Category Archives: Reason

Rebuttal to Ian Juby’s “’In 7 Days’ Crash Course in Creation” Day 1

Who is Ian Juby?

Ian Juby hails from Eastern Ontario, Canada. Inspired by Dr. Carl Baugh and the Creation Evidence Museum, he came back to Canada and set out to build Canada’s first Creation Museum, the Creation Science Museum of Canada.

– CreationWiki 

 

However, Juby is probably best known for his video response to AronRa.

On Ian Juby’s website, one of the first things one happens upon is his “in 7 Days” Crash Course in Creation. This delivers seven lessons over the course of seven days wherein Juby tries to prove the myth of creation over the science of evolution. I plan to debunk Juby’s crash course over the next few blog posts. So let us begin.

Day 1:  In the beginning…

 

The first lesson starts with Juby introducing the Origin Debate between creationism and evolution. There are no claims for creationism or against evolution until half way through the lesson. However, he does say this:

It has been my experience that evolution must hide behind assumptions, ad-hominem attacks, and lawyers.  It cannot be exposed to scrutiny because it will disintegrate.

 

Juby tends to do this throughout most of his work. He projects the faults of creationism on to evolution. Juby also goes on to state this:

I know when I first heard some of the information I’m about to share with you, I was angry.  I was not an evolutionist, and I was still angry because it became apparent that someone had lied to me.

 

I bring this up because Juby claims that he was upset that he was lied to by evil evolutionist, yet his whole crash course is full of half truths, blatant misrepresentations, and what could only be called lies.

After he is done projecting the faults of creationism onto evolution, he moves on to his first claim, which is:

Surprisingly, the debate did not begin with Charles Darwin.  The debate actually began with the age of the Earth, via one man, Sir Charles Lyell.  Lyell was a lawyer, and put his skills in arguing to work.  Though not trained in geology, he has become known as one of the founding fathers of geology.  I’m not arguing that a lawyer cannot do geological research.  I am simply pointing out that his “geological research” was everything from erroneous to downright fraudulent, and that he made an impression on the science of geology because of his argumentative tactics, not science.

 

Charles Lyell is indeed one of the fathers of geology because before men like him, there was no such thing as geology as we understand it today. Lyell could not go to school and obtain a degree in geology because no such subject existed until Lyell and others started to investigate the geologic formations found around them. Juby’s claim that Lyell’s research was “erroneous to downright fraudulent” is simply a lie. More importantly is the fact that Juby never brings up most of the evidence Lyell use to show deep time, such as many of the angular unconformities found in Scotland.

Juby moves on:

For example, it was Lyell who coined the phrase “The present is the key to the past.”

Notice what he has done here: He has effectively removed the idea of a global flood from the table, without ever mentioning it.  We do not see global floods occurring today, now, do we?  Therefore if only the present can be used to judge the past, then a global flood has just been disallowed in the interpretation of earth’s past – whether there was one or not!

 

No, he has not removed a global flood from the table. The idea of the present being the key to the past does not remove anything from the table except for miracles. One would be able to extrapolate the effects of a regional flood to a global system. A phenomenon happening today can be scaled up or down depending on the different variables we see. Juby simply does not understand how modern geology works.

Juby then goes on to speculate about Lyell’s intentions. According to Juby, the evil evolutionary conspiracy stretches back farther than anyone could have guessed.

In fact, he had secret intentions for his geological research, and his writings.  We would not have known his intentions except that after he died, his sister published his private writings and correspondence.  He wrote to one friend:

 

He follows this with a quote and his speculation as to how evil geologists got together to overturn the established teachings of the bible.

Whether Lyell had ulterior motives or not is not evidence against the ideas put forth in Principles of Geology. Lyell lays out the evidence for an old earth very clearly and the fact that Juby never mentions any of it is quite telling.

