Professional argumefying
We’re not the ones who have “bought into the confusion.”
A stupid counter-factual assertion doesn’t become less stupid or less counter-factual because you add a “Period” to it. Matt Dillahunty is Lauren Boebert’s second-best espresso machine. Period. See? It doesn’t work. Trans women are men who say they feel like women inside. That’s what “trans women” means. It’s the word “women” that means “women”; the phrase “trans women” means something else. The “trans” part of “trans women” indicates “not” or “opposite” or “fantasy.” It doesn’t indicate “real” or “literal” or “genuine.” And the “Period” is just decoration.
And he’s wrong that it’s not remotely like believing the bread turns into Jesus. It’s really quite like it. Granted bread is a different kind of thing from a man who thinks he has the “identity” of a woman, but the belief in a miraculous change from one kind of thing to another kind of thing is plenty similar enough.
But it gets worse.
“It’s right there in the name” – oh come on. “God” is right there in the name too, but that doesn’t make the claims about “God” true. Of course it’s right there in the name: it’s right there in the name because the “trans women” put it there, because they’re hell bent on taking our ability to name ourselves away and giving it to themselves. The claim doesn’t become true because the people who want us to believe it’s true worded the claim so as to trick us into believing it’s true. Language isn’t magic that way.
We’re not paying attention to Dillahunty’s saying some people with penises are women? And if we were paying such attention, we would Understand and Believe?
What a buffoon.
“Seahorses are horses. It’s right there in the name.”
“Then you’re not paying attention.” On the contrary, it appears you are the one not paying attention.
On another note: “Lauren Boebert’s second-best espresso machine” is perfect and needs to become a thing. Or perhaps just identify as a thing.
Aw shucks.
“Pantomime horses are horses. It’s right there in the name.”
“Pretend women are women. It’s right there in the name.”
A person is found unconscious in the street and brought to an emergency room. No identification is found.
Is there any way the doctors can determine if the patient is a man or a woman? Should they write “unknown” on the chart and wait for the patient to wake up and tell them?
What if the patient wakes up and has amnesia? Does the patient’s sex (or, if you prefer, gender) exist in an indeterminate quantum state, like Schroedinger’s Cat?
Right there in the name. Great. Does that mean I have to give points to my students who identified a blackberry as a berry? Or a strawberry as a berry? Because it’s right there in the name! What about ring worm? Is it caused by a fungus, or a fungus that identifies as a worm, or a worm that identifies as a fungus? After all, worm is right there in the name.
Back in my FTB frequenting days I was aware of Dillahunty, and that many held him in high regard. I checked out a couple of his videos and couldn’t frankly see what the fuss was about. He didn’t argue better than many many other atheists and skeptics. He didn’t have a unique take or point of view. I frankly found him. boring and just didn’t engage. that held true for many in that scene to be honest. I had a double handful of more or less regular favourites, many of whom one by one turned out to be misogynists, flakes, self promoters, or who were shunned and disappeared from the scene. By the time of the schism I was down to 2-3 regulars and a couple of occasional pop ins. B&W, PZ, Mano being the main ones. PZ’s blog almost instantly became a toxic place to be, so I gave up on it. Mano became even more anodyne, presumably to avoid either hosting or becoming the target of a shit fight, but he’s now joined the displayed his underlying sexism by tolerating and even using the ‘karen’ phrase nd mouthing the trans dogma, even if only perfunctionarily so. It’s hard to find the perfect blogger.
I agree. Aren’t we fortunate that we found her?
“[trans women] are women. It’s right there in the name.”
The lie becomes clearer with but a tiny tweak:
“[trans women] are women. It’s right there in the label they chose for themselves.”
This guy used to be one of the sharpest sceptics out there.
From my experience most social media debate is anything but – it’s just bullying by people who are far enough removed from their targets that they don’t have to fear a bloody nose or well placed knee.
