rationalskepticism.org

Wortfish wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:
If you don't find the contents of several thousand peer reviewed scientific papers on the subject convincing, this speaks volumes about your prejudices, and nothing about the content of those papers.

Firstly, that's an argument from authority you are making.

An argument from authority refers to two kinds of logical arguments:

1.A logically valid argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of one or more authoritative source(s), whose opinions are likely to be true on the relevant issue. Notably, this is a Bayesian statement -- it is likely to be true, rather than necessarily true. As such, an argument from authority can only strongly suggest what is true -- not prove it.

2.A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative. Sources could be non-authoritative because of their personal bias, their disagreement with consensus on the issue, their non-expertise in the relevant issue, or a number of other issues. (Often, this is called an appeal to authority, rather than argument from authority.)

In order to be fallacious, the argument must appeal to the authority because of their qualification in an irrelevant field and should be irrelevant to the argument at hand. For example, saying "There is no God, because Stephen Hawking said so and is a knowledgeable physicist" is an appeal to a misleading authority as Hawking's qualifications in physics do not automatically make his argument correct — the strength of his actual argument regarding cosmology is what needs to be examined, not his qualification or prior knowledge. On the other hand, dismissing Hawking's argument because he lacks any qualification in theology is an example of the Courtier's Reply. What is important in both fallacies is that it is the argument, its merits and how its premises form a conclusion that is what should be scrutinised and not the subject's previous qualifications.

Accusations of a false appeal to authority, or declaring an argument to be invalid because of a lack of relevant qualifications or expertise, runs the risk of encountering the pitfall of the Courtier's Reply. This is the counter fallacy to a misapplied appeal to authority: that the lack of an official and relevant qualification doesn't automatically make the argument invalid....

Secondly, there are indeed thousands of articles describing evidence for natural selection but there are none (for obvious reasons) showing how natural selection can produce design.