Thursday, August 2, 2012

HonestTechnoAtheist and Logic

So I've been on Youtube.  Yeah.  Where else can you find more people that don't know what they are talking about?

Case in point:  HonestTechnoAtheist.  In the video comments "Christians Who Disobey Jesus and the Bible" he made some comments that are particularly ill-informed and indicative of educational malpractice.

He claimed I committed Appeal to Authority Fallacy by stating that a dictionary hold the proper definitions of words (such as sarcasm, for which he invented his own definition).  

Protip:  Appeal to Authority Fallacy is NOT committed if the Authority you are appealing to is actually an Authority.  As demonstrated here:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

Also Known as: Fallacious Appeal to Authority, Misuse of Authority, Irrelevant Authority, Questionable Authority, Inappropriate Authority, Ad Verecundiam

Description of Appeal to Authority

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy with the following form:

  1. Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
  2. Person A makes claim C about subject S.
  3. Therefore, C is true.
This fallacy is committed when the person in question is not a legitimate authority on the subject. More formally, if person A is not qualified to make reliable claims in subject S, then the argument will be fallacious. 

...which is basically what I TOLD him before he whined that there is too an appeal to authority fallacy and he blocked me.

Whoever taught this guy logic should be fired.

And NO, Sarcasm is NOT a lie or something incompatible with the truth.

No comments: