:You have completely succeeded in scrambling my mind!
Well, that took almost no effort at all!
Why don't you give me a harder challenge next time?
Farkel
Beware of the Strawman argument!
by Farkel 97 Replies latest jw friends
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unclebruce
Hey Bro. Farkel,
tis good to see ya.
When I first came online you recomended formal logic tuition and I got it a few years back in psycology101.
red herrings, non-sequiter etc.. they're just a formal way of catagorising bullshit ..
it's a nice skill but generally met with bemusement down-under for we are a simple folk in waters easily muddied by formality
(often confused with pretence .and being 'up oneself'.
That said, it does keep things unarguably honest.
cheers, unc/zed
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PrimateDave
Well, Farkel, I'll certainly agree that it is important to learn to recognize logical fallacies. At the same time I have found that real life situations can be rather difficult to categorize. Sometimes I'll know that a fallacy has been used in an argument but have a hard time pinning down exactly which one.
In your example, however, I'm not sure that the dentist used any fallacy at all. He merely questioned your sources of information. Since you did not have any acredited sources to back up the advertising claims found on the tube of toothpaste, your dentist expressed skepticism about its effectiveness. Healthy skepticism is not fallacious reasoning.
Watchtower publications misuse sources by quote mining and vague references to "experts". They will even hand pick "experts" as sources for their arguments. If a published scientist or scholar expresses skepticism of vague claims made in a Watchtower publication, thus causing us to doubt those claims, it would neither be a red herring nor a strawman argument.
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Essan
Agreed OP. And an understanding of logical fallacies is really useful for anyone questioning the Watchtower Society's teachings in their literature, because the Society use little else.
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OUTLAW
Beware the StrawMan Arguement..
One of the Many things I`ve learned from Farkel over the years..
Nice to have you back Farkel..
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...OUTLAW -
BizzyBee
"My mother was very fond of black, and anyone who doesn't like black and likes green instead is an idiot."
I don't think this qualifies as argumentation - no argument has been presented, just name-calling.
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Mary
I recently had this exchange with a Witness on-line about going door to door. I think her reasoning tends to fall under the strawman argument:
Me: Actually Jesus did NOT preach 'house to house' the way JWs do today and there are no scriptures to back up that claim. Jesus preached in public places: in the market place, the Synogogue, in the Temple, on the shore lines and there is no scriptural basis for any Christian having to 'count their hours' and report them each month. Such a teaching is in line with the legalistic control that the Pharisees practiced which of course is what Jesus condemned them for.
Not every ex-Witness 'has an ax to grind'. Some people are concerned for the welfare of their family. Don't Witnesses tell everyone that they should investigate their religion and to ask the hard questions to their leaders? Why is this very thing viewed as being "spiritually weak" or even worse "apostate" when we do this very thing in the Organization?
Witness: I have been one of Jehovahs Witnesses for forty years. I have run into a few people who have had problems as we are all imperfect but only once in those forty years have I had a brother give me bad advice at which no tim e was I told I had ...to do what they say or I would be disfellowshipped. Read Acts 20:20 and I think you will find it reads differently than you said. I believe it reads something like this, " And I held back nothing from you ..... and from teacing house to house. Christ went where the people are and so do we. They are at home, work, malls, parks & etc. Keeping track of our ministry is not doing something wrong. It tells us where it needs work, meaning where to go and preach , it tells us if we are doing enough work in the ministry and there are many other things keeping track does for us but we are not breaking any rules of the Bible in so doing. When someone says they are not interested we move on. Yes, we go back to that door again because people move, because there may be someone else that is interested. Mathew 28:19,20 tells us we are to preach, teach, make desciples and to baptize. We just follow the scriptures. Jesus said his followers would be no part of the world because the world loves its own, but we would be hated on account of his name and also what it represents. You believe what you want but I am tired of being persecuted for standing up for what I believe in. After all Jesus was killed by his own people so who are you to judge me? Give it up as I am not changing my beliefs for you or my son or anyone else. I have been a Bible student for 52 yrs. so I know what I have is the truth.
