Thoughts on authorities and illogical arguments

The use of authorities

"You will use... arguments from selected authorities that support your view and on and on. The word is rationalization."

"I did look at the weblog quickly and it seems (as is the same with your articles) you cite scholar so-and-so that agrees with your position, but if a Christian apologist cited John A.T. Robertson for example with evidence for a pre-70 composition of Luke-Acts you would arbitrarily reject it out of hand. That's why you wouldn't fare well in a debate with Holding or Enigma."

Illogical arguments

"arguments from silence [or] arguments from personal incredulity."

• If the Bible is to be treated "like any other book", we must accept that parts of it may not be "true".
  
  
• Any argument based on the "truth" of the Bible is an argument from the authority of that work - and falls because the Bible is not "literally true".
  
  
• Extraordinary events - such as alleged miracles - require extraordinary proof.
  
  
• Ignoring evidence that you don't like does not make it go away.
  
  
• "Rationalization" (in the derogatory sense) is what happens when we devise self-satisfying but incorrect reasons to explain behavior. It is not using reason to reject illogical arguments.
  
  
• Asking why God would damn billions of people is not an argument from incredulity. It is an attack on Christianity's fallacy of the excluded middle... It would be logically inconsistent for an all-loving, perfect being to act in this way.
  
  
• Atheists and agnostics do not "reject God" - for that would require grounds on reason alone to believe that a particular type of God exists.