Reasoning Skills Fallacy Hunt

¶ … Red Herring Argument / Petition Principi:

Heard from friend who is supporter of the ancient astronaut theory. She seemed to believe it telling me that that intelligent extraterrestrial beings had almost certainly visited Earth in antiquity and made contact with humans in certain points of our history. This she argued was indicated from certain ancient texts such as the Ramayana that, for instance, has gods and avatars who travel from place to place in flying vehicles, whilst the Book of Genesis, (chapter 6 verses 1 -- 4) mentions "sons of God [who] went to the daughters of humans and had children by them" -- which she, along with others, maintains refers to extra-terrestrials. The Book of Ezekiel too has a description of winged creatures flying in the Chariot of God who looked like humans which indicates that that Ezekiel had seen spaceships.

These arguments -- all spurious -- not resting on evidence are examples of the 'red herring' / petition principia fallacy particularly since the arguer attempts to give the impression that the premises are sufficient evidence.

2. Argument: No True Scotsman.

Lyndon's argument for votes for Blacks -- powerful and moral though it was -- appeals mostly to elements of purity for its support.

Take these utterances for instance:

'Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man." He uses lofty words ": the greatest nation on earth" when speaking about America, implying that his listeners should heed him because of America's reputation:

"Should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation…. For with a country as with a person, "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

Rather than focusing on rational support for why Blacks should vote, Johnson relies on principles of religion, transcendence, and America's supposed greatness as was well as their history. He reminds his listeners that "This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose." He ends with: "Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says -- in Latin -- "God has favored our undertaking."

God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here tonight."

.It seems to me that this is an example of a No True Scotsman where purity is the ultimate appeal

(Reference: Lyndon B. Johnson - We Shall Overcome - Speech Text - 15 March 1965

http://uspolitics.about.com/od/speeches/a/lbj_1965_15_mar.htm)

3. hominem ad abusam

In his recent campaign, President Obama seemed to be attacking Romney more than once rather than dealing with Romney's argument. This was a case of Ad Hominem. He accused Romney of ambition and implied that his work ethic was deficient. For instance he claimed that "Romney's budgets were not as detailed as they used to be." This seemed to be an implication to the fact that Romney is vague about things and was an attack on his character. Other covert snide remarks include the following, "four years ago I promised I wouldn't be a perfect president and I'm sure Governor Romney still thinks that." These snide remarks and the remark about the budget had nothing to do with Obama's necessity to prove that he Obama would make a good president. This was a circumstantial ad hominem argument since it was attacking Romney's circumstances.

4. The fallacy of Causality (or Post hoc, ergo propter hoc)

An example is this video by Robb Wolfs, a person with a degree in biochemistry, who promoted himself as a former researcher and "one of the world's leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition" At one point of his video (at 2:34) says "Does cholesterol cause cardiovascular disease? Yes or no? If it does, then we absolutely should not see some fractions of the population with low cholesterol level that are expressing cardiovascular disease, and in fact we do." This logic is false since the cardiovascular symptoms may come from something else altogether. He is lumping them with effect but cardiovascular disease may be caused by a range of factors, one of which may be high cholesterol levels.