[quote=briansd1]
Many, on the right, have argued that hoping that Obama will bring about more peace and justice is stupid because he cannot deliver. I would argue that hope in Obama is more realistic than hope in God. [/quote]
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.[1] To “set up a straw man” or “set up a straw man argument” is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. Often, the straw man is set up to deliberately overstate the opponent’s position. A straw man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent’s actual argument has not been refuted.[2]
Who on the right argued this? Most of your arguments are littered with strawmen, but this is a particularly bad example. Forgetting for a second that its completely discursive, its also baseless, in that it provides no examples or evidence.
[quote=briansd1] But hope and faith are not science.[/quote]
And who said that they were? I certainly didn’t make that argument. Again, another strawman, but this one seeks to make a conflation without basis. Arraya, who has a background in the Philosophy of Science, makes a cogent argument supporting the intersection of spirituality and science and you seem perfectly okay with that, even going so far as approving “prayer”. However, any mention of God (and, thus, Christianity) and it becomes the province of the mindless, right-leaning rabble.
