fallacies of relevance

FALLACIES OF RELEVANCE - When an argument relies on premisses that are not relevant to its conclusion, and that therefore cannnot possibly establish its truth...Fallacy of relevance > Ad Hominem ArgumentsAlternative name: Insults and personal attacksEXPLANATION:The most common and well-known version of the ad hominem fallacy is just a simple insult, and is called the abusive ad hominem. It occurs whenever a person has given up attempting to persuade a person or an audience about the reasonable of a position and is not resorting to mere personal attacks.Examples and Discussion:Whenever you see personal attacks and abusive ad hominem arguments being used in a discussion, it is unlikely that anything productive will come out of it in the end. A person who can only make their case by attacking others probably doesn't have much of case to begin with.1. Who cares what you think about movies? You're just an ignorant American who doesn't know anything about real culture.2. You have claimed that John Edward doesn't really talk to the dead, but how can we believe what an atheist says?In both cases, something objectionable is identified about a person: one is an ignorant American, the other is an atheist. The arguer then goes on to conclude that, just because of this objectionable fact, what they say about a particular topic should be ignored.Instead of showing where the people have made an error in any of their statements, the argument simply attacks them for who they are, and claims that we can dismiss anything said without even considering it. But in neither case is this objectionable fact related to the topic at hand - especially when these "objectionable" facts are just plain insults.The proper way to evaluate the merits of an argument is by looking at what the argument says, not by distracting people's attention from the argument by insulting the person and then, unreasonably, concluding that your insult is a good reason to dismiss the argument