Emerson Green is a self-proclaimed atheist (I sometimes wonder where he´s really at) who is very skeptical (pun intended) of the really existing atheist/skeptic online community. I previously linked to a video in which he discusses conspiracy theories and the blank denial of such by the Skeptics (who seem to be skeptical of everything...except their own government and military-industrial complex).
In the video above, Green takes on Fallacy Man, pointing out that many "fallacies" sperged about by Skeptics are really thought-stoppers and not "fallacies" at all. At the very least, certain kinds of fallacious reasoning are actually pretty close to perfectly sound reasoning, making the topic somewhat more complicated than Skeptics like to admit. Others are just strawmen.
As an example of the former, why is it always wrong to point out that a person defending a certain proposition (X) has a vested material interest in defending precisely X? Why is that information irrelevant, an "ad hominem" or a "logical" (sic) fallacy? Maybe it´s very relevant indeed that rich people oppose higher taxes on rich people.
An example of the latter would be to counter, say, a political argument with the claim that the person putting it forward is a ginger. True, that would be "ad hominem", but how many people use arguments *that* dumb in a political debate? Almost nobody, making the "fallacy" a strawman (in itself a fallacy, I believe).
It´s almost as if Fallacy Man is a midwit!
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