After this, Juby talks about Lyell’s visit to Niagara Falls where he points out that Lyell’s calculations were incorrect thus Lyell’s estimated age for Niagara Falls was also incorrect. For some reason, Juby feels that pointing out that Lyell was wrong about this is important to know, probably because he believes that if one thing Lyell said was wrong, than everything must be wrong.

Juby never comes out and says it, but it seems clear that he is trying to claim that the age of Niagara Falls is a good estimate for the age of the earth. This is wrong because there is no evidence that the river that created Niagara Falls has existed since the beginning of the earth.

Now we get into Juby’s big guns:

Lyell was also well aware of “polystrate fossils,” due to his visit to the Joggins Fossil cliffs of Nova Scotia, Canada.  Polystrate fossils are so called because they are buried vertically in the rock, cutting through several strata or layers of rock.  Hence, “poly” for many, “strate” for the strata of rock.  It cuts vertically through many layers.

 

That is right folks; Juby is still claiming that polystrate trees disprove deep time. First off, these fossils are not what creationist wish they were; they do not cut through vast expanses of geologic time, they belong to the same geologic period. They are found in depositional environments that form rapidly, such as swamps. In a depositional environment, such as a swamp, there can be many layers formed that all represent the same geological period that formed over hundreds to thousands of years and not millions.

Juby concludes:

Lyell’s research was fiction, yet everyone who read Lyell’s book concluded it was the Bible that was fiction.

 

Again, no it was not. The fact that Juby could not be bothered to bring up the bulk of what is found in Principles of Geology (essentially removing his ideas from the table, without ever mentioning them) speaks volumes.

Coming up in lesson two:

You want millions of years?  You got it.  It doesn’t solve the problems for evolution, and instead causes problems for evolution.

The focusing illusion

If you asked a large group of students the following questions: (1) “How happy are you with your life in general?” and (2) “How many dates did you have last month?” What do you think the correlation would be? In other words, what impact does the number of dates a student experiences on their happiness? When the study is done, the correlation is statistically insignificant (-0.012) indicating that dates have no impact on a happy student life. Now consider the following two questions: (1) “How many dates did you have last month?” and (2) “How happy are you with your life in general?” Now how will the number of dates correlate with life happiness? Quite well (0.66). This reversal in correlation upon reversing the question order is called the focusing illusion.

In the first set of questions the students had to consider their life in general first. All aspects, positive and negative, had to be added up and averaged out. Dating made up only a tiny fraction of their lifetime experiences and was judged unimportant by the students. In the second set of questions their focus was first drawn to the aspect of their lives devoted to dating, trying to recall the dates they went on over the last month. When asked how happy they were in general, dating was occupying a large amount of their cognitive attention and was a big component of their overall happiness judgment. Similar effects have been observed when asking about marriage, health, income, and location of residence.

If you are entering into a negotiation with someone the focusing illusion can be used to your advantage. By being the first to make your position known, you anchor the likely outcome nearer to your target. In a salary negotiation, for example, when you have in mind a specific amount for a raise – making sure that number comes out early will constrain the range over which the negotiation can roam. Another use, when selling a house, is to set the price as a non-round number. This tactic will limit the negotiation to the lower units making it more likely you will get the price you want. Setting your price at $799,800 will encourage a smaller range of buy offers than setting the price at $800,000. This is because buyers will focus at the $100 unit rather than the $100,000 unit when making counter offers. Priming the people you are dealing with the answer you want makes it more likely you will be pleased with the outcome.

However, there is a darker side to this cognitive bias. Advertisers make use of the focusing illusion and cause us to overestimate the positive impact their products will have on our lives. They show us people making creative use of their items and invite us to image how we would use them ourselves. By focusing our attention on the product we come to believe that it will markedly improve our relationships, happiness, or efficiency when it reality most products will only have a very small impact on our lives. Politicians also love to use the focusing illusion to narrow the window of debate. Rather than conduct a full discussion of the issue and the merits of various alternative solutions, politicians like to forcefully state their solution and then claim there is no other option. The political debate is shifted to the relative merits of the proposed solution only and any alternatives put forward are ridiculed as too radical and unlikely to have the perceived impact that the proposed policy will.

