All fallacies are, in one way or another, non sequiturs. To be considered scientific, a theory must be falisifiable-that is, you should be able to prove the theory false if a particular fact is observed; otherwise, you have no means of testing the theory by experiment.
In the syllogism above, the argument is valid in that the conclusion would be true if the premises were true Tymoczko and Henle It is not clear whether the conclusion is true or not. If the conclusion was true, intelligent design could be regarded as scientific, thereby destroying a barrier between evolution on the one hand and creationist areas of knowledge, science, and theology on the other. This is a common error, especially among professors; this book may be an excellent example of it!
Rational arguments may not persuade if they are difficult to follow or if they challenge long-held and cherished beliefs. Reductio ad absurdum Latin for "reduced to an absurdity": Reductio ad absurdum makes use of the law of non-contradiction, which says that a particular statement "A" cannot be both false and true at the same time. Of course, the demonstration of absurdity may rely on a very extreme example of the principle being discussed-so extreme that it is an unfair distortion of the statement given.
See fallacy 9, "Straw man," below. The wording of the statement is very important, particularly when you use statements like " A is always true" or " B can never occur. Mark Twain made use of the reductio ad absurdum principle when he wrote that many years ago the Mississippi River was "upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long. It suggests that your opponent's logic must be bad when the only thing that is proven is that the argument does not hold in the extreme. For example, your opponent gets his answer by dividing by a very small number. You then declare him wrong because, if you divide by zero, which is very small indeed, the answer is undefined.
See fallacy 8, "Reductio ad absurdum," above. Demonstrating a contradiction in an argument is valid, but not if you distort the argument into a case it was never intended to cover. The terms are defined in such a way that the conclusion cannot be disproved. Examples of tautologies are "the law of the excluded middle" A or not- A , "de Morgan's law" if not both A and B, then either not- A or not- B , and "proof by cases" if at least one of A or B is true, and each implies C, then C is also true. Tautologies are not always fallacious. The tautological fallacy occurs when the conclusion is already contained in the premises-perhaps using slightly different words.
The logical argument does not advance us beyond what is already known or assumed. Either or both premise lines may not be true, and even the conclusion line may not be true. If the first two premise lines are true, then the conclusion line should be true and will be as long as the argument is valid. For example, recall the syllogism at the beginning of section B, "Deduction versus Induction," above:. This syllogism is sound. But what of the case where the third line instead reads "Bears eat meat"?
The argument is not valid even though the conclusion is true. The third line introduces a forbidden fourth term "bears" , and hence this case is also called the four-term fallacy. This represents an interesting case in that both premises and the conclusion "Bears eat meat" are true even though the logic-the argument-is not valid. Although the formula is true in terms of logic, it was just a coincidence that bears actually do eat meat; it didn't necessarily follow from the premises.
To see that the conclusion does not actually flow from the premises, consider another syllogism with the four-term fallacy:. Rhetorical devices use various phrases and tones for their effect, with or without regard to logic. All of the fallacies, if they are used despite the user's knowing they are fallacies, are then rhetorical devices.
Note the famous phrase "That's a rhetorical question," meaning that you aren't supposed to answer the question, which was posed only for effect. Loaded words are another, and very common, rhetorical device. It is rather in the spirit of "If you have no good arguments on the basis of the facts, then you should: Some recent examples include the following:. The astronomer Fred Hoyle has hypothesized that life may not originally have begun on Earth, but begun somewhere else and then migrated to our planet by various interesting ways.
Daniel Dennett observes, in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea , pp. This sarcastic remark is also insulting. This is in the same category as the howler. Phillip Johnson was referring here to Tim Berra's use of the changing automobile design in the Corvette sports car to illustrate the concept of "descent with modification. A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism.
Note that these examples of attacking the person rather than the scientific claims as exemplified are used by both creationists and evolutionists two each of the four examples. It is reprehensible whichever side does it. See rhetorical device 1, "ad hominem," above. Lewis by Dembski; emphasis mine. Infection is an excellent example of a loaded word, as is easily demonstrated by replacing infection with a neutral word.
Phillip Johnson is talking about the scientific method, which scientists use and which may reasonably be said to be naturalistic. Creationists have no comparable method, which frequently hurts the creationist arguments where the issue is one of whether intelligent design is or is not scientific.
Thus, if you insinuate that the scientific method is atheistic, you tend to reduce the importance of the scientific method in the reader's mind. Since naturalism or materialism is logically independent of theology see chapter 2, section B. Some creationist advocates have favored the term creation science as a means of suggesting that it, too, is scientific. Evolutionary scientists in return have scornfully referred to creation science as an oxymoron- a loaded term if there ever was one.
An oxymoron is a term that is inherently self-contradictory. Notable examples include "deafening silence," "civil war," "friendly fire," "jumbo shrimp," "original copy," and, yes, some people maintain, "military intelligence. Certainly the level of emotion in our example would be greatly reduced by saying instead that creation science is not in fact scientific. See "Rhetorical Devices," in this section. Another example of loaded words is the following humorous conjugation of verb forms such as "I am persevering, you are stubborn, he is pigheaded.
