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JWeinCom on 03 July 2017
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numberwang said:
G. Washington did not believe in morality separated from religion.

https://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/WashingtonFarewell.html

Ok..?  Who cares?

George Washington said and did some great things.  He said and did some dumb things.  This is one of the dumb ones.

When they've studied it, there is a negative correlation between religiousity and quality of life among nations.  Plenty of mostly secular countries (Scandanavian Countries, Israel, Japan) have been doing pretty well in terms of crime rates and other indications of morality.

Cerebralbore101 said:
JWeinCom said:

I don't believe there is any official list of fallacies.  What you're probably referring to is the non-exhaustive categories of logical fallacies that we tend to address.  But, beyond those broad fallacies, there can be specific variations in regards to certain subjects.

The god of the gap fallacy (usually referred to as god of the gaps argument, but lets not split hairs) is a variation of the argument from ignorance fallacy.  For example, we can't (although I'd say we can) determine where morality comes from exactly, so it must be god.  And he pointed out exactly where the fallacy was used several times.  When you say "100 years ago using radio waves for communication would've made you a witch.. you really think that in 100 years we won't uncover more hidden aspects of reality"  that is basically a textbook example of argument from ignorance.

That's not what argument from ignorance is. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html 

There is no evidence for God, therefore God doesn't exist is an argument from ignorance. 

There is no evidence against God, therefore God exists is another argument from ignorance. 

The argument from ignorance takes the form of "There is no evidence for A therefore not A", and "There is no evidence against B therefore B".

There is no evidence for god, therefore god doesn't exist is not necessarily an argument for ignorance fallacy.  In cases where we should expect evidence for something, then pointing out that there is not evidence can be a valid argument.  For example, if I claimed there was a fire in my house, and there is no scorch marks, no smoke damage, etc, then the lack of evidence is proof that there was no fire. 

It depends on the particular god you're arguing for, but generally, the absence of evidence is a pretty logical case against it, or at least a case for not believing in it.

As for the argument I gave as an example it is absolutely an argument from ignorance fallacy.  But, since people don't generally talk in logical syllogisms (and I find the particular poster isn't particularly clear) then it gets messy.

If you're saying it's reasonable to believe in god because there is so much we don't know, that is an argument from ignorance.  The argument goes, since we don't know everything, we can't completely rule out the possibility god is lurking outside our knowledge.  That means we don't have definitive proof against him/her/schlee/schler, so it is reasonable to believe in it.  

That is quite literally an appeal to what we are ignorant of to support a position. 

Likewise, claiming that god (fictive or otherwise) is necessary for objective morality (that has not been shown to exist) becaue nobody has provided another method (which people had) without positive evidence that god is necessary or sufficient for objective morality is definitely an argument from ignorance.