That's the nature of jury instructions, Aaron. You don't need an instruction to tell the jury to believe a witness. The point of the instruction is to tell them that they can disbelieve one under the "false in some respects, false in others" theory.

No, Concerto. You and several others USE the accusation of fallacies to shut down an argument you don't want to answer. That's why accusations of fallacies are banned from my threads. It's possible to answer arguments without whining about fallacies. If YOU, however, are incapable of doing it, that just speaks to deficiencies in your own intellect.

As I note with my jury instruction example, the argument that dishonest people tend to lie about many things is not fallacious. It is an inductive conclusion that arises out of human experience. Indeed, anyone who ACTUALLY claims they do not apply this principle is either extremely gullible or a complete liar.

That's the point here-- you can't trust people who would lie about God telling them that the earth was stationary when they tell you that Jesus was resurrected (or that the scriptures that claim that are reliable and supported by evidence). And even if there is not lying involved, you can't trust people who claim to be divinely inspired when they claim the earth is stationary when they tell you that they are divinely inspired when they claim that Jesus is resurrected. There's a clog in the pipeline somewhere.

This has nothing to do with the fallacy of composition.

In any event, no more discussions of fallacies in this thread. We know, everyone took logic class. The issue is answering the argument, not whining about fallacies.

First of all, yes, if every religion has made these big-time mistakes, I get to generalize about them. If you could show me a religion that has never made a significant errant teaching, this objection could have some merit.

Second, I don't think you are engaging with how bad the problem is here. For instance, as I said, you have the example of RIGHT NOW, the leader of the world's Catholics asserting that a married woman in Africa whose husband contracts HIV can neither obtain a divorce nor insist on a condom, her only choice being to refuse sex, leave the marriage but not divorce, and never have sex again unless her husband dies.

That's simply wrong. There's no doubt about it. And the Pope claims that God's laws regarding sexuality demand this completely unjust, false result.

Now, that same Church claims, more centrally, that this man is the Vicar of Jesus on earth and is the successor of Peter and designee of God on spiritual matters.

It's simply nonsensical to claim that getting this peripheral, but important, issue of sexual morality so wrong doesn't have any relationship at all to the truth value of the claim that this man is God's mouthpiece on earth.

You're mistaken. I want to address actual arguments because I enjoy the sight of them spiraling down and crashing. Consequently, it bothers me when someone like you starts threads with flightless wonders.

If you don't want to respond and fix the situation when people expose the fundamental fallacies in your OPs, that's your prerogative. However, be advised that obstinate silence under those conditions reveals plenty.

• The earth (and the universe) are not a few thousand years old.
  
• Humans were not created separately from other animals.
  
• It is not possible to create wine from water.
  
• People who have been dead for three fukn days, do not come back to life. They decompose.

Therefore, other fanciful claims contained in the same collection of letters and fables are less likely to be true.

You don't seem to understand my point. Being allowed to "disbelieve" has no stronger bearing than being allowed to "believe." It's up to the person to decide whether to believe or disbelieve based on any number of unspecified reasons. That you *CAN* disbelieve does not imply that you should or anything like that.

And this speaks nothing to the "validity" of disbelieving. That is, even if someone has told the truth 100% of the time up to this moment, you have can disbelieve the next sentence out of their mouth. (Edit: Under this jury instruction, it does not appear that you are allowed to disbelieve a part of a testimony UNLESS you have reason to disbelieve another part of the testimony. Or is there another instruction that allows you to disbelieve something just because you don't believe it? And if that's the case, why not just point to that?)

I don't think anyone has ever presented a position that you *CANNOT* disbelieve information being presented.

Way too much generalizing and false categorizing in the OP, making it laced with fallacies from beginning to end. /Thread

Just as a suggestion, perhaps we should avoid the word "fallacy" and simply use the word "error." I think lawdude is too hung up on that word to actually address the concerns being laid out in front of him. I don't think he has yet distinguished between formal and informal logical fallacies.

I don't think you understand: a) the point of a fallacy, b) how they work, and c) that this is one.

Still, I'll try one more time. "Some of the things religion X says are [likely to be] false, therefore all of the things it says are [likely to be] false." That's what you're saying, and that's all there is to it. It's nothing so complex requiring a (lol) ban on fallacies.


You have to show this...

...before you can do this.

What's significantly errant? If you're going to be dipping into the realm of the subjective, then there's absolutely no point continuing the discussion. It will just reduce to feelings and opinions on certain beliefs and rules.

Also, I don't need to show that every single religion has made absolutely no error of any sort JUST so that you don't have a license to pick one thing and generalize to every one.

And no you're not being rational when you're invoking the generic umbrella of induction. The powers of induction don't give you free reign to forego all other reasoning.

Well, it's official now: the thread is an opinion post. Make life easier for everyone and don't try to stake a claim for an argument based on your opinion mixed with poor reasoning. Again and again, you're being shown that it doesn't work this way. You're refusing to get off your horse that's running straight into a wall.

