{"id":1440,"date":"2013-07-09T23:30:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T23:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2013-07-09T23:30:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T23:30:34","slug":"invincible-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2013\/07\/09\/invincible-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Invincible Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

For a little while, I’ve wanted to share a short post about my favourite logical fallacy. \u00a0Not to be confused with the Catholic doctrine<\/a> of the same name, the Invincible Ignorance Fallacy<\/a> refers to the situation where one party in a debate “simply refuses to believe the [opponent’s] argument, ignoring any evidence given”.<\/p>\n

I could list numerous examples of this fallacy in action, and I’m sure my readers (on all sides of all debates) can point to many cases from their own experience. \u00a0But a classic example happened a few days ago, when I shared my recent blog, Deny Christ or die… or… <\/a>, on the Reasonable Faith Facebook page<\/a>. \u00a0That generated some discussion, but ultimately led to a very frustrating conversation with a Christian who thought he had a silver bullet:<\/p>\n

Are you basing your moral evaluations of Christianity on an objective or subjective moral standard?<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously, if I simply answered\u00a0“<\/em>Objective!”<\/em>, he would say “Oh yeah, well you can’t have objective standards without God”<\/em>, while if I replied\u00a0“Subjective!”<\/em>, then he would respond\u00a0“Oh yeah, well why should anyone else think your subjective standard holds any sway?”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Naturally, as anyone who has thought deeply about these questions would know, it’s a bit more complicated than that. \u00a0I referred the Craig fan to my previous blog, Morality: just a theory?<\/a>, in which I consider that question at length. \u00a0I suspect he never read it, but in any case, despite my frequently addressing his question, he continually claimed that his challenge had gone unanswered.<\/p>\n

I’m happy for my ideas to be dissected and critiqued. \u00a0I’ll defend my ideas if I think the critique is inadequate. \u00a0But I’m perfectly happy to change my views if I become convinced I was wrong, as evidenced by my deconversion from Christianity. \u00a0However, repeatedly saying\u00a0“You haven’t answered my question”<\/em>\u00a0(when this is not the case) is not a critique that needs to be taken seriously – it is not really a critique at all, and is nothing more than the Invincible Ignorance Fallacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  For a little while, I’ve wanted to share a short post about my favourite logical fallacy. \u00a0Not to be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[134,135,217,214],"class_list":["post-1440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-logic","tag-fallacy","tag-invincible-ignorance","tag-logic","tag-morality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}