The Straw Man Test

You would think it would be quite easy to explain the concept of a fallacious straw man argument to a Creationist, given the amount of matieral on the subject that exists on the internet. Here's an example of an attempt to do just that...

A straw man is based on the misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. Let's call the straw man user person B and the opponent person A. Person A's actual proposition is replaced by Person B with a similar sounding proposition that is actually different. This modified proposition is then refuted by Person B even though it was never proposed by Person A. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

To test that we have identified a Straw Man argument we need to look for three things... We need a starting proposition presented by person A a modified version of the proposition from person B and a refutation of the modified proposition by person B. There are numerous examples here 

http://tinyurl.com/RGFSMCL-039

This table can be used to test for a Straw Man as used by Person B.  

EXAMPLE

In this example, Person A is a Creationist. A statement has been made by Person B: "Morality cannot arise from Amoral Physical Processes. This is often stated as an axiomatic truth by religious apologists"

	Starting Proposition from Person A	Modified version of the proposition from person B	Refutation of the modified proposition by person B
1		Morality cannot arise from Amoral Physical Processes. This is often stated as an axiomatic truth by religious apologists

This statement has been claimed to be a straw man by Person A. Person A claims that Person B provided a modified version of a proposition. So let's put that in Column B.

We now need Person A to fill in the blanks: What was the Starting Proposition from Person A - and what was the refutation provided by Person B?

The debate continues

Person A says that the Starting Proposition was this: "a universe governed only by mindless mechanistic processes can offer no objective basis for meaning or morality." 

In fact, the actual starting propositions from person A were this: "Mindless mechanistic processes are completely amoral." and this... "if we are all products of mindless mechanistic processes, what is the basis of ANY moral perspective"

In other words, Person A is claiming that physical processes are amoral and there is no basis for any moral perspective if we are the products of such processes. This seems equivalent to the statement from person B. Therefore, this is not a straw man argument.

The debate continues further!

Person A subsequently states that his proposition was this: "what is the OBJECTIVE basis for any moral perspective given a belief in only a mindless mechanistic universe". 

However, there is no record of person A ever saying this. What is on record are these exact words from Person A...

"if we are all products of mindless mechanistic processes, what is the basis of ANY moral perspective" (27 Jan 2014 3:13 AM)
"Mindless mechanistic processes are completely amoral." (27 Jan 2014 5:10AM)

Person A then claims "that wasn't what I said" - but they are direct quotes - that is precisely what he said. So there is no evidence of a modified proposition or its refutation. So this is not a straw man argument.

Let us assume that Person A did also make a statement about an "objective basis" etc. even though it cannot be found on record. The fact is that person B was not responding to that statement. Therefore, there is no straw man argument here as Person B was responding to statements made by Person A.