Talk:Straw Man
From EvoWiki
- "When done deliberately, this fallacy of presumption is both unethical and unchristian."
(1) Saying that it is both unethical AND unchristian seems redundant, since presumably the author intends "christian" to be a subset of "ethical." (2) Calling something "unchristian" as if that is a bad thing sounds bigoted anyway. (3) I'm not aware of any Christian teachings against the deliberate use of fallacies, and I don't know that it matters anyway.
I suppose that the point is to discourage Christians from purposely abusing fallacies, but it seems more precise just to call it "deceptive." Let Christians decide for themselves if it goes against their beliefs.
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I disagree about the putative redundancy of calling something both 'unethical and 'unChristian'. As I see it, the author is taking 'Christian' to refer to a standard of behavior which exceeds mere 'ethics'. It's a kind of extra-special emphasis, sort of like saying, "John Doe isn't just taller than the average man; he's even taller than Shaquille O'Neal!"
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I'm not sure what you mean by "exceeding mere ethics." I'm guessing you mean supererogatory, but I disagree with (1) implying that refraining from deception is supererogatory (it obviously isn't), and (2) assuming that "ethics" doesn't include supererogatory actions. Yes, the author is in effect saying "Christianity is exceptional," but I would argue that this is just a statement of the author's bias, not a fact.
Vandalism
Some anonymous user (probably a creationist) destroyed some links and added this:
- Self-referential: The only examples given for a Straw Man fallacy are relevant to Creationism. Therefore, the Straw Man argument is fallacious only when it is used in that context.
This is nonsense. This site is about evolution and the attacks on it by ignorant but tricky individuals. Therefore, the fallacy pages concentrate on uses of the fallacies for attacking evolution (or possibly defending evolution, but use of fallacies is much rarer there).
