It isn't just as matter of being "without content". I think they are a deliberate attempt to both (1) derail the thread and (2) pretend that an argument does not need to be answered. It's a form of trolling.

And bear in mind, some of the people engaging in it were also engaging in other forms of trolling, such as pretending not to understand the argument when they understood it perfectly well, etc.

The point is, if I argue "here's the 3 reasons I think we should re-elect Barack Obama", it's not too much to ask that the responses concern either why those reasons or wrong or why there might be other reasons not to re-elect him, rather than a series of questions as to what I really mean by "re-elect" and a charge that any argument that posits reasons to re-elect the President is fallacious. The fallacy whiners are trying NOT to engage.

The parenthetical words are taking something I said and which was central to my claim and pretending that it isn't really a part of my argument.

It's like if I argued "some 'professional atheists' distress me by overstating the arguments against religious belief" and you wrote the sentence as "[some professional] atheists distress me by overstating the arguments against religious belief". The second statement takes the crucial qualifiers and makes them look irrelevant, and therefore leaves a false impression that I am making an argument about all atheists rather than about "some 'professional atheists'".

I'll respond to the rest in a bit, but first I want to push you to clarify (1). So, claims are either true or false, not "reliable." In this context, I would say that reliability would be an attribute of persons (or books). The function of reliability is that we say that a reliable mechanism gives us warrant for accepting a claim as true. So, if a cosmologist tells me something about the stars, and cosmologists use a reliable mechanism to determine this, then I have warrant for accepting her claim as true.

So (1) should say something like "A claim is more likely to be true if made by a reliable person or book." What you want to add is a thesis about what makes a person reliable--that he or she generally makes true claims.

However, I don't think this thesis is accurate. So, for instance, one of my professors in graduate school was a brilliant man with regards to a few relatively specific fields. However, he was also a self-admitted racist. Thus, while I regarded him as very reliable on some subjects, I regarded him as unreliable on others. It seems to me that this is actually much more accurate as a description of how we regard reliability of persons. We generally restrict the reliability of a person to specific areas, and we usually don't view these areas as significantly overlapping other areas. For instance, I suppose that Max Raker is fairly reliable with regards to the current state of the field in physics. However, his reliability with regards to physics doesn't inclines me to think his advice about relationships will be reliable as well.

That being the case, if I regard the reliability of religious people to be with regards to religious matters, then I don't see why their lack of reliability with regards to moral or scientific claims significantly impinges on their reliability on religious matters. Thus, if you want to claim that religious people are unreliable about religious matters, I think you will have to specifically address their reliability about religion, not just show it as part of a general unreliability.

This is an example of the type of argument you put forth:

3 Reasons to Re-Elect Barak Obama

1) He loves his country.
2) He is an incredible rhetorician.
3) He's black.

There is nothing to "disagree with" regarding your claims. They are things that people who are not partisan hacks would believe are generally true (which is actually a bit more than what can be said about your claims, especially with regard to the "truth" of "moral" claims).

However there is plenty of room to disagree with your conclusion even though we agree with your premises. The fallacy in this case is basically that you've presented a non-sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premises or the presentation. There is no argument to rebut.

FWIW - People do argue this sort of way (more towards the negative side, though) and they believe that this is a reasonable "argument", and people do convince other people to vote one way or the other based on this type of "argument", but I repeat the claim that the rules of rational debate are different from other forms of persuasion.

Aaron:

There is no such thing as 'the rules of rational debate'. What matters is whether people are right, and whether their reasons are coherent. But there is no 'rule' that says unless you use the (overrated) techniques of formal logic, you can't be right or your reasons can't be coherent.

OP:

While your racist professor may be correct about some things, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be more skeptical of his arguments, especially to the extent that race is implicated.

Wow.

I believe that the whole of academia would disagree that a formal logical fallacy can be ignored in a rational debate.

And you should really take time to reflect on that second sentence. It really highlights everything that everyone has been trying to tell you. You can only measure "rightness" of a conclusion based on the quality of the argument presented, and the "reasons" that arguments are "coherent" include whether it is a "logical" argument.

Here it is using poker stats (VP$IP/PFR/AF) ...