Examples of loaded words can be seen in a discussion of peppered-moth selection involving a creationist Jonathan Wells and two evolutionists Kevin Padian and Alan Gishlick. Wells wrote a book, Icons of Evolution: The data at issue are from peppered-moth studies carried out by H. Kettlewell's research is about moths that are generally peppered or very light in color.
They spend most of their lives perching on the bark of trees. In the mid s, when the industrial revolution was occurring, industry smokestacks were emitting much soot and thereby blackening the trees in industrial British cities like London and Manchester and their neighbors.
And about that time someone found a previously unseen dark moth. As the trees got blacker, the frequency of dark moths increased, reaching sometimes to 98 percent. With an interest in preserving the environment, laws were passed to reduce the pollution.
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To no surprise for a Darwinist, the frequency of the dark moths declined again as the blackness of the trees declined. How might this have occurred? Birds are known predators of these moths, and it was soon suggested that the increase of dark moths was a matter of camouflage.
When the bark of trees was black, dark moths were difficult for the birds to see, but when the bark of trees was whitish, peppered moths were the variant that were difficult to see and thus their chances of survival were enhanced. The positive correlation between the blackness of the trees and the frequency of dark moths supports the proposition of natural selection going on before your eyes. Kettlewell illustrated the camouflage by pinning a peppered and a dark moth side by side on a dark tree trunk and also a similar pair on a light-colored tree.
It was astonishing how well the dark moths blended in with the blackened trunk, and equally astonishing how the peppered moths blended in with the light-colored trunk. But things are not quite as simple as they may at first appear.
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The Kettlewell study was incomplete in that it failed to properly consider other possible factors, such as migration of moths from surrounding areas that could have overwhelmed the influence of selection. The Kettlewell study also gave undue emphasis to moths resting on tree trunks and failed to consider that birds see ultraviolet light much better than humans and thus might have been able to detect moths that are well camouflaged to human eyes.
There are unanswered questions, but the evidence for differential survival in agreement with the selection hypothesis is basically sound, despite the incompleteness of the Kettlewell study. Wells published a rejoinder to criticisms raised by Padian and Gishlick-criticisms that included pejorative phrases like " notorious peppered moth experiments," " staged photos of moths on tree trunks," and "the statistic is bogus.
This was hardly the critical measurement of the study, but it can be said to demonstrate the assertion that peppered moths do rest, in sizable numbers, on tree trunks. That is important, not bogus. In conclusion, loaded words should not be used to attempt to sway your audience. The true scientific question-Does the molecular evidence as a whole tend to confirm Darwinism when evaluated without Darwinist bias? Any assumption, often unrecognized, that tends to cause the experiment to produce inaccurate answers, pushing the results in one direction.
See objectivity and subjectivity below.
A scientist's goal, reflecting the scientist's attempt to see what is there in his experiments rather than what he hopes, believes, or expects is there. It is the overcoming of one's personal biases or inclinations.
This is something that is often difficult to achieve. A common phrase is "If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. A different humorous phrase, also typifying objectivity, is "If I hadn't believed it I wouldn't have seen it. Wishful thinking can often lead us to accept "evidence" that would be rejected by a more objective observer. For example, a primitive human called "Nebraska Man" was once thought to have existed, based on the evidence of a tooth.
It was found later that the tooth was not from a human but from an extinct peccary a piglike hoofed mammal , and had been misidentified as being primitive human. Other examples include the "Paluxy Event" and the "Piltdown Affair. In a more famous example, Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons claimed to have produced "cold fusion" in but this claim has not been accepted by the scientific community. A case of wishful thinking? In science, it is best to proceed with a good dose of humility. The misreading of evidence because of personal beliefs. See bias and objectivity above.
Problems associated with bias, lack of objectivity, and subjectivity are common to evolutionists and creationists alike. But the two groups typically do not respond in the same manner.
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Suppose there is disagreement over two proposed dates for the age of some event or artifact. The evolutionist, understanding the requirements of the scientific method, will ask whether his determination of the dating is repeatable on another sample from the same geographic site. The creationist, on the other hand, doesn't have much interest in repeatability except for its hoped-for conclusions. Then the lack of scientific repeatability is, for the creationist, evidence that the science is wrong and creationism is right.
Of course, in the worst case for the scientist, both dates are quite wrong, whereas in the best case for the scientist, both dates are correct but with larger-than-hoped-for error bars. An extreme example of this sort is the date for the Earth's origin. For example, the question "Did any dinosaurs survive their great extinction at the end of the cretaceous 65 million years ago?
Whenever it is impossible for A to be true without B also being true, it is said that A strictly implies B. Although the word entails is sometimes used as a synonym for implies, some logicians notably Alan Ross Anderson and Nuel D. Belnap have argued that for A to entail B, not only must it be impossible for A to be true without B being true, but there must be some relevance between the truth of A and the truth of B.
