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Originally posted by ballast
Politicians everyday use of NLP tactics and the powerful hypnosis Obama appears to use do not seem to have the same effect. People don't commonly swoon in a politician's presence.
That is generally seen in Religous mania. It would be interesting to find historical records of people swooning or fainting for other candidates. Has it happened, historically, in the past?
Here is a reference The Reality of the Resurrection
The evidence and significance
by Dr. David R. Reagan
This is interesting because the doctor is writing for an entirely different subject and premise, yet this applies when looking at the probability of mass hypnosis.
lamblion.com...
"4) Hypnosis — Another modern theory is that the disciples experienced mass hypnosis. The advocates of this idea argue that the disciples so desperately wanted Jesus to rise from the dead that they created an aura of auto-suggestion (or mental hypnosis) and thus, whenever the name of Jesus was mentioned, His disciples believed they could see Him.
Now, mass hypnosis is a probability, with even as many as 500 people, given precisely the right type of controlled environment and the proper mass medium like radio, television, or film. But mass hypnosis without some form of mass media, and without a professional hypnotist, and without ideal conditions, is utterly outside the realm of sound reasoning. So, I ask you, how could 500 people in the open air of a country side, before the invention of mass media, and before the discovery of hypnosis, be subject to mass hypnosis? And how does this explain the fact of the empty tomb? I think it's obvious that the skeptics are grasping at straws.
5) Fainting — This leaves us with a centuries old theory that has recently been popularized by an apostate Christian named Hugh Sconfield. It's called the "swoon theory.""
[edit on 21-10-2008 by ballast]
Whether it applies to humorous use or references to oneself is open to interpretation, because although mentioning and trivializing Nazism in an online discussion, this would not be a fallacious attack against a debate opponent.
Sexton in 1989: "You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participants drags out Hitler and the Nazis."[8] Godwin's Law does not, however, claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust,"
However, Godwin's Law itself can be abused, as a distraction or diversion, that fallaciously miscasts an opponent's argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. A 2005 Reason magazine article argued that Godwin's Law is often misused to ridicule even valid comparisons.
As no one in the debate was compared to Hitler or Naziism . . . or labled as such. I believe the third section above more aptly applies to this thread. Godwin's doesn't apply here, as there was no comparison made to an antagonist, nor was Naziism/Holocaust trivialized. Using the historical figure as reference doesn't denote use of this "law".