How about,
“I’m not a bigot, BUT…such and such group is blah blah blah…”
Usually used as an excuse to make bigoted remarks, but still claim not to be a bigot.
You know what? If you really believe that, why not just admit you’re a racist, or a bigot, or whatever? Obviously, you don’t believe it’s a BAD thing, so why deny the label?
Caveat: This is not true in, for instance, mathematics, where “proof” is a very different thing than it is in real life. Fermat’s Last Theorem, for instance, is a negative.
Not to mention the related “I know it’s not PC to say this, but…”
I need some clarification. Is this your assertion, or the assertion of someone else that you ascribe to? Or do you believe like the rest of us, that this is total and utter bullshit?
Yeah, that’s why I listed it as a specific argument I’m just sick of. It isn’t true outside mathematics either. In fact, it is epistemically impossible that it be true. It is a self-contradiction. If you cannot prove a negative, then you cannot prove the very assertion itself.
Ahh, gotcha. You weren’t sick of people trying to prove negatives. You were sick of the “You can’t prove a negative” argument.
Although there are some cases where it’s possible to prove an assertion, but impossible to prove the negative of that assertion, particularly cases of existence. It’s very hard to prove that there are no dogs currently residing in the United States named “Skipper” who walk with a limp and like to eat lasagna. But it would be very easy to prove that there was such a dog. (Granted, it’s not very interesting one way or the other…)
I agree but at least one of the “twin studies” showed that there was a higher incidence of homosexuality among the second adopted twin in a family where both twins are adopted; thus suggesting an environmental trigger which is neither pre-natal nor in the first few months of life. Or maybe I misunderstood the study.
Sure, but it linked to three studies conducted by academics and published in peer-reviewed journals. I mean, we could not trust it just because it’s on the internet and you can never fully trust anything on the internet… but not having access to Lexis-Nexis I’d have a hard time finding cites for you guys!
You don’t think that “ignorant” and “evil” might be exclusive in some cases? I don’t think any of them are “evil,” I think they’re very, very misguided.
Thanks. I take back what I said about you maybe intentionally mischaracterizing me.
Allow me to come on record as saying (1) there’s a very small chance this scenario could come true (2) it’s not worth worrying about (3) thus homosexuals should indeed be allowed to adopt
I apologize if I’ve offended anyone or stepped on anyone’s toes here. I initially had just intended to respond to matt_mcl’s initial post stating he was fed up with “argument X” by essentially saying “well, you may think argument X is dumb, but technically speaking, there’s no hard evidence against argument X.” After reading some of the stuff in the thread linked by bodswood I can see why certain people would become so defensive. (An argument over “should whites be allowed to adopt” just because whites have a lower TFR than certain other ethnic groups would similarly hurt my feelings.) Please just keep in mind that the people you feel like are “debating your humanity” aren’t inherently evil, they just don’t know any better. The evil ones don’t bother to debate. Cheers to most of you for remaining open to discussion and I don’t have any hard feelings for those of you who weren’t.
How about the endless arguments about the meaning of the word “documentary”. For cripes sake, can’t you get past that and argue about the content of the damn film rather than what genre it belongs in?
Don’t be silly, of course Christians are for the Death Penalty, without it how could you ever have martyrs 
Your rebuttal is correct, but there is an even better one. The UN inspectors, before the war started, had been to the supposed WMD stockpiles identified by our sterling intelligence, and found nothing. Hans Blix, who also thought there were WMDs, had changed his mind before the war started. Assuming this fact showed up in an intelligence briefing, and that Bush had read it, there was evidence that the WMD assumption was incorrect. So what people thought in 2002 means nothing - the evidence when he made the decision is what counts.
But as Groucho said, the war had to go on because he already had rented the battlefield.
Race arguments that I enrage me:
“Chris Rock (or any other popular black celebrity) said XYZ, therefore, it must be okay or true.” Since when did stand-up comedians become the arbiter of reality or morality?
“If black people get reparations, shouldn’t I get something for being the great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of [insert oppressed foreign ethnic group here].” What does being a descendant of people persecuted in Russia or Romania or some other nation have to do with reparations for Americans that are the descendants of enslaved Americans ?
“Asians and other immigrants faced terrible discrimination when they first came here, but they’ve managed to prosper in this country. What’s wrong with blacks?” Nothing is wrong with blacks, but plenty is wrong with this argument. Apples are not red oranges, are they?
