Straw men and Mayans

There is some confusion that exists about the logical fallacy known as a “straw man argument.” This is a fallacy where instead of attacking an opponents specifc position on a subject, you set up a weaker, easier to argue against arguement, and knock that down.

For example:

Smith: It’s possible that life exists elsewhere in the universe.

Jones: You’re saying that people are being abducted by little green men? There’s no evidence that that’s true.

That is fallacious becuase it does not address your Smith’s point in a meaninful way, only another argunment that Smith did not make. However this is not fallacious:

Smith: Big bang theory shows that the universe has a beginning. Therefore modern science has similarities to the Gesesis account.

Jones: Genesis makes many claims which have nothing to do with science. It is only similar through at one point, and that similarity is the product of chance more than anything else. Therefore the similarity is meaningless.

You might say that this is a straw man because the rest of the Genesis is not directly relevant to the claim about the one similarity. In this case, however, the comparison is being made as part of a larger point, that though there may be one similarity, it is meaningless. It is not intended to imply that Smith claimed that the entire Genesis account is supported by science.

Also:

A question recently came up of if the Mayans believed that the world would end in 2012. I believe it was put well by Brian Dunning:

“There’s no archaeological or historical evidence that the Mayans themselves expected anything other than a New Year’s Eve party to happen on this date: Claims that this rollover represents a Mayan prediction of the end of the world appear to be a modern pop-culture invention. It’s true that the Mayan carvings of their calendar only depicted 13 baktuns, but what did you expect them to do? Carve an infinitely long calendar every time they wanted to express a date? The explanation could be as simple as they didn’t expect people in the 21st century to still be obsessed with their archaic calendar.”