Belief-Claim-Confusion

[sepia]

I have observed a kind of Straw Man Argument and I wonder, if it has already a name.

The characteristics are: When a sceptic ist criticising a claim, the person, who commits the fallacy, responds, that the sceptic should let the people belief, what they want. But the sceptic just said that the claim is/might be wrong and not, that noone is allowed to belief it.

For Example:

A: The great flood is proven true.

B: That isn't correct, because of [insert whatever you want].

A or third person: Let A his/her beliefs!

[kandinsky]

I don't know if that is a logical fallacy as much as a desire to disengage and defuse the conversation.

[dobbie]

A: The great flood is proven true.

B: That isn't correct, because of [insert whatever you want].

A or third person: Let A his/her beliefs!

Naturally the Bible believer says that "The great flood is proven true" only because he wants you to accept it, too.

He starts out in a bid to persuade you. But if he were to start out by saying that he just personally believes in the great flood, then that would be something different. A preacher once started out by saying to me that he personally believes in the "Noahian flood." And I just said, "Okay." In other words he just wanted me to understand his position about it.

When the Bible believer says "Let me have my belief," well, nobody has said otherwise about him. So the Bible believer addresses an issue that was never brought up. I would say, then, that he shifted his ground.

Yes, in the end it's a kind of belief-claim confusion.

[sepia]

I don't know if that is a logical fallacy as much as a desire to disengage and defuse the conversation.

So you mean it is a thought-terminating cliché?

[Lausten]

I don't think that has a name, although "moving the goal posts" would be close because they started out saying that something IS proven, which implies anyone could repeat the experiment and come to the same conclusion, then change to "let them believe", a much weaker claim and something you didn't argue against. (I should add that we should argue against letting believe crap like that because irrationality in any form hurts everyone).

When I was a big time EST guy, we often talked about prostelytizing, although we called it "enrolling". We noted this behavior in people we were trying to convince. We would begin by "sharing" our experience and at first they would be curious, because we were just telling a story. If they became interested in participating themselves, they would say, "don't prostelytize". Whether or not we were prostelytizing is not the point.

In the case of this Noah believer, you are taking the stance that "proof" requires some evidence. However you present that in your discussion, forcefully, or simply stating that you are a sceptic and require some data, at some point the believer realizes they aren't getting anywhere. Depending on where they are at, they are probably starting to think that this whole "evidence" thing might have some merit. They are getting a little spark of doubt. Defense mechanisms immediately pop up and they have to blame you for not "allowing" them to hold their irrational belief. You may need to look in psychology books for a definition of this instead of lists of logical fallacies.

[gauSSian]

I would call this a defeat...

Me: Present evidence.

Them: Blah, Blah, Blah ,i.e. I have no evidence to offer. Then, they go on to say I have not read the Bible, my understanding of the Bible is flawed, I hate God, etc.

Conclusion: I win.

Then, I move on to my next victim...

[lucas11]

I think the closest fallacy would be a non sequitur. Whether the flood is true or not is entirely independent of whether people should be allowed to believe what they want.