Part six (though the order doesn't matter) where I try to break down the general areas of Scott Youngren's ignorance. At first I thought he was only truly ignorant of Information Theory, 2LOT, and QM, but it appears I was wrong.
Part 2: Idealism/Materialism & QM
Part 3: Second Law of Thermodynamics (2LOT)
Part 4: Statistics and scientific laws
Part 5: The "symbolic representation" in DNA (information theory)
Part 7: Evolution and panspermia
Logical fallacies:
You think, “Making a personal attack against me by suggesting that I cannot understand something constitutes a textbook example of the Ad Hominem logical fallacy. This logical fallacy occurs when a person launches an attack against the person making an argument in order to avoid responding to the logical argument itself.”
You are wrong. The ad hominem fallacy is rejecting a claim or argument based on irrelevant issues with the claimant. Declining to even discuss an issue with someone because they don’t understand the topic well enough is not an ad hominem fallacy. I did not (at that time) attempt to refute your arguments involving QM or IT, I simply expressed why I was very hesitant to even engage, given your obvious lack of knowledge in the relevant areas. If I had said, “You’re wrong because you only copy arguments from professional apologists (without offering any reason to think the professional apologists’ arguments are wrong) that would be an ad hom fallacy. But to say I don’t even want to discuss it is not.
Perhaps this will help you understand. Let’s say I make the following argument:
1. (2+2)=5.
2. 5*2=10.
Therefore,
3. (2+2)*2=10
If you say, “You’re wrong because you’re ugly,” or, “You’re wrong because you’re an atheist, and atheists cannot be trusted,” that would be an ad hominem fallacy because you’re reject my argument by citing irrelevant personal issues.
On the other hand, if you say, “Number 1 is wrong because 2+2=4, you no-good, ugly lying atheist,” this is not an ad hominem fallacy. You provided a logical and valid reason for rejecting my argument. Granted, it was accompanied by a personal attack, but that only makes your refutation of my argument valid and rude; it does not make it fallacious.
I didn’t make a personal attack, I made an assessment of your knowledge in a couple of areas. It was blunt, and I knew it would not be well-received, and I apologized ahead of time, but I didn’t see any other way to tell you why it would be pointless to discuss QM and IT with you other than to say you didn’t know enough about the subjects to be able to have a meaningful discussion.
In my math proof, above, if you didn’t try to rebut my proof, but just said, “You think 2+2=5? Obviously discussing this with you would be a waste of my time,” it would not be an ad hominem fallacy. You would simply (and bluntly) be declining to discuss it further with me based on an assessment of my mathematical knowledge. That’s all I did with you.
You also do not understand what a Category Error is. More accurately, you seem to understand it, but you’re hypocritical in not applying it to yourself. In a comment made a few days ago to someone else, you quote John Lennox to expose what you consider a category error, when you yourself commit a much more egregious category error by quoting Lennox, elsewhere. In your evolution article you quote Lennox as saying:
The strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity have no eyes to see with, either physical or mental. And most mechanisms are blind — think of a watch, a car, a CD player, a computer hard-disc. Moreover, they are not only blind but also unconscious… But those mechanisms, though blind in themselves, are all the products of minds that are far from being blind; such mechanisms are intelligently designed.Here Lennox draws a faulty comparison between physical mechanical inventions and the non-physical relations between observations we call the laws of the Universe. One category is physical objects, the other is non-physical relationships. You quote such a blatant category error from Lennox, then turn around and quote him to accuse someone else of a category error.
General Logic:
You think that to reject Statement A requires a definite belief in an alternative, Statement B. In multiple places (e.g., the comments to your “strong evidence” article on Jan 30, 2012) you quote Timothy Keller as espousing this position. You say, through him, “All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B… The reason you doubt Christianity’s Belief A is because you hold unprovable Belief B… Every doubt, therefore is based on a leap of faith.” This is false. Propositional statements can be rejected without regard to the truth or falsity of any other statements, including any opposite statements.
Sometimes one might reject Belief A because they hold conflicting Belief B, but that doesn’t have to be the case. If you say you have a 50-carat diamond in your pocket and I say, “I don’t believe that,” based on a lack of evidence (and the rarity of such an event), I am not saying I believe (or Keller’s even more erroneous claim, “I have faith”) that you do not have a 50-carat diamond in your pocket. I’m only saying that I do not accept your propositional statement.
