But in a debate, the evolutionist has to shut up while the creationist Gallops along, spewing out nonsense with every paragraph.Д¬reationists are fond of it see ' 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe' or the various lists of creationist scientists. вЂњ вЂќOn the radio, I have been able to stop Gish, et al, and say, 'Wait a minute, if X is so, then wouldn't you expect Y?' or something similar, and show that their 'model' is faulty. This essential flaw in the Gallop means that a skilled rebuttal of one component argument may in fact be a rebuttal to many. Upon closer inspection, many of the allegedly stand-alone component arguments may turn out to be nothing but thinly-veiled repetitions or simple rephrasings of the same basic points - which only makes the list taller, not more correct (hence 'proof by verbosity'). However, Gish Gallops aren't impossible to defeat - just tricky (not to say near-impossible for the unprepared). There may also be escape hatches or 'gotcha' arguments present in the Gallop, which are - like the Gish Gallop itself - specifically designed to be brief to pose, yet take a long time to unravel and refute. The myriad component arguments constituting the Gallop may typically intersperse a few perfectly uncontroversial claims - the basic validity of which are intended to lend undue credence to the Gallop at large - with a devious hodgepodge of half-truths, outright lies, red herrings and straw men - which, if not rebutted as the fallacies they are, pile up into egregious problems for the refuter. Gish Gallops are almost always performed with numerous other logical fallacies baked in. At the highest levels of verbosity, with dozens upon dozens or even hundreds of minor arguments interlocking, each individual 'reason' is - upon closer inspection - likely to consist of a few sentences at best. The same is true for any time- or character-limited debate medium, including Twitter and newspaper editorials.Д®xamples of Gish Gallops are commonly found online, in crank 'list' articles that claim to show 'X hundred reasons for (or against) Y'. Thus, Gish Galloping is frequently employed (with particularly devastating results) in timed debates.

For this reason, the refuter must achieve a 100% success ratio (with all the yawn-inducing elaboration that goes with such precision). This is especially true in that the Galloper need only win a single one out of all his component arguments in order to be able to cast doubt on the entire refutation attempt. The tedium inherent in untangling a Gish Gallop typically allows for very little 'creative license' or vivid rhetoric (in deliberate contrast to the exciting point-dashing central to the Galloping), which in turn risks boring the audience or readers, further loosening the refuter's grip on the crowd. The Gish Gallop is named after creationist Duane Gish, who often abused it.ДЄlthough it takes a trivial amount of effort on the Galloper's part to make each individual point before skipping to the next (especially if they cite from a pre-concocted list of Gallop arguments), a refutation of the same Gallop may likely take much longer and require significantly more effort (per the basic principle that it's always easier to make a mess than to clean it back up again).

It's essentially a conveyor belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it's unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop. The Gish Gallop is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. Albert Einstein on the book 100 Authors Against Einstein вЂњ вЂќIf I were wrong, then one would have been enough!

Gish definition