But I also think there’s something else at work here. Many people who are liberal-minded fear being on the wrong side of history. And face it, every single position most of us hold dear (racial equality, feminism, reproductive rights, tolerance of others ideologies, gay rights, etc.) faced conservative counter arguments on their way to mainstream adoption. Even biology was distorted to make arguments about the inferiority of blacks and women or at least their unsuitability in some roles. After all, in many cases God himself had supposedly weighed in on some of these issues so who were we to try and change the will of God. Many of those arguments were fashioned to appear reasonable to the average person of the time. But social conservatism has pretty consistently been on the wrong side of history. That the trans-militants appear to be the ones distorting the biology and applying religious thinking this time may be a subtle distinction to many people. The arguments are designed to make it seem as if this is just an issue of semantics. But they also have people with credentials on their side as well (even atheists can fall victim to religious thinking it would appear). Many liberals are probably staying out of this fight because they’re afraid of being bigots, not because someone might call them that. When in doubt go along with those promoting inclusiveness whatever that means.
Of course there are plenty of reasons to view this as totally different form those movements of the past – for one, and it’s a biggie, those movements strived to extend the privileges, rights, opportunities, and safety enjoyed by a few to the many, not try to bulldoze over the many to appease a few.
Of course and as always – this is just one Pliny’s opinion.
“Trans-women are women. Period.” Ironically the final word identifies once reason why trans women aren’t women
In my militant atheist days, I never came across a single argument for the existence of “God” that added up to “better than nothing”* in my view. In fact, they were exactly what I for one would expect from people who had no reason what so ever for believing as they did, but were absolutely determined to believe it anyway and rationalize it to themselves somehow. Another feature Gender Ideology shares with theism.
But by far the worst arguments were the ones that tried to derive sweeping claims about reality from whatever arbitrary words and labels* humans have coined to talk about it. Same story:
By the same logic, Creation Science is science. It’s right there in the name. Matt Dillahunty approves. As I have previously put it, if you know how to detect a pun when you hear it, you know everything you need to know to debunk all of Gender Ideology.
Religious apologists would frequently attack their opponents for their failure to “educate” themselves and appeal to unspecified arguments by unspecified philosophers or theologians that atheists were too uneducated and unsophisticated to deal with. What’s implied is of course:
It is, of course, a 100 % watertight (and cowardly) strategy: Even if you did nothing but study theology for the rest of your life, you would die of old age before even making it through 1 % of everything that’s ever been written on the topic, and apologists would still be able to claim that the best arguments are among the ones you haven’t looked into yet, thus proving once again what an intellectual philistine you are. In fact, part of the definition of “sophisticated theology” seems to be that you haven’t dealt with it yet. As soon as you deal with it, it instantly becomes another example of atheists attacking strawmen, shooting down easy targets, and ignoring the best that theology has to offer. Do I need to spell out the parallels to Gender Ideology?
And of course all the obligatory excuses for not making ones case (“I don’t have time”***, “It’s a waste of time arguing with you” etc. etc.) are all too familiar. As Not Bruce and others have pointed out, if they had anything better, they would use it for everything it was worth, and the fact that they don’t is plenty reveling in itself.
* No, the First Cause argument cannot be “fixed” by modifying the first premise to “everything that falls into subset x (where x just happens to include everything except God) must have a cause”.
** I remember a theist on twitter arguing that atheism was an “ideology” because the word itself ends with “ism”. I told him that was an interesting way to look at electromagnetism and left it at that…
*** Funnily, these very same people never seem to lack the time when it comes to parroting the conclusion or attacking anyone who disagrees.
I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility that he was created in his entirety by a freak fluctuation in the Dunning Kruger Field.
Bjarte#11; I stopped going to church almost immediately after being confirmed into the Anglican Communion. I don’t think I had any reasons much beyond the feeling that I simply couldn’t believe, as I was supposed to do, in all this stuff. Not long afterwards, I happened to bump into the Rector, a very kindly and good man, as he came out of the gate of the Rectory.
‘Oh, Tim,’ he said, ‘I haven’t seen you in church recently.’
‘Well, I’m afraid I don’t think I believe in God any more.’
‘Oh, but it’s much the nicer hypothesis!’ (He had been a teacher of mathematics before taking orders, or may be had been orders already & doubled as the school chaplain.)
I muttered something I can’t remember now (though the first part of the exchange is etched into my memory), but I remember very clearly what I was thinking: ‘I don’t want a bloody hypothesis!’
