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While I generally work in the realm of conceptual analysis and argumentation for my academic work, I find that Catholics are incredibly weak in appreciating and grasping the burdens of empirical claims, where evidence through real example serves as justification and as a reason.
This empirical weakness is odd to me since argument and proof through example is a common approach from the Greeks through Scholasticism, especially in Aristotelian veins.
It seems that every time I rely on empirical evidence to verify an empirical claim, Catholics get super huffy and don't really know how to take it. Don't they see that a good way to argue here is to simply question the evidence empirically?
Instead, they alway try to do this tortured and forced "FIRST principles" or "deFinItions" or alike games, pretending there is not real empirical--AND FALSIFIABLE--evidence on the table.
This kind of lightweight stuff really makes me crazy because it is so elementary that to bring it up in live argumentation comes off as rhetorically pretentious to the max.
It shows that people are not thinking, they are using formulas for their thought which prevent them from seeing what is right in front of them. I know I sound like an empiricist or positivist here which is wildly not my thing, but that doesn't mean I cannot use examples to argue.
