Talk:Fallacy fallacy

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[edit] Needs work (from WIGOCP)

I don't think the God Delusion reference is appropriate here. First of all, the example is an extreme simplification of the argument, and really doesn't do it justice. Furthermore, I don't remember seeing this specifically in the book.

It also seems to me that this fallacy is subject to recursion--if you call someone out for using a fallacy to refute your bullshit argument, aren't you doing the exact same thing by calling out their fallacy? Thus, using this fallacy seems unproductive in a discussion. -- Seth Peck (talk) 16:19, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

The parts of The God Delusion that deal with God's existence refute the teleological argument only. Hence, Dawkins's arguments that theists are deluded progress solely from his refutations of the teleological argument. This is the reason why Dawkins's "God Hypothesis" specifies that God be a "creator" — had he not done that it would have made the fallacy blindingly obvious to even the casual reader. Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX 21:20, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
Reading it I got the impression that he was refuting the concept of a supernatural designer. I don't think he set out to, or claimed to, somehow disprove a deist god that wouldn't be a tinkerer or have an effect on real life. After all, he's refuting god as an observable phenomenon that interacts with the universe - something founded almost entirely in teleology. The final line is probably more accurately expressed as "Therefore, God as an interacting entity and designer does not exist." - in which case it isn't the fallacy fallacy at all. Scarlet A.pngnarchist 16:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
It is still an invalid argument. Dawkins's arguments only refute the idea that the breach of natural law was necessary for the formation of life. They do not prove that such a breach did not occur. Even less do they disprove the entire idea of divine involvement with the creation of life. Had Dawkins drawn the scope of what he was disproving narrowly enough to make his arguments valid, it would have been an effective admission of failure. Mjollnir.svgListenerXTalkerX 02:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a reverse form of this?

I've been looking for a term for a sort of inverted form of this, which goes

  • Argument A supports the proposition P
  • P is true
  • Therefore argument A does not contain a logical fallacy.
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