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Creation vs. Evolution Debate

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Now that's poisoning the well.
NO, Peg, those were statements of fact.

Israelites were never Bedouin. (Nomadic Arabs)

There is not one single scientific statement in Genesis 1.

"in the beginning" refers to being before time existed since time did not exist until God created space-time. (So the reference to "in the beginning" as "time" is incorrect.)

That God is the creator of all things visible and invisible is not a scientific fact since nothing of that truth can be proven by the application of scientific methods.

Identifying glaring errors in one or more statements is not "poisoning the well."

Poisoning the Well
This sort of "reasoning" involves trying to discredit what a person might later claim by presenting unfavorable information (be it true or false) about the person. This "argument" has the following form:
1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented.
2. Therefore any claims person A makes will be false.

This sort of "reasoning" is obviously fallacious. The person making such an attack is hoping that the unfavorable information will bias listeners against the person in question and hence that they will reject any claims he might make. However, merely presenting unfavorable information about a person (even if it is true) hardly counts as evidence against the claims he/she might make. This is especially clear when Poisoning the Well is looked at as a form of ad Hominem in which the attack is made prior to the person even making the claim or claims. The following example clearly shows that this sort of "reasoning" is quite poor.

Before Class:
Bill: "Boy, that professor is a real jerk. I think he is some sort of Eurocentric fascist."
Jill: "Yeah."
During Class:
Prof. Jones: "...and so we see that there was never any 'Golden Age of Matriarchy' in 1895 in America."
After Class:
Bill: "See what I mean?"
Jill: "Yeah. There must have been a Golden Age of Matriarchy, since that jerk said there wasn't."

Examples of Poisoning the Well
1. Don't listen to him, he's a scoundrel."
2. "Before turning the floor over to my opponent, I ask you to remember that those who oppose my plans do not have the best wishes of the university at heart."
3. You are told, prior to meeting him, that your friend's boyfriend is a decadent wastrel. When you meet him, everything you hear him say is tainted.
 
Faith comes by hearing the Word, not by logic. The difference between you and I is the power and the works that Back the Word. It's the power of the Holy Spirit backing the Word that changes hearts and reproves of sin. Through the Word God says I can help you overcome anything. Love is what draws people, not science so falsely called.
My hope is that you understand this someday.
Mike,
You have managed to completely miss the point ans subject matter of this thread.
It's not about how faith comes.
Your assumption of having some power is not what the thread is about.
It's not about how the Holy Spirit changes hearts.
What you can help me overcome is not what the thread is about.
And the thread is not about love.

Please go back and read the OP and see if you can figure out what the thread is about.
If you find it too confusing then here's a summary:
The objective of the thread is:
to help people avoid logical fallacies when presenting their apologetic.
 
Ah, but that isn't what I did:
You poisoned the well when, in your post #3 the very first thing you said was: "Evolutionary science "assumes" atheism. Atheism is its foundation."
That immediately casts a negative taint upon evolutionary science.
All scientists do not accept evolutionary science. Stephen Meyer is a scientist. Michael Behe is a scientist. The evolutionary science paradigm is rejected by legions of scientists.
That is true.
It also has absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SUBJECT OF THIS THREAD.
 
Eek, the appeal to ridicule fallacy, appeal to modernity fallacy, argumentum ad hominem fallacy and appeal to the dictionary fallacy all in the same post!
NO, that is a request that, before you comment on a subject, you find out something about it.
 
This thread is really about the logical fallacies you're committing against Creationists.
That is false.
I AM a creationist.

Perhaps the subject matter is a bit beyond your grasp as that seems to be a common problem in this forum. I posted a thread designed to help people present their creationist arguments without falling into logical fallacies and half a dozen people attack me calling me an atheist, evolutionist, science fraud.

Tell me where the Universe came from.
Tell me where life came from.
Tell me how Natural Selection favors complexity (enough to turn bacteria into humans)
None of those topics are a part of the OP.

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT
CREATION VS. EVOLUTION
The objective of the thread is:
To help people avoid logical fallacies when presenting their apologetic.


