Sunday 1 July 2012

Stupid Arguments


I recently wrote, here, about the ridiculous twaddle that preachy carnivores have a tendency to trot out whilst they are persecuting Vegetarians, all the while never spending any time focussing on the fact that we leave more bacon for them. Like most of my articles it engendered a lot of thought, debate and comment. Like most of my articles it was only me it engendered this in... Come on people pimp this blog to your friends... What it mainly got me thinking about was other ridiculous arguments. So here I am going to present some other arguments I find stupid. I'm not going to tell you where I fall on these topics because I broadly agree with some and broadly disagree with others but these particular arguments are absolutely terrible.

“We can't get rid of the monarchy they're great for tourism”
If you happen to live anywhere other the United Kingdom then you probably don't have to regularly hear people discussing the pros and cons of abolishing the monarchy unless you live in 16th Century France. This debate does have merit on both sides but this argument is stupid. If China was to start running the Hunger Games it would be phenomenal for tourism that doesn't mean it's a good idea. I chose China because they could pull it off. If tourism is your primary concern then abolish the monarchy and build a Harry Potter theme park on the site of the Buckingham Palace. No scratch that you put, Diagon Alley, Nocturn Ally, Gringotts et al there and build Hogwarts at Balmoral and link 'em by the Hogwarts Express. That'd make us millions.

“Scientists believe in things that they can't see as well”
This argument is largely trotted out by religionists and is there way of pointing towards dark matter, dark energy and the like as being equivalent to believing in god. Now there are a whole ton of reasons to believe in a deity... none of them persuade me but that's a separate issue. You see Scientists don't want Dark Matter and Dark Energy to exist it's a theory that exists to explain the world the universe works. That is to say that the theories of Dark Matter and Energy only exist because they are the best explanation of things that we have witnessed, removing them from the equations stops the maths that underpins the workings of the universe stops working. Physicists working in this field know that the maths does work because it make testable predictions and explains observable facts. If you come home find your door kicked in and your TV missing and you say 'a thief has been here' it is not akin to believing in god. I can't see the atmosphere I know it's there though.

“There are a lot of holes in the evidence for evolution.”
This is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. There is more evidence to support the theory of evolution than any other theory to explain the origin of life on earth. Not just some more. Fuckloads more. Evidence has been gathered and amassed that supports it for 150 years. This argument further more is presented by people who's only evidence for there theory is two chapters of a book that was written approximately 1800 years ago and of whose author we know literally nothing. It's very much like a naked man point out a hole in your t-shirt.

“You've read a lot of books but the real world doesn't really work like that”
This is less of an argument in itself and something that is more used to dismiss any argument backed up by statistics or facts. The reason it's so fundamentally flawed is that it assumes that any degree of 'book-learning' is gained at the expense of real-world experience, when it's not it's gained at the expense of real-world experience it's gained at the expense of watching sports, reading the tabloids and having terrible taste in television. People who have a decent understanding of science, statistics and social issues still go down the pub and have as many anecdotes about the funny thing Dave did as those who don't. They just also know that the death penalty doesn't act as a deterrent due to the facts that US states with and without it still have similar crime-rates, and psychological experiments that prove criminals don't think about punishment before committing a crime.

“Only humans have war.”
This is an argument put forward by those those on the left-wing who are usually also members of PETA or some bollocks. The argument basically being that we are inherently a worse species than most of the others. Utterly failing to understand the way the world works. We are the top predator on this planet and if we weren't whatever had developed to take our place would have been as warlike as us. Without war and struggle you can't rise to this level you'd just end up as a ig lizard until a giant space-rock killed everyone. Also only humans have romance and medicine so it's not a great argument. In addition to these points animals are constantly fighting with each other for food, mating rights and territory.

“Scientists don't know how it gravity works so it must be god.”
Richard Dawkins calls this the god of the gaps. It's one of those ridiculous arguments that renders debate futile. You see scientists don't understand how gravity or mass work... YET! They're working on it as we speak. You've basically set a limit on you're belief in god. As soon as science works out gravity you've lost the argument. It's the argument that was used thousands of years ago except then it was 'we don't know why the sun rises so it must be god.' Well we know that now and we'll know a metric fuck-ton more in the future. Arguing that science hasn't unravelled a mystery yet therefore god is as stupid as it is ridiculous.

Once again I try to see the merit in all points of view but these arguments are just pathetic enough to undermine your entire point.

eddie <all for intelligent opposition>

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