Argument from Lack of Imagination

The arguer suffers from a lack of imagination, which may be genuine or merely feigned.

Examples

I cannot imagine a world without a god, therefore there is a god.

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977. DEC did not enter the home computer market.

We cannot believe that the president would ever lie to the American people, therefore he didn't.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to think for themselves, which risks expulsion from our group and a life of loneliness and isolation and very flat soda. Therefore thinking for yourself is wrong.

I cannot see why white people don't let us subjugate them. Therefore white people are inherently racist.

I cannot imagine that my wife had anything to do with robbing that bank, officer, therefore she's innocent.

How can you believe that the town's public health spa has become polluted and is making many of the tourists sick? You must be a liar and a trouble-maker for saying such things. This is the premise of the play /An Enemy of the People/, by Henrik Ibsen.

I simply cannot believe that the media would conspire with politicians and the military industrial complex to hoodwink the public into embarking on unnecessary wars, therefore you're a conspiracy theorist. Everything happens by random chance!

Weaknessess

A lack of imagination is not an argument. History has been a steady progression of discoveries, especially in science, each of which has shown us again and again that a lack of imagination is not praiseworthy.

If the lack of imagination appears feigned, you might inquire about motives. Perhaps the actual cause is ignorance, or blind faith in authority, or even a hidden self-interest that compels the arguer to dispel inquiries.

In propaganda, the Big Lie technique consists of presenting to the public the biggest possible lie, because the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. An arguer who is hoodwinked by a Big Lie, or on the side of the liars, will claim that no one could imagine such a colossal fabrication as alleged in some Claim C, therefore Claim C is false.