The Three Failures of Creationism. Walter Fitch
a case it was never intended to cover.
10. The tautological fallacy: formulating a conclusion that is true for whatever set of values (true or false) are entered into our table. 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.
11. Miscellaneous fallacies. 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:
| Premise 1: | Fido is a dog. | |
| Premise 2: | Dogs eat meat. | |
| Conclusion: | Fido eats meat. |
This syllogism is sound. But what of the case where the third line instead reads “Bears eat meat”?
| Premise 1: | Fido is a dog. | |
| Premise 2: | Dogs eat meat. | |
| Conclusion: | 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:
| Premise 1: | Polly is a bird. | |
| Premise 2: | Birds have feathers. | |
| Conclusion: | Bears have feathers. |
The logical structure is similar, but in this case you can see that the conclusion is absurd.
E. RHETORICAL DEVICES
Rhetorical devices use various phrases and tones for their effect, with or without regard to logic. “What is the authority for…?” is a rhetorical question that implies that, after considerable search, no such authority will be found. 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.
1. Ad hominem: attacking the speaker rather than the speaker's argument. It is rather in the spirit of “If you have no good arguments on the basis of the facts, then you should: (1) cause confusion; (2) shout louder; (3) assert your opponent's ignorance of the issue; (4) accuse her of unethical or immoral acts; (5) ridicule your opponent; and so forth. Some recent examples include the following:
a. The astronomer Fred Hoyle has hypothesized that life may not originally have begun on Earth, but began somewhere else and then migrated to our planet (by various interesting ways). Daniel Dennett observes, in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995, pp. 314, 318), that skeptics sometimes refer to this idea as “Hoyle's Howler” as a way of insulting Hoyle by implying that he is stupid.
b. “The fact that a distinguished philosopher overlooks simple logical problems that are easily seen by chemists suggest that a sabbatical visit to a biochemistry laboratory might be in order” (Behe 1996, p. 221; Behe is a creationist). This sarcastic remark is also insulting.
c. “I have encountered this blunder so often in public debates that I have given it a nickname: ‘Berra's Blunder’” (Johnson 1997, p. 63). 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.” (See chapter 2, section G.1, “Automobile evolution.”)
d. “…creationist canards (lies) [regarding thermodynamics]…” and “…these thermodynamics howlers…” written by Paul R. Gross (an evolutionist) in his review of a book edited by Matt Young and Taner Edis entitled Why Intelligent Design Fails: 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.
2. Ad ignorantiam: using the ignorance of one's opponent as evidence of the correctness of one's own position. (See rhetorical device i, “ad hominem,” above.)
3. Loaded words. “We all have naturalism in our bones and even conversion [to Catholicism] does not at once work the infection out of our system.” (Citing of C. S. 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. For example: “We all have naturalism in our bones and even conversion [to Catholicism] does not at once work our prior beliefs out of our system.” (The difference between the two statements is emphasized in the italicized words.)
“Methodological atheism”: 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.4, “Logic/epistemology”), their mixing is particularly loose.
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.” Students at Occidental College in Los Angeles have any number of “Oxymoron” jokes.) 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: Science or Myth?, that Padian and Gishlick reviewed. The data at issue are from peppered-moth studies carried out by H. B. D. Kettlewell.
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 1800s, 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. To no surprise for a Darwinist, the frequency of the dark moths declined again as the blackness of the trees declined.