Penn & Teller's "BS" -- Yay or Nay?

[Hitch]

"I liked the show until they made fun of a woo belief that I hold dear."

I'm sorry, that just seems to be the form so many criticisms of the show take. People get upset when Penn Jillette starts attacking their beliefs. The thing to remember, even when you agree with him, is he's just a stage magician.

 

[gnome]

To be fair... I hear just as often "I liked the show until he started using poor reasoning even when I agreed with him overall."

I find it hit and miss, like Mythbusters perhaps... but plenty worth seeing.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Nay.

It's not skepticism.

 

[technoextreme]

ETA: You're in danger of falling for the Fallacy Fallacy. Just because the argument includes a fallacy doesn't mean that the argument is wrong. The conclusion can be right, despite the entire chain of reasoning being wrong (continental drift comes to mind).

Actually if you are invoking a fallacy you are making a stupid debate tactic end of story period. Its interesting that you actually bring up continental drift because its a textbook example of people not listening to the progenitor because he was invoking a fallacy but because his argument was devoid of evidence.

 

[Dinwar]

There were at least four major lines of reasoning (identical formations across oceans, glacial morains with identical lithologies across oceans [not quite the same as the first], identical fossils of animals and plants which obviously couldn't cross oceans on different sides of oceans, and the way continents fit together perfectly) that Wagner used to support continental drift. The issue was that the mechanism he proposes couldn't work (it takes less stress to pulverize granite than to push it through basaltic oceanic crust). His conclusions--that continents move--was right.