Animavore wrote:They're trying to be the authority people can use their arguments from.
This.
It's closely related to why argument from authority shows up so brain-meltingly often in arguments put forward by god's fanboiz. Funnily enough, and rather tellingly, they will only recognise such authority
if it comes down on their side.One example is Anthony Flew. Back when he was still
compos mentis, they wouldn't have a bar of him. Now his brain is demonstrably in less than good working order, they're perfectly happy to cite "The man once described as the world's most notorious atheist", completely neglecting to acknowledge that the poor fucker rarely knows what fucking day it is. Oh, sure, he's an
authority now that he can barely tie his own shoes, because he got duped into having his name on a book that he had almost no significant input into and was largely ghost-written. Wasn't so much of an authority back when he still had his entire set of marbles and routinely won all the jacks.
It's also why they always try to claim buggers like Einstein as their own. Ol' Mr Relativity is probably the most famous sciencey geek-bloke in history, or at least in the last hundred years or so. They tend to take one of two paths with such people: Either he's one of them, or he's full of shit, never graduated from highschool, and so forth.
It's why they got so fucking confused by Miller, too. Here's an open goddist demonstrating to the world how absolutely constructed of farts the Creationist argument actually is. He's the textbook counter to their insane argument from authority, since he demonstrably
has the authority according to their own lights, and exercises said authority by pointing out that the warm rectal effusions they were releasing into the atmosphere aren't, in fact, conducive to general health.
by 
) that compels these people to boast.
