Reply #21: You don't seem to know what the fallacy of appeal to authority is [View All]

[HamdenRice]

and that is reflected in the inconsistency of your posts ("at least appeal to an authority in the right subject"). Or to put it more bluntly you seem not to know what you are talking about at all.

Appeal to authority is a fallacy in syllogistic logic arguments. But none of the discussions you bring this up with respect to are syllogistic logic arguments.

In empirical, inductive science, social science, political, religious, aesthetic and other fields of argument, appeal to authority are valid as part of an argument, so long as the authority is an authority in the relevant field.

(If you disagree with that, then perhaps you should spend most of your time criticizing sue's "I'm a scientist" posts.)

Science is said to disprove religion. That's how they are related. If the greatest scientist of the last several hundred years was not an atheist, then it is appropriate to point to him in discussions of the relationship between science and religion.