There are more bad arguments out there than good ones — that’s only to be expected, considering how much easier it is to construct a bad argument than a good one. For any of the beliefs you may hold, you can probably find bad arguments defending it if you try a little bit. When faced with someone using one of those bad arguments in order to defend a belief you happen to hold, what do you do?
- There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.
- Daniel Dennett
On the one hand, you can object and point out that the argument is flawed and fails to establish either the truth or even the likely truth of its conclusion. Doing so, however, may create friction between yourself and those who agree with you. It may also make it less likely for others to end up agreeing with your position - you did, after all, just undercut an attempt to convince them.
On the other hand, you can keep quiet and allow the argument to proceed. This may lead others to end up agreeing with you, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. Is it worth it? Do you want people agreeing with you for the wrong reasons? What happens if they find out that they accepted a bad argument — how forgiving will they be?
The above quotation from Daniel Dennett is hostile towards allowing bad arguments to pass by without objection, and I agree with him. If you allow bad arguments to be used like that, even if you aren’t using them yourself, your actions come very close to intellectual fraud. It’s not as bad as knowingly using bad arguments, but it isn’t far off, either.
Allowing bad arguments to continue means that you put certain conclusions above the process by which a person arrives at those conclusions. That, essentially, means that you want people to agree with you regardless of how or why — a position that is completely at odd with the basic principles of logic, reason, skepticism, and critical thinking.
Ultimately, allowing bad arguments to persist only undermines your position because it serves to communicate the idea that you don’t have any good arguments as replacements — or, even worse, that you don’t respect others enough to think that they deserve or can understand the good arguments. If you did, then you’d object to the bad arguments and offer the good arguments in their place.
