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Sometimes people ignore a few arguments at hand and place new arguments to back up their case.For instance, there are already argument A, B and C, now since I don't have a rebuttal for A,B and C, I would present a new separate argument D, because that's what I can deal with. But the rest of these A, B and C arguments also raise questions and needs to be dealt with. What do u call this scenario? What kind of fallacy does it fall under?

A Scenario:

Agnostic: Ur book says women are inferior in several places.

Religious Preacher: Yes but in other books, it praises them as well.

(here the preacher intentionally ignores the questionable verse in the book)

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  • Depending on context, this may not be a fallacy. When arguments are informal and inconclusive one does not need to rebut the other side's arguments, only present their own case in the best light possible. The sum total is that "it's complicated", and each makes their own inference to the best case presented in the end. Your example is of this sort. When something more definitive is insisted upon based on such exchanges, this may be a case of cherry picking evidence.
    – Conifold
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 7:42
  • what about "Moving the GoalPost Fallacy" ?
    – Tanvir
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 15:33
  • Your example is not a clear example of what you describe. What proposition is being argued for? If the proposition is "some passages in the Bible say that women are inferior", then the response of the preacher is simply irrelevant. If the proposition is that the Bible supported women in a culture that was generally brutal to women, then the response is on point and may be a sound counter to the agnostic (assuming in both cases that the assertions are true). You have to clarify what point is being argued about.
    – David Gudeman
    Commented Dec 31, 2021 at 21:47
  • @DavidGudeman I mean the scriptures says a lot of things that are good, but some preachers cherry-pick the good ones to back them up. But u gotta first rebut the worse ones and then the positive ones. Another example, suppose I m talking abt SPECIFIC benefit/privilege that my govt. doesn't provide, but my opponent (govt. official) intentionally talks abt the ones they provide, ignoring the ones that he cant talk about (or feel ashamed of).
    – Tanvir
    Commented Jan 2, 2022 at 8:00
  • You and the official have different goals in the conversation. You can't force him to discuss whether a specific program is good. He is entitled to respond to your criticism as general criticism of government, regardless of your goals in the conversation. It may be frustrating, but unless he says something outlandish like "the existence of this good program proves that the other program is good too", then he hasn't committed any kind of fallacy; he is just pushing the conversation in the direction he wants it to go.
    – David Gudeman
    Commented Jan 2, 2022 at 17:17

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