| Unsupported Assertion |
Logical Fallacy of Axiomatic Thinking / Unsupported Assertion / Alleged Certainty / Appeal to Common Sense / Bare Assertion Fallacy / Unprovable Statement / Groundless ClaimWhenever a logical fallacy is committed, the fallacy has its roots in Agrippa's trilemma. All human thought (without Divine revelation) is based on one of three unhappy possibilities. These three possibilities are infinite regression, circular reasoning, or axiomatic thinking. This is known as Agrippa's trilemma. Some have claimed that only logic and math can be known; however, that is not true. Without Divine revelation, neither logic nor math can be known. Science is limited only to pragmatic thinking because of the weakness of human reasoning, which is known as Agrippa's trilemma. Unsupported assertion, a form of axiomatic thinking, is one of these three unhappy possibilities. The Logical Fallacy of Axiomatic Thinking / Unsupported Assertion / Alleged Certainty / Appeal to Common Sense occurs when an assertion is made without any support or evidence for the assertion. This is especially true when the statement makes the conclusion appear certain when, in fact, it is not. This doesn't mean that every writer or speaker must pepper their work and their speech with references and proofs. However, when asked for a reason to believe, if they can't provide support, their statement is not to be taken likely. There are many things that cannot be proven to someone else. No one can prove to you that they have a pain in their back, but they ought to be able to tell you how they know that they have a pain in their back. They would probably say, "I can feel it," and they would think your question was a bit weird if you asked how they know. The point is that there are supported assertions that cannot be proven to someone else, but the person making them can give testimony of how they know. Examples of the Logical Fallacy of Axiomatic Thinking / Unsupported Assertion / Alleged Certainty / Appeal to Common Sense / Bare Assertion Fallacy / Unprovable Statement / Groundless Claim
By calling this a logical fallacy, Bo is making the assertion that it is fallacious to believe that God speaks. He offers no proof for His claim that God doesn't speak, so his claim that God doesn't lead or speak commits the logical fallacy of unsupported assertion. What's more, he does this on a web site that is claiming to be an authority on logic. On the other hand, everyone who follows Christ is led by Christ. They know Christ in an ongoing, moment-by-moment experience. Granted, there are probably few if any Christ-followers who are mature enough in Christ to speak with the authority of the prophet of old all the time, but most of us have our moments when we really do know what God is saying without a doubt. And there are certain things of which we are very sure because God makes those things very clear to us. The reason that people tend to make unsupported assertions is because of the problem of individual and group-held worldviews/paradigms/fake-realities. These fake realities tend to seem more real than reality itself. And, they filter our facts. Everyone has one, and they tend to be internally inconsistent as well as inconsistent with reality. The godly and ungodly all have them. They are strongholds in our minds. The work of the Holy Spirit is to demolish them.
Those four examples of unsupported assertions are just the tip of the iceberg. Be alert for statements that begin with "everyone knows," "obviously," "we would all agree that," "it's just commons sense that," and such like. Notice the last assertion is accusing someone of not having evidence, but where is the evidence that faith is blind and where is the evidence that there is no evidence for true faith. In fact, faith is the evidence, and faith comes when God speaks. It is a free gift that actually gives us a vision of reality as it really is.
This was taken from a paper titled: "Soft tissue and cellular preservation in vertebrate skeletal elements from the Cretaceous to the present." There is no mention in the paper that there might be a possibility that the million-of-years story may be in error. The presupposition is so strong that it ignores the evidence, resulting in the unsupported assertion, "refutes models of degradation, decay, and fossilization." All such models are solidly grounded in vast amounts of real experimentation and observation, while the methods of assigning dates are based on the many stories of evolution and arbitrary assumptions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1685849/
How can we know anything about anything? That’s the real question |
Other Pages in this sectionIpse Dixit Secret Knowledge Allness Fallacy Autistic Certainty Lie Big Lie Outright Lie Bold-Faced Lie Appeal to Confidence Hypothesis Contrary to Fact False Prophecy Argument to the Future Escape Via Ignorance Argumentum Ex Culo Blind Authority False Accusation Argument from Omniscience Universal Negative As Far As Anyone Knows Proving a Negative Claim of Unknowables Presupposition Irrelevant Purpose Propositional Fallacy Thompson Invisibility Syndrome Presumption Grammatical Presupposition Arbitrary Thinking Reversible Logic Floating Abstraction Implied Lie Spiritual Fallacy Feigned Powerlessness Pious Fraud False Open-Mindedness Recently Viewed |