Avoiding the focusing illusion seems to be impossible. In the same way it is impossible not to think of an elephant, once the influencing factor has entered our consciousness it will immediately colour our future perceptions and decisions. If time allows, try to make the decision at a later date when the focusing factor has receded in importance. Another tactic is to shift your focus to concentrate on what isn’t there. If you think about the information that has been left out you may give your conscious mind a more accurate conception of the problem at hand. If an advertiser or politician claims a particular benefit for a product or policy try to think of the things they are not claiming. If their policy will create more jobs why are they not talking about its impact on government revenue? If an advertiser is touting their product is high in vitamins, ask yourself what they might be leaving out about its sugar content. Training in formal argumentation helps but remember that nothing can break the focusing illusion once it is in place. Be on your guard.

Faulty Premises 2

In my last post I discussed some of the more common and simplistic logical fallacies. I would recommend going back through that post if you are unsure what a logical fallacy is, as this post will assume that the reader has some prior knowledge.

 

Argument from Authority

This can be a tricky fallacy because we all know that often arguments such as those put forth in research papers rely on the referencing of relevant authorities in various fields to support them. Quoting Stephen Hawking when talking about the physics of black holes, for example would not be a fallacy because he is considered an expert in that field and there is consensus among experts on much of what he says. Thus his words can be trusted to a reasonable degree.

The fallacy occurs when someone uses the authority of an individual that is not a reliable expert on a given subject. For example it would be inappropriate to use the views of an engineer to support an argument about biology. No matter how much of an expert they might be about engineering, this has no bearing on the veracity of their views on biology.

Another form of this fallacy occurs when someone appeals to the views of a relevant expert, and holds them to be true whilst ignoring the fact that there is no consensus among other experts in that field. For example one might quote a particular scientist and use them to support a particular view on the evolution of language, taking their word as truth, whilst completely ignoring the fact that many other experts disagree.

 

Quote Mining

This fallacy is similar to the argument from authority in that it uses quotations often taken from well-known figures. The difference here is that the quotation is taken out of context, or important information is left out. Take a look at this quote from Charles Darwin:

“But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?”

This appears to the reader as though Darwin is saying that there is a problem with evolutionary theory—the lack of transitional fossils. Quotes like this are frequently used by creationists in an attempt to show that even Darwin had doubts about his own theory, however if one puts this quote into context, one can see that a crucial piece of information is left out:

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; and I will here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed. The crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been imperfectly made, and only at long intervals of time.

When put into context we can see that Darwin did not view this question as an insurmountable problem with no conceivable answer, its just that the following sentences were removed to give this impression. The use of quotations in such a misleading manner can be difficult to spot (especially if one does not have access to the original material to look it up). As a general rule of thumb, one should be weary of people using quotes from experts that appear to contradict their known views or appear to be saying something extraordinary.

 

Misleading Use of Polls and Stats

Many people use stats and polls to support their arguments, however these can often give misleading results. Where possible, one should always examine these to see whether the results may have been biased in some way. Lets use an imaginary statistic to illustrate this: 7 out of 10 British people state that that British weather is miserable.

Lets say you look into this poll and find that it was only conducted among a small number of people in Northern Scotland. The first issue would be sample size; a poll that uses a small number of individuals cannot be extrapolated to be representative of an entire nation.

The second area of potential bias is in the location of the survey, Northern Scotland is generally colder than southern parts of Britain and thus it might be expected that there would be more people who are unhappy about the weather in that region. This cannot be considered representative of the entire nation.

You might also find out that the survey was conducted in mid-January when the winter is at its worst and most miserable, a factor likely to affect people’s answers on the matter. You then discover that the survey was conducted among farmers, who as a general rule spend more time outside than people in other professions—another way in which the answers might be biased.

