Saturday, March 22, 2014

Modern Atheism: a futile exercise in "circleism"


Circleism is the tendency to win arguments by drawing a circle around the facts and concepts that are admissible in the debate. Of course circleists carefully exclude their opponents' strongest data and arguments to make their job easier.

One of the stupidest circlist tricks is to pile up hundreds of examples of smart people who agree with you, carefully avoiding those that don't.   It more resembles intellectual voter fraud than honest argumentation.

Emma Green reviews a new circlist Jeremiad  that does precisely that the link. It's English, natch. The lime balls are the most tedious, smug circlists of all. I guess dreary weather inculcates dishonest argumentation somehow.

http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/the-intellectual-snobbery-of-conspicuous-atheism/284406/

No comments:

Post a Comment