Proposed Rules for Debates

Welcome to the fray lokiare So that it could be debated. The Proposed New Topics forum is only for proposing and fine tuning of new topics, not for debate. Admins then place the new topic in an appropriate forum when it is ready. Which thread was that? Also known as the Gish Gallop, a rather common creationist approach, especially in verbal debates (such as the Ham and Nye debate).

And I was one involved ... Yes, this is what happens when one side just asks questions or states several erroneous posts. The answers are not necessarily easy one-liners, but need to supply significant information. This is also what happens when one side has evidence to provide and the other doesn't so they make stuff up. You are free to hold that opinion. Myself, I suspect that Mindspawn ran out of misinformation and rabbit holes. Nor do I expect that he thinks he was defeated. Please note that I offered to wait for more answers, so arguing that the amount of information was overwhelming is a red herring fallacy.Do you think the information I provided was wrong?One of the other things that happens in debates like this is that the goals shift or are moved by one participant, so that it doesn't end when the original argument is dealt with -- and Mindspawns original "objection" was dealt with, he just kept piling on more things to be answered instead of acknowledging that it had been answered.If you want to establish new rules, then I suggest having a clear goal is one. It was shown that (a) tree ring dating is accurate and (b) that carbon dating correlates with tree ring dating and thus can be used to calibrate it. At that point the debate should have been over.Do you disagree?

Also called Gish Gallop:

quote:

---

Shotgun argumentation — the arguer offers such a large number of arguments for their position that the opponent can't possibly respond to all of them. (See "Argument by verbosity" and "Gish Gallop", above.)

---

It's listed as an "informal fallacy" which means "arguments that are fallacious for reasons other than structural (formal) flaws and which usually require examination of the argument's content" ... ie - you need to demonstrate that there is not sufficient time to answer in a written debate in order to apply this fallacy.So this doesn't apply to written debates where one can take the items one at a time and the other is waiting for replies before continuing.Of course when mindspawn lists things he wants to see or states fantasy concepts and there are 50 different pieces of evidence for each item on one side and zero on the other it is more difficult to invent replies other than to demand more items to be provided, resulting in more mountains of evidence being presented.The shotgun fallacy was used by mindspawn as part of his red-herring approach to avoiding the obvious - that tree rings provided a very strong validation of 14C dating.