Logic Fallacies

[seanrobertson]

Complex questions are a favorite of many people; e.g.,

"Do you still beat your wife?"

Either way you answer, you're an asshole.

Or "He worships his Jeri Ryan poster every day, doesn't he?"

"No, he doesn't" is insufficient; they could then crash on you worshipping the poster every other day or the like (note the italics above).

If you say, "Yes, he does," well...you get the idea.

The golden mean is interesting. Many do this without even thinking about it. In the versus community it typically takes the form of something like this:

"The White Star's lower-limit firepower is 5W, and its upper-limit is 12,500 TW. Therefore, to know its true firepower, look somewhere in between."

While somewhere "in between" IS probably closer to the truth, that is not a valid way to arrive at a figure (see bottom for some difference between truth and validity).

Be sure that, anytime you encounter a person who wants to use such a method in a semi-formal debate, you either do not allow it or you are quick to whip it out when the debate gets to the stage of questioning each others' ability to reason. You have a big, fat example to throw in his/her face.

Hmm...let's see...what to say...

Abusive ad hominems are pretty common, but some mistakenly believe it's any insult, which is wrong. It's only fallacious if it's an insult without a logical argument. E.g.,

"It is raining outside.
Rain is wet.
Therefore, it is wet outside, ASSHOLE!" is not an ad hominem attack.

A true ad hominem:

"Michael Jackson said he did not have more than two facial surgeries.
But Jackson is one weird motherfucker.
Therefore, he must be lying...I bet he had three or more surgeries."


Less common is the Tu Quoque variant of the ad hominem. It literally means "you too":

"You drink five gallons of whiskey a day, dad, so it's okay for me to do that too."

I considered using a form similar to this about a half hour ago. In an argument with some Cowboy Bebop fans, it was suggested that I should watch more of the show before forming an opinion (w/ which I partly agree, but not totally).

I was about to retort, knowing that the following (stated as such) was fallacious: "Well, you guys probably bash 'Enterprise' and you don't intend to watch one more episode, ever, let alone all of them; therefore, I can do the same thing with Cowboy!"

Well, I could, but it would be illogical. Bad bad. Zathras no like bad.

Instead, I simply used the ENT thing as an analogy, to illustrate that forming a dislike for a character (for instance) doesn't require me to watch all aired episodes of CB; such is as sure a false dilemma as it would be to tell someone they must watch all ENT episodes before they can form a dislike for Hoshi worth airing in an online community. (I didn't put quite that fine a point on it at the time because I was a bit mad and tired at that very moment, however. One should not post when angry or tired! . But I did. I'm a peckerhead. I don't care so long as no one else kno...oops.)

Other popular fallacies...hmm...I would qualify "appeal to authority" as an illicit appeal to authority (or illicit authority), for you can make a perfectly valid argument based on someone else's "authority" as such. Almost all valid arguments depend on this to a certain extent, even if it's at a Cartesian level.

For instance, an appeal to illicit authority would read:

George Bush says pollution causes cancer.
Cancer is bad for us.
Therefore, pollution is bad for us too.

That'd be ok if you weren't asking an unqualified "expert" like George Bush what he thought about cancer; but he's the U.S. President, which does not require expertise on diseases or pollution!

But if you said C. Everett Koop says something causes cancer, he ought to know. You'd have to get that information from somewhere, though you raise red flags when you take pains to mention the source in the simpler syllogistic forms. If you are arguing with someone that is vaguely familiar of the fallacies, leave off the actual "appeal" itself, no matter the source. Some neophyte idiot will probably try to divert the issue by incorrectly dismissing your argument as "authority appeal." And to crank out a slippery slope of my own, chances are good that they'll go on to start attacking that source's person; e.g, "Mike Wong can be mean, wanh!, so he doesn't know what he's saying!" or "Mike Wong is biased so he is wrong!" One fallacy begets another sometimes

And how about false cause?

"I was about to hit myself on the head with a hammer.
I suddenly dropped dead.
Therefore, even preparing to hit yourself will kill you."

The most relevant popular example false cause in vs. debates is the whole bit of fighters shooting a dome on Executor, which people then take to mean, "Oh, those are SHIELD DOMES! The fighters shot them, and that caused the shields to drop!"

Appeal to the stick? This sort of chest-beating is somewhat rare, and often confused with posturing, but it's when the threat itself takes the form of an argument that you run into trouble, like:

"I can kick your ass. What you say, therefore, is wrong."

