Gemli Continues Making Hash out of Sic et Non Cheerleaders

[_moksha]

If challenged, would the LDS apologists be able to support the Church position that dinosaur bones were planted by Satan?

[_malkie]

Plantinga ... does make arguments that are much easier to assert than they are to debunk.

Well, this is always the goal of arguing. Ideally one does it by making arguments that are impossible to debunk because they are valid.

But I know what you mean. In debates it seems to be irresistible for both sides to make arguments that aren't really hard to debunk, but for which their opponents won't be able to find the succinct rebuttal within the available time. Instead of threshing out the truth they're just exploiting the limited processing speed of their opponents' brains. It's an ad hominem fallacy: my opponent can only think so fast, therefore they are wrong.

I would love to debunk this idea, but I have places to go, and people to see, so I really don't have the time right now.

But if I did, ...

[_Physics Guy]

I win, I win!

Thereby proving my point.

I win twice!

[_EAllusion]

Plantinga ... does make arguments that are much easier to assert than they are to debunk.

Well, this is always the goal of arguing. Ideally one does it by making arguments that are impossible to debunk because they are valid.

But I know what you mean. In debates it seems to be irresistible for both sides to make arguments that aren't really hard to debunk, but for which their opponents won't be able to find the succinct rebuttal within the available time. Instead of threshing out the truth they're just exploiting the limited processing speed of their opponents' brains. It's an ad hominem fallacy: my opponent can only think so fast, therefore they are wrong.

I know what you mean here, but it isn't even necessarily an issue of mental acuity. For example, it's just much easier to assert an irreducible complexity argument than it is to explain what is wrong with it in general or in the specific examples used. The volume of words and ideas required for the latter significantly exceeds the former. This is the case with a lot of religious apologetics or pseudo-scholarship, and it advantages people who use them in verbal debates.

[_Physics Guy]

An argument that's ultimately invalid but hard to answer isn't cheating to me, though. If I myself can't concisely make clear what's wrong with the argument, when I disbelieve its conclusion, then it's fair to assume that my opponent honestly doesn't see that there's anything wrong with it. So in good faith they're making an argument that's hard to answer. That's what people are supposed to be trying to do. I don't see how we can blame anyone for it.

If we've failed to come up with succinct rebuttals to unsound or invalid arguments, then I think we have to admit our own failure and try to do better. The argument from irreducible complexity, for example, is definitely not a valid rebuttal of evolution but it is a legitimate and insightful point, and it deserves a serious answer. If it were posed as an honest question by a curious and unbiased lay person, everyone would agree that it was an excellent question.

[_EAllusion]

An argument that's ultimately invalid but hard to answer isn't cheating to me, though.

It's only cheating when you dishonestly offer it because you know how it burdens your opponent and/or confuses the audience. Unfortunately, I think that happens a lot. But I'm not interested in what's "cheating" or not. I'm just interested in pointing out that verbal debates are a bad format to sort out the type of arguments you find in religious apologetics. Gish galloping abounds.

There are a handful of people who know how to prepare for this and come across well, but I find that to be the exception to the rule. Exchanges of papers is a vastly better way to see who has the goods, so to speak.

[_Physics Guy]

It's only cheating when you dishonestly offer it because you know how it burdens your opponent and/or confuses the audience. Unfortunately, I think that happens a lot.

I agree that in that case it would be cheating. Do people really often do it? I'd prefer not to attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity—and relative to the complexity of some of these topics I think all humans are stupid.

But I'm not interested in what's "cheating" or not. I'm just interested in pointing out that verbal debates are a bad format to sort out the type of arguments you find in religious apologetics. ... Exchange of papers is a vastly better way to see who has the goods, so to speak.

This is my bottom line as well.

The danger with longer formats is that they give people space to cover a range of contexts and this opens the door to bait-and-switch. So sometimes people don't really discuss with each other but instead spend half their papers discussing entirely different things from what the other person is discussing while using the other half to conceal that this is what's happening. I think this can even happen unconsciously. It can also happen in live debates, though, so the written debate is still a big improvement on them.