Regarding Pascal's Wager -- the argument can fundamentally be boiled down to "just cover your ass!" This reasoning should be insulting to believers, as it seems to indicate that the all-knowing God isn't smart enough to distinguish atheists that are acting like theists just to get into heaven.
The more I watch this series - the more I am convinced Winston Wu was secretly writing a conclusive list of all fallacies possible, like a fallacypedia or something.
This also has the same form as the argumentum ad baculum, only replacing feeling with negative outcomes. "You don't wish to go to hell, so you need to believe in god!"
A way I passed this to my Dad is "It would be fantastic if Orange juice cured Cancer, this would be so fantastic it would be a literal miracle and whoever revealed it would acquire wealth beyond measure, I wish it did so do you even prior to hearing such a fantasy but reality does not care if you are happy"
Someone claiming that they are offended over a particular subject or idea seems to be a modern usage of the Appeal to Emotion. It shuts down any idea or conversation that someone doesn't want to address while making it appear that the person who is making the ‘offense’ is wrong by default without the requirement to justify one’s position.
3:26 Actually, while Pascal's Wager has many fallacies (it's riddled with flaws), an Appeal to Fear is not one of them. He's not saying "this is terrible, therefore god exists". He's saying "this is terrible, therefore you'd be safer off, believing that god exists ...whether he does or not"
Talk of hell gives children nightmares and can be thought of as child abuse. Getting rid of religion will make our children happier and more sane. Think of the children.
But but but I feel god in my heart and stuff because I'm the most special thing in the universe. Didn't Jesus bleed like 50 pints of blood in that movie?
PS: I think Lord Buddha was on to something about desire. The only way to satiate desire is to stop desiring. Not necessarily in the Nihilistic sense either, though: I read it more in a "I'm fine with what I have" sense. You don't need an afterlife if you're fine in this life.
I hate this on. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS ON ME. And I hate that. But I think with my emotions. No, not because I'm a woman, but more because I just like people, and people re emotional creatures. This co-worker of mine boldface LIED TO MY FACE about something really important, and Gods am I happy that I didn't end up following up on the other end, because I could have lost my job. Here's the thing: I am loyal, literally to a fault. My loyalty can get me hurt, and has in the past. But at the same time, if you ABUSE my loyalty, you don't get it ack .It's gone for good. The reason why this particular case pissed me off so much wasn't because I could have gotten fired: it's because my co-worker KNOWS I'm loyal, and therefore, in some people's minds...easily exploitable...? What I'm pretty much pissed about is that they used my greatest strength as my greatest weakness, and that's just wrong.
I always thought that Pascal 's wager is only about whether believing is in your best interest, not about the existence of any gods. Using its logic, we "should" (in the sense of it giving the best expected outcome) believe in the god with the highest chance of existing (and mistaking atheist pretending to be believers for actual believers), assuming that all heavens and hells have the same values. This interpretation shouldn't be fallacious, right?
Theist: "Watch passion of the Christ there's now way you'll be an atheist" Me: "watch roots they do worst to kunta kinta over a longer period of time should I worship black people then?"
Roots... the shittiest and most insulting piece of racist propaganda I have ever seen. Even the very name Kunta Kinte is insulting. It's a fiction novel turned into a propaganda piece. The author if it was even accused of plagiarizing part of a whole other novel called The African in Roots.
Martymer 81 Isn't an ad baculum a subset of appeal to consequence? WLC uses apeal to consequence in support of ultimate meaning(and appeal to emotion as well) and creationists use appeal to consequence against evolution all the time with their "evolution inspires racism" and the like. I'd love to see a fallacy of the week on appeal to consequence!
Re: the "you won't be an atheist if you watch Passion of the Christ and see what Jesus had to go through"... You won't believe that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is just a work of fiction when you read the entire series and eventually find out about Agrajag, who despite never being mentioned by name, was in every previous book, and the crap he had to go through because of Arthur Dent in the previous books.