Consider a much more mundane statement you could make, like, “I have a penny in my pocket.” I would not reject it (because of the commonness of such occurrences), but I also would not accept it because I haven’t seen the penny. I would withhold judgment and take no position.
This is logic 101, and apologists like Keller count on people to spread this misinformation without actually understanding it. Incidentally, this shows the danger of argumentation by quotation. I agree with your conclusion in that comment, and your explanation was fine, but your method of arriving at that conclusion was based on Keller’s faulty logic. You would have done much better responding as you did without the quote.
Nov 6. Scott:
NC: The ad hominem fallacy is rejecting a claim or argument based on irrelevant issues with the claimant. Declining to even discuss an issue with someone because they don’t understand the topic well enough is not an ad hominem fallacy. I did not (at that time) attempt to refute your arguments involving QM or IT, I simply expressed why I was very hesitant to even engage, given your obvious lack of knowledge in the relevant areas…..I didn’t make a personal attack, I made an assessment of your knowledge in a couple of areas.
.
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FOOLING?! You refuse to engage in a discussion of QM because you cannot coherently respond to my arguments. In addition to my own arguments, I cited Bruce Gordon, who HOLDS A PhD IN THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS. Gordon’s argument for why materialism is completely incompatible with modern physics is NOT DIFFICULT to grasp.
DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOU ARE FOOLING ANY INTELLIGENT THIRD PARTY VIEWERS OF THIS DISCUSSION BY SUGGESTING THAT YOU RUFUSE TO RESPOND TO MY ARGUMENT (OR GORDON’S ARGUMENTS) BECAUSE “I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE TOPIC WELL ENOUGH?”
Why don’t you point out what Gordon and I do not understand? It is clearly because you cannot coherently respond. Please note that rational discourse would be impossible if any party were permitted to argue that they refuse to engage in discussion because the other party does not understand.
FURTHER, YOU HAVE FAILED TO RESPOND TO MY POINT ABOUT THE “DELAYED CHOICE QUANTUM ERASER EXPERIMENT” DEBUNKING THE NOTION THAT A PARTICLE CAN CAUSE A WAVE FUNCTION COLLAPSE.
A large part of your argumentation consists of trying to assume a posture of intellectual superiority. I seriously do not think you are fooling any intelligent third party viewers with this. You must furnish a rationally constructed, fact-based rebuttal to my arguments. You cannot escape from this necessity with posing and posturing.
NC: You also do not understand what a Category Error is. More accurately, you seem to understand it, but you’re hypocritical in not applying it to yourself. In a comment made a few days ago to someone else, you quote John Lennox to expose what you consider a category error….One category is physical objects, the other is non-physical relationships.
No, there is no category error in Lenox’s argument. Both are mechanisms. One is a physical mechanism, another is a non-physical mechanism. Do you not consider Darwin’s random mutation and natural selection to be a mechanism? You can suggest that the proposed “natural mechanism” of Darwinian evolution is not a non-physical mechanism, but rather, describes a “non-physical relationship.” But if you did so, you would again be quibbling about semantics. Much of your argumentation seems to be based upon diverting attention to a quibbling about semantic issues. Why do scientists so regularly discuss natural mechanisms (such as Darwin’s)?
NC: General Logic: You think that to reject Statement A requires a definite belief in an alternative, Statement B. In multiple places (e.g., the comments to your “strong evidence” article on Jan 30, 2012) you quote Timothy Keller as espousing this position. You say, through him, “All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B… The reason you doubt Christianity’s Belief A is because you hold unprovable Belief B… Every doubt, therefore is based on a leap of faith.” This is false. Propositional statements can be rejected without regard to the truth or falsity of any other statements, including any opposite statements.
…and yet, you are very clearly arguing from the alternate belief of a belief in materialism, which is completely incompatible with modern physics…as I have demonstrated, and which the famous physicist Eugene Wigner pointed out.
Further, we are not discussing “propositional statements” here. Materialism and theism are worldviews, not propositional statements.
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