Old_Gold
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You neglected to include a good argument in favor of slavery.
Some people aren't intelligent enough/don't have high enough time preferences to function in modern society. Thus you either need to have them under the control of a master, or you wind up having to put them on the public dole and institutionalize the many of them anyway.
True, however, the civil rights movement did.
For instance, suppose my cause is to prevent the growth of a hole in the ozone layer. I tell people they must stop using CFCs.
Well, that raises issues about just how serious a threat was the "hole in the ozone layer", and how much if anything it had to do with CFCs.
Stop hyper-focusing on individual words to try to score debating points when the intent behind their use is clear from the context, everybody on LessWrong.
There were good arguments for all of those things when they were still in use. There are no good Arguments today for favoring Aristotelian physics over Newtonian physics, Ptolemaic over Copernican, or the phlogiston theory over the oxygen theory, where an Argument means a complete consideration of the evidence and the individual arguments.
I'm not trying to score debating points. I have a serious poin...
Slavery, suffrage, Christianity or Prohibition aren't right or wrong in some objective non-moral sense. Arguments for or against such things are inevitably about convincing people, not about some objective truth.
Well three of those four things are essentially government/societal policies, and one can argue about what the consequnces of adopting or not adopting those policies are.
...Let's test your idea that "There are no good arguments for X" is simply how having a successful social taboo against X feels from inside:
"There are no good arguments for the phlogiston theory of chemistry" is simply how having a successful social taboo against the phlogiston theory of chemistry feels from inside.
"There are no good arguments for Ptolemaic astronomy" is simply how having a successful social taboo against Ptolemaic astronomy feels from inside.
"There are no good arguments for Aristotelian physics" is si
Ideally, I would estimate the negative effects: how many people would later learn I lied and abandon my cause, and how enemies of the cause might use the fact I lied against it, and the reputational harm to my other causes and to my allies.
Not to mention the damage the people who believe your lies might do by acting on them.
What might be the cause of the perceived difference between the atheists/nontheists in Europe and in the USA?
Where in Europe? Richard Dawkins is from England and organized things like the infamous atheist bus campaign.
Also numerous European countries used to have atheist militants, of the priest-killing or at least send-priests-to-labor-camps variety.
Both Western governments and countries like Sierra Leone and Saudi Arabia. If he's simply talking bullshit why do government seek him out as a highly-payed advisor?
Because the official who made the proposal gets to look good for consulting with someone high status. There's a reason consultants have the reputation they do in the business world and governments have even worse internal incentive problems.
Anything about adding symptoms to currently harmless bacteria?
The argument isn't that logic is inherently sexist and racist and therefore bad but that it's frequently used in places where there are other viable alternatives.
Such as?
There are no pure-blooded aryans here. There are no pure-bloods at all.
There's also no such thing as 100% pure water, that doesn't mean "water" or even "fresh water" is a meaningless or "socially constructed" concept, and it definitely doesn't mean it's a good idea to drink a glass of sea water.
There's far more difference between a black-skinned person whose ancestors have lived in America for five generations and a black-skinned person whose ancestry remains rooted in Africa, than there is between the black-skinned American and a white-skinned American
Genetics science says otherwise. Or do you believe that genes have no impact on who someone is?
Am I from a small tribe in Polynesia because I have an unusual crown formation? Maybe I'm American Indian because of the way my roots wrap around my jawbone?
I don't know, are you? You can trace your ancestry or get genetic tested if your curious.
Well, in case you haven't noticed aren't in small forager tribes right now.
You're right, I left out a few alternatives. We could also deport them to a haunter-gatherer society, let them go around engaging in tribal-style raids (although that tends to interfere with the functioning of modern society for those who can function in it), or let them starve to death.