Propaganda Techniques: Appeal to Stupidity

 
There's a list of common propaganda techniques at [Propaganda and Debating Techniques]. It's well worth reading in order to familiarize yourself with common fallacies that we all commit from time-to-time.

Some of the tricks are quite subtle. For example, there's The Appeal to Stupidity.

Appeal To Stupidity

Flaunt an anti-intellectual attitude, and belittle knowledge, wisdom, intelligence and education.

This technique is closely related to "Common Folks" -- "There ain't nobody here but us stupid common folks. I'm just a regular ignorant Joe, just another man of the people."

The IDiots are really, really good at this kind of trick although, in fairness, it may not be a debating trick in their case. Maybe they really are stupid.

Here's an example from a recent posting on Uncommon Descent where someone named Granville Sewell describes his view of Michael Behe's latest book [Trench warfare, not an arms race]. Apparently this person wrote an email message to Behe where he said,

I still insist you don’t need to know any biology at all to have predicted your main conclusions, all you need to know is the second law of thermodynamics: natural forces don’t build bridges, they just destroy them*. But no one will listen to you unless you do know some biology, so I’m glad there are people like you who look at the details and arrive at the same obvious conclusions.

Hmmm, I wonder why nobody will listen to you just because you don't know anything about biology?

Granville Sewell then goes on to make his point even more clearly.

Progress in the battle between Darwinism and ID is judged, by both sides, by who has the most Nobel prize winners and National Academy of Science members (they do!), but for me the whole issue has always been extremely simple. It’s not too complicated for the layman to understand, it’s too simple for the scientist.

Yes siree Bob! Them smart scientists are just too smart for their own good. You have to be a regular ignorant Joe to appreciate why Darwinism is wrong and the IDiots are right. A classic appeal to stupidity.

Boy, you just can't make this stuff up, can you?