Finally you hear that the actual question asked was “do you agree that the weather in Britian is miserable?”—when asked in this way the question is presupposing that the weather in Britian is miserable and might thus influence the answers given.

These are a few examples in which polls and surveys can be biased. It is advisable to try to ask the following questions, when presented with such results:

  • Was the sample size large enough to be representative?
  • What factors in the method of the survey might lead it to be biased? (location, individuals asked, method of asking etc.)
  • Was the question leading or presumptuous in any way?

Of course many polls and statistics can be enlightening and are carried out in ways that eliminate bias, but it is always useful to view these results in a critical manner.

 

That’s all for now. Hopefully I have given some insight into various kinds of logical fallacy. I would be interested to hear some feedback, comments and criticisms about these posts, and ask a specific question; would you like me to continue posting about logical fallacies, or should I move on to discussing other topics?

Here we go again! “Militant Atheism” and Communism

Another day, another documentary purporting to educate us all on “hidden truths” about the USSR when in reality, the “hidden truths” have been known about since even before the collapse of the USSR. This time however to the interests of all of us secularists and atheists, the entire emphasis on the film being “Militant Atheism, in the Former Soviet Union”. (Watch the trailer)

[Youtube]3ZSeGp8BwKs[/Youtube]

Continue reading Here we go again! “Militant Atheism” and Communism

How MonsterQuest gives creationists a platform

As you already know, I sat through several days of the History Channels pseudo-documentary MonsterQuest (the joy) and much to my surprise, in two of the episodes we find creationists. Now, I knew the History Channel had gone off the deep end by having this show in the first place, but I did not think it would stoop down to allowing creationists on their channel. Than again, one must ask themselves, what is the major different between an average creationist and an average crypto-zoologist?

Nevertheless, I digress. The first episode I noticed that allowed a creationist on was entitled “Flying Monsters” (episode 15, season 3). This episode deals with a group of creationists from Genesis Park, which mounts annual expeditions to Papa New Guinea in search of pterosaurs (or Ropen). Now, the History Channel did do a wonderful job editing out (what I can only suspect to be) the vast majority of the crazy coming from the creationists on this program, but they let a few things slip. At ~10 minutes in, Garth Guessman (the head creationist), while holding a copy of an old map says; “This is an old sea chart from 1595 depicting Papa New Guinea, and it has animals depicted on here that are similar to pterosaurs that could very well be distant memories of legends of possible pterosaurs.” I kid you not! That was what set the alarm bells off in my head, but it was not until around the end of the program at ~40 minutes in when he said, “Every culture in the world has stories of dragons. And if you think about it, they also have stories of people killing dragons. And when you ask the question what happened to dinosaurs, people never want to put that together.” This statement made me look into this person. Sure enough, he is a Young Earth Creationist (YEC) hoping that if he finds evidence of pterosaurs in Papua New Guinea that will somehow disprove evolution.

However, in this episode, not only do they have a YEC, but they also have an actual paleontologist (Dr. David Martill) whose specialty is pterosaurs. I truly wish I could get my hands on some of the unedited material for this episode. I would love to see the reaction from Dr. Martill when dealing with the inanity of the YECs.

However, this was not the only episode to feature creationists in it. While researching the above episode, I thought back to one of the first episodes I watched entitled “The Last Dinosaur” (episode 18, season 3) which was about Mokele Mbembe, thought to be a sauropod. This episode was not as bad as the first one I talked about (in terms of creationism, it is a terrible show after all), but the narrator was the worse part of this show. At ~13 minutes in, they talk to a creationist who went to Africa to take a picture of a living dinosaur (no doubt, because he thought that would somehow disprove evolution); instead, he took pictures of what were three toed tracks of something large (most likely a rhinoceros). The creationist claims they are most likely from a sauropod, yet gives no evidence as to why. This mistake can be forgiven, because he is nothing more then a creationist, however the narrator starts talking about how sauropod tracks have three toes and starts showing pictures of fossil dinosaur track ways (the tracks are from theropod dinosaurs). I cannot really get mad at the narrator because he is only reading a script, but whoever wrote that script is a moron. Sauropods had five toe tracks, and the pictures that they showed were of theropod dinosaurs, a very different animal. Did I mention how terrible this show is?