Me: I was a 3rd generation Witness. Both my paternal & maternal grandmothers joined in the early 1930s & both were promised that they'd never grow old in this System. They're both long gone and buried. As for Acts 20:20, a little research into early Christian history, the original Greek language and some quotes from the Organization show that this was not referring to "door to door" preaching.
The word "house" in Acts 20:20 is referring to ‘house-churches'. In the early days of Christianity, there was no centralized meeting place where believers could congregate, simply because the average Christian wasn't wealthy. Rather, there were many small ‘house-churches' scattered throughout the each city (similar to the way the Bookstudy used to be held). (Acts 2:46, 5:42, 12:12) The use of specific church buildings did not appear before the end of the second century.
Further, if you read Acts 20:17-19, Paul is speaking to the "older men" of the congregation. Would Paul be knocking on their door preaching if they were already Christians? Of course not. That would be like one elder knocking on another elders' door Saturday morning trying to place the magazines with him. Even amongst Witnesses, elder meetings are done either at the Hall, or in private homes, not by consecutive door knocking.
In fact, if you have the Watchtower's CD-ROM, it has a footnote on Acts 20:20 where it admits another translation can be "in your homes" instead of "house to house". If you have the Society's Kingdom Interlinear Translation, you can compare their translation of Acts 5:42 that says "every day in the temple and from HOUSE TO HOUSE they continued without let up teaching & declaring the good news about the Christ" with Acts 2:46 that says: "...and they took their meals IN PRIVATE HOMES and partook of food with great rejoicing and sincerity of heart."
Both phrases that I capitalized are the exact same phrase, with the same distributive sense of ‘kata' appearing in both texts. Yet in Acts 2:46 the translation is not "from house to house" but "in private homes." Why? Because it is ridiculous to think that the disciples ‘breaking bread' was done by going consecutively from "house to house".
However, the Society does not apply the same rule of thumb in the translation of Acts 5:42. Why not? Because then it would be obvious that the preaching was being done, not consecutively by knocking on strangers' doors, but rather in the homes of either those who were already believers, or in the homes of where the disciples were lodging.
That Jesus and his disciples preached is not in dispute. Christianity would have never taken off had they not preached. However, for the Organization to insist that this was the MAIN way the early Christians preached is without any historical or scriptural basis, nor is their idea that in order to be in an "approved standing" in the congregation, one has to turn in a Field Service Report each month. There's absolutely nothing scriptural to support that idea at all and it is just one of many examples of the Society "going beyond what is written."
After that, she didn't want to hear anything more from me (big surprise there eh?). If only I had her address, I could send her a copy of my project!
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chickpea
i took a composition course this summer
on informed argument and this link was
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BluesBrother
This was in last Sunday's study article.. Is it a slippery slope fallacy or a straw man fallacy ? I do know that it is a fallacy, for sure!
9 During Jehovah’s day, those who have
been molded by the world and its evil spirit
will display their true nature, even slaughtering
one another. In fact, it could well be
that the numerous forms of violent entertainment
popular today are conditioning
the minds of many for the time when
each man’s hand “will actually come up
against the hand of his companion.” (Zech.
14:13)I am indebted to this site for showing me the danger of fallacious reasoning and how to spot it, especially in the WT ...
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Quillsky
I'll say first off that it's a complete load of crap piece of writing on the part of the Watchtower Writing Department.
But okay, here's the strawman.....
The world and its evil spirit mold people, then people display their true nature, even slaughtering
one another.The tactic you can see is..... saying it as if it were accepted as true, this convoluted concept of true nature being molded by evil and leading to slaughter.
Then the rest of the debate (conditioning, violence based on nothing) tries to FOLLOW ON to discuss the strawman as if it were true.