Also, as others have pointed out, false dilemmas (often taking the form of the false dichotomy) and straw men are completely different things.

A false dichotomy, for instance, is a fake either/or scenario thrust upon you, wherein you must choose between two things; a straw man is when you distort someone else's argument, attack the distortion, then claim to have whipped their original positon. It is often confused with the red herring, but simply think of it this way: red herrings change the subject, while straw men twist your words or put words in your mouth.

If, for example, you said something like, "That guy is not smart," a straw man would begin by claiming you said, "That guy is retarded," and a red herring would discuss some irrelevance about, oh, say, intelligence or unsmart people's breeding habits, perhaps.

Bandwagon appeal, similar to the appeal to authority (only this time, you're talking about more than one person; you're talking about a huge group of people), is rarely seen in a respectable discussion forum, but it's still prone to pop up from time to time:

"90% of people think dietary fat makes you fat.
Therefore, dietary fat does make you fat."

Or more pertinent to these parts, something we've all heard before:

"Most Star Trek fans think ST technology is more advanced than stuff we see in Star Wars.
Therefore, it must be true."

One anyone could relate to:

"Much of Europe at one time thought the world was flat.
Therefore, at that time, the world was flat."

In general, if you want to argue successfully...do NOT run with what's simply "popular belief"! The masses can be startlingly simple-minded.

Let's see...Ooo! The context-dropping fallacy, sort of a few other fallacies crammed into one:

"In Star Wars, fighters are useless against capships.
Star Trek has capships also.
Therefore, fighters would be useless against Star Trek capships too."

I love talking about fallacies; I fell in love with logic in the early spring of 1997, even some of the worthless symbolic shit So I better stop now.

But first--Tom, you said:

See, my impression -- using example 1 -- is the following statement:

Everyone who understands Plato likes Plato. You do not like Plato; therefore, you do not understand Plato.

Which would, then, be an example of "A, therefore B." I think. I try never to be too sure of myself in these things.

It's actually a number of fallacies rolled into one, depending on how you look at it, but you have to try to look at the argument in its entirety...don't get bogged down looking at the false dichotomy of "either you understand Plato and are smart, or you don't understand because you're dumb" just yet, as that is only a single premise. You want to speak to the validity or invalidity of the entire argument w/ which you're faced...

So if I was to give one fallacy top-billing here, I'd give it to begging the question, because the premise--if you understand Plato, you like Plato--is the same as the conclusion; it's simply worded differently.

You might say that if we isolated the argument's premises to look for fallacies, we'd be going about a hasty generalization in that we didn't look at the whole argument But that's okay, really...as stand-alone statements, a lot of that "people like Plato" crap are terribly stupid. But keep in mind what Mike said:

Stating facts, even if those facts are false, is not fallacious. It may be incorrect, it may even be dishonest, but a logical fallacy invariably requires a proposition of the general form "A therefore B" in which A does not actually lead to B.

Put another way, do not treat invalid and "untrue" as synonymous. I oftentimes slip up and do this because the distinction isn't firmly reinforced in our everyday language...for that matter, most things are not beyond linguistic routines ("Hey, how are you?" "Fine," etc.).

When we say, "Ah, that's just not valid," we register: "INVALID, BULLSHIT, FALSE, UNTRUE." But invalid arguments can certainly have very truthful premises, like the one above about pollution being bad for us; how you use that to draw a conclusion, however--that process you follow to come to some determination--is where the fallacies might come into play.

Someday, just for fun, I intend to compile the best fallacies I can find into one big document. Lord Wong has already done this successfully here, but I think I might do it with a Babylon 5 twist to submit to Babtech. Especially a couple of years ago, listening to some Babylon 5 fans' arguments was at least as thorough a study in fallacious reasoning as listening to the most infamous vs. community Trekkies.

But I swear, the very best place to hear fallacies is from my barber. He is a dear man, if I can say that without sounding gay, and I've known him for 18 years or so--great guy. I'd give him the shirt off my back.

But damn, he is flat-out dumb sometimes. I can think of no other, more delicate way to euphemize that. He is a born-again Christian who believes in all kinds of conspiracy theories that his preacher (or someone at his church) tells him, like shit about "the New World Order" led by Satan, George Bush Sr., and a bunch of other junk.

Anyway, if the subject of war comes up, he is quick to talk about Muslims, specifically how "...their God didn't rise from the dead!"

I take it he means something like this:

"A religion in which your God takes a flesh form, dies, then is resurrected is superior to a religion with a god that doesn't take flesh, etc.

