Presupposition In Edgar Allan Poe's Rhetoric

That’s a false choice fallacy and a stacking the deck fallacy because it limits the choices to two when at least one more choice is available. And we know that Bill left out one choice. Because his hidden presupposition was that the flood hadn’t occurred, Bill left out the time during the flood. As a result, he didn’t consider the fossils being deposited during the flood, and he eliminated the flood as a presupposition. In this, Bill secretly assumed the flood had not occurred. And that was the hidden presupposition. So he reasoned that, if the flood didn’t occur, the deposits couldn’t have occurred during the flood. And that’s circular reasoning.
Not only that, but none of this was clearly stated. This lack of clarity also acts as another

It’s designed to fool us. But that’s not to say that Bill consciously decided to fool us. More likely, Bill has probably deceived himself using the same method. To better understand what’s going on here, let’s look at Bill’s circular logic another way:
1. The flood didn’t occur, and billions of years did occur. (These are hidden presuppositions.)
2. Therefore, the flood couldn’t have laid down the fossils.
3. Therefore, the fossils were either laid down over billions of years or in the last 4,000 years.
4. The fossils couldn’t have been laid down in the last 4,000 years.
5. Therefore, the fossils were laid down over billions of years and the flood didn’t occur.
We note that step 5, the conclusion, contains the unspoken presupposition in step 1. That’s circular reasoning.
By spelling out these steps, we’ve made the logic clear, but not one of these steps was clearly stated. Instead, they were implied using innuendo. In this case, innuendo is a smokescreen to hide circular reasoning. And circular reasoning is also a smokescreen, in this case, to hide the axiomatic thinking fallacy. As in this case, axiomatic claims are often hidden in unspoken