A proper understanding of logical fallacies will improve the quality of debate

As shown by the opening quotation mark on the quote with a lack of a quotation mark on the end. I think it is obvious it is a cut and paste from some other site.

Hi DesignTheorist,Well, the Big Bang isn't the topic, so I guess I'll just say that you have some interesting interpretations and leave it at that.I only joined this thread to point out that you misunderstand the fallacy of argument from authority. Citing an authority isn't a fallacy. But claiming something is so because an authority says it is so, that's a fallacy.--Percy

And yet when you made several logical fallacies you start whole thred devoted to showing how you didn'tHoly contradiction, Batman!Edited by Larni, : Spelinkage

Ok I am done feeding the troll. It is obvious DT is either lying or exceedingly dense. He refuses to consider anything other than his own preconceived ideas no matter how wacky.He cannot even tell us what a singularity is and what its relation to or not to the big bang is. He probably thinks the big bang is truly a big explosion.All I can say at this point is WOW.Edited by Theodoric, : I truly wish I had a pint, but the word is actually point

You are not going to do well here.

Do you agree that quotes in and of themselves are not a form of evidence?

Why is it too high? Naturally. I believe I said as much in my last post. But the onus is upon one's self to try and avoid as much error as possible, and critical thinking is key in this regard. The thinking should be critical in nature. One should always ask 'how do I know what I am claiming is true?' and 'how am I sure it is not false?' as minimum safeguards of critical thought. And happy can keep them! Yes, I think you have proved that mistakes are going to happen. I never suggested anyone should be error free. I just suggested that one should think critically even about (especially about!) ideas that coincide with one's own beliefs. Confirmation bias, and other such biases are an affliction we all need to develop the tools to combat.But since we're talking about general errors in reasoning as well as strictly logical fallacies, I thought I'd discuss a mistake that you made, speculating on the forces that might have been behind it.

So you've read the book. Now where do you get the idea that Hawking went for the "no boundary" proposal because he wanted to "get rid" of God rather than deal with the problem of boundary conditions ?I'm pretty sure that you didn't get it from Hawking's actual words. e.g.In chapter 8 p122-3 Hawking seems quite happy with the idea of a God, but much less happy with the idea of arbitrary boundary conditions:e.g. This is the writing of an agnostic, who is willing to take the idea of a God seriously, not someone devoted to crushing the idea altogether.

I don't read the passage the same way you do. But we are way off track anyway. This thread is about logical fallacies.I used the Hawking quotes as an example. If you read the quotes I provided, it is clear that Hawking understands that a universe with a beginning "smacks of divine intervention."

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I don't read the passage the same way you do. But we are way off track anyway. This thread is about logical fallacies.

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I don't see how you can possibly read it as indicating hostility to Divine Creation or even as consistent with hostility to Divine Creation. It pretty clearly DOES object to arbitrary boundary conditions. But perhaps you had a case of confirmation bias that lead you to skip over all the mention of boundary conditions as the problem ?

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I used the Hawking quotes as an example. If you read the quotes I provided, it is clear that Hawking understands that a universe with a beginning "smacks of divine intervention."

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It's a fact that the quote that you got that phrase from didn't say anything about Hawking's beliefs. So why use it ? It's a clear example of a logical fallacy (non sequitur).

Hawking himself, of course, disagrees with you about what he "understands".

On face value the argument is petty silly. Even if Hawking thought that the Big Bang "smacked of Divine Creation" it would be both too weak to be of much value in supporting the assertion that the "Big Bang Theory Supports a Belief in the Universe Designer or Creator God" and an argument from authority (and not a very good one).Using quotes which don't even support this is sillier too.The arguments that Hawking DOES think this are:1) Hawking didn't argue against it.We might also point out that Hawking didn't say that it was true or that he personally agreed with it. This is at best weak circumstantial evidence, far from conclusive.2) Hawking "abandoned" his own paper and the "Big Bang" because the Big Bang "smacked of" divine creation .Hawking's paper was based on Classical physics, and thus failed to take Quantum effects into account, even though those effects are significant as the singularity is approached. According to Hawking's own words his efforts in handling the Quantum effects and to tackle the problem of boundary conditions lead him to abandon the idea of an actual singularity (although he retained the appearance of one in time as we see it).
(See Message 223,Message 293 for sample quotes).Thus, this claim misrepresents what Hawking did, and goes against Hawking's own statements on his motivations, while offering no real evidence to support any alternative view.Presumably this is an example of confirmation bias (Hawking's statements about his motivations are ignored), jumping to conclusions (the fact that Hawking's new view did NOT support the idea of a Divine Creator is used to conclude that he is hostile to the idea) and likely a dose of tribalism (designtheorist's "tribe" hold that all theories which go against the argument in the original thread are convoluted attempts to evade it).Thus we have fallacious arguments used to attempt to support a claim which is too weak to be useful without invoking further fallacies.

