In a previous article "Bob White" <threeball@hotmail.com> writes:
:
;
:"Virgil" <vmhjr2@comcast.net> wrote in message
;news:vmhjr2-B00BF4.16483623082003@news.newsguy.com...
:
;
:
;> Septic the Capon is putting words in the mouths of theists that
:> theists would never utter.
;
:Your theolog stuff is all hypothetical (speculative, 'may be') imaginings
;with no basis in fact, knucklehead.
:
;Note the term, 'hypothesis' is this example of theist argument _ad
:ignorantiam_?
Being in a hypothesis does not make a thing hypothetical.
:---
;<quote>
:Famous in the history of science is the argument _ad ignorantiam_ given in
;criticism of Galileo, when he showed leading astronomers of his time the
:mountains and valleys on the moon that could be seen through his telescope.
;Some scholars of that age, absolutely convinced that the moon was a perfect
:sphere, as theology and Aristotelian science had long taught, argued against
;Galileo that, although we see what appear to be mountains and valleys, the
:moon is in fact a perfect sphere, because all its apparent irregularities
;are filled in by an invisible crystalline substance. And this hypothesis,
:which saves the perfection of the heavenly bodies, Galileo could not prove
;false!
:</quote>
;(Copi and Cohen, _Introduction to Logic_, p. 117)
:---
And Copi said this is how an argument _ad ignorantiam_ is shown to
be one:
quote>
Legend has it that Galileo, to expose the argument _ad ignorantium_, offered
another of the same kind as a caricature. Unable to prove the nonexistence
of the transparent crystal supposedly filling the valleys, he put forward
the equally probable hypothesis that there were, rearing up from the
invisible crystalline envelope on the moon, even greater mountain peaks --
but made of crystal and thus invisible! And this hypothesis his critics
could not prove false.
</quote>
(Copi and Cohen, _Introduction to Logic_, p. 117)
Now please do the same to that which you say is one.
.
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