PS2: Like, as an Atheist talking to a Pantheist, are you bothered by the fact that I like certain Gods and Goddesses? I don't formally worship either Lord Krishna or Mother Kali--I'm not a Hindu--but I do love them. I also don't think they're REAL, but is "I believe in them just because I want to" AT ALL valid? Or is that just annoying?
dose Appel to emotion is valid when talking about thing like wars , poverty , cutting down on some services like health care for example : cutting a planet parenthood funding will prevent access to abortion to women who couldn't otherwise afford it . (this argument Appel to emotion in this case empty ) so is it invalid cause it provoke emotional response ?
I think there's a difference, and I'm not sure Pascal's Wager is a good example of the appeal to emotion, either. "These people are suffering" is a thing to avoid if we want to be compassionate, so it's a motivation for action, and not intended as a logical argument. Pascal's Wager seems to me a motivation for believing in God, rather than a logical argument that God must exist.I think the difference is whether you're asserting that something is true, with emotions as your evidence.In short, "The minimum wage must be raised because I really feel it will help the poor!" seems (to me) an example of the fallacy. It appeals to compassion, yes, but it also asserts that it will help the poor, without providing logical foundation.But "I've shown with all this other data that raising the minimum wage will help the poor, who re suffering," seems to me not to be an example of the fallacy. It doesn't substitute emotion for logic or evidence.
I think that the desire to retain one's religion is based on two things for most people: firstly, the appeal to authority, in that religion is passed down in families and in cultures, and therefore is a matter of carrying on the traditions of old. Due to the appeal to authority fallacy, anything that comes down to us from an elder is often thought to be wiser, more correct, than anything we could have nowadays. That's why, in the back of my own mind, I rather like people like Henry David Thoreau, because the Transcendentalists were the Pantheists of the American civil war era and they wrote about what they believed, which is strikingly similar to what I believe. The second problem is that, with religion, a powerful sense of "us versus them" is created, and that's appealing in that a person feels part of a group, as opposed to another group that is touted as being inferior to their own. That's why people in the West had such a big problem with the Syrian refugees coming in, or at least some of them did, and prick like Donald Trump still do--they feel that our cultural integrity is being threatened by people who wish to either subjugate or destroy us, neither of which is true. I am not now and probably never could be an Atheist, but I understand how beneficial it is in that it dodges these fallacies. HOWEVER, I have to ask for the sake of clarity: is there not the possibility that an Atheist would become emotionally attached to the fact that they are right, based on empirical evidence, and shove that belief down another person's throat because, after all, that person is wrong, and ought, for their own good, to be cured of their ignorance? You see the problem here, I'm sure.
Sure it's possible, simply because being an atheist says nothing about the individual's personality. There are atheists who would leave the other person alone, and there are atheists who would fell compelled to try to change the other person's mind. There are atheists who are creeps, and atheists who are compassionate. There are atheists who are aggressive, and atheists who are reticent. And so on.
Yeah, I know. Same with any other kind of group. I'm just not really the aggressive type myself in terms of spreading my own (largely invented by me) faith, so I don't like the ones of ANY faith who go, "I am right, you are wrong, here's why, now believe." That's short-sighted and stupid if you ask me.
People can believe what they want, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they don't tell others that they have to live by those beliefs. (That includes trying to pass legislation based on said beliefs, etc.)
I agree with you completely and especially about that last part. What a lot of religious people don't realize (I mean religious in the Abrahamic sense) is that the Ten Commandments are ripped straight out of the Hammurabi Code, meaning that our system of law is actually operating on what monotheists would consider "heathen" or "Pagan" standards. Monotheists have done their very best to discount those sorts of teachings in the long-term, but hey, I suppose whatever is convenient will stick, eh? Another thing that Christians specifically don't realize is that half of the religion is Pagan, because they take from both the Jewish and the Greco-Roman traditions of belief. Jews are really the only ones not to do that, or at least the more conservative and main-stream ones, because cultural integrity is rather important to them. As a rule, though not necessarily in practice, but I've heard that you're not really supposed to convert into Judaism. You're either born a Jew or you're a non-Jew and can't really become one. I don't know how true that is in modern times, though, or with less conservative branches of the faith, but Hinduism is the same way for the most part. Personally I don't care: I take from every religion what I like and leave the rest, and screw my actual label. Labels are for conformists, which I am not.