As a general rule, juries are allowed to disbelieve whatever they want. However, juries are not supposed to take into account purely personal feelings-- to use a rather offensive, but illustrative example, a guy who thinks that all Jews are liars doesn't belong on a jury. The purpose of the instruction is to remind jurors that despite the fact that you aren't supposed to disbelieve a witness for purely personal reasons, if you think he's lying about some aspects of his testimony, you are entitled to refuse to credit any of it.

And according to several people in this thread, that's a "fallacy".

Just to be clear, the problem isn't my "failure" to distinguish among fallacies. I was a college debater who competed on the highest levels, and am now an experienced trial litigator-- I know all about fallacies, both formal and informal.

The problem is that people want to accuse me of using fallacies RATHER than answer the argument, because, as Concerto so eloquently said, if he can claim there's a fallacy, the argument becomes a nonstarter and he doesn't have to answer it.

So the point of accusing me of fallacies is to stop the argument rather than engaging in it. Since I want people to engage the argument, I think the people who want to whine about fallacies need to find another thread.

I don't want to do this, because I'm sick of the fallacies, but the words you are putting in parenthetical in that sentence are actually extremely important to the point that there is no fallacy here.

The fallacy of composition is "some Ford Focuses are black, Sally owns a Ford Focus, therefore it is black".

However, if you say "75 percent of all Ford Focuses sold in America are black, Sally just purchased a Focus, thus, knowing nothing more about Sally's car, based on that information, it is 75 percent likely that the car is black" this is NOT the fallacy of composition.

Thus, the words you put in brackets, "likely to be", are hugely important. In inductive reasoning, you argue that because facts A, B, and C are all true, D is more likely to be true than it otherwise would be. And since there is no syllogism there, there is no fallacy of composition. The argument could be wrong for all sorts of reasons, but it is not fallacious.

As I said, though, this isn't the problem with the fallacy whining. The problem is, as Concerto eloquently admitted, that the point of whining about fallacies is to avoid answering the argument.

You know, arguing that Stalin's purges were wrong would be an opinion post. But unless someone comes forward to say that Stalin's purges were actually RIGHT, it's not really contestable ground.

The Pope's solution for African women whose husbands are HIV positive is about as justifiable as Stalin's purges. If you want to argue it, be my guest.

(Oh, and by the way-- the post was labeled "View". I think it was established from the get-go that this was an opinion post.)

Your OP is long and not super clear, so let see if I can simplify it and then you can tell me whether I got the gist of it correct.

1) A person or book should only be accepted as authoritative if it is reliable in making true claims.
2) Religious figures (and texts) are not reliable in making true claims.
3) Therefore, religious figures (and texts) should not be accepted as authoritative.
4) The only reason to accept religious claims is the authority of religious figures and texts.
5) Therefore, we should not accept religious claims.

Assuming this is correct, the controversial premises are (2) and (4). Your main support for (2) is to point to a long history of religious figures and texts of making false claims and you seem to take (4) as a given.

So here is one objection to your support for (2). It is true that, for example, some people in the American South used religion to support racism and slavery. However, many of those same people used "science" to support racism and slavery as well. Do we regard this as a lessening the reliability of science? Not really. And that is because we think that what they were doing was either an abuse of science, or more accurately, not science at all. Rather, they were using science as a rationalization for their own racist biases and to support the social and economic structure of their society. But this seems to be exactly the same thing going on with religion. It is not the religion that is driving these beliefs, rather religion is being used as a rationalization for these kinds of beliefs (some people think that this is all that religion is, in which case your point also ends up being incorrect).

In other words, in order for your point to be meaningful, you have to tell us how you are distinguishing between things said by religious people, or falsely claimed to be religious, and actual religious claims (in the same way that we can with regards to science or history). "Religion" is not responsible for everything said by religious people.

The real problem, as I see it, is that your argument is clear as mud. What qualifies in the realm of trial litigation, and what qualifies under college debate standards, are not things that qualify under the standards of rational debate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT8t4liEHwU

Maybe this will rub you the wrong way, but from everything that I've seen and read, I believe it to be true.

Edit: I guess knowing that you were a college "debater" is also highly indicative of the style of "argumentation" that you have been assuming is valid. Spreading in an untimed debate is not a useful tactic. We have all day long to break down your argument and demonstrate point after point after point is problematic. You can't persuade by pure volume of noise.

OP:

That's a good job, but it's actually not quite my argument. Let's try it this way:

1. Persons or books are much more likely to be correct in the claims they make if their claims are generally reliable.
2. Religious figures and texts are not reliable in making true claims.
3. Therefore, religious figures and texts are less likely to be correct with respect to other claims that they make that we cannot immediately verify.
4. One reason people claim to accept religious claims is that they believe they are reliable and authoritative.
5. Therefore, if that-- rather than simple faith-- is your claimed reason for accepting religious claims, that is not a persuasive reason to do so and in fact is a reason to reject religious claims.