Christianity has such a God. Islam does not. Therefore, Christianity is superior to Islam."

Well, DUH, Wayne: Mohammed never claimed to be Allah, so why is it unremarkable that Mohammed--a prophet of pure heart, says the Qu'ran--doesn't rise up from the grave? Massive context-dropping, among other things...it actually becomes such a bad comparison that it makes my eyes cross!

And I must confess, I get frustrated by the man's hasty generalizations. For instance, I am a bodybuilder. I train very heavy, balls to the wall, but my workouts are brief (valid dichotomy here: you can either work as hard as possible whilst still maintaining a certain level of productivity, or can work for long periods, but not both). When people ask me, "How many sets do you do of presses and curls?" they are dumbfounded when I say, "One hard set of all the exercises I do."

So my barber asks me how my training is going. I tell him, great, I'm training twice a week at the moment (as I was at that point; I'm training 3x/wk. at the moment but with lower volume of work/workout, for those interested ).

Suddenly, he blurts, "Just enough to maintain, huh?!" I crinkled my nose. "What? Maintain? No. I want to be bigger than a house," I said. "Why would I train to just be maintaining?"

He, of course, was operating under the assumption that to get really big, you must train every day of the week for hours on end; and that, consequently, anyone who did far less than this wasn't out to get bigger. It took ages to explain to him that less work is in most cases MORE desirable; that you shouldn't apply the same kinds of rules you would to further aerobic training to anaerobic training.

I bet barbershops everywhere are just teeming with fallacious bacteria.

[seanrobertson]

Here's another popular one. It's just a kind of false dilemma, but I see it so often that I think it deserves its own little tag:

"You do not go to church regularly, so you do not know anything about what the church stands for."

I call it the Empirical dilemma.

It comes in many forms. For instance, one could say,

"You have not watched all of Star Trek: Voyager, so you cannot claim that it sucks."

Another funny one I often see is something I posted about here once before, months or more ago. I call it "The Good Old Times Fallacy."

Basically, it is just massive context-dropping. You often hear old people talk about how great the Cold War era was in every way: you could drive fast on the highway, women were prettier, movies were a big event, enemies of the West, like the Soviets, were clear-cut bad guys, people could eat more food and not get fat, their penises were eight feet long back then--whatever. All bullshit in how the argument is set up.

My barber is again a great source for these things. He thinks it would have been better to live in "the olden days," as he says. He thinks people thousands of years BC lived for hundreds of years, a'la Methuselah, because of a, I kid you not, "more oxygenated atmosphere."

I skipped on the ridiculousness of all that and just told him life expectancies of "non-superbeings" in Biblical times were lucky to live long enough to have a few kids, that most could not read or write, and almost all lived their short-assed lives under some kind of dictator. He didn't have much of a response.

In fact, he literally said, "........"

Poor guy. As I said he is a great man, a stand-up person in every respect...but sometimes I just want to sit him down and re-educate him. And I'm only 25!!!!!

But there's not much you can really do. You listen to his funny reasoning, his queries about whether or not George Bush is a "war mongrel" (whatever that is), smile and try to push him in the right direction when it will not hurt his feelings too badly.

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

I have only faced the Complex Question fallacy once in recent memory; at Ziggy's, as my beer was set in front of me, a particularly jovial jock leaned out of a game of pool, and asked, "Hey, if you went camping with your friends and woke up in the middle of the night with a dick in yer mouth, would'ja tell anybody?"

I thought for a minute, looked over at him, and admitted, "Geez, man, I don't know... how did you handle it?"

[seanrobertson]

I have only faced the Complex Question fallacy once in recent memory; at Ziggy's, as my beer was set in front of me, a particularly jovial jock leaned out of a game of pool, and asked, "Hey, if you went camping with your friends and woke up in the middle of the night with a dick in yer mouth, would'ja tell anybody?"

I thought for a minute, looked over at him, and admitted, "Geez, man, I don't know... how did you handle it?"

LOL. Excellent!

That's what you do to someone posing a complex question: red herring their ass

I remember those sorts of juvenile things from high school. Boy, I really miss that Of course, it was my bloody friends throwing that stuff out; all of the jocks were afraid of me, thinking I was a big juicer (looking back, I cannot really see why though).

High schools are another breeding ground for fallacies...I suppose any school is, but at least at a university, such things will occassionally be shot down (they were in my philo. courses, anyway...the literature courses, which constituted my major, were often exploding with students' bullshit arguments).

