Straw Man, or "If I Only Had A Brain"

The Straw Man logical fallacy involves a deliberate mischaracterization of the opponent's position, with the specific purpose of making the mischaracterized position easier to argue against.

In the following example, A is a non-theist, and B is a believer:

A: I do not believe in God for the simple reason that I have never seen any evidence for his existence.

B: Well, you have never seen the wind either. Do you also disbelieve in that?

The believer makes a subtle shift from the language of the original statement to the language of his objection.  The atheist did not say he has never seen God, but that he has never seen evidence for God. In order to be a fair comparison, the believer's objection would have to be phrased in parallel to the original statement, in terms of seeing "evidence for the wind,"not "seeing the wind" itself. Naturally, evidence for the existence of wind is easy to observe, and an entire field of science is dedicated to the measurement, observation and study of various phenomena associated with the movement of invisible air currents. No such science exists to do the same with God.

Straw men pop up in many locations, one of the more common ones being the ongoing debate over evolution vs. creationism. One common tactic is to refer to evolution as "Darwinism," which is a little like comparing your sleek new miniaturized cell phone to Alexander Graham Bell's first working model. A lot has changed since then. We owe a lot to Darwin, but at the same time, we have moved way beyond him

Another typical straw man in this context is the creationist who characterizes evolution as "just blind chance." This usually leads to a rehash of the business about a tornado in a junkyard turning out a fully functional Boeing 747 by "blind chance." Obviously, if  "blind chance" were an accurate description of evolution, it would have no merit at all as a scientific theory, which is why it's such a popular straw man argument.

To be fair, and because I realize that it's not possible in such a small space to demonstrate adequately the fallacious nature of the 747 example to its fans, I now offer another example of a straw man that the theist can relate to:

Believer: "Religion offers mankind the best hope—indeed the only hope—for any kind of moral guidance. Without God, morality is entirely subjective and relative. People would devour each other."

Godless Heathen: "Sure, look at the morality of some of the religious people out there—Rev. Ted Haggard was buying crystal meth from his gay prostitute; Faith healer Peter Popoff was getting secret radio transmissions from his wife and pretending they were voices from God; and the entire Catholic church conspired to cover up generations of child molestation by priests. Yes, religion is a great source of morality."

Now, lots of non-believers actually consider this very compelling evidence for the moral bankruptcy of Christianity. But in fact, it is only evidence for the moral bankruptcy of some Christians. Immoral people are an easy target. The objection does not address the more difficult question of the actual source of human morals and ethics, preferring instead the easier path through the straw man of individual Christians who fell short of their own standard.