False Attribution and/or Sleight of Hand informal fallacy?

Hallucinogen

I've noticed that in arguments, particularly fast-moving ones, I have to be on the look-out for my opponent slipping-in/leaving-out claims or clauses within claims, when describing my position, that I didn't originally posit.

This seems to be done by accident, but when it's not noticed, you end up being tricked into defending something you weren't originally defending.

Here's an example to illustrate what I mean:

ME: Atheism, which denies design, and by implication selection, at the most general and unrefined level of reality, appears to lead its adherents to endorse and even celebrate the idea that the genesis of reality’s laws are “randomness” or “total chaos” at the quantum level. According to a dictionary, these terms mean the lack of any intelligible law, pattern or reason, which when modelled, results in a corresponding ignorance...
SOMEONE: the science that completely disproves creation or design, proves the Big Bang and evolution, and proves randomness and chaos.
ME: How does science "prove" randomness? All randomness seems to be is choosing to believe in no governing principle when one cannot choose among the available explanations.
SOMEONE: the law of conservation of energy proves that energy can’t be created.
The universe, and all life, is made of energy, so NONE of it was created, which means none of it was “designed”. Entropy is the scientific measure of randomness and chaos/disorder in any system.
There’s literally a known mathematical variable for it, ding dong. A variable that has numerical value in each situation.

In this example, in my second comment, I ended up tacitly pinning the defence of my ideas on denying that science hadn't "proven randomness". When in fact, my original claim was that the inception of reality's laws are not randomness, by definition. He then ends up thinking he's proving my wrong by just showing that there are scientific measurements of randomness.

Does anyone know what the "official" name of the informal fallacy is? False attribution, or a kind of sleight of hand, maybe?

L'éléphant

Does anyone know what the "official" name of the informal fallacy is? False attribution, or a kind of sleight of hand, maybe? — Hallucinogen

Strawman fallacy.

He then ends up thinking he's proving my wrong by just showing that there are scientific measurements of randomness. — Hallucinogen

Because you allowed it. Revisit the example. Your second comment should be confusion -- "why are you mentioning bla bla when my position is this..."
You should have repeated your original argument, not entertain a strawman.

unenlightened

the law of conservation of energy proves that energy can’t be created. — Someone

Some radical circularity here. The "law" is discovered by the repeated failure to produce perpetual motion machines, etc. The law doesn't prove anything about the world but contrarywise, the world proves the law. And there is a built in contradiction; if energy cannot be created how come there is energy? Laws have a scope; and energy is conserved in the universe; how energy got to be in the universe is necessarily beyond the scope of the conservation law.

But apart from that, never argue with dogmatic scientism or dogmatic religion.

Hallucinogen

Strawman fallacy.

Because you allowed it. You should have repeated your original argument, not entertain a strawman. — L'éléphant

Yeah I think it is the strawman fallacy. It only seemed like it wasn't because normally strawmanning is so in-your-face and head-on, whereas this has a "sneaked-in" quality to it. The argument was months ago, but I did eventually (a couple comments later) notice what he did and when I mentioned what he'd done, that ended his attacks.

Some radical circularity here. The "law" is discovered by the repeated failure to produce perpetual motion machines, etc. The law doesn't prove anything about the world but contrarywise, the world proves the law. And there is a built in contradiction; if energy cannot be created how come there is energy? Laws have a scope; and energy is conserved in the universe; how energy got to be in the universe is necessarily beyond the scope of the conservation law. — unenlightened

Completely correct. Normally if this is pointed out, the empiricist/atheist will appeal to "we just don't know"-type slogans. So to avoid that, I pointed out that if he denies the conservaiton law has an origin, he's being inconsistent, since he who infers laws from observations in state to explain changes in those states is obliged to explain where the inferred law itself comes from. Otherwise, it is special pleading.

False Attribution and/or Sleight of Hand informal fallacy?

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