Sunday, August 23, 2020

The Informal Fallacy I want to invent: "Special knowledge" / "Mind reading"

For quite some time in my videos on my youtube I've highlighted a fallacy that I called "Special knowledge" &/or "Mind Reading" this fallacy happens if a person/group claims to know (or infers to know) the thoughts/motives of the other person. 

Ie: 
"You made that video because you want to get attention." 
"You are not a Christian because you hate god"
"Republicans hate America and want to destroy it."
"You are just saying that because you do not want to know what is TRUE."
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Do note that one does not have to SAY they are able to read your mind NOR does someone have to SAY they have special knowledge of your thoughts/feelings and so on. Its implied by the statement(s) they are making.

No one can know your inner thoughts, motives or intent. Thus - if a person/group claims to know "why" someone is doing (X) then the fallacy has been committed. 

The logical fallacies of Bulverism Appeal to motive. are close to this fallacy, The Fallacy of Speculation is in fact called "Mind-Reading" here (click) (number 74) this is almost exactly what I am proposing. As such, mine could simply be called "Special knowledge" to avoid confusion, or maybe it is covered well enough. The idea of making new fallacies is not just mine, this webpage (click) also came up with two new fallacies - by blending other fallacies together.

Granted, none of this is, or perhaps will be recognized by scholarship, and I have zero idea how to get my idea to be even considered. 

You can always of course be skeptical of my fallacy if you want, or maybe you can help me to make it into a "real" one if you know who I would contact to get that ball rolling, or perhaps you can help me shore up the phrasing, if you can - comment on this or email me (my email is found on my youtube channel on my about page, goodness knows what would happen if I put it on this blog)

Thanks for reading. I know you just read this to make me happy.

See what I did there? ;)

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The God of the Bible is still incoherent, yet people believe anyway.

200,000 to 300,000 years ago, give or take, Homo sapiens emerged from the hominid predecessors they had been, as they slowly made there way out of Africa 130,000 to 200,000 years latter, they also began to develop language 20,000 to 50,000 years after beginning that journey.

At some point Jehovah, Yahweh, YHWH, reached out, and plucked two people from among them to be placed into a garden full of things to eat, it revealed itself to these two humans, let them be tempted by a talking serpent, then when they failed the test, it kicked them out of the garden with a curse that the man would have to work for food, and that the woman would have to have (MORE) painful child birth. At this time, "sin" entered the world.

Before this point, things lived and died and there was natural disasters, all because it just was that way, but now that sin was here, now there was a reason for all that bad stuff. You see, this god of Abraham Isaac & Jacob let bad things happen before the "fall" because.... it did.

Of course, that doesn't really make sense, so actually God made two humans that already somehow knew language and were homo sapiens, and then put them in the garden, once they failed the test then evolution began due to sin and.. wait no that doesn't work... you see its... a metaphor yes- right the Genesis story is just sort of, kind of what happened. I found out I was wrong when I thought I was right, its always the same just a shame, that's all.  

So, how do modern Christian's make sense of any of this?

Well, you could pretend the world was made 6,000 to 10,000 years ago and ignore the realty of how we got to the place we are, in total denial of all evidence that we have of all the things I suppose. Plenty do this, but many do not. 

Yet, how do they, how can they possibly have the story of Genesis fit within reality? BioLogo's tries its best to do this, and when I was a Christian, I felt that these guys "got it" that they were trying to do what made sense - make seance out of what we know is true, and what these stories tell us are true. 

Still - why would God leave it to us puny mortals to do this for it? Why make the world in such a crazy way in the first place? Just what sort of all powerful being does this anyway?

Of course, Christians might have some excuse answer's to this, but I doubt it.

What happened to all the millions upon millions that existed before Jesus, and during Jesus who did not know about Jesus - when they died, what happened to them? What about the ones who were alive, yet had not heard about Jesus? What about those souls? 

Well, uh. God - had a plan for them? I guess. I mean, the bible doesn't say anything about them.

Of course, the bible does not say much about any of the world, other then the tiny part of it that God happened to visit that day. Revealing itself to a select few people. (Count the times that God reveals itself in the Torah/Old Testament...13!!! just thirteen people!!!) but you know, God wants to have a relationship with "everyone". Sure.

God loves me, I am told by those that believe, yet God doesn't reveal itself in such a way that all of humanity would know, without doubts, without questions, without the need of a book of all things. A BOOK mind you... to tell us it exists. 

Its incoherent. Yet, people believe it anyway.