Cemetery of Failed Arguments

[Heyo]

This is my 5.000th post and thought I might attempt to do something useful.
(But I'm not sure everybody will agree that it's useful.)

There are ideas and arguments that get frequently repeated and debunked.
Wouldn't it be useful to have a repository of well formulated, short, widely agreed upon, comprehensible answers to those failed arguments? An FDA (frequently debunked arguments) thread (possibly pinned) to cite from right here at RF?

Just in the last few days I have encountered the argument from design (a.k.a. "Look at the trees!") three times. That hasn't worked for millennia.
I don't expect every noob to know all the arguments and their flaws but I also don't want to sound like a broken record. And what's most important, we won't get anywhere when we have to start at zero every time and just move in circles.

But that is assuming that somebody wants to go somewhere.

So what do You think, useful or not?

 

[Secret Chief]

We've had one of these threads before

 

[Secret Chief]

How's it work then?

Has the existence of a deity been a failed argument?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

This is my 5.000th post and thought I might attempt to do something useful.
(But I'm not sure everybody will agree that it's useful.)

There are ideas and arguments that get frequently repeated and debunked.
Wouldn't it be useful to have a repository of well formulated, short, widely agreed upon, comprehensible answers to those failed arguments? An FDA (frequently debunked arguments) thread (possibly pinned) to cite from right here at RF?

Just in the last few days I have encountered the argument from design (a.k.a. "Look at the trees!") three times. That hasn't worked for millennia.
I don't expect every noob to know all the arguments and their flaws but I also don't want to sound like a broken record. And what's most important, we won't get anywhere when we have to start at zero every time and just move in circles.

But that is assuming that somebody wants to go somewhere.

So what do You think, useful or not?

That any positive privileged claim of knowledge about metaphysics should be avoided. Not just for religious people.

 

[Heyo]

How's it work then?

Has the existence of a deity been a failed argument?

There have been a lot of failed arguments for the existence of gods - and some for the non-existence.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

TSo what do You think, useful or not?

Dunning-Kruger comes to mind.

 

[Valjean]

Great idea! Count me in.

 

[Secret Chief]

failed

...in the eyes of...?

or did everyone agree and the thread wound up?

 

[Secret Chief]

Dunning-Kruger comes to mind.

I hate it when someone makes me learn something.

The wiki entry says its veracity has been "strongly challenged" though. Maybe it's a failed argument.

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

How about we throw out the failed idea that just because we cannot see God or see "scientific" proof of his existence, that proves God does not exist.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I hate it when someone makes me learn something.

The wiki entry says its veracity has been "strongly challenged" though. Maybe it's a failed argument.

In this case, "cognitive bias" may be no more than a highfalutin justification of willful ignorance.

 

[Quintessence]

The problem with attempting to come up with some list of debunked arguments is that all debunking relies on particular assumptions that can themselves be debunked.

Put another way, all positions can be rationalized as true granting certain assumptions and the converse is equally true.

 

[Heyo]

...in the eyes of...?

Every philosopher there is.

or did everyone agree and the thread wound up?

Pretty much so.

Everyone who has ever discussed Pascal's Wager knows that it's flawed and how.
The argument from design is only used by ignorant people and only once.
Epicurus trilemma only disproves the triomni god (in its most radical understanding).
I think those are common knowledge among most of the RF regulars and can be made understood to the noobs by linking to the FDA.

 

[George-ananda]

So what do You think, useful or not?

I'll go 'not'. One person's 'debunked' is another person's 'unsatisfactory debunk effort'.

Who is the official judge?

 

[Heyo]

The problem with attempting to come up with some list of debunked arguments is that all debunking relies on particular assumptions that can themselves be debunked.

Put another way, all positions can be rationalized as true granting certain assumptions and the converse is equally true.

I may be just too optimistic and the argument may seem strange, coming from an Agnostic but there are things that can be known and are known.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Every philosopher there is.
Pretty much so.

Everyone who has ever discussed Pascal's Wager knows that it's flawed and how.
The argument from design is only used by ignorant people and only once.
Epicurus trilemma only disproves the triomni god (in its most radical understanding).
I think those are common knowledge among most of the RF regulars and can be made understood to the noobs by linking to the FDA.

Yeah, and so what? Justified true belief as knowledge is also flawed, yet there are still people who claim it.
Or people who confuse methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism.

There are people on both sides of religion/non-religion, who can't in practice for some forms of subjectivity understand, that it is not evidence, proof or what not.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'll go 'not'. One person's 'debunked' is another person's 'unsatisfactory debunk effort'.

Who is the official judge?

Not me. I am a global skeptic.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I may be just too optimistic and the argument may seem strange, coming from an Agnostic but there are things that can be known and are known.

No, not really. Only tautologies and some forms of logic qualify as knowledge in the Western tradition.

 

[joe1776]

Every philosopher there is.
Pretty much so.

Everyone who has ever discussed Pascal's Wager knows that it's flawed and how.
The argument from design is only used by ignorant people and only once.
Epicurus trilemma only disproves the triomni god (in its most radical understanding).
I think those are common knowledge among most of the RF regulars and can be made understood to the noobs by linking to the FDA.

Brian Josephson, the Nobel physicist for what's called "the Josephson Effect," has said that he sees merit in the argument from design. But he didn't elaborate so I don't know why he said that.

 

[exchemist]

This is my 5.000th post and thought I might attempt to do something useful.
(But I'm not sure everybody will agree that it's useful.)

There are ideas and arguments that get frequently repeated and debunked.
Wouldn't it be useful to have a repository of well formulated, short, widely agreed upon, comprehensible answers to those failed arguments? An FDA (frequently debunked arguments) thread (possibly pinned) to cite from right here at RF?

Just in the last few days I have encountered the argument from design (a.k.a. "Look at the trees!") three times. That hasn't worked for millennia.
I don't expect every noob to know all the arguments and their flaws but I also don't want to sound like a broken record. And what's most important, we won't get anywhere when we have to start at zero every time and just move in circles.

But that is assuming that somebody wants to go somewhere.

So what do You think, useful or not?

There is a facility for pinning "stickies" to the various subforums. It maybe worth creating a sticky under "Evolution and Creationism" that deals with the Argument from Design. However the trouble I always find with these is that the way one expresses the argument may need to be a bit different each time, depending on how the counterargument is being presented. I always find I like to express things in my own words, rather than simply referring the writer to another thread, which I feel would tend to close down the debate.

On some of these topics we are doomed to repeat ourselves, just as a schoolteacher has to teach Newton's Laws every year to a new batch of students. I don't mind doing that, actually. Each time one thinks of a slighty different way of getting the message across. What one also has to recognise, sadly, is that most of the creationists who come to this forum do so with a mindset cast in concrete and zero intention of learning anything.