Opps realized my original and reproduced analysis has the wrong fallacy. Instead of Affirming the Consequent, it should be Begging the Question. Additionally, it should be noted that the last paragraph came from forum member TD, who pointed out the distinction without a difference fallacy.
cognisonance
JoinedPosts by cognisonance
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Logical Fallacies in WT Publications
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Logical Fallacies in WT Publications
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cognisonance
I like the OP too, as learning about logic fallacies helped me learn the TTATT as well. Here are some of the ones I've contributed in other threads:
We need not conclude that our loving Creator was the first one to make what we know as swords. Adam and Eve saw turning in front of the angels something that was blazing. What exactly was it? By the time Moses wrote the book of Genesis, swords were well-known and used in warfare. (Genesis 31:26; 34:26; 48:22; Exodus 5:21; 17:13) So Moses’ words "the flaming blade of a sword" enabled his readers to visualize to a degree what existed at the entrance of Eden. The information known in Moses’ day contributed to the understanding of such matters. And the language Moses employed must have been accurate, for Jehovah had it included in the Bible.—2 Timothy 3:16. (“Questions from Readers.” Watchtower 1 Feb. 1994: 31)
We need not conclude that our loving Creator was the first one to make what we know as swords.
Appeal to Consequences of a Belief, a form of a Red Herring. This appeal is being made because God couldn’t have invented the sword because that would make him seem unloving somehow. In other words, God inventing a weapon that is associated with killing would imply bad consequences, such as man imitating that invention and using it to kill each other in war. Alternatively, if God was the first to make such a weapon, that means he is the inventor of weaponry. Why would a loving God invent weapons, one thus argues. Rather it feels better to believe that war and weapons came about only from Satan and sinful men, not from a loving God.By the time Moses wrote the book of Genesis, swords were well-known and used in warfare. So Moses’ words "the flaming blade of a sword" enabled his readers to visualize to a degree what existed at the entrance of Eden. The information known in Moses’ day contributed to the understanding of such matters. And the language Moses employed must have been accurate, for Jehovah had it included in the Bible.
Affirming the Consequent, a form of Circular reasoning. The bible is accurate (unstated premise). The bible says that God used a flaming sword. Thus, the description can be considered accurate because God had it included in the Bible.
It's also a distinction without a difference fallacy. One on had the author is saying it would have been unloving for God to create the sword, a weapon. I ask why this would be unloving. To which I can only think of the negative implications associated with him being the inventor of the sword. Next the author says that while God didn’t technically create the first sword, what he did have placed at the entrance of the Garden of Eden could be visualized to a degree of accuracy as being a sword. So wouldn’t the first statement about it being unloving for God to create the sword still be an issue? How is this any different? He didn’t create the sword per se, just something that resembled it.
It doesn't matter if 'Sword' is the correct word for the spinning 'Thing' or not. If the spinning 'Thing' was lethal by design, then it was a weapon by default. And there's no moral difference between the assertion that God introduced humans to weapons vs. God introduced humans to swords.
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A recent discussion that had me stumped!
by Terry inokay--first off, i wasn't involved in the following conversation; i was eavesdropping!.
you know how it is when you happen to be in a public place.
you are minding your own business until you're not minding your own business.
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cognisonance
'What if it could be established that pedophiles are the way they are because of their genes?'
What if hard determinsim is real and thus free will is illusionary? Do we stop punishing harmful actions just because people may not techically have been able to do otherwise? I don't think anyone would actually argue that, but the type of punishment and how we view the person might change.
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A recent discussion that had me stumped!
by Terry inokay--first off, i wasn't involved in the following conversation; i was eavesdropping!.
you know how it is when you happen to be in a public place.
you are minding your own business until you're not minding your own business.
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cognisonance
I love thinking about logic fallacies as it's the biggest tool in my toolbox for critical thinking so I appreciate this thread.
Terry, I think the main problem you are having is mistaking the Dad's Appeal to Extremes for the fallacious-logic-exposing technique of reducto ad absurdum.
The son says not, "... it is a question of WHAT IS FAIR! If somebody is born with any innate tendency WHO ARE YOU to deny them their own nature." Had the son argued for this, then the Dad's argument would be a reducto ad absurdum showing the fallacy in the Son's premise.
But of course, the son isn't saying that. He is talking specifically about homosexuals, and his father is substituting apples for organes via extremes (i.e. arguing pedophilia is an "extreme" form of homesexuality perhaps, and/or substituting the idea of a homosexual's innate nature with unrelated innate natures). From what I can tell this is an absuse of the reducto ad absurdum technique. In short, the father is making a form of a slippery slope argument (as besty has pointed out with regards to how his argument is affecting your thinking), as well as a strawman argument.