Going off on another but related bit of a rant here: I have long thought that logic, or some kind of basic, rational argumentation course, should be mandatory for high school students. (Let's face it, most people don't have college educations, so the only place they're going to get this information would be high school.)

They don't need to piss about with the tildes and side-ways horseshoes; that stuff can be fun, but those kids need to understand the power of principles, of proper methodology in thinking...that's something they can get a better understanding of in proper debating.

I don't mean they should simply have a "debate" class, those things often associated with "nerds" that merit loud speaking, sarcasm, sophistry/trickery, and out and out dishonesty. (Those things remind me more of a "discussion" Bill Maher allows to run completely out of control on about every talk show he's ever done.)

Instead, just hammer the fallacies into these kids' heads...by showing them what to avoid, they'd at least be steered in a better direction. It's funny, but people do not recognize the value of simple, logical argumentation...teachers, for instance, often wish to have kids stand up in front of a class to "get them used to public speaking," thinking that's a potential asset in the kid's future. (It probably would be.) But what about the ability to recognize when someone is telling you something STUPID?

Lives could depend on that shit, for God's sake. "Col. Saunders said, don't worry about them Iraqis comin' over that there hill!"

"What? Private Pile, you stupid bastard! Col. Saunders is the fried chicken guy! He's no kind of authority!"

BAM, Pile's appeal to authority winds up hurting some guys in his unit.

That might sound waaaaay over the top, but I'm mostly serious...I have run into people who DID reason on about that kind of level.

In some of the gyms @ which I've trained, bodybuilders are quick to eschew logic in lieu of simply more and more effort. I myself train with a very low volume, but high intensity, quantity of work. I've tried to explain the merits of such training to guys who have not gotten bigger in years, but they just blindly follow the "more is always better" principle--though they don't of course follow that to its ultimate conclusion, and train all day every day!--and the gambler's fallacy, thinking that one day they'll magically be huge.

That's hard for non-weight trainers to relate to, maybe. Here's a better example:

Once, a guy ran a stop sign right in front of me as I was about to drive into his path (after a full stop natch). He came out of nowhere, and must have been going at least 35 through the intersection.

Well, he almost hit me; we missed by all of 6' since I was paying attention. So, still kind of shocked, I blew the hell out of my horn and gave him the finger. I started to speed up and follow him to get his tag number, so he slammed on his brakes and got out of his car.

"Hey, buddy, what's your problem?" he shouted.

I told him, "You DUMB F**K! You almost HIT ME! You didn't even SLOW DOWN!"

His retort: "It's a free country!"

It's a free country...this guy runs around, all over whatever percentage of creation this shithole town compromises, and THAT passes as "reasoning"? It's possible that collision would've killed me. And this retard thinks it's okay to do that; it is, after all, a free country!

I don't care if he was mad or not. That is just pure, unadulterated stupidity plus incredible ignorance. There are many like him bebopping around out there. Other than a real good ass-whipping, I think learning how to think might help that kind of knuckle-dragger make the best out of what little brains they have.

I like to think I'm forgiving, but damn. When people are thinking so damn badly that it can cost your life driving down the fucking street, we have problems!

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

I don't believe courses in logical thought would find favor with the majority of educational institutions beneath the graduate college level. This perception is, of course, based on a paucity of real evidence, but I believe that there is a political bias in our educational institutions which would be damaged or even crippled if these institutions were to provide students with the armament of logic and clear thinking.

[Stormbringer]

Crayz9000 Explains Occam's Razor

[seanrobertson]

Crayz9000 Explains Occam's Razor

Good list. Off the top of my head, amphiboly is the only one I didn't see!

[Darth Wong]

I don't believe courses in logical thought would find favor with the majority of educational institutions beneath the graduate college level. This perception is, of course, based on a paucity of real evidence, but I believe that there is a political bias in our educational institutions which would be damaged or even crippled if these institutions were to provide students with the armament of logic and clear thinking.

The only teachers who would wholeheartedly benefit from logical and objective students would be math and science teachers. Every other course tends to rely on varying degrees of fallacious thought and subjectivity. So the faculty demographics (in which most teachers are NOT math and science teachers) works against the idea of introducing formal logic.

Take a look at Shakespeare, for example. Most of the countless subtle themes and nuances Shakespeare supposedly hid in the stories and identified by literary scholars are totally unnecesary theories; they COULD be true but they don't need to be. Therefore, they're an irrational waste of time. But could we point that out to a literary scholar? No sirree!

