- Joined
- Jan 10, 2009
- Messages
- 42,744
- Reaction score
- 22,569
- Location
- Bonners Ferry ID USA
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Note: X = what ever subject you want to insert
We've all heard it before, that sentence that someone has to utter, that "Prove to me that X is happening!" All the way from the gun debate to religious persecution (for or against) to SSM.
Question is...is it an honest debate tactic?
Personally I don't think so. Such a question posed leaves a wide open range of unacceptable answers. After all, the person that asks the question does so from the point of view that whatever is presented must meet their criteria of what is an acceptable answer. All that one can do when answering such a question is to give examples and if a study was done provide that, or just ignore the question at which point the questioner can claim the person has no proof. The problem of course being that since it is the questioner's question then they get to set the bar of how much evidence is enough to answer their question. Of course they never say just how high the bar is. There is no set number of examples that can be shown as each example can be pawned off as "rare" or "ancedotal". A study can be dismissed by faulting the author of the study, the methods used (lets face it, all studies have their flaws which every opponent uses), the sampling size etc etc.
We've all heard it before, that sentence that someone has to utter, that "Prove to me that X is happening!" All the way from the gun debate to religious persecution (for or against) to SSM.
Question is...is it an honest debate tactic?
Personally I don't think so. Such a question posed leaves a wide open range of unacceptable answers. After all, the person that asks the question does so from the point of view that whatever is presented must meet their criteria of what is an acceptable answer. All that one can do when answering such a question is to give examples and if a study was done provide that, or just ignore the question at which point the questioner can claim the person has no proof. The problem of course being that since it is the questioner's question then they get to set the bar of how much evidence is enough to answer their question. Of course they never say just how high the bar is. There is no set number of examples that can be shown as each example can be pawned off as "rare" or "ancedotal". A study can be dismissed by faulting the author of the study, the methods used (lets face it, all studies have their flaws which every opponent uses), the sampling size etc etc.