forgive if i'm wrong, but isn't calling out these quotes of Wu, cherry picking and/or quote mining? not that i'm saying i don't agree, but we don't get to see the context of the quote, and he debunks it, on the premise of that quote alone. keep up the good work btw, Marty! lets hope the world is just a bit less dumb when your done
I would argue that Pascals wager only is an appeal to emotion fallacy as long as it's used as an argument for gods existence. On face value I would argument that Pascals wager is more of a "political" statment. "I'm not saying god exists, but to avoid even the slightest posibility of eternal torment in hell, you SHOULD believe in him for your own sake." It's still a silly argument of course, and that logic could be used to make people believe other horrible things that has no empiric or logic foundation. Still not a fallacy as I see it.
I've just discovered Nephilimfree's TH-cam channel. I honestly think Jordan from Spirit Science makes more sense than him he at least pretends like he has credible sources to quote sometimes but Nephilimfree did no such thing and stated things that have nothing to do with one another...
if a is true: God sends people to hell, simply for their lack of belief. then b is true: This God is (by definition) extorting belief from people. if c is true: Extortion is a crime among the people of the earth. and d is true : Whatever you hold true on earth God will hold true in heaven. then e: God is a criminal. did I do that right? I'm trying to learn critical thinking from you-tube (perhaps this shows that I lack critical thinking lolz)
Well, that's a great video! However, you've misrepresented one thing, GOD the Almighty. The argument of desire is simply like this: If the thirst for water proves the existence of water, then the desire for justice proves the existence of an after life as there is no absolute justice in this world. Finally, I would like to end by quoting a verse from the glorious Quran:"How can you disbelieve in Allah when you were lifeless and He brought you to life; then He will cause you to die, then He will bring you [back] to life, and then to Him you will be returned".May Allah guide you to the straight path.
What could you be meaning to say when you say "stay logical"? There is a delusion here from which both the theist and the atheist both suffer - and delusions are usually impenetrable but I have to try. Demanding of someone that they provide sufficient evidence for what they claim to know is an ultimately unreasonable demand. It's the same as asking with great insistence - 'how do you know?!' as if this is a question that could, let alone 'should' be answered. Were I to ask you 'how do you know you're conscious?!' You would never be able to provide a 'sufficient' argument to prove the claim. If we only knew things that could be demonstrated by appeal to other things that we know, there would be no end to the process of justifying our knowledge. What we 'know', cannot be supported only by other things that we know because this would be infinitely regressive. There is something 'else' to knowledge other than that which can be demonstrated by appeal to argument.
"Buy this product, because BEWBZ" - A logical fallacy we can all relate with.
This video appeals to my emotion.
Keep up the good work!
Is there any logical fallacy Winston Wu has *not* committed?
maybe ableism
That's... not a logical fallacy.
Appeal to Bacon..?
How could appealing to bacon be a fallacy in the first place?
I see this one very frequently.
More often around election time I find.
Regarding Pascal's Wager -- the argument can fundamentally be boiled down to "just cover your ass!" This reasoning should be insulting to believers, as it seems to indicate that the all-knowing God isn't smart enough to distinguish atheists that are acting like theists just to get into heaven.
After-life insurance policy.
The more I watch this series - the more I am convinced Winston Wu was secretly writing a conclusive list of all fallacies possible, like a fallacypedia or something.
As usual, absolutely fascinating and a big help for when I'm compiling an argument. Thank you!
Oh we forgive you for the pause. Goth Jesus *really* needed taking down.
This also has the same form as the argumentum ad baculum, only replacing feeling with negative outcomes.
"You don't wish to go to hell, so you need to believe in god!"
A way I passed this to my Dad is "It would be fantastic if Orange juice cured Cancer, this would be so fantastic it would be a literal miracle and whoever revealed it would acquire wealth beyond measure, I wish it did so do you even prior to hearing such a fantasy but reality does not care if you are happy"
Someone claiming that they are offended over a particular subject or idea seems to be a modern usage of the Appeal to Emotion. It shuts down any idea or conversation that someone doesn't want to address while making it appear that the person who is making the ‘offense’ is wrong by default without the requirement to justify one’s position.
