Argument from incredulity is still good.

Greg, the OP suggests we can play spot “the other” because individuals tend to have a favourite logical fallacy (interrupting, evading, monkey-watching, harbour-mining, etc). As per commenter daedalus2u, human psychology ensures self-described Skeptics are also guilty of using their gut instead of wikipedia.

What is OUR favourite? I’d like to nominate the Argument From Fallacy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

See, here’s what I don’t get.

Lets say for sake of the argument made that the earth REALLY IS 6000 years old and created by a God.

That God made the universe and the earth in a way that is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT in evidence.

God did that.

Obviously, God must be trying to tell you something by making it look like the universe is 14 billion years old and the earth about 4 billion.

Surely you should be investigating the universe AS IT APPEARS to see what He is trying to tell you by that billions of years evidence. Not denying it.

I went down to talk to him afterwards, he smiled, nodded, smiled some more. I suggested he read The Language of God by Collins or Only a Theory by Ken Miller, both believers that he’d probably feel more comfortable reading. I made a few other points, and he just smiled and nodded (maybe he was too distracted by the big red mark on my forehead from smacking the pew in front of me too many times).

And that was it. He didn’t acknowledge he said anything wrong, he didn’t acknowledge his logic was several flawed, he didn’t acknowledge that I had said anything that would make him reconsider even his simple obvious wrong statements (“if you believe in evolution, then you believe in ” [insert stupid black-and-white mischaracterization here]). Somehow in his case he tied believing in evolution into being in strip clubs where people are depressed and unhappy and he knows this because he used to be a police officer and had to go into strip clubs many times and all the patrons didn’t look at all like they were having a good time.

So 2+2 = 4, and the only response is a lot of smiling and nodding and what most reasonable people would assume was agreement. Not sure what kind of antiskeptic that is.

How about “morons operandi”?

“Anti-skeptic” – One who believes blind faith is a virtue. These people are trusting, genuine, and misguided.

“Psuedo-skeptic” – One who is willing to practice skepticisim on everything except their own ideas. These people are distrusting, genuine, and misguided.

“Denier” – One who diliberately misleads the above groups with the aim of orchestrating what Stalin(?) called ‘an army of useful idiots’. These sociopaths beavering away in their no-think tanks are surprisingly cheap and effective global propogandists. Seriously, $50M to delay action on AGW for 20yrs is an unbeliveable bargain for the likes of Peabody and Exxon. Coca-Cola spends the same amount every quarter on their advertising.

Now, skepticisim is a learned behaviour*, so I’m sure even the most level headed of us here have fallen into one or both of the first two categories at sometime during our lives. The denier category is much more exclusive and is reserved for industrial strength propogandists like Moncton and Irving.

* – It’s true I became interested in the art of skepticisim because I was angry I had been tricked by the likes of Uri Geller in the late 70’s. I have James Randi’s thin book on Geller to thank for that initial push in the right direction over 30yrs ago.

I picked the book out of a bargain bin because I thought I knew enough ‘sciency stuff’ to debunk a mere magician. How wrong I was, and how disappointed the importance and mechanics of this art had not been hammered into me at school.

Trivia: Randi himself became a skeptic very early in life because his father died a premature death as a direct result of being conned by a sharlaton offering a miracle cure.

I get this all the time when I talk about nitric oxide. Because I write with authority on how NO is involved in this or that disorder, some pseudoskeptics assert that I must be wrong because I am too sure of myself. Then they do a quick stint at Google U, find a paper that has NO in the title that seems to contradict what I have said, and which confirms their bias. They are then unable to hear or understand when I point out the flaws in that paper.

In effect they are tone trolls, deciding the merits of something by the tone with which it is asserted.

I post comments a lot on SBM, and get this all the time from the other commenters (not from the bloggers, they know the limits of their knowledge pretty well and have no problem defaulting to “I don’t know”, or to silence). What is funny is that sometimes actual skeptical commenters will say that “maybe his NO stuff is crazy, but none of the other stuff he says is”.