The Consequences For Truth Of Sabine Hossenfelder's Preferred Ideology Negates The Basis Of Her Argument - That's Quite A Definitively Refuting Consequence

What are the historical origins of the argumentum ad consequentiam, the argument from (or literally, to) consequences, sometimes featured as an informal fallacy in logic textbooks? As shown in this paper, knowledge of the argument can be traced back to Aristotle (who did not treat it as a fallacy, but as a reasonable argument). And this type of argument shows a spotty history of recognition in logic texts and manuals over the centuries. But how it got into the modern logic textbooks as a fallacy remains somewhat obscure. Its modern genesis is traced to the logic text of James McCosh (1879).

Douglas Walton:  Historical Origins of Argumentam ad Consequentiam

SUSPECTING THAT this dodge of accusing someone of committing this "logical fallacy" which I'd never had a pop-atheist throw at me before would become a more often resorted to dodge, I decided to see what I can see.  As the paper the above abstract introduces says, the "fallacy" is merely an "informal" one and one of fairly recent origin and, from what it looks to me, not particularly well thought out by those who use the term.  From what he shows it is sometimes confused with a somewhat related mode of thought that Aristotle gave a name that can easily be confused with it.  I'll leave it to anyone curious enough to go into that to read it for themselves,  the author of the paper is quite concise and clear in a way someone typing out a quick answer won't be.

The most important point is made after he discusses what Aristotle said, distinguishing what he presented as a (sometimes) useful mode of reasoning with what is presented as a "logical fallacy" by SOME modern logic textbooks and, outside of the academic realm by pop-atheist would-be logic ninjas from the philosophical school of Carl Sagan, James Randi and Michael Shermer.  He sums that up:

The long and the short of this digression is that the fallacy of the consequent is an interesting type of fallacy in its own right, and it is somewhat related to the kind of inference called argumentum ad consequentiam, but two the two things are quite different.  Argument from consequences is a very common, and generally quite reasonable form of argument to the effect that a projected course of action is a good (bad) course to take if the consequences of it are good (bad).  The fallacy of consequent is the error of turning a conditional around when such a turning around (converting) of the conditional is not warranted (generally because the inference from consequent to antecedent is weaker when turned around).  But the fallacy of consequent is certainly something to pursue, because of the neglect of any adequate and useful treatment of it in modern logic. 

Being a political blogger, a firm and complete believer in egalitarian democracy as the only possibility of establishing a legitimate government which is likely to produce the least moral atrocity, I will begin with a hard truth.

If people are incapable of free thought, free will then democracy is a sham and a delusion, no more legitimate than dictatorships, monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies or inegalitarian governments including those make a show of "democracy"  in which one class of people get to lord it over other classes of people, ruling without the consent of the governed.*   Human history has shown that the consequences of that assumption are virtually everything bad ever in the recorded history of our species and its present.   

The contented, well-paid cattle in university faculties who are generally well subsidized by the state or by the patronage of the rich, whose families are safe, fed, housed, clothed, have access to health care, may not feel any immediate or credibly suspect they are in any danger of violent oppression - so long as they keep to the rules for maintaining their positions - are probably quite content to give up the belief in free will because those consequences are reserved for those lower on the economic scale.   They have far more of a stake in Christians acting like they're told to in the Gospel and Epistles which are rejected by those who love the idea that freedom is an illusion.

However, when the consequences of the fashionable and respectable materialist-atheist, scientism are pressed on its true believers, especially those consequences impinging on  the necessary demotion of the minds they use to follow their passion and professional bread and butter, they don't much care for it.   

The fact is, the real consequence of the demotion of all of the things they like from their other ideological preference is real, the consequence of not believing in the monistic character of materialism (the denial of "natural law" is imaginary. 

It's OK with them as long as they can apply such dogmas as the denial of free thought to religion, to politics, to consumer choices but when it is pointed out that literally everything they do, from the most speculative and often at odds with each other  denominations and sects of current theoretical physics down to the sciences of lesser prestige (though often of entirely more exigent necessity) and on down to the most basic of foundations on which all of that rests in mathematics and logic must be as devoid of transcendent significance as what they disdain, mock and dismiss as unimportant they either will not admit the point that their universalist-totalitarian monistic materialism cannot provide for their thoughts what it denies for the thoughts of those they don't like or they will refuse to follow their argument to its logical and inescapable end.  

Nietzsche did understand that consequence of total nihilism required by the ideology of materialism, a materialism, ironically, demanded by the scientism of "enlightenment" modernism.   And you didn't find it only in the expression of the line that came from Nietzsche.   It is the position that Nicolai Bukharin took when he told Michael Polanyi "Under [Leninist-Stalinist] socialism the conception of science pursued for its own sake would disappear, for the interests of scientists would spontaneously turn to the problems of the current Five Year Plan."   Though the scandals of modern science as seen in Retraction Watch prove that capitalism and scientists serving in corporations are as able to corrupt science as Polanyi feared would happen under Stalinist communism.   Scientists are certainly prone to all manner of decadence as their refusal to rigorously follow the consequences of materialism right down to the bitter reduction of everything to no more significance than iron oxidizing, water evaporating or any other banal natural phenomeon, devoid of any transcendence as truth.  

That is quite a consequence and totally unnecessary if a materialist would give up the pretense that it is a totally potent explanation of things, the dogmatic holding that materialism is an adequate monistic explanation of everything.    The fact is that if you believe in the possibility of miracles you don't have to not believe in the validity of some of what scientific method, mathematics, logic demonstrate.  The number of scientists, mathematicians, logicians who believed in God and that God could do miracles is not insignificant, among them some of the most accomplished of all scientists.   I don't think Stephen Hawking is ever likely to replace Isaac Newton for top position as the greatest physicist on those ranked lists they love to make.  I don't think, Pascal's mathematics will ever be discredited, not for all of the snarking about his "Wager" which is discussed in the paper linked to above, though I doubt anyone has ever believed in God and acted accordingly based on it, excepting, perhaps Pascal.  There are a lot better reasons to decide to believe in God, better ones than to believe in any number of theories held by current science, certainly better than some of the competing theories of current theoretical physics which Sabine Hossenfelder ably critiques, though those who hold it are among those who determine what gets into science.  

* The touted Athenian "democracy" was such a gangster government in which only old-family white, Greek males governed, all foreigners (you couldn't become an Athenian citizen except through birth) women, slaves, etc. were denied a say in the government.   I would like to have a different word for the modern, egalitarian governance with all of the governed having a say in who governs on behalf of The People because it's a far different thing from that classical era gang rule system. I am convinced that modern democracy is far more a product of the Hebrew tradition than the classical Greek tradition, it is certainly not a product of the Roman Republic which the slave-owners and financiers who wrote the Constitution emulated.  That the Roman Republic degenerated into the Roman Imperial era and never recovered the Republic should have been a warning of what their emulation of it might spawn in the fullness of corruption they maintained.