Comment by jibal

Thanks. I’m by default disposition suspicious of fallacies that are not logical fallacies. And I’m not convinced that this is a solid fallacy.

> > Ad hoc fallacy is a fallacious rhetorical strategy in which a person presents a new explanation – that is unjustified or simply unreasonable – of why their original belief or hypothesis is correct after evidence that contradicts the previous explanation has emerged.

That someone jumps to a new thing once something is refuted just looks like rhetoric to me. Not fallacious rhetoric.

> > that is unjustified or simply unreasonable

So it needs to be these things as well. But why are not these points the problematic part?

It seems impractical to usefully label an argument in this way since you either call any new argument (that is also unjustified or unreasonable) a fallacy, or divine that the argumenter is intending to be dishonest.

> > https://cerebralfaith.net/logical-fallacy-series-part-13-ad-...

This was one of the results of my googling.

> > One example of this logical fallacy that immediately comes to mind is the multiverse hypothesis. When Atheists are presented with The Fine Tuning Argument For God’s Existence, many of them will respond to it by giving the multiverse hypothesis. [...] Given an infinite number of universes, there were an infinite number of chances, and therefore any improbable event is guaranteed to actualize somewhere at some point.

So why is this a problem?

> > There are many problems with this theory, not the least of which is that there’s no evidence that a multiverse even exists! There’s no evidence that an infinite number of universes exist! No one knows if there’s even one other universe, much less an infinite number of them! You can’t detect these other universes in any way! You can’t see them, you can’t hear them, you can’t smell them, you can’t touch them, you can’t taste them, you can’t detect them with sonar or any other way. They are completely and utterly unknowable to us. I find it ironic that atheists, who are infamous for mocking religious people for their “blind faith”, themselves are guilty of having blind faith! Namely, blind faith in an infinite number of universes!

> > This explanation is one example of the ad hoc fallacy. The multiverse hypothesis is propagated for no other reason than to keep atheism from being falsified. The theory is ad hoc because the only reason to embrace it is to keep atheism from being falsified! For if this universe is the only one there is, then there’s no other rational explanation for why the laws of physics fell into the life permitting range other than that they were designed by an intelligent Creator!

Allow me to restate. It is a fallacy because there is no evidence of the theory. And further that (perhaps following from the no-evidence part in their mind) there is no reason to hold this theory other than from arguing against theists.

Yeah there is no reason to hold a theory from physics other than wanting to prove theists wrong.

Why? Because my argument for theism is so water-proof that this would be the only hope that they would have of refuting it.

I find that very unconvincing. (The argument for this fallacy. I can take or leave the God/unGod part.)