I feel very upset that this show ever aired on the History Channel. I think it is bad enough that the History Channel allowed crypto-zoologists to run amuck on their channel, but to allow creationists…

I do not have anything else to say because words cannot describe how disappointed I am with the History Channel. This is a channel that I feel, when I was in high school, did a far superior job teaching me history than my actual high school. It is just upsetting to see it slip this far.

Faulty Premises 1

Faulty Premises Part 1

Last time we discussed how to dissect an argument, by finding its premises and the conclusion. I also spoke briefly about non-sequiturs—something which is known as a logical fallacy. There are many different kinds of logical fallacy, all of which when used weaken the strength of an argument. In this post I will outline some of the more common logical fallacies, not only so that you can spot them in the arguments made by others, but perhaps more importantly, you can spot them in your own.

A logical fallacy is, as the name implies, a use of false logic to support a conclusion. The best way to highlight exactly what a logical fallacy is, is through showing examples of them.

 

Ad hominem

An ad hominem is when something derogatory is said of a person making an argument or holding a position in place of an actual argument. An example of this is as follows:

Creationists are stupid therefore creationism is false.

The statement ‘creationists are stupid’ by itself is not a logical fallacy (though not a particularly nice thing to say), it is only when the derogatory statement is used as a premise for the conclusion that it is a logical fallacy. Even if the statement is valid, it does not follow from it that the conclusion is true, therefore it is a fallacy.

 

Argument from ignorance

(Argumentum ad ignorantiam)

This fallacy is when someone argues the following:

We don’t know that X is false

Therefore X is true

A few common example of this would be:

Science doesn’t know everything, therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the supernatural exists.

Telepathy is possible – we don’t know everything about the human brain after all.

All that can really be derived from an absence of knowledge is the conclusion; we don’t know. A specific area of ignorance does not make a positive claim plausible or even possible. When one makes a positive claim such as ‘the supernatural exists’ or ‘telepathy is possible’, it needs to be supported with positive evidence. An area of ignorance does not allow one to fit anything that one likes into that gap.

 

Argument from personal incredulity

This fallacy is committed when someone states that they cannot believe how something could be true and then uses this to support their conclusion that this is something is false. A common example of this would be the creationist argument:

I do not understand how something as complex as the human eye could have evolved by chance, therefore evolution is not true.

The logical error committed here is that one’s personal inability to comprehend something is grounds for dismissing it. In reality this is not true, and whilst you personally might not be able to understand something, this does not mean that nobody can. In the above example, there have been numerous instances in which scientists have explained precisely how the eye could evolve via gradual incremental steps (I’d recommend Richard Dawkins’ book Climbing Mount Improbable for such an example). ‘I don’t understand X’ means nothing when used as a premise.

 

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

(Correlation does not imply causation)

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is Latin for ‘after this, therefore because of this’. This fallacy is made when someone assumes a causal link between two things simply because one occurred before the other. In formal terms this fallacy is written thus:

X occurred before Y

Therefore X caused Y

An example of this fallacy would be:

Since the MMR vaccine was introduced diagnosis rates for autism have risen, therefore the MMR vaccine causes autism.

The argument is assuming that there is a link between these two events; the introduction of the MMR vaccine and the rise in diagnoses of autism. However these events following each other does not necessarily mean that one caused the other. Therefore in order to accept the conclusion as valid the person presenting the argument would need to demonstrate that there is indeed evidence of a causal link between the two events that extends beyond the fact that one event preceded the other.

