Very well.
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
Person A has position X. [Religious attacks have no place in this News/Activism forum]
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X). [FC: "Truthfully, I think everyone who believes religion has NO place in politics should be banned, don’t you?"]
Person B attacks position Y [ FC: "Wouldn’t that be a de facto way of turning Free Republic into an atheist site?"].
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed. [FC: "Or is that what you want?"]
“The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.”
Hey, at least you tried to force me into the Strawman pigeonhole with a resort to definitions, but you muffed the analysis.
The first proposition was : Religious attacks have no place in this News/Activism forum.
This of course requires the banning of anyone who would break this rule, else it is moot. So we can restate it as:
1) Anyone who makes Religious attacks have no place in this News/Activism forum and should be banned.
Hardly a distortion of the opposition position, the calls for banning have come exclusively from that side.
I proposed the exact opposite (not a distortion)
2) Everyone who believes religion has NO place in politics should be banned.”
A position you claim is a “Straw Man” (though it is the counter to proposition 1) and not something set up to be easily defeated). Perhaps in your confused way you mistook position 1) as the “Straw Man”, because it is so easily disposed of.
If proposition 1) is taken to its conclusion, the only safe people on Free Republic would be Buddhists or atheists. If you cannot “attack” another religion in logical terms, it implies either a) all religions are true as the Buddhists believe, or b) no religion is true and we Should all be atheists.
One man’s attack is another man’s logical inquiry, so banning religious “attacks” (debate) is the same as calling for no religious discussion at all. While everyone could presumably be a Buddhist and live with this, in practice it would mean anyone who believes a moral structure should guide political thought would have no place here - i.e. an atheist. Indeed, this is the tactic of the ACLU.
I do see now that there is a third proposition:
3) No one should be banned who discusses religion in the political sphere (as long as the discussion is within the bounds of comity), since religious mores are the foundation of our political mores.
I believe that has been Jim Robinson’s approach to the matter, and I commend him and his moderators for allowing this contentious area to be discussed.
A Strawman argument would on analysis break down as being specious. I have defended my position quite forthrightly, therefore I believe your portrayl of my argument as a Strawman, is nothing but a RED HERRING :)