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WT 5-15-13 Can anyone find this quote from the Boston Target ?
by trujw inwe all know about the wt's famous quotes.
i can't find this article from the magazine on page 9 paragraph 8 from the lincolnshire boston target uk?
can i get some help from our crack staff her on jwn.
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cognisonance
Don't know how much it is related, but that quote comes up in a google search to this:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Christianity-Youth-Issues-2346/today-youth-christianity.htm
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I sometimes feel like I'm in the twilight zone
by cognisonance inbeing out of the cult that i spent the first 3rd of my expected life span in, now on the outside i keep having this amazement that i was actually in a cult!
what we were told was the "real life" now seems so surreal and dreamlike that i feel like i lived an episode of the twilight zone.
i also feel like.
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cognisonance
That Ad was very weird.
Queue the twilight zone theme...
do-do-do-do...
It's also an example of an Argument By Giberrish.
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New Game: Spot Those Logic Fallacies! - "theory of evolution is 'much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon.'"
by cognisonance ini read on here someone paraphrasing from evolution versus the new world the quote in this post's title where a scientist is quoted as saying the theory of evolution is "much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon.
for those interested in the quoted scientist actual words, you can read them at google books.
of course the author, a chemist, is refering to the theory of evolution by natural selection, something he refers to as "percise theory," as opposed to "vague thoery," the latter he is describing the easy-to-see evidence that evolution has happened.
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cognisonance
I'm surprised no one wants to play (or just comment on this as that quotation was new to me as of 2 days ago). Maybe I'm just pedantic about logic fallacies and find them interesting and intellectually fulfilling to find in a cult that I spent the first 3rd of my lifespan in.
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I sometimes feel like I'm in the twilight zone
by cognisonance inbeing out of the cult that i spent the first 3rd of my expected life span in, now on the outside i keep having this amazement that i was actually in a cult!
what we were told was the "real life" now seems so surreal and dreamlike that i feel like i lived an episode of the twilight zone.
i also feel like.
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cognisonance
Being out of the cult that I spent the first 3rd of my expected life span in, now on the outside I keep having this amazement that I was actually in a cult! What we were told was the "real life" now seems so surreal and dreamlike that I feel like I lived an episode of the twilight zone. I also feel like
I'm in the twilight zone even now, with the reality that cults exist in general in this day and age of science and knowledge. I saw this ad on TV recently and thought, wow, cults are even trying to get mainstream attention and membership. I also thought it was so ironic when it talked about learning "truth" and having freedom, being a free thinker, and thinking for yourselves (since we all know that supressing critial thinking and freedom of mind is what cults are about). I could see the JWs trying to make an ad like this and saying how modern and state of the art their production ability is. I'm sure Scientology thinks of themselves that way too.
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New Game: Spot Those Logic Fallacies! - "theory of evolution is 'much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon.'"
by cognisonance ini read on here someone paraphrasing from evolution versus the new world the quote in this post's title where a scientist is quoted as saying the theory of evolution is "much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon.
for those interested in the quoted scientist actual words, you can read them at google books.
of course the author, a chemist, is refering to the theory of evolution by natural selection, something he refers to as "percise theory," as opposed to "vague thoery," the latter he is describing the easy-to-see evidence that evolution has happened.
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cognisonance
I read on here someone paraphrasing from Evolution Versus The New World the quote in this post's title where a scientist is quoted as saying the theory of evolution is "much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon." (a quote used in 1967 taken from a LIFE magainze article from 1950 - and of course men flew to the moon 2 years after this booklet was pubished by the WBTS).
For those interested in the quoted scientist actual words, you can read them at google books . Of course the author, a chemist, is refering to the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, something he refers to as "percise theory," as opposed to "vague thoery," the latter he is describing the easy-to-see evidence that evolution has happened. In short, he is attacking how it happened, not that it has happened. Prior to saying what he did as quoted above, in the preceding paragraph in the article he says this:
The question at issue with the percise theory of evolution is whether God gave things a sort of evolutionary shove every now and then (or perhaps all the time), or whether he just wound things up in the beginning and let them rip.
And two paragraphs preceding farther back we see him saying:
The vague theory has been abundantly proved, with an overwhelming mass of evidence.
Cleary, he wasn't supporting the idea that evolution has not been "proved," or better worded is not a fact (as the WBTS asserts, but he seems to instead support thiestic evolution, the very thing that Evolution Versus The New World blasts as being just as bad as accepting evolution atheistically!).
Anyway, out of curiousity I looked at the context of that quote in Evolution Versus The New World and noticed that the logic employed is full of logic fallacies. I will post some of the passages from the book and thought it would be fun to see how many logic fallacies we can enumerate. Thought this could be a fun game! For a nice list of fallacy canidates see here or here.
