We all have had the opportunity in our lives to hear faulty logic in discussions or debates. A fallacy is simply using faulty logic for an argument. Often fallacies appear in debates from politics to theology. It's good to have an awareness fallacies as often debaters are aware of them as well, but are hoping their audience is too ignorant to spot them. Here are a few:
Begging the question fallacy:
This is where the speaker assumes the conclusion is true in the premise of the statement. It's a form of circular reasoning that is structure something like this:
Makes a claim that A is true and assumes it to be true. Then concludes A to be true.
An examples:
"Zeus is real and in our lives because the Book of Gods says so and The Book of Gods was divinely written.
"Everyone wants the new AMC pacer because it's the most popular car out there"
The idea here is that the speaker assumes the claim is true without adding real proof.
The Red Herring fallacy:
The Red Herring is meant to distract attention from the original argument. The idea here is when one person has an argument, the other person introduces another argument that if successful, will abandon the first argument.
Example:
Person A: "We need to find a better way to increase tax revenue"
Person B: "I agree that taxes are important, and this is one of many topics to cover this evening, but don't you think that there is just too much corruption in our government right now and we should investigate these city officials?
Person B is trying to make that argument somewhat relevant to the original statement but ends up chaining the focus of that argument.
The Strawman Fallacy:
This tactic is used to oversimplify the opponents position in order to falsely win the argument.
Example: "Evolutionists would have you all believe we evolved from rocks. that's just ridiculous"
Here the speaker is oversimplifying how evolution occurred in order to try and discredit the opponent.
Ad Hominem:
Another type of Red Herring fallacy that is used to directly attack the opponent speaker personally
Example: "My opponent has no right to talk about gun control. I have footage of him on camera purchasing a rifle"
Appeal to emotion:
This one is simple. The arguer tries to tug at our emotions to claim something to be true
Example :" Buying this ice cream will save the lives of all of these poor children. You would would do it for the children. Right? Ice cream saves."
Non Sequitur:
The Latin name for "it doesn't follow". This happens when someone breaks the conditional rules of an argument. The result is the conclusion does not follow the premise. The format is like this:
Statement: a claim is made
Next statement supports a
conclusion: the conclusion is a new claim not supported by the first two statements
Example: Someone forgot to put the milk back in the refrigerator. Jerry was the last person in the house. Jerry must be the one who could have left the milk out.
Another example:
Jerry is a great guitar player, but he is also so rude. Guitar players are all awful people.
The general idea here is that the conclusion of this statement is too far of a leap to be rational
Appeal to Ignorance:
This one happens when someone claims something that is true is because it cannot be proven untrue. Something like: "you can't prove that I'm wrong".
Example: "UFO's are real. Scientist have not provided proof that they don't exist."
Remember. The burden of proof falls on the one making the claim. not the other way around.
These are just a few of several fallacies out there. This is by no means an exhaustive list. In the future, I may post some more if there is interest.