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Old 12-09-2010, 11:17 AM   #96
MarchHare
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Just thought of another one:

"Begging the question" is almost always used incorrectly. Most people use that phrase when they mean to say, "That prompts me to ask..." For example: "The government is spending more and more tax dollars on healthcare, but citizens are more dissatisfied than ever with our health system. That begs the question, how is all that money being spent?"

That's not what begging the question means. It's a very specific type of logical fallacy where the person making an argument assumes their initial premise to be true (when it may or may not be), therefore making their conclusion also true.

For example, the following is a type of argument that uses this fallacy:

A: "We know that God exists because it says so in the Bible."
B: "How do you know that the Bible is true?"
A: "Because it's the written word of God."
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