There are cases in which correlation does imply causation, however in these cases there is more evidence to support the claim of causation than the fact that the two phenomena occurred around the same time. X occurring before Y by itself is not sufficient grounds for claiming that X caused Y.

 

I shall end this here for fear of rambling on too much. I will endeavour to highlight more examples of logical fallacies in the next few posts of this series. Until then I can point the interested reader towards the following links, should you wish to know more:

Wikipedia’s list of logical fallacies

The Nizkor Project – Fallacies

www.logicalfallacies.info/

I hope you have enjoyed this post. Feel free to respond with any comments, questions, ideas, suggestions, disagreements or whatever in the discussion thread.

How MonsterQuest disproved Bigfoot

A far lesser known hobby I have is dealing with crypto-zoology (I have not dealt with this for years). However, recently I sat through a marathon of MonsterQuest to see how much new information cryptozoology has compiled. The only thing that I have learned is that the crypto-zoologists have all but disproved Bigfoot and all other land based cryptids with just one episode.

The main difference in the MonsterQuest pseudo-documentary compared to most other cryptid pseudo-documentaries I have seen is the use of trail cameras. A trail camera is a camera left in the wilderness for weeks to years taking pictures or video of anything that sets the motion detector off. Now, the episode of MonsterQuest that disproved land based cryptids is entitled “Lions in the Backyard” (episode 7: season 1). This episode deals with reports of black cats seen in the U.S., and of course, they were unable to show any black cats in the U.S.

However, how does an episode about black cats in the U.S. disprove Bigfoot and all other land based cryptids? Well, in the episode they eventually get to a section at ~21 minutes in where they talk to two actual biologists that use trail cameras. The two biologists explained that jaguars used to live in the U.S. (mostly the southwest) during historic times, but were now thought to be extinct in the U.S., thanks in large part to humans. Nevertheless, they were able to show, using trail cameras, three separate individual jaguars in Arizona; essentially proving that jaguars are expanding their territory back to somewhat historic ranges. Furthermore, they were able to prove this over an 8-year period.

Now, trail cameras are in use all over the U.S., not just by crypto-zoologists, but also by actual zoologists and hunters. Does anyone truly believe that something the size of Bigfoot, or any of the other cryptids crypto-zoologists love to talk about, could go undetected by these trail cameras for decades when they photographed several jaguars in 8 years? In addition, the photographs are not ambiguous, they were able to determine that two of the three individuals were male (the other remains unknown at the airing of this episode), that is how wonderful the pictures of these animals came out.

In every episode of MonsterQuest that dealt with a land based cryptid, trail cameras were placed in the areas the animals were thought to roam and yet no photographs of the cryptid were ever produced. I must point out that MonsterQuest only sets up these cameras for perhaps a month or two, but the actual crypto-zoologists, zoologists, and hunters have trail cameras that are in use for most (if not all) of the year, for years! One would think that if these cryptids were real, at least one of them would be captured on camera in the decades that trail cameras have been in use.

There are two things I learned from watching MonsterQuest; the first is that crypto-zoologists appear to be just as dogmatic as creationists are when it comes to their preconceived notions. I know that this information does not definitively disprove Bigfoot and his kin, but it seems to be very compelling evidence that any rational person should consider.

The second is I really want a trail camera now. Here in New Mexico there is a lot of wildlife that would be very interesting to photograph without human interference. Seeing the price tag on most of the trail cameras makes this dream something that will probably never happen for the simple fact that I do not think I would waste that much money on a hobby. However, one can dream.

Edited by Dean, 12/03/2013
Reason for edit: Grammatical corrections.

Of species and kinds

 

One familiar argument an evolutionary proponent will encounter when dealing with creationists is the “species problem”. Essentially the argument is that there is not a definitive definition for a species. This almost inevitable argument comes up because the evolutionary proponent asks the creationist if they could define kind. Creationists believe that since biologists cannot come up with a consensus on species that applies to every organism, it gives them a free pass to not define kind.

