ruveyn wrote:
Kurgan wrote:
I find mr. Dawkins' fallacies even funnier.
What fallacies. Please enumerate.
ruveyn
Enumerate? I don't think I could list them
all, but I'll see which ones come to mind:
1.
I'm always rightAn example that comes to mind is his argument against the Christian God, found in 'The God Delusion', that God is such an immoral character. As evidence for this, he lists a bunch of negative character traits that can be ascribed to God. (Most of the ascriptions are flawed in themselves - for example, calling God a 'megalomaniac', when a megalomaniac is someone under the delusion of having absolute power, whereas God by definition
actually has absolute power. But the flaw of the description isn't the point here.) What he fails to notice is that he doesn't prove God has bad morals - all he proves is that God's morals disagree with Dawkins'.
It's the same old argument, found back in Ezekiel 18:25,
A) I disagree with God
B) I'm always right
C) Therefore God is wrong
Point B is the point that nobody ever manages to prove. But Dawkins considers point B to be self-evident, so in his mind he has proven C, and therefore that God doesn't exist.
An intelligent person recognises that when trying to make a moral argument against God, there's the possibility that actually it's their
own morals that are wrong, so to use a moral argument against God is actually a lot trickier than just pointing out that you disagree with Him. But Dawkins' never realises this.
2.
Ignoring any contradictory evidenceThere is are various YouTube video showing Richard Dawkins explaining how wrong it is to think the earth is young, because of the evidence that it is old - while never even asking whether there is
also evidence that it is young. Whether either 6000 yrs or 4 billion years are right or wrong, it remains a fallacy to address an issue by pointing out all of the evidence on one side, and never even stopping to address any evidence that has been presented for the other side.
3.
Poisoning the wellObvious really - but Richard Dawkins is one of many professional evolutionists who advises not to consider the claims of creationists on the merits of their evidence or arguments, but simply says (in various language usually stronger than this), "They disagree with me, therefore they're crazy, so don't listen to them."
4.
Argumentum ad hominemHe makes many attacks on religion, and even on God, based on the fact that some people who believed in God did bad things.
5.
Affirming the consequentEvolution causes similarities in DNA and body structure. We observe similarities in DNA and body structure among all living things. Therefore all living things evolved.
(A foundation fallacy for evolutionists everywhere - but Dawkins is as guilty as anyone, and especially guilty of refusing to acknowledge the fallacy involved, and always talking about it as if it were concrete proof that nobody has the right to question.)
6.
Good old-fashioned bluffing about the evidence[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxZ6MrBl9E&playnext=1&list=PL7CD4B8B5FC5FD8D2&feature=results_video[/youtube]
Dawkins here claims that if you take the DNA sequences from any gene from a set of animals and compare them, they will form a perfect family tree. Why does this disagree so much with this website, which claims that some genes show humans to be more similar to cats than we are some other primates?
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/10/te ... 51741.htmlWell, why not go here and look up the evidence for yourself?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/4519Just search "CYTB latin-species-name" (e.g. "CYTB homo sapiens") and on the page that comes up, hover over the red bar partway down, click the double down arrow, and click the GenBank link - this will bring up a page where you can see the DNA data.
Analyse how many differences there are between certain species (preferably either using a quickly-written-program or a spreadsheet, otherwise it'll take you days), and not only will you find that our genes are indeed more similar to cats than to many primates, and NOWHERE NEAR 98% the same as chimps, but that the various fish have more in common with us than the various reptiles - so the evolutionary story really doesn't fit this evidence at all, and Dawkins was bluffing when he said that the data formed 'a perfect family tree', (and he easily could bluff about it because so many people blindly believe whatever he says and wouldn't check it, and so many other scientists would back him up). Was he lying or is he just incompetent? Frankly, both are quite believable. What's equally interesting is that he would tell us not to believe the ID proponents and to dismiss their arguments out of hand, but
they were right about the DNA. Probably the reason he doesn't want people to listen to them is that they know what they're talking about.
(Notice as well how he seizes the chance to poison the well again - the only reason creationists don't accept this is because "they don't listen". It couldn't possibly be because we've looked at the evidence and seen that he's completely wrong, and besides, his argument is another one based on affirming the consequent (mentioned above) anyway!)(Notice also the example here of the
strawman argument - the only alternative to evolution is that 'the designer set out to deceive us'. After all, computers also grow in complexity over time, and there's a family of Windows computers and a family of Mac computers with similarities and differences - obviously they evolved because the only alternative is that their designers set out to deceive us, right? No, that's absurd. There's good reasons why computers, cars, etc. form kinds of families, and creationists would say the reason is the same why living things seem to form a family. But Dawkins doesn't address this possibility, opting instead to attack a strawman and get a big laugh from his crowd of sycophants.)
AspieOtaku wrote:
It is funny when facts over right beliefs like the example of how nervous the creationist got sitting next to richard dawkins.
Yes. It's a great thing - however dumb you are, you can always find somebody dumber than you to argue with. And if you're making a TV show, then you can interview 100 people, and if 80 of them were smarter than you,
you don't need to include them on your show. You can just show the 20 who were dumber than you, and make it seem as if
everybody is dumber than you, and make it seem as if you're the smartest person in the world!
This is what Dawkins does - show selective interviews to make it seem like everybody who disagrees with him is stupid. It's all part of his technique of poisoning the well - he was abused in a church as a child, he has an irrational hatred for religion based on that, so he wants everybody to be atheist and he's willing to invent evidence and use logical fallacies as necessary in order to accomplish that goal. And as part of that, he selects only the stupidest people in his programs to represent all creationists. And you've fallen for it like a blind roofer.
11 Sep 2012, 4:46 pm