Get a grip people.
 
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Can't we just give them a copy of Gods not dead movie. :)

I forget if part one or part two was dealing with this?
 
Mike,
You have managed to completely miss the point ans subject matter of this thread.
It's not about how faith comes.
Your assumption of having some power is not what the thread is about.
It's not about how the Holy Spirit changes hearts.
What you can help me overcome is not what the thread is about.
And the thread is not about love.

Please go back and read the OP and see if you can figure out what the thread is about.
If you find it too confusing then here's a summary:
The objective of the thread is:
to help people avoid logical fallacies when presenting their apologetic.

Any discussion of Evolution is 100% illogical Fallacy and scratching my head why you would even bring up such a ridiculous topic to start with. So we avoid the whole issue by even acknowledging the topic of evolution since it's all make believe.
 
Any discussion of Evolution is 100% illogical Fallacy and scratching my head why you would even bring up such a ridiculous topic to start with.
What you can't figure out is a reflection of your intellectual capacity, not the purpose of the thread which you have yet to understand.
And if you find the topic to be ridiculous, then why bother with it? (Rhetorical question)
So we avoid the whole issue by even acknowledging the topic of evolution since it's all make believe.
Your lack of information does not make any field of study "make believe." It simply identifies a part of the totality of human knowledge of which you are ignorant. Reciting the pro-ignoramus catch-phrases you have picked up does not make your case. It simply identifies you as someone who knows almost nothing about the topic but won't be still.

But whether evolution is a bunch of bunk or not, that is not the topic of this thread.

You don't seem to be able to grasp that fact either. Perhaps you could ask someone to explain it to you. I have not been successful even when I posted it in big letters so it would be easy to read as follows:

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT
CREATION VS. EVOLUTION
The objective of the thread is:
To help people avoid logical fallacies when presenting their apologetic.
 
I wish the op was more clear so I could help steer the discussion along. Even the stated objective isn't clear to me. I'm speaking as a moderator now. I'd like to help keep things on topic but I'm admittedly confused.
 
What you can't figure out is a reflection of your intellectual capacity, not the purpose of the thread which you have yet to understand.
And if you find the topic to be ridiculous, then why bother with it? (Rhetorical question)

Your lack of information does not make any field of study "make believe." It simply identifies a part of the totality of human knowledge of which you are ignorant. Reciting the pro-ignoramus catch-phrases you have picked up does not make your case. It simply identifies you as someone who knows almost nothing about the topic but won't be still.

But whether evolution is a bunch of bunk or not, that is not the topic of this thread.

You don't seem to be able to grasp that fact either. Perhaps you could ask someone to explain it to you. I have not been successful even when I posted it in big letters so it would be easy to read as follows:

THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT
CREATION VS. EVOLUTION
The objective of the thread is:
To help people avoid logical fallacies when presenting their apologetic.

Jim,

I understand that your goal is to help people see the logical fallacies they commit in the creation vs evolution debate.

Do you think it might help the people who don't seem to grasp the intent of your OP for you to give 3-4 examples from this thread of logical fallacies committed so they can see how they do it?

Just list the fallacy by name, one after the other:
  1. a
  2. b
  3. c
  4. d
Then we can discuss them one at a time to see how this fallacious reasoning messes up logical discussion about evolution vs creation.

As you appreciate, the use of logical fallacies in Christian circles (including on CFnet) has wider application.

Thanks in advance,

Oz
 
A doctor is only concerned with the here and now.

Jason,

This is a straw man fallacy. There have been reported cases of measles in Australia in the last 12 months. The medical profession most definitely has investigated past movements of these people to try to understand how they contracted measles.

I have had 5 valve-replacement open heart surgeries and have had a lifetime of atrial fibrillation. When I had my first heart surgery in 1983, the cardiologist and surgeon wanted to know when this started and what could have been the circumstances that led to this heart condition. They traced it back to the 3 bouts of rheumatic fever I had when I was aged 6, 10 and 12 that left me with leaking heart valves.

Doctors most certainly are concerned with issues other than 'the here and now'.