Player One
70/50/4

Player Two
8/5/1.7

When Player One raises, it is "less likely" that he has what he represents. Like the Bible claims of walking on water, coming back from the dead after 3 days, etc.

When Player Two raises, he actually has a big hand.

Luke 16:10 - "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."

Like OP said, you haven't demonstrated that his unreliability about race issues means he should be considered skeptically on non-race issues.

Flip it around-- if he weren't a racist, you should be less skeptical about what he says regarding non-race related things? What if I write a book that says "2 + 2 = 4; hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe; God exists." Is God more likely to exist because my math is good?

--

But it's not like lawdude is getting at something completely irrational though (despite his initial aversion to logic). Unless I misunderstand, the Bible essentially contains an "everything in this book is correct clause," and demolishing some of the peripheral claims in turn demolishes that clause*.

Of course, this says nothing about how likely the central claims are. But when the "everything in this book is correct" clause can no longer be invoked, perhaps you have to look towards other means of investigation and verification.

If I understand the way lawdude thinks, what he means by "less likely to be true" is the following: if the 'everything in this book is true' clause is correct, theres a 100% chance of everything in the book being true; without it, there enters a nonzero probability that some of the other, central stuff in the book is wrong; 100% vs <=100% means less likely to be true.

It's not a very strong or important claim, but maybe it makes some sense.

*Unless you want to claim that we haven't demolished any of the peripheral claims, like if science were wrong or an illusion. Or if you want to claim that the Bible isn't 100% accurate and the stuff is either intentionally wrong or supposed to be interpreted as metaphor/allegory, but that's a different discussion.

Of course, I missed the part where this forum was a part of academia.

There are reasons why logical fallacies shouldn't show up in published papers. In normal conversation, however, formal logic is a parlor game for idiotic geeks who never learned the difference between college and the real world (or who just don't want to answer arguments on the merits.

This is a relevant point about this issue. All these people who claim that getting some things wrong doesn't have any impact on the truth of other claims must be terrible poker players, given this is a fundamental part of reading poker players.

That seems lawdudes approach.
If the support for a claim depends on "everything in this book is true" then showing that premise wrong kicks out the support.
That does not mean that some claim in the book is false, it's just that there is no basis for believing it simply because it's in the book.

It confuses the issue for no reason to say "well, it's only been wrong about cross-dressing and lipstick" or some such. The premise is dead.

It's the exact same reason that they are logical fallacies.

The "merits" of a fallacious argument?

Wow.

I guess this only goes to demonstrate that what is "rational" is still a function of what is assumed. If you assume that formal logical fallacies are not a problem for a rational argument, you get lawdude.

[/my attempts to reason with lawdude ITT]

I think this entire discussion of logic has been harmful to the point that you are trying to make and I don't know why you continue to pursue it. As you say, it is certainly possible to reason competently and clearly without putting your argument into a formal structure. That doesn't mean that when others try to put your argument into such a structure that they are doing something wrong--they are doing so to better understand what you are saying. Calling them nerds, or geeks, or idiots for doing so just makes you seem ignorant.

My claim is that you are treating "reliability" as too broad a category. So, for instance, when my professor said something about physics, or the history of modern philosophy, or various other topics, I considered him very reliable. When he talked about politics, I considered him unreliable. My point is that my awareness of his false beliefs about race didn't cause me to lower his credibility in other fields.

In the same way, I'm not sure why a person's views on race should cause me to lower (or raise) her credibility on unrelated issues like religion. In other words, I think that you shouldn't be more skeptical of a person's claims just because he is a racist. A more well-known example: Gottlob Frege, who was probably the most important logician of the last couple thousand years, was virulently anti-semitic. Yet no competent philosopher claims that his innovations in logic are somehow less reliable because of his racist views. Anyone who suggested this wouldn't be taken seriously.

That's only because the basis for your trust in his other fields is not based on "Everything I say is true".

Of course, such a clause, if it existed, would be meaningless, because it could also be false. However, lawdude has emphasized that his claim is more holistic--that it includes not just the Bible, but also the other claims of religious figures at different times--who certainly do not claim such a presumption.

You think religious people claim "everything I say is true"? That certainly doesn't seem to be the case.