[seanrobertson]

I don't believe courses in logical thought would find favor with the majority of educational institutions beneath the graduate college level. This perception is, of course, based on a paucity of real evidence, but I believe that there is a political bias in our educational institutions which would be damaged or even crippled if these institutions were to provide students with the armament of logic and clear thinking.

The only teachers who would wholeheartedly benefit from logical and objective students would be math and science teachers. Every other course tends to rely on varying degrees of fallacious thought and subjectivity. So the faculty demographics (in which most teachers are NOT math and science teachers) works against the idea of introducing formal logic.

Take a look at Shakespeare, for example. Most of the countless subtle themes and nuances Shakespeare supposedly hid in the stories and identified by literary scholars are totally unnecesary theories; they COULD be true but they don't need to be. Therefore, they're an irrational waste of time. But could we point that out to a literary scholar? No sirree!

I was actually thinking more in terms of the students' benefits, not the teachers (even though there is a causal relationship between the two: proper-thinking students should make instruction easier for a teacher that gives a damn/puts forth an effort).

It's also true that most students of the arts rely heavily upon subjective analyses in their given fields...when I was getting out of that first year introductory crap for my English degree, I was astonished at what passed as...well, "acceptable," you could say, in the higher level classes.

Some methods of analysis, like the New Criticism/Formalist approach, are okay, in that only the text itself is interpreted; others, like "Reader Response," was wholly subjective..."I feel this after reading this passage, I feel that after..."

IOW, it was a bunch of bullshit. If I was not a good writer and decent textual interpreter, I never would've stuck with that garbage.

But logic was still worthwhile for me, since I understood something of making a strong argument. Had some of my classmates been introduced to the same, whether in high school or not, their own analysis would've been far better.

As it was, 95% of the class just couldn't make a convincing argument in their papers. (On top of that, they wrote badly.) And I'm thinking more of "convincing" vis-a-vis a strong argument, not just eloquent rhetoric.

Most of them were prone to basing an entire paper in a clear-cut instance of a weak induction fallacy...you'd see lots of false dichotomies, terrible straw men (through terrible misrepresentation of their quotes), weak analogies...you name it. And in class...*groan*. More ad hominems than you could shake a stick at: "Thomas Jefferson had slaves. People with slaves are assholes. Therefore, we should ignore everything he wrote and for which he argued."

Thinking about all that makes my stomach turn a little. It's no wonder I said, ok, fine, fuck the Masters degree.

The way I see it, the hard sciences, at least, and math require and reinforce clear thinking, so those high school students who've taken all the calculus, biology and so on should be a step up from those who focus more on psych, literature, and history. (I still think there's benefit to a more direct approach, though, in reminding people that rational thought is something we don't just drop like a baseball when we're no longer playing catch. For instance, I knew a true genius in high school, a guy who's already an M.D. at 24, that was prone to drop rational thinking outside of "serious" academia...he geniunely thought "fat turned into muscle," so to build a more muscular body, you "had to get fat first." Of course, lots of doctors treat exercise as if it's mystical.)

As such, I see even more reason to hammer the arts bunch with logic and argumentation, not simply that they might be more efficient in their own studies--it will help them if only to understand what they're doing IS subjective--but such that they can be better thinkers outside of school.

More importantly, most everyone will eventually have a significant other, and most assuredly, they'll argue. As in, Mortal Kombat fight!

To me, that's the very best reason to know something of logic, because it gives you an advantage You'll be able to identify when they're tossing out fallacies left and right, even if pointing that out to them would just make things worse

[Baron Scarpia]

The only teachers who would wholeheartedly benefit from logical and objective students would be math and science teachers. Every other course tends to rely on varying degrees of fallacious thought and subjectivity. So the faculty demographics (in which most teachers are NOT math and science teachers) works against the idea of introducing formal logic.

Well, I'd also add music theory, which is based on rigorous method and logic, at least as far as tonality is concerned.

[Metatwaddle]

The only teachers who would wholeheartedly benefit from logical and objective students would be math and science teachers. Every other course tends to rely on varying degrees of fallacious thought and subjectivity. So the faculty demographics (in which most teachers are NOT math and science teachers) works against the idea of introducing formal logic.

Well, I'd also add music theory, which is based on rigorous method and logic, at least as far as tonality is concerned.

Thank you. I was just about to say that. Music theory isn't as entrenched in logic as, say, physics is, but it still requires a lot of concrete thought. Abstract thinking only comes in when you try to "interpret" music, which is generally only done by advanced students whose teachers help them along the way. But although it's abstract thinking, I love it anyway I'm a convert to Baron Scarpia's religion.

