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

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I think you mean Hoyle.

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I'm guessing he meant Hawking: This isn't really 'admitting' it, but I suspect this is the quote designtheorist had in mind.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

It isn't. The big bang merely posits that the universe was much hotter and denser in the past and that the universe expanded from this hot, dense state. Hawking accepts that the universe was once much hotter and denser. Therefore, Hawking accepts the Big Bang. As have most physicists. The idea of a singularity comes out of the mathematics of relativity. Physicists have postulated that this can't be right for some time and that some marriage between relativity and quantum physics is required.I believe some wondered if the singularity was somehow real, but that view is marginal these days as far as I am aware. There are singularities throughout physics, not just at the big bang, and nobody believes these singularities are real - they are just artefacts of mathematics.

I believe it has been mentioned a few times, but the entire problem with posting quotes from people is that there can be different interpretations of what people mean when they say certain things. Our intrinsic human biases can lead us to believing that experts are in agreement with us when they aren't, on all the important points in question.Quote mining is of course, a subset of 'cherry-picking'. It is cherry picking select quotes that support a particular interpretation of the opinions of a proposed expert. It also falls under 'confirmation bias': a person finds quotes that agree with his position, and does not seek or discounts claims that call conclusion into question.Cherry picking is often seen in the EvC debate as creationists like to cherry pick results and try to weave them together to suggest they are right. They will cherry pick dating evidence, quote mine the sources and try to weave a story of doubt over radiometric dating, for example. Critical thinking avoids confirmation bias because it is critical and confirmation bias is a suspension of criticism. When you have a belief (such as Eddington was an atheist who converted to a religious view because of the big bang), it is important you seek out information that may contradict this view, before presenting it as any kind of evidence.Thus, you would confirm the religious views of Eddington (specifically you would seek evidence that he was not an atheist, rather than just looking for evidence he was), when he accepted the big bang and when any supposed conversion is meant to have occurred, and preferably you wouldn't settle until you could find a causal link or evidence that a causal link existed between the acceptance of the theory and the subsequent conversion (so as not to fall foul of post hoc ergo propter hoc). This emotional reaction is called 'cognitive dissonance'

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Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously.

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(wiki)Everybody has experienced it, the true test is in how a person handles the experience. Any belief that you have not been in this position, would be frankly delusional - I'm sure you'd agree.It would be a suspension of critical thinking to reason like this: 'The Eddington being an atheist claim supports my hypothesis, my hypothesis is right, therefore Eddington was an atheist'. I'm sure you can see, since you have admitted you made a mistake, how you could have run afoul of your own stated standards of reasoning.

He was challenged to read Chapter 1. He responded that he had read Chapter 1. Since Chapter 1 is a subset of The Whole Book it would fallacious to assume that just because he HAD read Chapter 1 that also means he HAS NOT read The Whole Book. Indeed, anybody that has read The Whole Book could truthfully say 'I have already read Chapter 1' when challenged by someone to do so.

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.

This is so. Many sites that discuss logical fallacies warn of identifying them and leaving it at that. The sort of 'this is false because it is logical fallacy x' reasoning. As One Good Move states:

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The names of the fallacies are for identification purposes only. They are not supposed to be flung around like argumentative broadswords. It is not sufficient to state that an opponent has committed such-and-such a fallacy. And it is not very polite.

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There are some debators that do like to use logical fallacies as rhetorical swords, thinking that they are very clever for having identified them. But it is true: it is not sufficient in the world of rhetoric.