The divine fallacy + What Trump doesn't get about conservatism

[C C]

The Divine Fallacy: When People Use ‘God’ as the Explanation
https://effectiviology.com/divine-fallacy/

EXCERPT: The divine fallacy is a logical fallacy where someone assumes that a certain phenomenon must occur as a result of divine intervention, simply because they don’t know how else to explain it, or because they can’t imagine that this isn’t the case. For example, if someone doesn’t understand how evolution works, they might display the divine fallacy if they claim that their inability to understand evolution is proof that God must have created all the living organisms on Earth. It’s important to understand the divine fallacy, since people frequently use it in an attempt to discredit scientific theories that they disagree with, and in order to support various pseudoscientific concepts. In the following article, you will understand how the divine fallacy works, see some examples of its use, and learn what you can do in order to counter people who use it....

MORE: https://effectiviology.com/divine-fallacy/

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What Trump Doesn’t Get About Conservatism
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/opini...atism.html

EXCERPT: . . . Conservative thinkers have on the whole praised the free market, but they do not think that market values are the only values there are. Their primary concern is with the aspects of society in which markets have little or no part to play: education, culture, religion, marriage and the family. Such spheres of social endeavor arise not through buying and selling but through cherishing what cannot be bought and sold: things like love, loyalty, art and knowledge, which are not means to an end but ends in themselves.

About such things it is fair to say that Mr. Trump has at best only a distorted vision. He is a product of the cultural decline that is rapidly consigning our artistic and philosophical inheritance to oblivion. And perhaps the principal reason for doubting Mr. Trump’s conservative credentials is that being a creation of social media, he has lost the sense that there is a civilization out there that stands above his deals and his tweets in a posture of disinterested judgment....

MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/04/opini...atism.html

[Syne]

Divine fallacy is often more a straw man than actual argument. It's rarely used due to a lack of understanding.

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Actually, free market pressures taken out of education (like teacher's unions and government financial aid) is what has ruined it. And the free market can directly affect the culture and support religion, marriage, and family.

[Yazata]

The divine fallacy is a logical fallacy where someone assumes that a certain phenomenon must occur as a result of divine intervention, simply because they don’t know how else to explain it, or because they can’t imagine that this isn’t the case.

If there's any fallacy there, then it would seem be be non sequitur, a formal fallacy in which a conclusion doesn't follow from what came before (God supposedly following as a conclusion from not knowing how to explain something in this case). Logical non-sequiturs are nothing unique to God or religion, so it's probably not helpful to imagine that their religious examples are a unique new kind of fallacy.

Besides, I doubt whether many educated theists with any sophistication in philosophical theology would argue so crudely. So I get the impression that this author is arguing against a caricature.

It’s important to understand the divine fallacy, since people frequently use it in an attempt to discredit scientific theories that they disagree with, and in order to support various pseudoscientific concepts.

It might be instructive to recognize that assuming that things we can't really explain must have scientific explanations, based largely on explanatory speculation and on faith that the world of scientific understanding must be coextensive with reality itself, is only as plausible as those exceedingly scientistic premises. (Like they say: garbage in, garbage out. It's true for logical deduction too.)

In my opinion, metaphysical naturalism is faith-based, just like theistic faith is. (Mainly because I don't know of any way to satisfactorily justify either one.) I wouldn't say that about methodological naturalism though, which seems to naturally derive from empiricism.

[Zinjanthropos]

I hear these two all the time, "God made you" or "God gave you". Found at.the beginning or end of a.sentence, descriptive in nature. I have countered that one by asking the speaker why men produce so many sperm to fertilize an egg when only one will do if God is in control. I'm confident that by now most.people.realize each sperm packet contains different genetic instructions. All you have to do is look at couples who produce children knowing the chances of passing on a deadly genetic defect is high. Not a certainty but very risky meaning that every sperm is different or.sacred as Monty Python would have us think. IOW if God made.or gave me then all dad's.sperm should be identical, at least.that makes sense to me. . So much death to have a baby, maybe there should be an inquest....lol