Hi kbertsche, No, he is using the quotes to back up his argument that Big Bang cosmology supports a designer. He has made this clear repeatedly. I expect that Jesus-is-Lord is phase two of his position, but he has not argued for this directly as of yet. However, I still believe that he is employing the fallacy of appeal to authority, as I have outlined in my posts to him. Depending on what you mean by "eradicated", you may be going a little further than Dawkins does in that quote. Again, I think you are overstating Dawkins' position there. Now this, both Professor Dawkins and I agree on. The problem is that the issue is far more complicated than this.I believe that science and religion are ultimately incompatible, but that does not mean that there can be no religious scientists or that the science done by theists must be bad, or anything of the kind. It simply means that to do good science, one must remove one's theist hat and put on one's scientist hat, because you can't do both at the same time; in this way science and religion are fundamentally incompatible.If you want to discuss this further, start a thread. It is too nuanced an issue to deal with here. And if I or anyone else here had ever argued in the manner that you describe, then designtheorist would not be committing a fallacy. But the reality is that you are mischaracterising my argument. I have not argued in the way that you describe, nor has anyone else that I've noticed. No. They show that belief in God and the practise of science are compatible insofar as they can exist within the same person. They do not show that God himself is compatible with science; I do not believe that an actual omnipotent magical being can be described as compatible with a system that must ignore magic. Well, as it happens, a nice person called "kbertsche" has linked to a survey that backs up my position. Check it out! In Message 196 this "kbertsche" cites two studies that put atheism at around the halfway point amongst scientists; notably higher than in the general population, just as I said. Thank you "kbertsche", whoever you are!Mutate and Survive

No. I think you are profoundly misunderstanding the science here. No you aren't, as has already been explained to you multiple times. The "colliding branes" hypothesis, for example, describes a scenario where by multiple universes can come into being without ever invoking any "Big Bounce".Of course Sandage died a few years back. His inability to keep up with the state of the art is yet another reason why citing him as an authority is a fallacy on your part. No, but he is not an expert on universe designers. No-one is, nor could anyone ever be. That, in part, is what makes your argument fallacious; not that you cite expert physicists, but that you cite them in support of a position that goes far beyond physics. Citing anyone, anyone at all, in support of your argument is innately fallacious, since no-one can know anything about this designer. But you go significantly further than Sandage does here. Sandage only points to a supernatural cause. You on the other hand find it "inconceivable" that the "Big Banger" is anything other than a personal entity. Here your position substantially differs from that proposed by Sandage, who seems to think that this latter position, that of a personal force behind the Big Bang, requires a leap of faith. But you have claimed to be able to know about the qualities of the creator and I think that leaves you in a different place to Sandage.Don't get me wrong, I accept that yours and Sandage's positions are perhaps closer than I originally thought, but I still don't think that you have demonstrated that he would have been in agreement with your position. Compatible yes. Supportive? I still think that you're on shaky ground there. And yet curiously, the only entity that you mention as candidate for this honour is the Abrahamic monotheistic deity. Your intentions here are pretty clear. Every word of that is nonsense. If Hawking believes this, he must be an utter moron, since he still professes to be an atheist, thus casting aside what you claim he believes.Quoting atheists in support of pro-theist arguments is not good practise. It's just too blatantly an example of quote mining. I mean, just think about it; Hawking is an atheist. Whatever you can quote him as saying, there's clearly more to his beliefs than you mention, or he would be a theist, wouldn't he?Or maybe you feel that you know what Hawking thinks better than he does. Not content with putting words in the mouths of dead men, you are now moving on to misrepresent the living, is that it? And you have conspicuously failed to do this, citing Hawking (who diagrees with you), Tipler (who's as mad as a basket of badgers), Davies (who also disagrees with you) and Sandage (who only comes close to agreeing with you). You have in fact showed a diversity of opinion at best and you have only cited a tiny handful of names. You are not even come close to showing that anything approaching a reasonable consensus exists on this issue. You have not demonstrated that the position you take is anything other than a fringe one amongst physicists. Worst of all, you are citing the support of physicists in a matter that goes well behind their expertise, thus leaving you back at square one, making a bad argument from an inappropriate authority.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

So has anyone learnt anything new about logical fallacies as a result of reading this thread about who said what?Maybe, when this thread staggers into summation mode we could post simply what we have learnt about logical fallacies?I would find that fascinating.