To start I notice the following fallacies about the the Anythony Standen quote:
- Appeal to Authority (he's a Chemist, not a scientist in a life sciences field)
- Fallacy of exclusion (i.e. cherry picking/quote mining/quoting out of context/misleading quotations)
- Faulty Comparision (i.e. weak analogy especially since men did fly to the moon)
- Non Sequitor (the analogy presented as reason not to accept evolution is irrelevant and adds very little support to the conclusion ex ante, and works against the reasoning ex post (now that men have flown to the moon))
So here is the context of the quotation in Evolution Versus The New World (page 61):
So do not be stampeded in the name of science to worship at the altar of evolution. As Anthony Standen warns, science has become "the great Sacred Cow of our time". This scientist with a refreshingly uninflated ego declares that the precise theory of evolution is "much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon". — Science Is a Sacred Cow, pp. 34, 103.
The theory of evolution is old-fashioned, a pagan religious teaching of ancient nations, philosophized about by the Greeks, fervently believed by totemist savages, reeking with fairy tale transformations. It was old when Christ trod the earth, but he did not follow it. He scorned such traditions of men that voided God's Word. It was part of the wisdom of the Greeks, which was foolishness to God. It was part of the philosophy and vain deceit Christians were warned to beware of. Shun "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called", cautioned the apostle Paul...
In case you are wonder what the last paragraph is refering to... (pages 26-28):
Evolution was taught in the fifth century B.C. The Greek philosopher Empedocles (493-435 B.C.) has been called "the father of the evolution idea", believed in spontaneous generation as the explanation of the origin of life, thought that organisms evolved gradually after much trial and error, and taught in rough form Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) claimed that "man is the highest point of one long and continuous ascent". — See The Encyclopedia Americana, vol. 10, p. 606, 1942 edition.
It has been suggested that the Greek philosophers gleaned their evolution ideas from the Hindus, who have the soul transforming from one animal to another till it reaches the perfection of nirvana. Six hundred years before Christ the Mayan culture began, and its religion taught a streamlined evolution, saying that the rain-god made man in this order: a river, a fish, a serpent, and then man. And did you know that savage tribesmen scattered throughout the earth have believed evolution from ancient times? They have totems, and the totem of a clan is generally a species of animal or plant. On this subject the Encyclopcedia Britanmca, vol. 23, pp. 467, 476, edition of 1894, states:
The members of a totem clan call themselves by the name of their totem, and commonly believe themselves to be actually descended from it. Thus the Turtle clan of the Iroquois are descended from a fat turtle, which, burdened by the weight of its shell in walking, contrived by great exertions to throw it off, and thereafter gradually developed into a man. The Cray-Fish clan of the. Choctaws were originally cray-flsh and lived underground, coming up occasionally through the mud to the surface. Once a party of Choctaws smoked them out, and, treating them kindly, taught them the Choctaw language, taught them to walk on two legs, made them cut off their toenails and pluck the hair from their bodies, after which they adopted them into the tribe. But the rest of their kindred, the cray-fish, are still living underground. . . . Prof. Sayce finds totemism among the ancient Babylonians.
And is it not the evolutionist that is the gullible gobbler of fairy tales? Is it not the fairy tales that deal copiously with physical transformations? that tell of children turned into spiders and back again? of mice becoming horses and lizards becoming men to serve Cinderella? Of course, the evolutionist's transformations are fables more cunningly devised, and instead of popping in on the wings of a witch's spell or the wave of a fairy's wand they steal in so slowly that in comparison a snail's pace would appear as the lightning's flash. Nevertheless, evolutionist W. Beebe writes in The Bird, page 97: "The idea of miraculous change, which is supposed to be an exclusive prerogative of fairy tales, is a common phenomenon of evolution." Dr. McNair Wilson, formerly editor of the Oxford Medical Publications, observed that evolution is "a theory which is as full of ogres, mermaids and centaurs as any fairy tale".
Hence it is the evolutionist that is stuck with a superstitious myth out of the dim past, as unprovable now as it was then. Why do most scientists accept this theory out of the bogs of antiquity? Because it is their religion, the orthodox belief of scientists, and they fear what fellow scientists would think if they did not conform to it. Unproved and unprovable, evolution is a faith, a faith in fossils that do not exist, faith in missing links still missing, faith in vestigial organs not vestigial, faith in embryological evidence that is imaginary, faith in blood tests that refuse to behave and in comparative anatomy that proves nothing. It is a blind, credulous faith, a dead faith without works, a faith induced by fear, fear of what a smart world saturated with evolution might think. To prove orthodoxy many scientists become unscientific, and embrace the religion of the college-bred class of this twentieth century — evolution.
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What was it about Bethel that woke you up?
by cognisonance inone the how many exbethelites thread it was mentioned that some think one either leaves down the path towards apostasy or as a 100% true believer.
i'm curious what experiences did you face at bethel that woke you up (or started to at least)?.
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cognisonance
Huh? They screened people's mail?
