Gish Galloping Your Way Through Threads

Ever debated a Young Earth Creationist? You know how some of them just come at you with a stack of arguments, most ridiculous, or questions of the style?

If people came from apes why are there still apes?
If evolution is true where are all the missing link fossils?
What about Mt St Helen Eruption?
The bible clearly provides evidence for a young earth!

You get the picture.  Since evolution is a complex concept and the area it covers is enormous it takes time to properly answer those questions and combat terrible arguments. Hell, even if the arguments were good it’s sill going to take time. But usually by the time you’re done answering the first question properly, they’ve left claiming you can’t answer the questions or combat their viewpoint.

It’s disappointing to see our fair share of Gish Galloping in threads arguing against religion. Firing off questions in rapid succession and making frequent and silly arguments, just don’t cut it. It might win you a few cheers from the atheist cheer squad, but how well have you engaged? I know some might say “well it doesn’t deserve proper engagement it’s a load of bullshit”. Well if that’s you then please ignore this.  But if you are interested in engaging for the sake of understanding and rebutting arguments I think you need to slow down. We can’t expect the theist to provide a quick and easy response to “What do you believe?” (God I hate that question, broad much?) that is convincing. You are expecting them to sum up a complex belief in a comment or two.  To finish here’s a little sample of the atheist Gish Galloping I usually see on threads.

There’s no evidence for your god!
Show me a shred of evidence for your god?
We’re all atheists, I just go one god further than you!
So you’re saying Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists etc are going to hell?
How can their be free will if God exists?

Definitions Matter: A Rebuttal of “Definitions, Definitions”

First off, thank you to Makagutu for critiquing my ideas from a recent post on using a poor definition of atheism as a defensiveness maneuver.  I’ve detailed below my rebuttal. Enjoy.

“Most often, it is theists who have issues with defining atheism. That could be excused. But when we have an atheist having issues with it, then you know we have a bit of a problem.

Whether the criticism comes from a theist or atheist is irrelevant to the argument. It wouldn’t matter if a Scientologist had an issue with the definition, we would focus on the argument at hand.

“Atheism is a lack of belief in gods. I can tell you why I think no gods exists. This in no way changes how atheism is defined. To claim that the above definition is used  as a defense is, to me, not valid.”

It’s true it doesn’t change the definition that states atheism as a lack of belief in gods. However it does bring into question how it fits with what an atheist is. If atheism is a lack of belief in gods, then an atheist is someone who lack a belief in gods. If you can tell me why you think no gods exist you don’t quality for lacking a belief in gods. You have a belief or possibly more about gods.

“Babies lack beliefs in gods. As far as I can tell, I don’t which deity dogs worship.”

I suspect that was meant to read “I don’t know, which deity dogs worship”. Right, so you as far as we can tell they lack a belief in gods just like a baby does. Showing us how meaningless the definition is. An easy demonstration of how useless this definition is ie lack of belief in gods, we just need to look at how we tally the number of atheists worldwide. In no poll that I’m aware of does a statistician count babies as atheists. I mean it would up the numbers, yay team atheism, but it would make little sense. Imagine if we tried to work out how many people didn’t support any major political parties and we included babies in that. It wouldn’t give us a realistic or meaningful figure to work with.

It is honest to say atheism is a lack of belief in gods. It is also honest for me to say I think no gods exist. Those are different issues.

It is honest to say atheism is a lack of belief in gods IF that actually describes your situation. It is not if you have a belief about the existence of gods.