Also, an eternity in Hell, which seemed to be my fate as a non-believer and apostate, didn’t seem to be very ‘nice’, whether hypothetically or not.
Matt Dillahunty has steadily been dropping in my estimation. I watched a few of his takedowns of believers, but quickly became bored with them, and wondered why any believer would bother to phone in, and why Matt D would want to go on doing these smackdowns on and on ad infinitum. Hasn’t he got better things to do?
One should always beware of “professional debaters” as a source of solidarity or even as a reliable finder of the truth; if one is incisive and wise, and also charismatic and quick-witted, one might be good at the format, but being good at the format does not imply wisdom or even a great amount of wit, especially when that facility is self-described.
Recall that the platonic ideal of a debater is one who, at the drop of a hat, can argue his opponent’s case better than the opponent can. The point of such debates is not to convince anyone of the truth of the claim, especially not the opponent, but rather to show off one’s ability to out-argue the opponent in whichever rhetorical terms the audience accepts, and the truth of the matter be damned.
William Lane Craig is a fantastic debater; he has been making a better living at it than any one of us has made at anything for longer than most of us have been alive, and back when the “New Atheists” were a phenomenon on the rise, he had several notable run-ins with Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, neither of whom acquitted themselves at all poorly. But Craig has dedicated his superlative debating skills to promoting a rank falsehood, and he was neither convinced by the atheists’ arguments nor did he manage to convince them. I doubt between them they managed to convince any in their audience who’d come in with a preconceived notion to the various topics raised at these debates.
I have not spent more than a handful of minutes of my life listening to this Dillahunty fellow, but in that time he hasn’t come off as any less of a charlatan than Craig, and a much less amiable one, at that. His behaviour on this topic is a bit disheartening, but not surprising. He could do with a good trip to Delphi, I suspect.
Tim Harris #13
As I have previously written, I strongly suspect the most common “reason” for believing in “God” (besides tribalism, group conformity, communal reinforcement etc.) is:
There’s a reason why all the major faith based religions are so eager to get to the children first, before they have what it takes to make an informed decision on their own. Because once you already believe, mechanisms like confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and motivated reasoning kick in to make sure the religion enjoys a decisive “homefield advantage” forever after.
Der Durchwanderer #14
Another point is that the soundest arguments, the most reliable lines of evidence, the strongest indicators of truth and falsehood etc. objectively speaking rarely coincide with what seems most subjectively persuasive to a lay audience. As many climate scientists and evolutionary biologists have discovered a little too late, having science and logic on your side is not the decisive advantage (in terms of persuasive power) it’s often cracked up to be. Playing by the rules of science is nothing if not limiting, while the purveyors of BS are free to say whatever it takes to impress people. Without the necessary experience, pre-knowledge, critical thinking skills etc. all your average layperson can be expected to get out of the exchange is that one side comes across as far more confident, assertive, aggressive etc. while the other side is forced to use conservative language (“seems to indicate”), acknowledge doubt, and introduce caveats, conditions and qualifiers at every turn. No need to specify which side is the scientific one.
This inability to argue permeates so much of the movement. I won’t say the ENTIRE movement because I just don’t know.
Yes, Bjarte – getting the little buggers early is certainly the strategy in faith-based religions. And judging from certain quite elderly Catholic acquaintances of mine it is appallingly successful. A relief on coming to Japan, where I have lived for nearly fifty years, was being in a society where ‘faith’ doesn’t play a part in religion, though one shouldn’t assume from that, as many Westerners, whether Christian or atheist, cheerfully do, that the Japanese are irreligious, usually citing surveys where Japanese people are asked whether they believe in this, that, or the other, and they reply, ‘No, I don’t.’ It seems that people brought up in faith-based religions cannot conceive of religions that do not require faith as actually being religions.
I think what turned me against Christianity from quite an early age was the constant undercurrent of threat. There is this all-powerful person watching over your every thought and act, and he’s going to punish you if you don’t obey him and particularly if you don’t believe in him. I only became confirmed because my parents wanted it, and, I suppose, thought it would improve my morals, as you might geld a tom-cat. It didn’t. But this threat is potent. It is a cruel thing to force on children, and it ruins minds.