And the award for the most annoying race argument goes to…
“The term ‘African-American’ doesn’t make sense. I mean, technically, a white person from Nigeria who immigrates to the States is an African-American, too. So it is a uselss term.”
Using that piece of wonderful logic, all hyphenated American descriptors are useless. I mean, like, what if Naomi Campbell immigrated to the US and became a English-American? How would we ever figure out what she really is?!? ::rolleyes::Never mind that immigrants from Africa should be identified by their country of origin anyway, and not continent.
I dunno about that one. Depends on what your definition of PC really is, I guess. To me, it smacks of sugarcoating something for the only purpose of not offending anyone, at times.
Example?
I can say the following: “I believe the majority of overweight people have an incorrect balance of calories consumed and calories burned: they have more control over their body weight than a lot of them seem to own up to. Too often, people use all sorts of denial escape routes to just NOT face the fact that they simply consume too much in relation to the amount of energy they burn, plain and simple.”
Completely un-PC, and it will get you roasted alive on this board. But I do happen to believe it’s true, being a recovering fatass myself. Does that make me a bigot, or even anything related? Not at all - IMHO, it makes me a realist.
FWIW, I’m not looking to debate this issue right here and now. I’m just giving it as an example of an un-PC remark (at least by the standards of this board) that still is valid.
That’s the problem. Nobody can agree to a good definition. Might as well, then, get a real vocabulary to say what you mean instead of relying on vague political slang or you’ll end up like this guy.
I’m not an anarchist, and I do believe in social order. However, I think law should stem from a consensus on what is ethical and what isn’t, rather than the fact of a law alone being sufficient justification for the wrongness of something.
Take drunk driving for example. To my way of thinking, it’s wrong because it’s inherently hazardous, especially to others, and for that reason it’s against the law. But it isn’t wrong just because it’s against the law. The law against drunk driving is based on the inherent wrongness of the act, rather than the wrongness of the act being based on the law.
Matt, Matt, Matt… bubbeleh.
By using words like malfeasance you only confuse people like Shakes who don’t even have a grasp of which version of their/there/they’re to use not to mention i before e except after c.
Or is this an insidious Canadienne plot to weed out the stupid by pulling a Cronenbergian Scanners move to make their heads explode?
If so, bravo.
I feel that I need to point out that there’s a lot of people who DO believe that all hyphenated American descriptors are useless, and completely unnecessary besides (and, some say, even harmful). So people who say that aren’t always being inconsistent/hypocritical/ignorant of the implications of what they’re saying. I’m sure they very often DO mean what that logic implies.
Yes, but please consider that “very hard” and “impossible” are not the same. Please consider also that possibility, as a modality, may be either metaphysical or epistemic. “It is not possible for there to be a dog named Skipper” is a metaphysical claim. “It is not possible (for all we know) that there is a dog named Skipper” is merely an epistemic claim.
Damn you, matt, you took mine! This is part of the agenda, isn’t it?
Anyway, what I really wanted to post was the four-step blame-avoidance shuffle that’s become so common recently. In the interest of being fair and balanced, however, I’ll keep it party-neutral.
Step 1) “It never happened” Simple denial
Step 2) "[accuser] did [random, possibly non-existant misdeed that’s completely irrelevant to the matter at hand]! So there!
Step 3) “[member of opposite party] said he supported it too! What do you [libs/pubbies] have to say now?”
Step 4) “Old news. Is that all you people can dig up? You must really be getting desperate.”
And there are cases where it’s hard to determine which type of impossiblity you’re talking about.
For instance, I don’t believe in Angels. And not just because I think that Angels are perfectly possible, but there happen to be none alive right now. Rather, I don’t believe that Angels, as typically understood, could exist. However, I can’t prove that. And one could propose a model for the world we live in which would be consistent, which would explain all the phenomena I’ve ever experienced, and which would allow for Angels. It would just (imho) be a less simple model than one which doesn’t allow for Angels.
Compare that to a dog which is also not a dog, or an even prime greater than two, both of which can’t possibly exist (without fundamental changes in reality beyond realistic human imagining).
(I realize I’m skirting dangerously close to the dreaded Modal Logic here 
)
(There are also interesting cases whose type-of-impossibility is probably knowable, but beyond current human knowledge. For instance, there certainly does not currently exist a human who can run a mile in two minutes and thirty seconds. But could such a human ever exist?)
Evolution is just a theory. That means it hasn’t been proven.
I can say something that sucks is gay, because “gay” really means happy.