Back on topic, anyway. I, for one, would love to take logic classes, but I doubt they'd be too popular. I could see a lot of putdowns happening by the logical ones, and students to whom logic does not come easily could get rather frustrated and most likely hate the class. They'd probably see it as the science and math geeks acting superior and smart again. As far as I am concerned, the only people who would actually try to learn logic and get absorbed in the class, would be the future scientists and mathematicians for whom logic comes naturally anyway. Although I guess we could probably find a way to formulate a course that's universally (almost) acceptable, a course for which logical arguing in class is not a very big part of the grade. It would be hard, though, not to mention the difficulty in finding room in every student's schedule.

[Lord MJ]

2. Ad hominem(against the man) Fallacy: This is where you direct the argument directly against the opponent. "You are A mother F*cking faggot whose IQ is less then a canine crossbred with pubic lice."

This is incorrect, an Ad Hominem fallacy entails saying someone's argument is wrong becasue of a fact about the person.


"You are A mother F*cking faggot whose IQ is less then a canine crossbred with pubic lice, therefore your arguments are wrong" Would be an Ad Hominem fallacy.

"You are A mother F*cking faggot whose IQ is less then a canine crossbred with pubic lice" is rude and vulgar, but does not constitute an ad hominem fallacy, it constitutes being a jerk.

[Rogue 9]

Hmm. I notice a big one missing from the list. Namely, guilt by association. One that's rather common around here, I might add. Especially with regards to holding all Christians responsible for the Crusades, though that's just one example.

[Rye]

Hmm. I notice a big one missing from the list. Namely, guilt by association. One that's rather common around here, I might add. Especially with regards to holding all Christians responsible for the Crusades, though that's just one example.

I think that's in reference to either the christian church comitting atrocities, alternatively that christians can and have committed atrocities.

[InnerBrat]

Hmm. I notice a big one missing from the list. Namely, guilt by association. One that's rather common around here, I might add. Especially with regards to holding all Christians responsible for the Crusades, though that's just one example.

Is that like saying 'Stalin was an athiest, Stalin was bad, therefore God exists?'

[Sir Sirius]

Hmm. I notice a big one missing from the list. Namely, guilt by association. One that's rather common around here, I might add. Especially with regards to holding all Christians responsible for the Crusades, though that's just one example.

You christians often belief and have a tendancy to loudly tout that the bible, god and christianity are the sources of all that is good and moral in this world, the Crusades and other attrocities committed by christians in the name of god serve as a handy reminder that christianity is not quite as virtuos and innocent as it's followers like to belief. It has nothing to do with blaiming modern christians for what they predecessors did centuries ago, that is only you Strawman distortion.

[Rogue 9]

Okay. Yes, I am a Christian, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here to talk Star Wars, not harass you guys with my beliefs. I just used that as an example because its the one I saw.

Is that like saying 'Stalin was an athiest, Stalin was bad, therefore God exists?'

See? You're associating me with whoever said that now. I never made that contention. I agree with all three parts of that sentence, but not with the association made between them. Stalin was an atheist and he was bad. However, that is not evidence for or against God's existence. I do not believe that I can prove God's existence through logic, therefore I will not try. What I will do is go off to the Pure Star Wars forum and ask about the length of a Super Star Destroyer. See you.

[InnerBrat]

Is that like saying 'Stalin was an athiest, Stalin was bad, therefore God exists?'

See? You're associating me with whoever said that now.

*spreads arms*

nope. Just pointing out that it works both ways.

[CrazyShanker]

I'm coming in late into this thread, So'll probably look stupid.

Anyway, there was one fallacy that was missed. I forgot the Latin, but it's basicaly "argument from a big stick". I.e. "You're wrong, and unless you concede, I'll flame/beat you till you cry.

Is that like saying 'Stalin was an athiest, Stalin was bad, therefore God exists?'

Good and evil & truth and fasleness don't always apply directly. Stalin could be the worst man on earth, but he could still be right. Likewise, Mother Teresa could have been the best person on earth, and she could have been wrong.

Anyway I'm playing Devil's advocate.

[InnerBrat]

Is that like saying 'Stalin was an athiest, Stalin was bad, therefore God exists?'

Good and evil & truth and fasleness don't always apply directly. Stalin could be the worst man on earth, but he could still be right. Likewise, Mother Teresa could have been the best person on earth, and she could have been wrong.

Um, that was kind of my point..