Ohio lawmakers vote to give themselves a pay raise

[pbrower2a]

Vine --

Either write more individual material... or get help!

You used an inexcusable word... you know, the one that rhymes with maggots.  I have heard that word directed at me with vehement animus... maybe because I am a sissy. (Male lesbian -- yup. Men -- yuck!, and that makes me as straight as one can be).  I get along with male homosexuals as long as we keep our pants up and that the conversation stays safely away from sex.

I have been gay-bashed, and with that I have become vehemently for the rights of LGBT people. A community that respects LGBT rights is far safer for us all. Bigots are often wrong about the people that they meet.  

Much that you say is completely wrong. I am for LGBT rights but clearly against perverts who mess with (and mess up) children. Mainstream gays and lesbians (wisely!) sacrificed those creeps to get the respect of straight people. You can safely assume that once gays and lesbians have children they will protect  them as ferociously against abusive perverts as straight people like me. If I were to have a child in the presence of sexual predators, I might be tempted to keep a literal predator for defense. You know -- Man's Best Friend unless one is a burglar or rapist, in which case it starts acting like a tiger.

...You are using a straw-man argument, one in which you deliberately or recklessly misrepresent the Other Side and knock it down. I have deliberately used an  illustration from people with whom I heavily disagree:

Quote:Strawmen, scarecrows, and mannequins all have one thing in common: they are, by nature, flimsy objects that are easy to knock down. In the context of logical fallacies, a “straw man” argument is an argument that is framed in such a way that it is easy to “knock down” or dismantle.

How many times have you been in conversation with someone—someone who holds an opposing viewpoint to yours—who frames your position in a way that you have not? Then once they frame your position in that way, they attack it, supposing that by doing so they have won the argument? This week’s fallacy is, arguably, one of the most prevalent, and it’s called the “straw man” fallacy.

During times of medieval debate, debaters often began with a clear presentation of their opponent’s position. In Socratic Logic, Peter Kreeft writes about this saying, “One of the rules of medieval debate was designed to block ‘straw man’ arguments: you must first state your opponent’s idea in your own words (to be sure you understand the idea instead of just parroting the words), to his satisfaction, before you go on to refute it.” Such courtesy is rarely given today; instead, those who have conversations with others of differing opinion often try to discredit the opposing viewpoint by caricaturing it, minimizing its coherence, or conducting any other number of methods as a means of destroying its cogence.

https://ses.edu/logical-fallacies-101-straw-man/


The rejection of straw-man arguments is one way to reject obsolete, fanciful,  or fabricated positions of the Other Side. If you are to denounce the Roman Catholic Church for the priestly scandals of child sexual abuse, then do not bring up the Inquisition. (If anything, I know that priests make vows of poverty, obedience, and celibacy, and child sexual abuse is contrary to Church teachings to all, and is as overt a violation of the vow of celibacy as is possible; the Catholic Church now denounces the Inquisition and seeks to root out the child sexual abuse of wayward priests). If you create a straw-man argument, then you are not in a genuine debate.

Quote:A great example of a “straw man” fallacy that falls in the second group was evident in a recent debate between SES Professor Emeritus Dr. Richard Howe and Dr. Ed Buckner. This took place at Georgia State University, and if you’re interested in watching, you can do it here: “Does God Exist?” Debate

It was apparent in this debate that Dr. Buckner’s refusal to address Dr. Howe’s arguments arose from his inability to interact with them. Instead of responding to them, Dr. Buckner chose to interact with the weaker/weakest versions of philosophical arguments, albeit the ones espoused by Richard Dawkins in God Delusion. The problem, of course, is that Richard Dawkins isn’t a philosopher, and plenty of philosophers have pointed out the same.[1]  Further, even though Dr. Buckner was persuaded by the God Delusion, he would have been able to avoid straw man argumentation by investigating the primary sources in Dawkins’ argument. Instead, he relied on Dawkins’ caricature of them. This, of course, is what his critics noted—that Dawkins failed to understand the philosophical arguments that he chose to critique in his book.

[1] See philosophers such as Michael Ruse, Thomas Nagel, or H Allen Orr.
Be that as it may, this is a poignant example of one who chooses to address the weakest version of an argument and “knock it down” instead of interacting with the stronger version that’s being presented.