded series of straw men and non-sequiters.
Before the earth was round, it was flat, it's been shaped like a disk. It's been hollow, filled with magma, it's had a liquid core, a solid core, and now it might have two cores orbiting each other.
what you've very neatly laid out there is the progression of scientific knowledge gradually refining the consensus towards something more and more accurate. Notice how that sequence didn't go "first it flat then it was round then it was flat then it was a pyramid then it flat again, then a giant donut then flat now there's a 50-50 chance of it being flat or round and we haven't got a clue which it is"? That would be what you would expect from your weird caricature of the scientific process whereby everybody just seems to be bumbling around making things up as they go along, but as you freely illustrate, it isn't what actually happens.
and then you got a cure for all bacteria and soon viruses and cancer then woops we're nowhere on cancer and viruses and bacteria are going to win after all.
so could you cite exactly when the scientific concensus was that "you got a cure for all bacteria and soon viruses and cancer" and when this position was abandoned in a spectacular about-face to "woops we're nowhere on cancer and viruses and bacteria are going to win after all" because correct me if i'm wrong, but that's just something absurd that you pulled out of your ass.
before you go on about how science progresses and is never wrong
Well it's lovely of you to put words in people's mouths, but it's one of the basic tenets of science that all positions are provisional in the face of further evidence. EXACTLY the opposite of your straw man. This of course renders your following "analogy" completely irrelevant and specious
different kinds of fire, food, water... the air... and we keep drilling down and also learn about things that don't matter as much... [...]is that going to make my dick bigger?
I think perhaps the reference to the size your dick is supposed to be the "tell" that you are just trolling but the sad truth is some people actually think this way. So your attitude is that science is pointless because it just gets more wrong with time and even if it was right the things it teaches us are increasingly unimportant.
I think you've failed to show that science gets more wrong with time, indeed your earlier shape of the earth example illustrates exactly the opposite, and i think the correlation between how difficult to understand science becomes as time goes on, and you lack of interest in it as time goes on, might be a good indicator of some kind of causation, but of course, further independent evidence is required before i could make a firm assertion.
the ignorant are everywhere, so obviously, they must be better than you... that's what Darwin says.
I think you mean better adapted to reproduce in their environment. That's what Darwin says. And being better adapted to reproduce in your environment like everything else is a temporary status, especially if you are drastically altering you environment.
Your idea of what science is and what science "says" is grossly ignorant and absurd. I'm hoping you're just a troll and you got modded +5 interesting become someone though it would be funny.
Anyway, because some of the Whities in the EU have ancestors who once shipped NIGGERS from AFRICA as part of Triangular Trade, they are fucking with Microsoft, a fine upstanding White American company
Microsoft are not a fine upstanding WHITE American community because half of its stateside employees consist of stinky chutnies and the other half of them are losing their jobs only to see them being performed by colored undesireables overseas.
Just wait until Windows 8 comes out. Even its help pages will be written by grotesque colored caricatures and they will read like: "you is clicks on da 'x' to make window go away ooga-booga oo-oo aa-aaa". The latest UI will be code named "Calcutta shithole" and will be colored stinky shit brown, lavender, and fuchia just like stinky Indian foreign exchange students(and future H1-B cocksuckers) without a clue.
And don't be mad at niggers for having huge dongs. A plow horse also has a bigger dong than you do, but would you really want to be in his (horse)shoes?
On the other hand, I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the earth if there is no God and I'm a product of evolution.
Your existence is due to the efforts of others, intelligent and not. You decide how much of an obligation that means you owe. Society will impose its own obligations on you. Any gods that happen to exist might attempt to impose their own as well.
Having said that, the grand parent has some absurd and useless caricatures.
First, it's "Gilded Age".
Second, the notion that a free market has anything to do with "Social Darwinism" is an absurd caricature.
Third, how do you guarantee personal liberties without also giving a guarantee of economic liberties?
"People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban
guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want
the moderate version of your little caricature."
- Um, no.. that's what you'd like to think, not what most people for gun control really want.
I've never understood the argument that because you think that when people want gun control they want a total ban on guns, you think it's better to take the complete opposite, and just as insane position that everyone can have a gun.. for free.. get one for your kids.. 1/2 price off ammo at walmart.
Either extreme is stupid in regard to guns, Most people want intelligent restriction to guns, and arguing that you're against the idea of gun control "because the people aren't really saying gun control, they're saying ban" is putting lies into the mouths of others to excuse your extremely negative view of gun control.
I'd encourage you to look at the merits of the proposition, and not at what "isn't" being said, as you're making that up all by yourself.
Now who's perpetrating a common caricature? False strawman indeed.
