Stormbringer's Thunder

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  In a previous "Logic Lesson", I touched on the Argument from Silence , but I forgot that I did it! Diddly dur hay. Anyway, this is a more complete treatment. Arguments from silence, like other fallacies, have some clear-cut examples that are easily identifiable. The basic form is that if someone does not answer a question or give a response, it is taken as confirmation that the other person is right. Unfortunately, I do not have screenshots of one of my favorite examples. An atheopath on Twitter was attacking me for something or other, and I had better things to do (such as watching television). When I came back to Twitter, I realized that I had lost a "debate". The guy had been firing of questions and comments. Because he did not get responses from me, he declared victory for himself — I lost a debate that I did not know I had! Here is another one. It was posted in a forum, and I found out that it was e-mailed to me from a spammer-stal...

This lesson will be a mess. Some of the logical fallacies are blurred, and they overlap. The good news is that the basic False Dilemma fallacy itself is relatively simple. Be very watchful, because this is common in political debates and propaganda. Also, it is a favorite tool of of atheists and evolutionists in attempting to malign Christians. I want to remind you from the outset that I have two purposes for these lessons. First, that you can spot them when someone is using them to manipulate you, whether intentionally or unintentionally. (Yes, sometimes it happens unintentionally. People get careless, or they simply are not skilled in such critical thinking .) Second, you do not want your discussion to lose credibility because you are making too many (or too important) mistakes. False Dilemma goes under several names, including Either-Or, False Choice, False Alternatives and similar. Essentially, there are only two possibilities . The bully says, "Meet me on th...