[Secular Sanity]

It all boils down to sperm competition but not just between males. We only want the best one. It’s a treacherous trip. Our immune system kills off most of those slimy little critters.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MoAUfnKcA3I

[Ostronomos]

The Divine Fallacy: When People Use ‘God’ as the Explanation
https://effectiviology.com/divine-fallacy/

EXCERPT: The divine fallacy is a logical fallacy where someone assumes that a certain phenomenon must occur as a result of divine intervention, simply because they don’t know how else to explain it, or because they can’t imagine that this isn’t the case. For example, if someone doesn’t understand how evolution works, they might display the divine fallacy if they claim that their inability to understand evolution is proof that God must have created all the living organisms on Earth. It’s important to understand the divine fallacy, since people frequently use it in an attempt to discredit scientific theories that they disagree with, and in order to support various pseudoscientific concepts. In the following article, you will understand how the divine fallacy works, see some examples of its use, and learn what you can do in order to counter people who use it....

MORE: https://effectiviology.com/divine-fallacy/

Fallacies are not exclusive to uneducated theists. No human fallibility disproves God.

[Zinjanthropos]

Fallacies are not exclusive to uneducated theists. No human fallibility disproves God.

.
Then is it absurd to manufacture or proselytize any adjective, adverb or anything of a descriptive nature as well as attribute certain actions or events that take place either of a personal or global nature to a God you believe in?. 

IMHO, to be completely fair one must either believe in only that a God exists or doesn't.  It should be a matter of personal choice/opinion with any additional beliefs of divine subject remaining private.

Atheism...no God belief. Theism ...belief in a God. How simple is that if just left.alone.

[C C]

Fallacies are not exclusive to [the] uneducated [...]

The life as encountered instead of life as described irony... Is that the "acts" identified and classified by disciplinary reasoning as formal and informal fallacies are actually employed in the everyday world all the time by the educated. In courtroom prosecutions and defenses, in politics, by interviewers, in press conferences, industry presentations / lectures, advertising, etc.

Professional disparagement does little to impede their function as weapons of war or tools for persuading and manipulating people; they slip by due to sloppy monitoring or complete disinterest in / lack of monitoring. "Real world" environments don't care -- it's usually only in very uniquely staged situations (like classroom debates or intellectually supervised ones) that they are sternly screened and penalized. It often doesn't matter even when one of them is "caught" and exposed for all to see (so to speak), but that a viewing or attending audience, readers / listeners, public at large, jury, etc got exposed to it and its influences.

~

[Ostronomos]

Fallacies are not exclusive to uneducated theists. No human fallibility disproves God.

.
Then is it absurd to manufacture or proselytize any adjective, adverb or anything of a descriptive nature as well as attribute certain actions or events that take place either of a personal or global nature to a God you believe in?. 

Absolutely. There is only one God. And that God is far beyond human comprehension. Hence why He exists and non-exists simultaneously. A God that can generate itself from nothing in other words is far from incompatible with human fallibility.

IMHO, to be completely fair one must either believe in only that a God exists or doesn't.  It should be a matter of personal choice/opinion with any additional beliefs of divine subject remaining private.

Atheism...no God belief. Theism ...belief in a God. How simple is that if just left.alone.

Well, yes it is a matter of personal choice. The overzealous folk are the ones that give problems. As it was said on sciforums, God is okay, his fan clubs create problems.

[Zinjanthropos]

Fallacies are not exclusive to uneducated theists. No human fallibility disproves God.

.
Then is it absurd to manufacture or proselytize any adjective, adverb or anything of a descriptive nature as well as attribute certain actions or events that take place either of a personal or global nature to a God you believe in?. 

Absolutely. There is only one God. And that God is far beyond human comprehension. Hence why He exists and non-exists simultaneously. A God that can generate itself from nothing in other words is far from incompatible with human fallibility.

Then you just committed 3, possibly 4, absurdities without the 'only one God" comment. I guess people can't help themselves, psychologically it must have some benefit to the speaker. Unless they're hopelessly cast under some mesmerizing spell.