As Yuuki Dasu said, you've just committed a strawman fallacy. For example, I own guns yet favor gun control. I favor mandatory safety locks, mandatory background checks, closing the gun show loophole, banning certain weapons (quick, give me a 2d Amendment argument why nuclear weapons should not be permitted arms but AK-47s should be), and have toyed around with the idea of gun registration (although I'm trying to think of a technological solution that only allows owner lookups once the guns have been seized, in order to protect privacy--I imagine some sort of uniform public key/hash thing would work for that as gun serial numbers).
But I fucking love guns. They're awesome.
If this was about some legitimate satire or parody of say, the Superintendent then I would agree that the person involved is a public figure. However, even if we disagree on whether or not the AP is important enough to be considered a public figure is irrelevant in this case. Calling someone a name b/c you are frustrated != satire or parody. Look them up in the dictionary.
parody |ËparÉ(TM)dÄ"| .
.
noun ( pl. -dies)
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect : the movie is a parody of the horror genre | his provocative use of parody. See note at caricature
â an imitation or a version of something that falls far short of the real thing; a travesty : he seems like a parody of an educated Englishman.
verb ( -dies, -died) [ trans. ]
produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre) : his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction.
â mimic humorously : he parodied his friend's voice.
satire |ËsaËOEtÄr|
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues. See note at wit
â a play, novel, film, or other work that uses satire : a stinging satire on American politics.
â a genre of literature characterized by the use of satire.
â (in Latin literature) a literary miscellany, esp. a poem ridiculing prevalent vices or follies.
Calling someone a douchebag is not the exaggerated mimicry of parody, or the humorous pointing out of flaws seen in satire. It is a teenage being frustrated and resorting to 4th grade level name calling.
Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".
People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban
guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want
the moderate version of your little caricature.
I see you're an expert in false straw men.
Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".
People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want the moderate version of your little caricature.
The brutal irony here is that you, yourself, are guilty of the exact fallacy you're calling out the GP for. The fact that you can denounce the GP for focusing on the extreme fringe cases and then, with barely pause for breath, explain that everyone against you is an anti-gun extremist is really breathtaking
Regardless of where we, as a society, decide is proper to draw the line between what we legally permit in this debate, please understand that opinions on this (as in any subject) lie on a vast spectrum. There's a middle ground between banning BBs and allowing personal nukes.
I'd hate to break it to you, but the 2nd amendment as imagined by the Republican party doesn't exist. Interpreting it as being a right to personal firearms without any qualifiers is unjustified. Felons, children and those not trained to use them safely not have any protections that guarantee them access.
Of course this is a false strawman. You are perpetrating the common caricature of the "gun nut".
People who fixate on "gun control" want nothing of the sort. They want to ban
guns outright buy are stymied by the current state of the law. They don't want
the moderate version of your little caricature.
Besides, all she did was call them douchebags and tell other to harass them with the contact information she provided. It's not that what she said was offensive, but that she made no effort to dress it up above the level of 4th grade name calling that makes it not parody. According to the dictionary on my computer the definition of Parody is:
parody |ËparÉ(TM)dÄ"| .
noun ( pl. -dies)
an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect : the movie is a parody of the horror genre | his provocative use of parody. See note at caricature
â an imitation or a version of something that falls far short of the real thing; a travesty : he seems like a parody of an educated Englishman.
verb ( -dies, -died) [ trans. ]
produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre) : his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction.
â mimic humorously : he parodied his friend's voice.
No attempt at humor, no attempt to do anything other than lash out at the administration because she was angry. And she was angry b/c she wasn't getting her way.
I'm glad that her behavior was ultimately punished (although I do agree that prison time is overkill) and I'm also glad that corrupt officials are also being punished. One has nothing to do with the other.
Libertarianism is great on paper, but I don't think it could make the jump to real life. /. would characterize all libertarians as either wild west cowboys or mad max wannabes looking for ultimate law of the jungle? After all one quick way to get a neg mod is to make the assertion the we're on the slope from creeping socialism to full on Soviet style govt., but anytime someone says,"Heh, I don't really think govt. knows best at this point." The aforemention caricature of libertarianism is brought up. So I guess the question is when did libertarian become a pejorative?
Did I miss the meeting somewhere when it was decided that
You really should learn to separate what should be imposed on others (legality) from how should I live my own life (morality). The opposite of the political liberal is not the "selfish extremist", but rather the person who seeks to apply these principles in their own life without employing force (via legislation) to make everyone else do the same. Liberals are not despised for their "moderation, tolerance or love for [their] community", but rather for their attempts to codify these principles as legal obligations.
Casting your opponent as some ridiculously amoral caricature is an example of the strawman fallacy, and undermines your own side of the debate. Conservatives are not "selfish extremists" -- and liberals at least have good intentions, for the most part, however much I may disagree with their methods.