Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Kids say the darndest things, don't they?


For the sake of tying up the few remaining loose ends from Matthew's hilarious self-immolation over at The Politic recently, we have commenter "Logician" summing things up nicely:

Oh Matthew,

By the way, you ARE obligated to answer me. I know, with all the terrific responsiblity you have with judging books merely by their title that you have little time left, but hey, YOU’RE the one who wants to make a name for yourself.

YOU claim: YOUR bible is the ONLY book with ANY truth about the origins of mankind. That makes YOUR bible the ONLY true bible among ALL others. This EXTRAORDINARY claim REQUIRES justification. If you think it doesn’t, you’re wrong, period. Here’s your chance, handed to you on a silver platter.

Now, we have only TWO options here:

1) Either you are right and EVERYONE ELSE on this planet is wrong, or

2) You’re just another mealy-mouthed religidiot who is trying to inconspicuously pull your foot out of your big, fat mouth.

So far, Matthew, you have given no one ANY reason to suppose your knowledge is any greater than that of any other neurotic trying desperately to make sense out of the reality you must deny in order to believe in magical beings.

So Matthew, I will check back on you in 12, (twelve), (1/2 solar day), hours. If you have not responded, I will begin blogging all others who have spotlighted you that you are just another goof, a sad little trifle, a typical neurotic who unfortunately found access to a keyboard and is now back in custody of the nice young men in the clean white coats.

This is it, big guy, put up, or forever be branded just another jack-off.

Matthew?

To which Matthew's sandbox buddy Marsilio takes umbrage:

Most curious.

Why would a logician, of all people, commit an inductive fallacy by using the Argument From Silence?

I’m tellin’ ya, schools these days…

Which would normally be a good point, except for the uncomfortable fact that it was Matthew himself who started talking all that smack from the get-go (emphasis added):

For the trolls (and you know who you are!), I simply offer the original title Darwin gave to his book,

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

,and ask you to explain how such a social (and Holocaust-endorsing) statement can be classified as the title of a purely scientific work — until I get a direct answer to that, I will not respond to any of your inquiries as I haven’t seemed to get much of a response on mine and think I’m overdue!

Um ... yeah, Marsilio, so, you see, since Matthew whipped out that whole Argument from Silence thing in the first place, it's somewhat inconsistent and contradictory to now fall back on criticizing its subsequent application of ... you know, Marsilio, never mind ... it's just easier to call you stupid, OK?

BONUS TRACK
: You cannot make this stuff up.

8 comments:

Balbulican said...

And in other Marsilio news...he looks at Muslims Against Sharia, a group which:
- features a number of prominent Muslim haters, but apparently no Muslims
- solicits funds but wont identify their Board, membership or staff
- is busily rewriting the Koran, based on input from anyone who wanders by

...declares they're "good folks" for supporting Ezra (quel surprise!) and sees no reason to doubt their credibility.

I guess it's true, what they say about the impact of religious belief on the capacity for critical thought...

LuLu said...

Mon Jan 14, 2008 – 5:59 pm | Posted in General |

They really can't do anything right ...

The Seer said...

Splain something to me.

If Matthew's Bible lays out all we need to know about — oh — the origin of species & c, why do we need Matt and his friends to do all this supplementary work to set us straight on creationism and intelligent design?

Ti-Guy said...

I really don't believe these people are that stupid...I think they're mostly a bunch of frauds.

If I were a detective (or an investigative journalist), I'd be paying a lot of attention to the named figures associated with these...*ahem*..."blogs."

Balbulican said...

Marsilio seems to be on a bit of a tear. For the last couple of days he's been perking up The Politic with an unprovoked serial ejaculation of posts, without analysis or comment (a la Shaidle), whose only connecting theme seems to be "Catholics Aren't ALWAYS Wrong About EVERYTHING, You Know."

Ti-Guy said...

I wonder if Marsilio's misspelling of Ficino was deliberate or not.

The names of those people are certainly odd...Aaron Unruh (German for 'disquiet') and now one alluding to a Renaissance philosopher.

If the posts over there weren't so witless, I'd think more about this, but, well anyway...

E in MD said...

Maybe we need to coin another new logical fallacy.

How about argumentum ad fucktardium?

That would be the argument wherein the thinker makes up a bunch of claims but thinks that he's just SO right and SO good that he doesn't need to back any of them up at all.

Sorta like "You know, all right wingers are a bunch of cowards and the reason why they cling so steadfastly to their religion is the same reason they cling to morons like George W. Bush. Fear. They really fear finding out what might actually be beyond death is merely oblivion so they march along with anyone they think will have the remotest chance of keeping their moldy hides alive. Oh, and Dickey Cheney is fat." says the fucktard

"Now you know you are making one hell of a generalization and a major claim here... You're going to have to back it up." says the opponent.

"No I don't. I'm too righteous and too cool for that. All two of my friends and my mom say so. You can't take my lack of ability to back up anything I said as invalidation of my FACTS. Cuz that would be like, a logical fallacy or something. So nanny nanny boo boo stick your head in doo doo."

LuLu said...

argumentum ad fucktardium

Brilliant.