Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Delightfully Ironic Bad Logic

I get lots of comments on this blog that demonstrate bad or really weak logic. I usually just ignore them. This comment to this post is a gem, because the writer makes a false accusation of a false dichotomy, and then follows that up immediately with a false dichotomy of his or her own:

"but because he does not accept that evolution alone can explain life on earth."

But this is the number one tactic of the "creationist front". Under a false dichotomy, if evolution is not 100% true, then creationism might be true.

So, the movie is very biased against evolution and towards creationism and that certainly qualifies as being a "creationist front".


The statement "if evolution is not 100% true, then creationism might be true," is not a false dichotomy because it does not exclude other alternatives. Creationism might be true, but a third or forth alternative might also be true.

In the final sentence the writer seems to suggest that if you question the explanatory power of macroevolutionary theory, you must be part of a "creationist front." This is a false dichotomy, because you can question aspects of evolutionary theory and not be a creationist or a "creationist front," whatever that is.

If you are going to claim a false dichotomy, you have to define your terms carefully, which this commenter fails to do. This makes him/her a bad philosopher, just like Barbara Forrest.

1 Comments:

At January 31, 2008 11:19 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Creationism might be true, but a third or forth alternative might also be true."

Personally, I think the IDers have totally bungled this debate. They've unwittingly given Darwinism new life and caused the academic establishment to close ranks around it. I have to wonder why they didn't use the purely skeptical approach of someone like Berlinski. In the vein of Berlinski, lets just admit that nobody has a plausible explanation of evolution.

 

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