Sources, resources, and citations for apologetics discussions

[Underseer]

Anyway, Shake's reminded me of AntiCitizenX. I wish posted one of his, here's another in which he discusses Christian moral arguments for the existence of God.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Appeal to false authority... ie... "Well, Dr. Hugh Ross, an astrophysicist, says that evolution is false. And astrophysicists are super smart!"

That is an appeal to authority. It is a fallacy because Dr. Hugh Ross is not a biologist, but an astrophysicist. So his authority in biology as related to evolution is non-existent. While of obvious intelligence, he lacks the background to be authority on the subject.

As I noted in my Columbus thread, Dr. Ross dares to pretend he knows more than those that actually do, in the subject.

No, any appeal to authority is bad.

My understanding is that an "appeal to authority" fallacy implicitly means making a claim (almost always an opinion contrary to the general understanding) and founding it on the opinion in the guise of founded truth of someone that is an authority on subjects, but not the subject of discussion.

Yes, it isn't good to just quote people, however, if you are talking physics, citing a physicist isn't out of bounds and could be legit (plenty of other fallacies to choose from). But citing a physicist when talking about debunking evolution... appeal to authority fallacy.

 

[Underseer]

No, any appeal to authority is bad.

My understanding is that an "appeal to authority" fallacy implicitly means making a claim (almost always an opinion contrary to the general understanding) and founding it on the opinion in the guise of founded truth of someone that is an authority on subjects, but not the subject of discussion.

Yes, it isn't good to just quote people, however, if you are talking physics, citing a physicist isn't out of bounds and could be legit (plenty of other fallacies to choose from). But citing a physicist when talking about debunking evolution... appeal to authority fallacy.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

Edited because I just repeated what I already said.

 

[bilby]

My understanding is that an "appeal to authority" fallacy implicitly means making a claim (almost always an opinion contrary to the general understanding) and founding it on the opinion in the guise of founded truth of someone that is an authority on subjects, but not the subject of discussion.

Yes, it isn't good to just quote people, however, if you are talking physics, citing a physicist isn't out of bounds and could be legit (plenty of other fallacies to choose from). But citing a physicist when talking about debunking evolution... appeal to authority fallacy.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority

Edited because I just repeated what I already said.

Yup. Appeals to Authority are fallacies, and a fallacy renders your logic invalid - which does not necessarily render your conclusion false, but means that you cannot reasonably get from premises to conclusion by the path you chose.

Einstein is an authority on Special Relativity. But if I say 'It's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, because Einstein says so' then I am WRONG - Not in my conclusion 'it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light'; but in my argument 'because Einstein says so'.

'Because Einstein says so' is not the reason why supra-luminal travel is impossible; If Einstein gave some sound reasoning for this particular conclusion (and he did), then what is needed is to repeat that sound reasoning: 'Faster than light travel is impossible because (as Einstein pointed out) blah, blah, blah.'

In this latter case it's the 'blah blah blah'* that is the argument, and it matters not one whit whether Einstein said it, or it was said by Joe Blow down the pub - it either stands on its merits as an argument, or it does not. The name, reputation, education, or qualifications of the speaker do NOT affect the soundness of the argument.

One can justly make the probabilistic argument that the opinion of Einstein is more likely true than the opinion of Joe Blow on this subject; But that's not logic or reason at all - it's an heuristic shortcut. If Joe Blow can provide sound reasoning to explain how supra-luminal travel is possible, and that reasoning exposes a logical flaw in Einstein's earlier reasoning that led him to make the contrary claim, then we must accept that Blowian Physics is now the better description of reality.










*OK, Einstein didn't say "Blah, blah blah", but his full argument - the Theory of Special Relativity - is irrelevant to my point, and at 24 pages, would take up more space here than is warranted. You can find it here.

 

[beero1000]

Appeal to authority isn't a valid deductive inference, but can be a valid form of Bayesian inference. So you shouldn't say "Relevant authority says this, therefore it must be true", but rather "Relevant authority says this, therefore it is likely to be true." Generally, the more relevant authorities that agree on the conclusion, the more likely we should take the truth of the statement.

I would think that the majority of arguments between atheists and apologists are not based purely on deductive logic, so flatly claiming that appeals to valid authorities are always bad seems excessive. You're almost certainly not going to have actually checked all of the fossil records, and performed all of the carbon dating, and carefully studied all of the physics papers that you bring up in arguments, so having the support of statements from authorities who have is important.

 

[Underseer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you are talking Bayesian, then we are way outside any discussion about informal fallacies.

 

[beero1000]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you are talking Bayesian, then we are way outside any discussion about informal fallacies.

Sure, but this thread is about discussions with apologists, and what I'm saying is that if your position is "Any appeal to authority is bad" then you're gonna have some problems with using any conclusion that you have not personally verified. A clever apologist could easily turn that around on you because all scientific conclusions are based on a myriad of different background assumptions that only experts have really considered (and many times, even they don't often go back to reconfirm much earlier work). Understanding the idea behind be able to accept the conclusions of a valid authority in an argument lets you show how it isn't turtles all the way down, and lets you explain why some people are valid authorities and some people aren't.

 

[Underseer]

Martymer is with bringing up. He mostly good after supernatural claims outside religion (such as Spirit Science), the arguments are certainly applicable to religion as well.