[slg]

Where did I say you can't ask questions? I said asking questions is a bad rhetorical device to use on this topic. OP isn't an inquisitive mind looking for answers to those questions. They are trying to convince us of a particular viewpoint due to the implied answers to those questions.

[nradov]

Please give us a comprehensive list of topics for which asking questions is a bad rhetorical device. I'd like to understand the basis for your claim, and how you presume to know what's in OP's mind?

[slg]

>Please give us a comprehensive list of topics for which asking questions is a bad rhetorical device.

There is no complete list. Topics exist on a spectrum and some are completely poisoned by conspiracy thinking. If some anonymous person on the internet asks "how many people really died during the Holocaust?" I am going to assume bad faith before I assume honest knowledge seeking. Covid deniers aren't that extreme, but they have certainly gotten to a point in which I view rhetorical questions with skepticism.

>I'd like to understand the basis for your claim, and how you presume to know what's in OP's mind?

I don't have to "presume to know what's in OP's mind" in terms of those questions. They told us. They said "If you don't admit these (now-obvious) facts". They are obviously using the questions rhetorically.

My underlying point is in fact that I can't read OP's mind in regard to their motivation. That is what makes this a bad rhetorical device. It is guilty of bad faith through association. If OP's intent is for a good faith discussion, they should have used a different rhetorical style to avoid that association.

And once again, this is not an argument about whether OP's original point was correct or not. That isn't what the comments I was replying to were discussing and it isn't what I said in any of my comments.