Re: Archbishop more or less admits there's no God

On 30 Mar, 18:35, Ignis Fatuus <Ig...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:07:57 -0700 (PDT), "pbow...@xxxxxxx"





<pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On 30 Mar, 17:18, "Diane L." <dianen...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
pbow...@xxxxxxx wrote:

<HUUUUUGE great snip>

Let's be clear on this: ad hominem is the use of personal attacks to
avoid engaging with a point of argument raised by a debating partner.

Not quite. Ad hominem refers specifically to the fallacy of rejecting
an argument due to the character, behaviour of beliefs of the person
proposing the argument. Thus, both "Your argument is wrong because
you're a Christian." and "Your argument is wrong because you're an
atheist." are ad hominem, but "You're a hypocritical, whiny, pompous
idiot." *isn't* ad hominem, unless it goes on to add "... and therefore
your argument is wrong." :-)

Ignis might not have explicitly added "...and therefore your argument
is wrong" in his rant, but he's made it very clear in his commentary
that he regards said rant as rejecting Zarbs' argument, and the
failure to engage with a point of argument is, in practice,
interpreted to denote rejecting an argument, and reasonably so. If you
say "You're a hypocritical, whiny, pompous idiot, and that's my final
word on the matter" (or, as Iggy ended his response to Zarbs,
"Enough"), that's a clear demonstration that they regard the argument
as over in their favour. If it were a legal case, we'd be looking at
intention rather than just the literal word of law. Hence the common
usage of ad hominem to denote someone who uses insult in lieu of
responding to an argument, rather than necessarily saying in so many
words "I reject this argument".

BRILLIANT Another Fine Aggyism. If your opponent doesn't supply the
argument that you Want to Contradict - then You supply it for Him.

Hmm? Mind if I ask you to translate from the original Yaddish this
time? The only argument I 'supplied' in the above was your own, and
deliberately so.

Phil
.

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