My trust in his reliability was due to a combination of many factors (including his professional qualifications, my own familiarity with the subject, his character, etc). Here's another way to put it: some of my professors were Christians, and so held many false beliefs about religion. However, this doesn't cause me to judge them less reliable on other non-religious matters. So why would the converse?

Aaron:

You can say "wow" all you want. As I noted above, though, I actually think you are just a big-time liar. After all, you play poker (and claimed to be a winner, at least in the pre-UIGEA days). And poker reads, as VPIP points out, are based on the exact same "false in one respect, false in others" principle that you reject as fallacious.

I really hate arguing with dishonest cretins who say things for effect.

Part of your problem is you are positing examples where the "unreliable" subjects are completely unrelated to the "reliable" ones. But my example is not that. I am not arguing that if the Pope falsely believes that demand-side-stimulus does not work in a recession, that proves anything about his religious claims. I am claiming that people who get RELIGIOUS claims wrong are unreliable about other religious claims.

Why twist the subject?
Claims based on the bible depend on how reliable the bible is. It doesn't matter how good a mechanic a christian is.
X is true because it's in the bible.
Then we find out Y and Z claims in the bible are not true.
So the premise 'being in the bible attests to it's truth' is no longer a useful premise.

No, you are correct, "your transmission has too much oil, I just measured it" may be completely trustworthy even if by the same person that is claiming X is true because it's in the bible.

What are you trying to do going down this weird path?
If he said, "your transmission needs oil because of psalm 27" then you'd be following the ball.

I just wanted to note that I think this is a stronger point. What you are pointing out here is that while science has a relatively clear and visible mechanism for developing and criticizing beliefs about the world, religion doesn't. So that is a legitimate criticism of religion. However, this is a different argument from (2) than that given in your OP. Here you are not relying on an inductive generalization from religious people's unreliability on some matters to their unreliability on other, unrelated, matters.

For various reasons I think this is wrong, but I think it is a bit of a side issue, so hopefully we can avoid going into it. Basically, when you say that "science's" credibility is hurt, I think you are talking about its credibility among the general populace, which is not we are concerned with.
Again, as I pointed out above, this goes both ways. If it is "religion" speaking when Galileo is condemned, it is just as much "religion" speaking when Quakers agitate for the end of slavery. So making a generalization about the overall reliability of religious people from this kind of global claim seems impossible.

Absolutely! And if we want to do a thread about the good things that religion motivates people to do, I have many examples of it. For instance, I've been to a few homeless shelters and soup kitchens in my life, and the vast, vast majority of the volunteers at such places are devoutly religious; the facilities are usually run by religious organizations as well. I have no problem at all ascribing the amazing good works that the Los Angeles Mission on Skid Row does to Christianity.

But you are doing the same thing. In your OP, you used as evidence for your generalization that some religious people's views on scientific issues such as geocentrism, the age of the earth, and the theory of evolution were wrong. You also used as evidence the views of some religious people on moral and social questions such as the role of marriage and gender in society, and the morality of slavery. None of these issues are specifically religious, so why would their being wrong on these issues indicate a general unreliability on religious issues?

How you interpret the phrase "what he represents" depends on a priori notions. The first player's raise represents a wide range of hands, and the second player's raise represents a narrow range of hands. Each one is representing exactly what we have been told to presume he's representing.

When player one raises, it's "less likely" that he has "a strong hand." This is fundamentally different from saying that it is "less likely" that he has "what he represents."

An underlying theme here is the question of prior probabilities, and how one might begin to assess them.

lawdude's argument, as I understand it, is not an argument based on the unreliability of the Bible. Rather, he is generalizing from actual cases of religious people being wrong, such as geocentrism, Galileo, and the Catholic Church, the American South and slavery, and the modern anti-homosexual movement of evangelical Christians to a conclusion that we shouldn't trust Christians more generally on their core religious claims (such as: God exists, we are in need of salvation, etc).

If your mechanic says, your car has too much oil, I just measured it, I'll believe him, even if he adds, you're a sinner and Jesus saves. His false religious beliefs don't really affect my view of his reliability as a mechanic. Similarly, if he were a bad mechanic, I don't see why that should affect my views of his reliability on religious matters.