what does strawman mean?

Question

i've been seeing this word in a lot of religious debates recently
eg. 'your strawman arguments'

Answer 1

Strawman = man made of straw (think of the three little pigs story) blow over straw easily! No substance.

Answer 2

A strawman is a reference to a scare-crow. A fake person stuffed withed inconsequential fillings to divert the crows' attention from the cornfield.

In debate a "strawman argument" is one that is manufactured and has little content and is used to divert from the actual issue at hand. Most typical way of doing it is to purposely ignore the intent of the question posed and find a side-issue to the question, and then argue that instead. It is almost always the case that a strawman argument will be presented when a person is losing the argument and needs to divert attention, to move the debate onto different ground, without having to admit defeat.

Answer 3

Daniel C has the current literal interpretation 100% correct. However, this word is morphing in corporate jargon as we speak (due to folks being unaware of this literal interpretation but wanting to use a 'hip' bit of corporate jargon) to mean a kind of beta-concept. So basically if you have to do a presentation to directors quickly, or come up with a business case before you have anything spec'd out, this is getting referred to by mid-management these days as 'putting together a strawman'. For those of us who remember the original, diversionary meaning (such as Daniel's version), this gets a little confusing!

Answer 4

a weak or sham argument set up to be easily refuted