Pascal's wager is also a great example of a false dichotomy.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I'm appealing to emotion by
Saying that I won't like you (if you don't ever make another WDPLaSS episode).
3:26 Actually, while Pascal's Wager has many fallacies (it's riddled with flaws), an Appeal to Fear is not one of them. He's not saying "this is terrible, therefore god exists". He's saying "this is terrible, therefore you'd be safer off, believing that god exists ...whether he does or not"
Yes people are WAY too emotional most of the time and have a seriously hard time separating emotion from their thinking processes.
The Vulcans must hate this particular logical fallacy the most. Er, that is, they _would_, if it weren't for the fact that hate is an emotion.
Talk of hell gives children nightmares and can be thought of as child abuse.
Getting rid of religion will make our children happier and more sane.
Think of the children.
But but but I feel god in my heart and stuff because I'm the most special thing in the universe.
Didn't Jesus bleed like 50 pints of blood in that movie?
Nice video! I always learn a lot from your channel!
The emotion of pride prevents people from admitting that they might be wrong.
May rationality keep you Martymer good work
Thanks, Marty, now you convinced me to believe in Nod.
For the Brotherhood!
Zimny Lech Better healthcare plan and foreign policy than some, and flamethrowers are cool. Kane for president!
Basically social justice.
Yey! I was wondering when the next Fallacy of the Week was coming.
Oh, won't someone PLEASE think of the children!
The appeal to emotion is how most people get their point across. Logic will rarely ever drive the masses.
Good to have you back. :)
The one I hate is "there has to be X!" when they really mean "I really want there to be X".
That is definitely pretty bad, but I think the Y proponents are much worse.
Does the appearance of design in life forms infer actual design?
PS: I think Lord Buddha was on to something about desire. The only way to satiate desire is to stop desiring. Not necessarily in the Nihilistic sense either, though: I read it more in a "I'm fine with what I have" sense. You don't need an afterlife if you're fine in this life.
Bod? Mod? No, no, no...
*Kneel before Zod!*
I hate this on. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS ON ME. And I hate that. But I think with my emotions. No, not because I'm a woman, but more because I just like people, and people re emotional creatures. This co-worker of mine boldface LIED TO MY FACE about something really important, and Gods am I happy that I didn't end up following up on the other end, because I could have lost my job. Here's the thing: I am loyal, literally to a fault. My loyalty can get me hurt, and has in the past. But at the same time, if you ABUSE my loyalty, you don't get it ack .It's gone for good. The reason why this particular case pissed me off so much wasn't because I could have gotten fired: it's because my co-worker KNOWS I'm loyal, and therefore, in some people's minds...easily exploitable...? What I'm pretty much pissed about is that they used my greatest strength as my greatest weakness, and that's just wrong.
I always thought that Pascal 's wager is only about whether believing is in your best interest, not about the existence of any gods. Using its logic, we "should" (in the sense of it giving the best expected outcome) believe in the god with the highest chance of existing (and mistaking atheist pretending to be believers for actual believers), assuming that all heavens and hells have the same values. This interpretation shouldn't be fallacious, right?
Good ole Winston Wu!!
Theist: "Watch passion of the Christ there's now way you'll be an atheist"
Me: "watch roots they do worst to kunta kinta over a longer period of time should I worship black people then?"
If you watch an Adam Sandler movie, do you people then worship you?
Roots... the shittiest and most insulting piece of racist propaganda I have ever seen. Even the very name Kunta Kinte is insulting. It's a fiction novel turned into a propaganda piece. The author if it was even accused of plagiarizing part of a whole other novel called The African in Roots.
I think you mean fundamentalist.
Technically, Pascal's wager is an _argumentum ad baculum_ fallacy.
Paul T Sjordal Well, that too.
Martymer 81 Isn't an ad baculum a subset of appeal to consequence? WLC uses apeal to consequence in support of ultimate meaning(and appeal to emotion as well) and creationists use appeal to consequence against evolution all the time with their "evolution inspires racism" and the like. I'd love to see a fallacy of the week on appeal to consequence!
This video is great because I felt loved.
do you have any book recommendations on fallacies?
