Friday, November 12, 2010

The neverending incredulity of JREFers

After watching Jon Cole's excellent presentation "The Great Thermate Debate", I decided to visit the wretched hive of scum and villiany that is the JREF forum and read the responses from the people who believe that well placed, accurately timed, 4500 degree thermite reactions are unable to bring down a building symmetrically, but scattered, 1400 degree office fires that move around every half an hour or so CAN bring down a building symmetrically.

It never ceases to amaze me how much 'skeptics', who pride themselves on their ability to detect logical fallacies, violate their own rules when it's convenient. Ad-hominem attacks, straw man arguments and appeals to authority are the most common, but when all else fails there's always the argument of personal incredulity...

E.g.: "I can't imagine HOW WTC7 could be covertly demolished, therefore I'm going to deny all the hard forensic evidence that proves that WTC7 WAS covertly demolished"

As the 9/11 truth movement continues to falsify the debunkers' incredulous arguments, as Jon Cole has done in this new video, their responses just become ever more nitpicky.

It seems they are now beginning to accept that a thermite/thermate demolition is possible, but once again the goalposts have been moved, and now we must come up with an even more detailed theory about how demolition crews had such intimate access to the steel, how they coordinated it all, and how they disposed of any evidence of steel thermate cutter cases. Until we do that they are just going to carry on dismissing us. Here's a thought ... how about you support our demands for a criminal investigation so that we'll have the authority to properly investigate and find out the answers to these questions. What part of "We've done the CSI-style science, now we need a criminal investigation" don't you understand?

There's a fallacy commonly employed by creationists in the evolution debate that Michael Shermer calls "the fossil fallacy". Whenever a new transitional fossil is discovered that bridges the gap between two major groups of animals - for example Tiktaalik, the link between fish and amphibians - the creationist response will be "Well now you have two gaps! There's now a gap between fish and Tiktaalik, and a gap between Tiktaalik and amphibians!". So as their questions are answered, it just creates even more doubt in their minds. It's sort of like whack-a-mole, or at least that's what Shermer claims.

What we're seeing from the debunkers is the 9/11 equivalent of Shermer's fossil fallacy.

Oooooh ... that's right, I just compared JREFers to creationists ... they won't be happy! I basically just called Eric Cartman a ginger hippy jew!

And maybe that's it, maybe that's what's driving their thermite denialism. There was an episode of South Park a year or so ago called "Fishsticks", in which Jimmy came up with a joke which became a nationwide sensation, but Cartman genuinuely believed he had something to do with it coz his inflated ego wouldn't let him believe otherwise. And he kept flashing back to the moment with increasingly overblown and fantastical recollections to the point where he convinced himself that not only did he come up with the joke all on his own, but he also slew a dragon and defeated an army of 'jew bots' with powers similar to the Human Torch. The more I read JREF posts, the more I realise their mentality isn't all that different!