As for your objection to (2)-- I have a couple of responses. First, science has had a process in which it instituted procedures to prevent some of the errors that led to, e.g., eugenics from reoccurring. Indeed, this is part of the scientific method, and not just with respect to eugenics. We have more accurate presidential polling because the errors that led to the Literary Digest poll have been removed from the process and replaced with better methodologies. Science is thus a progressive system, where better methods replace weaker methods and continued observation allow us to improve the accuracy of results. None of this is done by religions. Second, I would argue that science actually DOES take a hit to its credibility when dubious things come out. Presidential polls were discredited for awhile after Literary Digest. The recent scandals involving climate science have hurt the credibility of theories about global warming. And yes, many people are very skeptical of various types of scientific procedures due to past abuses not only involving eugenics but also such things as human experimentation. So science has actually taken the hit that I am arguing that religion should take.

As for "religion is not responsible for everything said by religious people", again, I think that's answered above. When someone's placed under house arrest for heresy at the urging of religious authorities, it's fair to assign the responsibility to the religion and not simply religious people for what happened. When the leader of a religion teaches incorrect teachings (e.g., the Pope, the President of the Quorum of the Twelve), that's not just one religious guy speaking, that's the religion speaking. And when sacred religious texts say things that are wrong (such as the age of the earth and the creation story in the Old Testament), it's fair to ascribe those teachings to the religions who espouse the texts.

I am not going to defend the debate spread, but I am also not using it. Debaters who are spreading don't actually make arguments at all, they just try to get as many subpoints onto the flow sheet that they can later claim are arguments. (Imagine the following "argument", uttered at 200 words per minute-- "as for the topicality argument, 1 we meet, 2 our definition's better, 3 operational definition, 4 topicality not a voting issue, 5 is can mean future, 6 topicality abuse, 7 webster's definition more recent, 8 field definition". That's a spread. I have explained every point I have made-- I am not spreading.)

So in a very real way, these instructions are basically extraneous because it basically instructs people to do the things they would do on their own.

It is still a fallacy to do so because it simply gives anyone the freedom to reject any statement for any reason at all. In particular, I could reject that your conclusion has anything to do with the information you presented, and you have essentially no rebuttal. I don't believe that you've made the connection, so I reject it.

(By the way, I hope it's plain to you that thinking of a debate/discussion like a jury is a tenuous connection at best.)

I would say this aptly describes the contents of your posts.

Again, compare my posts (with their explanations and argument) to the text example of a debate spread I gave you.

I feel like Lloyd Bentsen debating Dan Quayle (although the difference is that Quayle happens to be smarter than you): I've heard debate spreads, I've delivered debate spreads, I've used debate spreads to win rounds, and this, Aaron, is not a debate spread.

The point is, we instruct juries routinely, in every single case, to do something that you consider to be fallacious. That might suggest to you that out in the real world, as opposed to the fantasy world that believers defending their beliefs live in, the principle I am arguing is one that is useful and yields reliable results, which in turn suggests that either (1) it is not "fallacious" or that (2) constantly whining about logical fallacies is not a technique that leads one closer to the truth.

Don't get hung up on the actual debate spread. I'm talking about structures here.

Compare your most recent post:

with your OP. Your OP lacks the coherence that you at attempt to convey here (and this is true of your other thread as well). Here you have 5 pithy statements which are strung together to form an argument. This is nothing at all like your OP. All you did in your OP was present a bunch of claims (many of which can be viewed as questionable), and then tried to draw some sort of conclusion from it.

As a bit of advice for the future, use the numbering system in your arguments. It really helps to condense what you're saying into a collection of meaningful statements, rather than a big mess of words that don't seem to say anything in particular. Believe me when I say that it's not a religious/non-religious thing. Your OP is really not that coherent.

Don't ever attempt to read anything written by a professional philosopher. Your head will literally explode. As I said before, the rules of rational debate are not the same as the rules of college debate or courtrooms (or the court of public opinion).

Edit: Do you really think that convincing a jury of the truth of a statement is the same thing as a "reliable result"?

This is not the "fallacy of composition." The fallacy of composition is when you infer from the attributes of the parts to the attributes of the whole, e.g. all the parts of a machine are light, therefore the machine is light.

Many fallacies, including that of composition, are characteristic of inductive as well as deductive (syllogistic) reasoning. So pointing out that your argument is inductive doesn't mean that it cannot be fallacious.
Uh-huh. In your last thread, I posted a long and substantive response to your argument, and the only part to which you responded was the part where I first noted the importance of logic in evaluating arguments and then claimed that Concerto was wrong in accusing you of affirming the consequent. If you regard these responses as without content, demonstrate that and then move on. And, to head it off, claiming that logic isn't relevant to pointing out errors in reasoning isn't such a demonstration.

The parenthetical words indicate that even w/o them, what you said is still erroneous.

In any case it's clear you don't get it, and don't respond well to reasoning. No matter, these things get better over time.