The techniques
Every objection answered on this site runs on a move, and the move is older and more widely used than the argument it is defending. The same shapes turn up in advertising, in court, in a sales call, and in any dispute where someone needs a conclusion to survive contact with evidence.
Knowing that a specific claim about ice cores is wrong is worth one claim. Knowing what it looks like when someone invents a mechanism for the sole purpose of absorbing a contrary result is worth every argument you will ever have, including the ones where this site is on the other side. That is why the definitions below never mention religion. Check them against your own positions too; they do not care whose argument they are in.
Ad hoc rescue
A claim meets contrary evidence, so a new mechanism is invented purely to absorb the hit. The mechanism has no independent support and was never proposed before it was needed.
How to catch it“It could have been different in the past.” Ask what evidence there is for the rescue itself, separate from the need for it.
- How old is the Earth?Radiometric dating is unreliable. Decay rates could have changed, or the samples were just contaminated.
- How old is the Earth?Distant starlight is no problem. Light could have moved faster in the past, or it was created already on its way to us.
Argument from ignorance
A gap in current explanation is offered as support for a preferred alternative. Not knowing how something happened is not evidence about how it happened.
How to catch it“Nobody can explain X, therefore Y.” The gap has to be filled by evidence for Y, not by the size of the gap.
- Did we evolve, or were we made?Some systems are irreducibly complex. The bacterial flagellum, the eye, blood clotting: remove one part and the whole thing fails, s…
- Is the Bible history?You can’t prove the Exodus didn’t happen just because nothing has been found. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, and the…
Cherry-picking
The favourable cases are presented and the unfavourable ones are left out, so a selected sample stands in for the whole record.
How to catch itCount the misses as well as the hits. Ask what the full dataset looks like, not the highlights.
- Was there a global flood?There are seashells and marine fossils on top of the highest mountains. That’s exactly what a flood covering the whole earth would l…
- Is the Bible history?Archaeology keeps vindicating Scripture. The Tel Dan Stele names the House of David, Hezekiah’s seal and tunnel are real, the Pilate…
Conflation
Two distinct things are treated as one, so a true statement about the first is transferred to the second where it does not hold.
How to catch itSeparate the two claims and check each on its own. The argument usually only works while they are fused.
- How old is the Earth?Carbon dating can’t measure millions of years, so how could anyone know the Earth is billions of years old?
- Is the Bible history?We can trust the Bible because we know we have what was written. The Dead Sea Scrolls show the Old Testament was copied almost perfe…
Equivocation
A word is used in one sense to establish a premise, then in a different sense to draw the conclusion.
How to catch itSubstitute a definition for the word each time it appears. If the sentence stops working, the argument was running on the ambiguity.
- Did we evolve, or were we made?Evolution is just a theory, not a proven fact.
False analogy
Two situations are compared, but they differ in exactly the respect the conclusion depends on.
How to catch itName the property the argument needs both cases to share, then check whether they actually share it.
- Was there a global flood?Mount St. Helens carved a deep canyon in days in 1980. So the Grand Canyon didn’t need millions of years; the flood could have cut i…
False dichotomy
Two options are presented as the only two, so refuting one is treated as proving the other. The unlisted options are where the answer usually lives.
How to catch it“Either X or Y.” Ask what a third position would look like before accepting the pair.
- Can you be good without God?Without God, morality is just your subjective opinion. You have no objective standard, so who are you to say anything is really wron…
Genetic fallacy
A claim is judged by where it came from or who proposed it rather than by the evidence for it.
How to catch itThe origin of an idea and its truth are separate questions. Ask which one is being answered.
- How did the universe begin?The Big Bang was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître. Even the science points back to a moment of divine creation.
Guilt by association
A position is attacked through the worst people who have held it, or held something adjacent to it, rather than through its content.
How to catch itCheck whether the position actually entails what those people did. Usually it is doing no work in the causal story at all.
