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

I can think of another reason why everyone but you on this thread thinks that you're talking crap.It's because you're talking crap.

No. But please feel free to quote any part of it that you feel is relevant.

Yup, lets say there's guy who wants the Big Bang to support the concept of a creator. He stumble's across this quote:

quote:

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Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

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Through Confirmation Bias, he would think that the author was describing his own reason for disliking the idea, rather than the many people's reason.

Okay, yeah... we've got a lot to clear up here. Your conception of the Big Bang, the singularity, and time itself has a lot of improvement to be made. We really need to get another topic going where we can discuss just that. And hopefully we can do it without quoting other people...

Really? Only in post #242 you wrote: That was posted at 8:26 a.m. And yet at 9:57 a.m. you claim to have "read the book".May I suggest that if you got through it that fast, perhaps you didn't read it very carefully?

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'

quote:

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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.

From an earlier thread the following rather succinct view of standard Big Bang cosmology.......... Message 236I think in general you are making a number of commonsense assumptions which just don't apply to the things you are attempting to apply them to.A lot of modern physics is counter-intuitive. And frankly you evdently don't understand why a lot of your implicit assumptions are rather nonsensical in this context.I don't know what fallacy that amounts to.....?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

It would be a strange way to put it. But let's wait 'til he speaks for himself.

Then why not do some actual research in an actual library?Websites are rubbish for research because they rarely have any accademic rigour.

As I said before, I have read the book.

Modulous,
I can agree with much of what you have written.However, your comment below is too high a standard: I do my best to present my case error free. But it is impossible for anyone to avoid all errors. Mistakes are going to happy. Obviously, the right thing to do is correct the error when it is pointed out. This forum is about "Understanding through discussion." I want people to point out my errors, but it is unreasonable to expect me or anyone to never make errors.

How the hell do you get that from this.

quote:

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Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

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In that case, it becomes much harder to put a charitable interpretation on your behavior.

Is that really your best?It's not like the rest of us have access to a Secret Vault Of Facts that is kept from you. When you're wrong so many times, one does come to suspect that if you are not actually a deliberate liar, you are not taking much trouble to tell the truth.