Therefore, you have committed a straw man fallacy with your example.

Oz
 
Jason,

This is a straw man fallacy. There have been reported cases of measles in Australia in the last 12 months. The medical profession most definitely has investigated past movements of these people to try to understand how they contracted measles.

I have had 5 valve-replacement open heart surgeries and have had a lifetime of atrial fibrillation. When I had my first heart surgery in 1983, the cardiologist and surgeon wanted to know when this started and what could have been the circumstances that led to this heart condition. They traced it back to the 3 bouts of rheumatic fever I had when I was aged 6, 10 and 12 that left me with leaking heart valves.

Doctors most certainly are concerned with issues other than 'the here and now'.

Therefore, you have committed a straw man fallacy with your example.

Oz
I believed how it's concerns diseases. They do need a genetic hIstory but not are going to ask the why your parents had you.

I thought I posted that.
 
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The different dog breeds are examples of microevolution. No one denies that microevolution occurs. The big issue is macroevolution, for which the evidence is scarce indeed. Laboratory experiments involving billions of generations of bacteria have shown literally zero evidence for macroevolution. As long as "billions and billions of years" may sound, the actual evidence suggests that the roughly 15 billion years the universe has been in existence are not nearly enough, by a really huge order of magnitude, for life to have originated and for what evolutionists say occurred to have occurred. Evolutionists' favorite ploy is to argue macroevolution from the evidence for microevolution, but this is mixing apples and oranges.

I don't see a conflict either between evolution and the notion of humans having been created in God's image. The conflict is between evolution and the Biblical account of the special creation of Adam and Eve. This is indeed a real conflict, unless perhaps you want to believe God allowed humans to evolve to the point where He had the raw material to specially create Adam and Eve in His image 100,000 or so years ago (but again, this is not what the Bible describes).

I had forgotten I owned it, but I just discovered on my Kindle Three Views on Creation and Evolution (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology, https://www.amazon.com/Three-Views-...eywords=three+views+on+creation+and+evolution. I just now skimmed it again, and it is excellent. The Old Earth, Young Earth and Theistic Evolution views are presented by scholars, and each view is then critiqued not merely by the other presenters but also by high-level representatives of other disciplines. There is also an excellent Introduction and Conclusion. For a mere $7 on Kindle or $15 in paperback, it would be invaluable to anyone who wants to think more deeply about this issue.

I can't comment on whether there would have been enough time for evolution as currently understood to take place, though if not, that seems like it would be more a problem with the theory of natural selection than with macroevolution itself. I'm not sure how scant the evidence for the latter really is, though--there are apparently fossils out there of legged whales, which certainly points in that direction.

I agree that Genesis 2 is harder to reconcile, though I have seen N.T. Wright argue that maybe there was a garden somewhere and Adam was chosen to tend to it. Nothing is going to make me believe in the historicity of that particular story one way or the other, so it's not personally an issue. My actual difficulty resolving evolution and religion is much more philosophical--if prejudices and the in-group vs. out-group mentality arise because of evolution, which is a theory that's passed around in evolutionary psychology now, why would a god who cares about justice work though such a mechanism? Not a problem if you reject evolution, but a delightful new twist on the problem of evil if you don't.

You can't tell me any of that, but you'll accuse Creationists if ignorance, of not knowing logic in this case. The motto of Liberalism might as well be "Agree with me or you're ignorant and hateful." If you what to know what a Liberal is guilty of, look at what they're accusing others of.

Did you just accuse Jim Parker of liberalism? He's one of the most anti-liberal people here. If you think liberals are all about shouting down people who disagree with them and then turn around and toss the word "liberal" around as an insult at anyone who disagrees with you, all I can say is, "Welcome to the Democratic Party." ~Love, an actual liberal.
 
I wish the op was more clear so I could help steer the discussion along. Even the stated objective isn't clear to me. I'm speaking as a moderator now. I'd like to help keep things on topic but I'm admittedly confused.
Yeah.
My bad.
I gave examples of a couple of fallacies so they can be avoided.
 
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