Re: the "you won't be an atheist if you watch Passion of the Christ and see what Jesus had to go through"... You won't believe that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is just a work of fiction when you read the entire series and eventually find out about Agrajag, who despite never being mentioned by name, was in every previous book, and the crap he had to go through because of Arthur Dent in the previous books.
2:18 Overly Long Gag
Great video as normal!
Yeah! Another fallacy of the week!
PS2: Like, as an Atheist talking to a Pantheist, are you bothered by the fact that I like certain Gods and Goddesses? I don't formally worship either Lord Krishna or Mother Kali--I'm not a Hindu--but I do love them. I also don't think they're REAL, but is "I believe in them just because I want to" AT ALL valid? Or is that just annoying?
Martymer, your channel is so excruciatingly undersubscribed. It hurts. I'm gonna go get some help!
dose Appel to emotion is valid when talking about thing like wars , poverty , cutting down on some services like health care
for example :
cutting a planet parenthood funding will prevent access to abortion to women who couldn't otherwise afford it .
(this argument Appel to emotion in this case empty )
so is it invalid cause it provoke emotional response ?
I think there's a difference, and I'm not sure Pascal's Wager is a good example of the appeal to emotion, either. "These people are suffering" is a thing to avoid if we want to be compassionate, so it's a motivation for action, and not intended as a logical argument. Pascal's Wager seems to me a motivation for believing in God, rather than a logical argument that God must exist.I think the difference is whether you're asserting that something is true, with emotions as your evidence.In short, "The minimum wage must be raised because I really feel it will help the poor!" seems (to me) an example of the fallacy. It appeals to compassion, yes, but it also asserts that it will help the poor, without providing logical foundation.But "I've shown with all this other data that raising the minimum wage will help the poor, who re suffering," seems to me not to be an example of the fallacy. It doesn't substitute emotion for logic or evidence.
I think that the desire to retain one's religion is based on two things for most people: firstly, the appeal to authority, in that religion is passed down in families and in cultures, and therefore is a matter of carrying on the traditions of old. Due to the appeal to authority fallacy, anything that comes down to us from an elder is often thought to be wiser, more correct, than anything we could have nowadays. That's why, in the back of my own mind, I rather like people like Henry David Thoreau, because the Transcendentalists were the Pantheists of the American civil war era and they wrote about what they believed, which is strikingly similar to what I believe. The second problem is that, with religion, a powerful sense of "us versus them" is created, and that's appealing in that a person feels part of a group, as opposed to another group that is touted as being inferior to their own. That's why people in the West had such a big problem with the Syrian refugees coming in, or at least some of them did, and prick like Donald Trump still do--they feel that our cultural integrity is being threatened by people who wish to either subjugate or destroy us, neither of which is true. I am not now and probably never could be an Atheist, but I understand how beneficial it is in that it dodges these fallacies. HOWEVER, I have to ask for the sake of clarity: is there not the possibility that an Atheist would become emotionally attached to the fact that they are right, based on empirical evidence, and shove that belief down another person's throat because, after all, that person is wrong, and ought, for their own good, to be cured of their ignorance? You see the problem here, I'm sure.
Sure it's possible, simply because being an atheist says nothing about the individual's personality. There are atheists who would leave the other person alone, and there are atheists who would fell compelled to try to change the other person's mind. There are atheists who are creeps, and atheists who are compassionate. There are atheists who are aggressive, and atheists who are reticent. And so on.
Yeah, I know. Same with any other kind of group. I'm just not really the aggressive type myself in terms of spreading my own (largely invented by me) faith, so I don't like the ones of ANY faith who go, "I am right, you are wrong, here's why, now believe." That's short-sighted and stupid if you ask me.
People can believe what they want, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they don't tell others that they have to live by those beliefs. (That includes trying to pass legislation based on said beliefs, etc.)
