Wednesday, October 22, 2008

A study in two syllogisms

MJ in SoCal said...

"Mr. Manata, I’ve read your movie review and was amused at your attempt to discredit Bill Maher’s intelligence. Last I checked, Cornell University doesn’t issue BA’s to the village idiot, which you slyly implied about him with your village atheist comment."

http://therealbillmaher.blogspot.com/2008/10/religulous.html?showComment=1224715320000#c7659095284536941293

1) Cornell doesn't issue BA's to village idiots

2) Maher has a BA from Cornell

3) Therefore, Maher is not a village idiot

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1) Maher is a village idiot

2) Maher has a BA from Cornell

3) Therefore, Cornell issues BA's to village idiots

2 comments:

  1. BTW, I wonder if MJ would apply the same standard if we were to plug this alumnus into his argument.

    http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April06/coulter.pre.dea.html

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  2. Bill Maher may not be a complete idiot. But his degree is in English and History. So that hardly, by his degree, qualifies him to talk about the issues he discusses in his movie. And besides, if we are considering degrees as standards of intelligence, having a BA (from any school) hardly makes one immune from intellectual critique, especially if that degree is a BA. A BA today is yesterday's Associates degree. Big deal.

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