For example, a contradiction implies the truth of any proposition whatsoever: When the conclusion does not follow from the premises, the syllogism is said to be invalid. Even if the conclusion is true, and even if it is an observable fact, if the structure is not proper, the logic is invalid. It is possible to have a true conclusion in an invalid syllogism. The conclusion may be true, but since it does not follow from the premises, the syllogism is invalid.
Fitch, a pioneer in the study of molecular evolution, has written this cogent overview of why creationism fails with respect to all the fundamentals of scientific inquiry. He explains the basics of logic and rhetoric at the heart of scientific thinking, shows what a logical syllogism is, and tells how one can detect that an argument is logically fallacious, and therefore invalid, or even duplicitous.
Fitch takes his readers through the arguments used by creationists to question the science of evolution. He clearly delineates the fallacies in logic that characterize creationist thinking, and explores the basic statistics that creationists tend to ignore, including elementary genetics, the age of the Earth, and fossil dating. His book gives readers the tools they need for detecting and disassembling the ideas most frequently repeated by creationists. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, member of the Human Genome Organization, and the author of more than publications in molecular evolution.
His previous books are Tempo and Mode in Evolution: Foreword by Francisco J. Logic, Logical Fallacies, and Rhetoric 2. Some Simple Math and Statistics 4. Books Digital Products Journals. Chapter One Logic, Logical Fallacies, and Rhetoric In writing this book, it was my intention that it be for people who have no irrevocable position on at least some of the differences of opinion between creationists and evolutionists, but who would like a view of those arguments that is relatively fair.
Syllogism 1 Premise 1: The Word of God cannot be wrong.
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The Bible cannot be wrong. Syllogism 2 Conclusion 1: The Bible says the world was created in six days. The world was created in six days. Syllogisms The study of logic is quite ancient Socrates, B. If Socrates was a man, and, Premise 2: If all men are mortal, Conclusion: Then Socrates was mortal. The three lines can be considered more generally as: If B man then C mortal. If B is true, then C is true. Socrates was a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates was mortal. Deduction versus Induction If one sees that whenever an event happens it is always followed by the same second event, one may come to believe that the first event causes the second one.
Fido is a dog. Analogical Reasoning Analogical reasoning is the process of making your logic, in a difficult case, exactly like your logic in another case that the listener will readily understand. Begging the question circularity: Consider the following syllogism: Complex things can be produced only by a designer. The human eye is a complex thing. The eye must have been designed. Or consider how begging the question may be used in political speech: Smith is a good family man.
Smith was a great football player. Smith will make a good mayor.
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Silly Correct Premise 1: I am a nobody. I am a person of no importance. There is no individual that is perfect. No logical conclusion possible. The creationist's syllogism goes like this: Evolution is a theory. A theory is only a guess. Therefore the theory of evolution is only a guess and thus is not a fact.
The correct syllogism is: A theory is a well-supported explanation of many observations. Therefore, evolution is a well-supported explanation of many observations.
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Humans are a species. A species is a mental construct. Humans are a mental construct. To make a valid argument, the statements should be as follows: Humans are interfertile with other humans. That is, they can interbreed. A group of interfertile individuals is termed a species. Humans are a group called a species. This can be stated as a syllogism as follows: It is acceptable for humans to do what some animals do.
Some animals eat their young. Therefore, it is acceptable for humans to eat their young. The argument, expressed as a syllogism, is as follows: Intelligent design has been argued against by scientists. If scientists can argue against or for intelligent design, it is falsifiable. Therefore, intelligent design is falsifiable. For example, recall the syllogism at the beginning of section B, "Deduction versus Induction," above: To see that the conclusion does not actually flow from the premises, consider another syllogism with the four-term fallacy: Polly is a bird.
The logical structure is similar, but in this case you can see that the conclusion is absurd. Rhetorical Devices Rhetorical devices use various phrases and tones for their effect, with or without regard to logic. Fitch provides a glossary and a reference list of standard creationist and anticreationist works, along with classic and contemporary science sources.
Given the intended audience of scientifically and theologically naive students, the references are somewhat dated and uneven. For example, Fitch includes a graduate-level monograph on hemoglobin, whereas a book such as biologist Joel W Martin's The Prism and the Rainbow , an explanation of evolution for Christian students, would have been a helpful addition. The Three Failures of Creationism presents no new or unique material. Although some parts will be accessible to students, other parts e. The book also lacks a coherent structure, which makes Fitch's discussion difficult to follow.
On the whole, other critiques of creationism and introductions to evolution are available that will be more helpful to students. Sign Up for E-alerts. Download to Citation Manager.
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Restoring Heterogeneity on Rangelands: Urbanization, Biodiversity, and Conservation. Looking for a job? Visit the BioOne Career Center and apply to open positions across the sciences. Log in Admin Help. The Three Failures of Creationism: Logic, Rhetoric, and Science. University of California Press, Barbara Forrest Barbara Forrest bforrest selu. References cited Martin JW. The Prism and the Rainbow: Johns Hopkins University Press.