poorwill - 2013-09-07
Fucking let the man eat!
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EvilHomer - 2013-09-07
That's not very nice of James.
I think he should design some experimental protocols and then, in a controlled laboratory setting, test whether human beings really are possessed by the souls of million-year-old space yachtsmen who got all kersploded by atomic bombs.
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Old_Zircon - 2013-09-07
I'm disappointed to learn that James has admitted to lying in order to win arguments. He was the only respectable person left to self-apply the "skeptic" label.
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Aubrey McFate - 2013-09-07 Could you expand on this or provide a link?
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EvilHomer - 2013-09-07 I'm skeptical of your claim, OZ. Prove it.
Everyone resorts to sophistry in order to win arguments once in awhile. He wouldn't be human if he didn't! The real questions are, what does he lie about, to whom, and how often does he do it?
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EvilHomer - 2013-09-07
Also, what about Michael Shermer, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Stephen J Gould, or Jared Diamond? There are plenty of respectable people who wear the "skeptic" label; the only famous example of a skeptic who could be said to have lost "respectability" over the years is Richard Dawkins. But I'd argue that even Dawkins, douchey and wrong though he may be, has maintained his intellectual integrity.
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Blue - 2013-09-07 Does he really have intellectual integrity after penning "Dear Muslima"? That's gotta be the dumbest fallacy ever because no matter how inconsequential the issue someone else is complaining about you are by definition, making an even more frivolous complaint than they are by complaining about them.
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glasseye - 2013-09-07 "Dear Muslima" was Richard Dawkins, not Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
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EvilHomer - 2013-09-07 "Does he really have intellectual integrity after penning "Dear Muslima"? "
Yes, he does. One snarky jab at a feminist doesn't cost a person forty years of intellectual rigor, regardless of how silly the situation was.
I wouldn't say his argument was fallacious because his complaint was also frivolous. That would be a form of ad hominem; a pot has every right to call a kettle black, when the kettle in question IS black. While the pot may be a hypocrite and lack self-awareness, his argument can still be logically and factually sound. As an example: Donald Rumsfeld's recent criticisms of Obama's Syrian agenda.
That's not to say that I think "Dear Muslima" was a particularly elegant piece of reasoning. Dawkins resorted to a variant of the Right To Speak/ Shut Up tactic, that is, "unless your suffering is equal to or greater than an arbitrarily defined valued, you don't have a right to complain". Everyone has a right to complain about anything they want, bullshit or not, and whether it IS bullshit or not is a question that can not be resolved by simply pointing out the speaker's shortcomings. Consider MRAs. Men face a number of unfair obstacles in society today. These obstacles may be smaller and less significant than those faced by, say, Hindu hermaphrodite prostitutes in India, but the fact that there's someone out there worse off than them does not, in and of itself, invalidate the legitimacy of their complaints. *Other things* may invalidate the legitimacy of their complaints, but not their comparative level of suffering.† (as an aside, I was with Dawky on that one, just not with the way he put it. Lighten up, babe!)
Anyway, this isn't really about Dawkins; I meant to post that comment as a reply to OZ. Even if both Dawkins and Randi are off the table (which they're not), that still leaves us with dozens of public intellectuals who are respectable, honest skeptics.
†(this is unless, of course, the person is complaining that their suffering is UNIQUE or WORSE than anything anyone else is enduring. In that case, pointing out analogous situations can be sufficient to counter the argument)
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StanleyPain - 2013-09-07 I don't think we'll be hearing too much from Michael Shermer anymore what with the rape accusations and all....
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EvilHomer - 2013-09-07 People really have to stop slut shaming Michael Shermer. :(
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THA SUGAH RAIN - 2013-09-08
What you're doing is just dismissing the subject!
Yup!
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