 

The problem with this argument and the reason we have a “species problem” in biology is that different forms of life reproduce differently. For example, a definition for bacteria will not work for a population of mammals because they reproduce in a different manner. Thus, one is able to produce a robust definition of a species for organisms that reproduce sexually (i.e. reproductive isolation), but have a more fluid definition for species when it comes to asexually reproducing populations.

 

However, this is all beside the point and can be considered a red herring, thus one does not even have to address it. The main issue with this creationist argument is that the definition for kind should be vastly more robust than any definition of species. Young Earth Creationists believe that their God came to Earth, seeded all life on this planet, and made sure that each kind would reproduce after its kind. Thus, if a god(s) truly wanted to do this we would be able to see distinct genetics unique to certain kinds, which are not shared with any other animal outside of their kind. That is, there should be genetics shared only between the cat kind or dog kind that are not found in other organisms and we should not be able to find shared genetics between the two kinds.

 

Nevertheless, this is not what we see when we look into the genetics of life. Every time we look into the genome of an organism, we can see its shared life history with every other living organism on Earth. To date, we have not found a gene sequence unique to a group of organisms except at the species level, and those unique genes are what make that species different. It is this fact that is the real reason creationists refuse to define kind and would rather hide behind the “species problem” when asked to define kind. If the creationists were correct, and god(s) created different kinds then geneticists would be unable to create phylogenetic trees linking all organisms into clades based on their evolutionary history. To make this problem worse, other phylogenetic trees, based on morphology, embryology, etc…, should not be able to produce similar (statistically the same) trees. One would think that their genetics would be different, since all the kinds were created separately with no relation to the other.

 

Thus, the next time a creationist refuses to define kind, kindly remind him that comparative genetics has definitively proven universal common descent and that there have been no genetic markers to indicate that there ever were unique kinds. The “species problem” is not equivalent to the lack of a definition of kind.

Edited by Dean, 25/02/2013
Reason for edit: Minor corrections of grammar & punctuation.

Dissecting an Argument

In my last post I spoke about issues and how to spot them in an argument. This post will follow in a similar fashion, about how to spot conclusions and premises in an argument.

Conclusions

I spoke briefly about how to find conclusions in my previous post. In a sound argument the conclusion should be a statement that follows logically or can be inferred or deducted from the premise(s). Generally these tend to follow what I’d term indicator words such as the following:

  • Therefore
  • Ergo
  • Consequently
  • Thus

Generally the sentences that follow these words are a conclusion to part of, or the entire argument. Of course these words aren’t always used, one might conclude their argument by saying ‘so in conclusion…’ or ‘this shows that…’. With a little practise you should have no problem being able to find the conclusions in someone’s argument.

Premises

Premises are the bulk of an argument, they are the reasoning that supports the conclusion(s) that you make. These can be statistics, facts, examples, logic, refutations of counter arguments, and so on. These are essentially the pieces of information that you wish to use to convince someone that the conclusion(s) you are drawing are valid.

Examples

Here are some example arguments, with the premises in yellow, and the conclusions in red:

In 2011 there were 8,748 alcohol-related deaths in the UK, heavy drinkers increase their risk of liver problems, cancer and other health issues, therefore alcohol should be more strictly controlled by the government.

[sources used: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/alcohol-related-deaths-in-the-united-kingdom/2011/alcohol-related-deaths-in-the-uk–2011.html and http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/Effectsofalcohol.aspx]

46% of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form, this calls for a great effort to improve science education in the United States

[source used: http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intelligent-design.aspx]

[NOTE: These arguments do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the author, they merely serve as examples for education purposes]

Non-sequiturs

Sometimes a conclusion will not follow from a particular premise, or series of premises. This is called a non-sequitur (literally meaning ‘it does not follow’). Here’s an example that many of you will be familiar with:

There is no evidence for evolution, therefore creationism is true.

The conclusion does not follow because it excludes the possibility of both evolution and creationism being false.

