@calcifer It took me a couple of reads (and a lot of re-searching for this thread) to realise you're arguing the point I agree with.

There's some gwadawful crap out there that is insidiously complex. Worse, it's often been made far worse through the application of simple fixes.

Though one can of course note that there are numerous fairly tractable and readily applied intermediations (possibly just addressing immediate rather than long-term systemic harms) that are dismissed by "it's complex* counterarguments.

To which I'd respond: There's a distinction between immediate rescue, recovery, and aid efforts, and long-term systemic improvements. These are both parts of the solution, they are complements, not opposites.

But yeah, the "you're just saying it's complex because you don't want to fix it or you think it's all just dandy" is exceedingly tired and needs to DIAF.

#Complexity #BigProblems #TiredArguments

@pzmyers Late to the game on this. The penny just dropped for me listening to the 14 December Ideas segment "God: Leibniz vs Voltaire", because though the eyeglasses argument is Voltaire's it's presented as parody through his pastiche caricature of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Dr. Pangloss, in Candide.

Media: https://cbc.mc.tritondigital.com/CBC_IDEAS_P/media/ideas-r7zAV7VP-20201214.mp3

Which reminded me I'd seen your earlier toot.

The useful takeaway is that so many ideological arguments aren't even original. They're the same old repeatedly debunked bullshit that's been repeated for years, decades, and centuries --- see Bishop Berkeley's 19th century watchmaker and eye arguments against Darwin still widely repeated. AiG are simply parroting, and plagiarising, these same old lines.

Or in this case, the parody of an argument, put forward in all seriousness. Proof both of Irony's death and the power of Poe's Law.

Neither the YouTube segment nor AIG's website (https://web.archive.org/web/20150513154628/https://answersingenesis.org/human-body/body-of-evidence-making-an-apeman/v) reference Voltair, despite clearly appropriating his concept, most likely out of sheer intellectual laziness and dishonesty, but also avoiding the ever so slightly inconvenient truth that Voltaire was violently punking Leibniz, as well as 260 years of subsequent evidence and argument. And the fact that the tactic implicitly assumes its audience idiots.

It's the ultimate in bad-faith (both senses) bullshit rhetoric.

But this tactic is common. It occurs not just in creationist spew, but in economics (RationalWiki has an extensive section on the Panglossian tradition in Austrian economic, Libertarianism, and Neolineralism: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Austrian_school#Paging_Dr._Pangloss). It also means that rather than bothering to argue de novo against much of this deliberate bullshittery, a first response (should you decide any response is in fact warranted other than "their lips are moving, they are lying") should be to identify the initial version, and fallacy, of the argument.

Difficult when facepalming or headdesking, but all the same.

#creationism #rhetoric #TiredArguments #BullshitArguments #Bullshit #AnswersInGernisis #BadFaithArgument #parody #SelfParody #IdiotsForDummies