The Declaration against Ignorance

The Declaration against Ignorance

When in the Course of human thought it becomes necessary for one group to deny any facts which could connect them to truth and to assume among the fantasies of religiosity, the separate and lesser cognition to which Religious Dogma and Claims of a God drive them, disrespect for the knowledge attained by mankind requires that they should deny the evidence which impels them to prevaricate.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humans make errors, that they are endowed by evolution with certain unalienable propensities, that among these are Lies, Taking Liberties with Facts, and the creation of Mythologies.

...... with apologies to the Founding Fathers and to that sensible Englishman whose political philosophy they appropriated.

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." ~ Oscar Wilde, Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

FOL-ly: fallacies of logic

å Ad Hoc Pseudoexplanations
å affirmation of the consequent
å Argumentum ad antiquitatem
å Argumentum ad nauseam
å Argumentum ad numerum
å Argumentum ad hominem
å Argumentum ad novitatem
å Appeals to Emotion
å Appeal to False Authority
å Argument from Ignorance
å Circular Argument
å cum hoc ergo propter hoc
å Denial
å denial of the consequent
å Doublespeak
å Fallacies of Association
å false cause fallacy
å False Dichotomy
å Fallacy Fallacy
å Genetic fallacy
å God of the Gaps
å Irrelevance
å Misleading Quotes
å non causa pro causa
å post hoc ergo propter hoc
å Red Herring
å Shifting the Burden of Proof
å Shifting Etymons
å Slippery Slope
å Straw Man Fallacy
å Sweeping Generalization
å Sweeping Generalization
å Trickery
å Tu Quoque Fallacy

Little Johnnyism and Little Kirkism

"Little Johnnyism" is a variant of fallacious appeal to authority. Parents used some variant of "Little Johnny" to convince us of how to behave: "Your cousin does the dishes", "Little Amanda keeps her room clean", "Little Johnny mows his parents’ lawn", and "The starving children in India would love your mother's cooking". Our parents assumed that such comparison to Little Paragons of Virtue would convince us to behave as our parents wished.

Religionists, in arguments that are not elevated above such childish fallacies, assume that examples of prominent believers–authors, scientists, etc–demonstrate that we all ought to be believers. Logically, all that these "Little Believer" examples demonstrate is that those who were indoctrinated as children may retain ridiculous credulities despite later achievements.

Little Kirkism appears to have been coined by Arthur Vandelay: "

Some apologists, like Kirk Cameron, will even cite (or, as I suspect, manufacture) their own atheist pre-history and subsequent conversion tale—call it “Little Kirkism”—and then claim to know what all atheists think (and presume to tell atheists what atheists think)."

As a group, united only by disbelief in Yagoal* or Brahman, atheists certainly do not think alike, though most whose disbelief arises through a logical refusal to believe ridiculous mythologies will be, by extension, immune to these "Little Dimmism" fallacies of logic.

* This term is derived from a concatenation of the "Yahweh-God-Allah" Abrahamic deity.