Der Durchwanderer, when I was trying to find better arguments for remaining a Roman Catholic, I watched a huge number of debates between William Lane Craig and various atheists. He only seems to be a master debater* the first time. After that, his boring script (which never changes), and stubborn refusal to acknowledge that his ‘arguments’ have already been refuted in previous debates, gets very boring indeed.
*I concluded that this title has a superfluous syllable.
And, of course, the other way that ‘TransWoman are Women’ is like believing the bread turns into Jesus is that anyone that doesn’t agree with you is a filthy heretic who should be burned at the stake.
Me#16; The trouble is, I don’t think it is so much an inability to argue as a refusal to do so – and, I suspect, for rather obvious, and cynical, reasons.
Hm, I’m going to say that believing a man becomes a woman by saying he is a woman… is a bit transubstantiation-y.
Uh on, Matt just came dangerously close to admitting that there was a difference between trans women and cis women. It has already been said for some time now that trans women are biologically female because they say so, and there are already mutterings here and there that it is bad to call a trans woman a trans woman, rather than woman as is. Given the rate at which genderist theory moves, I give this 6 months to a year to become the new wrongthink.
Not that they’ll notice.
I’ve already seen screenshots of men claiming to be ‘cis women’. It’s the old ‘give an inch, and they’ll take a mile’ but, unfortunately, the people handing over the inches aren’t the ones who’ll suffer the worst consequences from the miles taken.
But if they’re cis women then they’re just horrible disgusting hateful karens, so that won’t work out for them.
Ophelia, for some additional schaden in your Dillahunty freude this morning, consider the silence about him now at FtBlogs and that The Atheist Experience blog that was once there was removed by PZ Myers back in 2019 for being… wait for it… transphobic. Aww, isn’t it sad when friends fall out with each other?
A true skeptic would see the irony in demanding that one accept a declarative with such a definitive statement. “Period.” Skeptics use that as the beginning of discovery rather than the end of it, and have little use for authoritative declarations.
Note; I don’t declare to be a trained skeptic, but I know enough to recognize when a declared skeptic is doing the thing opposite of skepticism.
J.A. – oh lord. Now that you mention it I kind of remember a rift of some kind, but didn’t realize it was because transphobic. Good grief.
For the record, here’s a link to what transpired back in 2019 at FtB. Dillahunty was definitely disavowed as a atheist in good standing by that crew then.
https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=%22THE+ATHEIST+EXPERIENCE%22+PHARYNGULA&d=4608882430250311&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=vDCffeBwpMcv4NaX0x6KNyc4uozZ0S5l
J.A., it’s quite poetic that the first comment on Dillahunty’s excommunication from FtB is this:
One presumes that the commenter does not mean women such as those now lambasting Dillahunty, but it is somewhat funny that the man remains at least consistent in that way.
The rest of the comment thread is as revolting a cesspit of religious dogmatism as any I’ve seen at PZ’s since before he threw Rebecca Tuval under the bus.
One of the most popular arguments for the existence of God isn’t really an argument at all: “If God does not exist, then we are without hope or comfort.” This easily turns into a criticism of atheism — “the atheistic world view is sad and bleak” — and quickly becomes a criticism of atheists (the outspoken kind:)
“Why would they hate people so much, that they want to remove their hope and comfort?”
Like all such rationalizations, the desire to view a desire for a pleasing end result as a sign of Truth is accompanied by a dislike of being one of the Bad Guys withholding the pleasing result from those who need it. The need for God is virtually baked into the definition, along with the benefits — transcending death, loneliness, and insignificance. And transgender ideology is grounded in the hope for universal self-actualization and an end to all sex-based sexism. We can finally be what we were meant to be!
You can point out that neither one delivers — or could. You can also point out that a promised positive outcome isn’t a positive point in favor of a proposition. But you can’t do either without being accused of not caring about other people’s feelings. You want people to be miserable in the face of death. You want trans people to suffer. It’s the only reason you not only don’t believe, but won’t shut up about it.
In light of the discussion of “right there in the name, and how this applies to the name “God” and others, here’s a bit of humor, a cartoon about God running for reelection to another 12 billion year term. His campaign slogan is “Hey, his name is God!”
https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2021/12/02