- Can you be good without God?Atheism gave the world Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, a hundred million dead. That is what a society without God actually looks like.
Hasty generalisation
A conclusion about a whole class is drawn from a case or two, often ones selected precisely because they fit.
How to catch itAsk how many cases there are in total, and how the ones being cited were chosen.
- Was there a global flood?Fossil trees stand upright through many rock layers at once. Those layers had to be dumped fast, by the flood, or the treetops would…
- Is the Bible history?Scholars once mocked the Bible for mentioning the Hittites and doubted Pilate existed, then both were dug up. Skeptics keep being pr…
Impossible expectations
A standard of proof is demanded that nothing could ever meet, then the failure to meet it is presented as a defect in the evidence.
How to catch itAsk what observation would satisfy the standard. If none could, the standard is the argument.
- Did we evolve, or were we made?Small changes happen, but no one has ever seen one kind turn into another. Macroevolution is an extrapolation, not an observation.
Incomplete explanation
An account covers part of what needs explaining and is presented as covering all of it. The remainder is not addressed, only left unmentioned.
How to catch itList everything the explanation has to cover, then check the account against the list rather than against its best case.
- If God is good, why so much suffering?Evil is the price of free will. A world of free creatures who can choose good is worth more than a world of puppets, and free creatu…
- If God is good, why so much suffering?Suffering is how souls grow. Courage, compassion, and patience can’t exist in a frictionless paradise, so a world that builds charac…
Misrepresentation
The position being attacked is not the position anyone holds, or a technical claim is restated in a form its own field would reject.
How to catch itFind the claim stated by someone who actually defends it, and compare the two wordings.
- Did we evolve, or were we made?The second law of thermodynamics says everything runs toward disorder, so life growing more complex over time is impossible.
- Can you be good without God?Then where do you get your morals? You are borrowing them from Christianity whether you admit it or not.
Non sequitur
The premises may be perfectly true and the conclusion still does not follow from them. Nothing connects the two.
How to catch itGrant every premise for the sake of argument and ask whether the conclusion is now forced. Often it is not even implied.
- Was there a global flood?Cultures all over the world have a great-flood story. That shared memory only makes sense if there really was one global flood.
- How did the universe begin?The universe is running down toward heat death, its entropy always rising. Something running down must have been wound up, and the w…
- Can you be good without God?Objective moral values clearly exist. You know deep down that torturing a child for fun is truly wrong, and that could only come fro…
Observer selection
An outcome is called improbable while ignoring that only that outcome could have been observed. The observation was filtered before it reached you.
How to catch itAsk whether you could have been present to notice any other result. If not, the improbability is not evidence of anything.
- How did the universe begin?The constants of physics sit in the narrow range that allows life. Tweak one and there are no stars, no chemistry, no us. That preci…
Red herring
The question is quietly replaced with a different, easier one, and the answer to the substitute is offered as the answer to the original.
How to catch itState the original question in one sentence, then check whether it was the one that got answered.
- If God is good, why so much suffering?However terrible, earthly suffering is finite and brief against an eternity of bliss. From heaven’s side, the redeemed will see thei…
Special pleading
A rule is applied to everything except the one case the arguer needs exempted, and no reason for the exemption is given beyond needing it.
How to catch itApply the stated rule to the exempted case out loud. If it breaks the argument, that is the pleading.
- How did the universe begin?Nothing comes from nothing. The universe is something, so it can’t have come from nothing. There must be an eternal cause, and that …
Unfalsifiable retreat
Under pressure a specific claim is revised into a version that forbids nothing. It is now compatible with every possible observation, which is presented as strength.
How to catch itAsk what the world would look like if the claim were false. If the answer is “the same”, the claim has stopped being about the world.
- How old is the Earth?God created the Earth fully formed, with the appearance of age, the way Adam was made as a grown man.
- If God is good, why so much suffering?Just because we can’t see a reason for some horror doesn’t mean there isn’t one. God’s mind is beyond ours, so our failure to find a…