I agree with you completely and especially about that last part. What a lot of religious people don't realize (I mean religious in the Abrahamic sense) is that the Ten Commandments are ripped straight out of the Hammurabi Code, meaning that our system of law is actually operating on what monotheists would consider "heathen" or "Pagan" standards. Monotheists have done their very best to discount those sorts of teachings in the long-term, but hey, I suppose whatever is convenient will stick, eh? Another thing that Christians specifically don't realize is that half of the religion is Pagan, because they take from both the Jewish and the Greco-Roman traditions of belief. Jews are really the only ones not to do that, or at least the more conservative and main-stream ones, because cultural integrity is rather important to them. As a rule, though not necessarily in practice, but I've heard that you're not really supposed to convert into Judaism. You're either born a Jew or you're a non-Jew and can't really become one. I don't know how true that is in modern times, though, or with less conservative branches of the faith, but Hinduism is the same way for the most part. Personally I don't care: I take from every religion what I like and leave the rest, and screw my actual label. Labels are for conformists, which I am not.
forgive if i'm wrong, but isn't calling out these quotes of Wu, cherry picking and/or quote mining?
not that i'm saying i don't agree, but we don't get to see the context of the quote, and he debunks it, on the premise of that quote alone.
keep up the good work btw, Marty! lets hope the world is just a bit less dumb when your done
So pathos is different from appeal to emotion?
I would argue that Pascals wager only is an appeal to emotion fallacy as long as it's used as an argument for gods existence. On face value I would argument that Pascals wager is more of a "political" statment. "I'm not saying god exists, but to avoid even the slightest posibility of eternal torment in hell, you SHOULD believe in him for your own sake."
It's still a silly argument of course, and that logic could be used to make people believe other horrible things that has no empiric or logic foundation. Still not a fallacy as I see it.
Well- I'll go to hell... if it exists... but at least I can keep my free will. :D
"Race and IQ are related"
That makes me uncomfortable so I'll ignore it
I've just discovered Nephilimfree's TH-cam channel. I honestly think Jordan from Spirit Science makes more sense than him he at least pretends like he has credible sources to quote sometimes but Nephilimfree did no such thing and stated things that have nothing to do with one another...
Didn't know Neph was still around. Guess i just learned something in the comment section.
Is it bad that I'm emotionally invested in critical thinking and rational argumentation?
Yes
Cool
Winston Wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Politics in a nutshell.
Why does Jesus look like he's enjoying himself in the screencap?
If Christ was a masochist it would cast his faith in a whole new light.
Hit me up sometime if you want to Live Stream Sometimes?
Fallacy of the ****week****
if a is true: God sends people to hell, simply for their lack of belief.
then b is true: This God is (by definition) extorting belief from people.
if c is true: Extortion is a crime among the people of the earth.
and d is true : Whatever you hold true on earth God will hold true in heaven.
then e: God is a criminal.
did I do that right? I'm trying to learn critical thinking from you-tube (perhaps this shows that I lack critical thinking lolz)
+like :)
Well, that's a great video! However, you've misrepresented one thing, GOD the Almighty. The argument of desire is simply like this: If the thirst for water proves the existence of water, then the desire for justice proves the existence of an after life as there is no absolute justice in this world. Finally, I would like to end by quoting a verse from the glorious Quran:"How can you disbelieve in Allah when you were lifeless and He brought you to life; then He will cause you to die, then He will bring you [back] to life, and then to Him you will be returned".May Allah guide you to the straight path.
What could you be meaning to say when you say "stay logical"? There is a delusion here from which both the theist and the atheist both suffer - and delusions are usually impenetrable but I have to try. Demanding of someone that they provide sufficient evidence for what they claim to know is an ultimately unreasonable demand. It's the same as asking with great insistence - 'how do you know?!' as if this is a question that could, let alone 'should' be answered. Were I to ask you 'how do you know you're conscious?!' You would never be able to provide a 'sufficient' argument to prove the claim. If we only knew things that could be demonstrated by appeal to other things that we know, there would be no end to the process of justifying our knowledge. What we 'know', cannot be supported only by other things that we know because this would be infinitely regressive. There is something 'else' to knowledge other than that which can be demonstrated by appeal to argument.
Mark Lucas What are you on about? This is about constructing arguments, not the nature of knowledge.
+Graknorke You might be right I just got triggered by a certain phrase and wanted to make a point.
Your tone is kinda boring
First!
Nope.
Yes, I did actually post this within the first minute of this video being uploaded.
Mine was first.
nobody cares
Kolev Antonio I'm with you on this one.