In order to spot non-sequiturs, it is advisable to read through the premises of an argument, and think about what kind of conclusions could logically be drawn from them (assuming that all the premises are true). If the conclusion differs greatly from the conclusions that you think are reasonable to have drawn from the premises, then it’s likely that this person has made a non-sequitur.

General tips when making arguments

In order to make your argument as sound as possible, there are some important things to consider when coming up with your premises and conclusions. These are: does my conclusion follow from my premise(s)? Are there any logical flaws in my premise(s)? Is there any research/facts that counters my conclusion(s)? Have I cited references for my argument? Are these references trustworthy? What are the counter arguments to my position?

If you continually scrutinize your arguments in such a way, you will inevitably come up with stronger ones. If you find that your argument is flawed in any way, the most honest thing you can do is discard it. That doesn’t necessarily mean changing your position, it might just mean finding better arguments. However, if you find that no arguments tend to support your position, then the most humble thing you can do is change your position, rather than defending it with bad arguments just to maintain your bias.

In my next post I shall look into some ways in which premises can be flawed, misleading or plain wrong.

Any comments, questions, suggestions etc. about this post are welcome in the discussion thread.

You Have Some Serious Issues

In my first post on critical thinking, I spoke a little about values and how important they are. In the next few posts I’m going to look at the various means by which one can dissect an argument into its composite parts.

The first thing that it is important to get a grasp of when listening to, or reading an argument is; what the hell are they arguing about? The subject matter of the argument is often referred to as the ‘issue’. Sometimes they can be easy to spot because the person states the issue clearly, sometimes they are more ambiguous. To give you more of an idea of what an issue is, here are some examples:

  • Should the USA have stricter gun control?
  • Does creationism have any place in a science class?
  • Do violent video games negatively affect children?
  • Should George Lucas be allowed to make more Star Wars films?

As you can see, the issue takes the form of a question. This question is what the person making the argument is trying to answer. As I mentioned earlier, sometimes this question is not actually mentioned directly during the discussion, but one can deduce the issue from looking at the conclusion of the argument. Here’s an example:

“Many people, adults and children alike suffer with obesity and the health risks that come with it. Therefore junk food should contain similar warnings to those found on tobacco products.”

We can find the conclusion by looking at indicator words, in this case “therefore,” other examples of such words include; ‘thus’, ‘so’, ‘ergo’, and ‘consequently’ etc. These words tell us that the following sentence is likely to be the conclusion of their argument. Now if we look at the conclusion above, we merely have to rearrange the sentence a little to see that the issue is; should junk food contain similar warnings to those found on tobacco products?

This all seems pretty straightforward, and probably obvious to most of you. But there are instances in which people direct a discussion off course by going for a different issue than the original one raised—be it intentionally or unintentionally. This is often called a red herring. An example of this would be a creationist stating; “scientists carried out carbon-dating on newly formed igneous rocks and they came out as forty billion years old” during a discussion about whether creationism should be taught in schools. However, this does not address the issue at hand, rather it is addressing a completely different issue of ‘does radiometric dating provide accurate results?’ (rather badly at that). This merely serves to throw the discussion off course, and for that reason it is useful to be able to derive the issue(s) from the conclusion(s) of a persons argument and see if they match up to the original issue that you began with. If they don’t then you can discard them and politely request that the discussion gets back to the real issue.

There are of course some issues that cover a whole range of sub-issues. Does God exist? For example, also covers issues like what is the nature of evidence? And what are the attributes of God? etc. It is important to keep track of these and to try to make it as clear as possible what these are and how they relate to the original issue in your presentation. Once we begin to learn how to de-construct arguments to analyse their components, we can begin to make much stronger arguments ourselves. Looking for, and clearly stating the issue at hand might seem obvious, but it is important in order to argue with clarity and to begin to see whether someone’s overall argument fits together.

As always, comments, questions, criticisms and suggestions are welcome in the discussion thread.