See You Later, Alligator!

Today's featured fallacy: the straw man

"A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent."

~ Wikipedia

In the wake of the whole protest in Charlottesville, anyone on social media has no doubt seen the array of memes that people are posting, both "for" and "against", the recent removal of certain Civil War related statues/monuments., etc. Welp, the above gem of a meme is one such meme.


Okay, point by point:

"Gonna" isn't a word, you *insipid morons.

*Yes, this is a nit pick and has nothing to do with a straw man. And yes, calling someone a "moron" is itself a fallacy, namely, an ad hominem. However, the insult isn't the extent of my argument, as I'm including reasoned arguments along with it. In other words, the personal insult is not in lieu of an argument, so not technically an ad hominem. 

Next, the statues aren't being removed "for no reason"; they're being removed and some relocated because they represent a part of history in which a part of America was advocating (and fighting for) the right to not only own other human beings, but to beat them should they act up or show defiance. Saying that the statues are being removed for "no reason", besides being untrue and intellectually lazy, is a way to make it easier to refute, hence, the straw man fallacy. You make your opponent's argument sound "silly," then it's easier to criticize.

Other arguments:

"By taking the statues down, your erasing history!" (misspelling intentional)

Nope, you can't "erase" history. 'Ever heard of books? Libraries? Museums?

"The Great Pyramids of Giza were built by slaves, too. Let's remove them!"

Okay, fine. Move to Egypt, apply for citizenship, and then petition to have them removed. 'Probably won't succeed, mind you, since there was such a thing as "obligatory labor" in that era, which is akin to when the Amish here in the U.S. raise a new barn. The community joins in to see it through. In this scenario, no one is owned and no one is beaten or lynched if they flat-out refuse to help. So, yeah, this sort of false equivalence isn't going to fly.

Other false equivalence:

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides" ~ Donald Trump, POTUS

There aren't "many sides" in this particular case, there are only two sides: 

1) White Supremacists, and 2) people against White Supremacists.

Yes, I'm afraid that's it. There are those whose mission is to prevent equal rights and beliefs for anyone non-white, and there are whose mission is to ensure those same rights for ALL people, regardless of skin-color. Which side are you on?

Lacey Sturm: A Former Atheist's Testimony

So, the other day on social media a video popped up in my news feed. The person who posted it friend-requested me a few months back, and best as I can tell, this was because he is a lover of "prog-metal"(progressive heavy metal music). To connect the dots for anyone reading along, my old band is thought to have helped pioneer this sound, at least, according to fans and industry people. The correlation is below.

After a little investigating, aka, clicking around on this person's page, I found that the person who posted said video is crippled and in a wheelchair and also appears to be a father of a little girl. This, and the fact that he is a fan of what I do, mainly the former, made me think twice and ultimately decide against posting a response or rebuttal to the video he posted. It made me think twice because his faith could be the only thing getting this guy by in life. And yes, I'm aware that faith could be the only thing getting countless, able-bodied people by in life, as well. As I've said many times on this blog, I do not speak out against religion because I get my jollies or some sort of cheap thrill pulling the carpet out from under people----in this case, it would be a guy in a wheelchair. No. I speak out against religion for largely two reasons, which are, 1) because religion does more harm than good, which, even in this day and age, this clearly still makes the world more dangerous than it needs to be. And 2) because I want believers to know the actual reasons why people become atheists, as opposed to the reasons they are told in church, and/or, as opposed to the reasons they arrive at by projecting their own misinformed views onto me and other atheists.

So, now the video......

Okay, so prior to being "saved", Lacey here, in all of her 16, 17, 18 years on the planet, had been through a lot of hurt. 

Now, I'm not trying to minimize anyone's life experiences, but come on now anyone who's ever been a teen and is now over 40. My goodness! And what's this?....she was self-centered and only thought of herself? Say it isn't so! So, in other words, self-centered just like 99.9999% of all other teens in America. 

[Edit: I've since learned that Lacey Sturm is currently 35, albeit, I have no idea how old she was at the time this video was made]

Lacey goes on..... 

"And when you're an atheist, it kind of....if you don't... if...if life gets too hard, there's really...there's really no reason to keep going.....I don't know." ~ Lacey Sturm 

Correct. You don't know. You don't know what you're talking about, other than making assessments about your own life, which wouldn't be so bad if you weren't also attempting to project your solution onto everyone else. You assume that a teenager who has a lot hurt over feeling like an outcast is on par with a teenager who has a lot of hurt over losing both parents in an automobile accident.

In other words, Lacey here has a very myopic view of life. She thinks that everyone's threshold for emotional pain is exactly the same; that everyone's trials in life are exactly the same, and subsequently, that everyone's problems can be made all better with a once size fits all "elixir" called Christianity. But of course, this is what Christianity does - that is, it teaches us that everyone suffers from the same "root" problem and that there is one solution that will work for everyone. This is actually one of the things I now loathe about Christianity.

So, do you know how I know that this just doesn't work? Here's how: Because for starters, suicidal thoughts are not exclusive to "atheists". That's the biggest clue of all. I can count six people I've known who were devout, church-going, bible-believing Christians who, for one reason or another, decide to end their own lives. 

On a much larger scale, I think it then becomes very safe to say that on any given day in church someone is thinking of (or has recently thought of) committing suicide. Given this, we can see that what Lacey thought of as a direct, unique message from God wasn't so unique after all. In fact, it amounts to confirmation bias: Lacy subjectively validated in her own mind that her problems were "unique" to her and that God had chosen to intervene. It was His Plan.

If that's true, then when Christians have suicidal thoughts and no one picks up on those thoughts, say, in church, we are then being reasonable to conclude that when plans to hang themselves or blow their brains out are carried out, this must be "God's Plan", too. 

Christian's suffering from depression and killing themselves at roughly the same statistical rate as non-Christians, including atheists? It's almost as if there isn't any "Plan" at all.