The antitheists argue from three areas of concern; the first is that of Truth, then proof and finally harm although I have not found anyone yet that speaks with intelligence that is simply attacking religion for the sake of doing so. It comes from deep concerning worry that religion is causing things to happen that would not be so justifiable without followers believing in versions of God and if the books of God has anything other than the divine to do about it then it always needs to be questioned. There are of course problems with the new atheist movement. Part of the issue has to do with the argument that I have often found myself in that people tend to look at the worst of religion and then make decisions about it, still I have found that this is as such is still a fair way of addressing the issues after all the support of religion appears to still grow. Those that support it are as much a problem as the more fundamental believers, if you believe in a certain level of religious belief then they support the irrational thinking at a certain level and this is the cause of the problems in the first place. No one is ever saying that moderate religious people are incapable of doing good things, this I suggest is because they are good people even if I disagree with the method of thinking of how to be good and this is not an admission that they don’t do harm by their belief, they do, just they don’t mean to! Humanism is the solution to our problems as I will later show, religion even as a pure force of good – is not. The four horsemen is a discussion involving some of the biggest names in the movement and you can watch it online for free. It is about two hours long but it covers all the issues that are presented by the books. Note that I use to term antitheist rather than atheist although I think it is a question of semantics rather than issue of difference in most intelligent people at least.
These three phenomena cover a wide array of activities and beliefs but share the same broad sense that they break away from what could be considered to be ‘natural’ and move towards trying to produce or support events that cannot be explained unless there is an unsupported theory behind the curtain. They use a selection of common defences in order to make sure of their own continuation, these are claims that are often made outside of the sorts of other logic and reasoning that perhaps every other part of our lives are subjected to. If I were to claim that I was in fact the best stock broker in the world (I know that in these times of financial melt down that most likely is not a difficult claim to make) then you would expect me too to back it up with at least something. If however, I were to claim to have the ability to speak to a family member of yours who has died, if I were really good at reading you and had been through some sort of education which might include Barnum statements & showmanship, I could actually make you believe that I was doing it. Based not on my actual ability but because you are vulnerable (primed even) and you were brought up in a society where even the slight possibility of these things being real means something to you! These three things which I will refer to as general superstitions rely on at least these five common defences that have to be in place or they will simply fail. There are two wider questions; are such superstitions true (the answer is no) and why do they even exist at all, of course these have very complex answers. Part of the reason behind this post was a promotional video for the Centre of Inquiry which describes superstition as ‘uneducated answers’ and how science makes it possible to have educated ones. Still I think it should go further; superstitions are failures in reasoning, as René Descartes promoted – reason & rationality are the sources of truth and the guarantors of progress.
Please don’t mistake this as anything other than an examination of the gay gene and by far this is not the rejection of the ontological worth any individual places on their inner world that includes the belief that they were born gay. If anyone does truly believe that they were born gay then of course this holds immense value to them by which no method should it ever be undermined. This follows on from a conversation that I had with someone who does believe that. Whilst they were citing functional magnetic resonance imaging and genetics, the strange notion came across that there were simply two choices. The first is that people are born gay and the other that through learning & being brought up in a certain fashion or perhaps by some bad experience with the opposite sex, that they have chosen their sexuality. This in itself is a fallacy, a product of thinking more about reductionism than complexity. There is much more to understanding sexuality than these two opposing perspectives. While I cannot reproduce the complexity of this issue, maybe the suggestion of the combination of both nature and nurture is valid. Still that is not my point, I don’t know where sexuality really comes from but here I reject the notion of being born gay on two grounds.
To really understand this documentary slash movie you have to first understand how Intelligent design came about, after all it should at least in theory be different from the theological understanding of why we are here since such a theological argument would never be considered to be science. The whole point of intelligent design is so it could be included within science, mostly the aim is to get it taught in schools as the counter point to evolution, in other words to lift the creationists into the remit of science along the way acquiring the objective weight of true knowledge. At some point I was happy to concede that perhaps Intelligent Design is pushed out to easily, this was the first point made by Ben Stein, no one should be afraid of discourse on any subject. Freely expressed opinions and views are exactly the things that have allowed secular societies to become better for everyone. Now to be honest, after some thought, I want to claim that Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence allowed is simply a dishonest representation of the truth and I will explain why that should be the conclusion. Please do watch the documentary otherwise this won’t make sense even though the first issue is understood if you already know a little about the dispute. Sadly Ben Stein does not appear, at least from his documentary, to understand the argument at all.
In matters of justice the statement ‘There but for the grace of God I go’ should never have to apply, we should demand the same result from any legal ruling to uphold the same standard. Our laws are designed to be fair, just and most importantly to apply to everyone on equal terms, this is important because the statue of justice outside of the Old Bailey Central Criminal Courts in London wears a blindfold to represent something. Not only is justice inescapable it also means that it should never depend upon who is seeking justice and who has committed the crime, it should be blind to these things and only consider the facts of the case. Sharia Law in the UK is already being used through the Arbitration Act 1996, involving both civil and criminal matters. To a certain extent rather than both UK law and Sharia Law working together, the normal form of justice is being removed all together. No one should have a problem with any community seeking justice still everyone should have a problem when they use laws to make unfair judgements legal which are only justifiable to those who follow certain religious beliefs. Most importantly it’s not about taking power away from just courts, Sharia courts have every right to apply British law as long as it remains just, fair and the right thing to do.
I don’t really understand why I am even having to write this post, still the subject keeps coming up in debates that religious people have with Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens to name a few, the disbelief is that some people consider this an argument against atheists when it clearly is not. The thing that really gets me is people also use the notion that Hitler had about the idea of “survival of the fittest” as demonstrating that science without religion can only lead to completely negative things. This is not true and please don’t for any moment consider what I am saying as support for the crimes the Nazi’s committed against all of us. Let’s first decide that the term atheist does not mean much at all, read my earlier post [https://therationalunderstanding.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/there-is-no-church-of-atheism-%e2%80%93-what-does-atheism-mean-with-the-help-of-sam-harris/], in short everyone is an atheist about something and Harris puts it right when he rejects this term. Just because you apply the term atheist to describe yourself it does not mean you belong to some sort of group, on the other hand if you are a catholic and you do certain things which are mostly justifiable because of that faith then you do belong to a group and the group should be held accountable. Ignoring the technical definition of atheist let’s just use the idea that it just means you don’t belong to a group as a working hypothesis, the only thing that atheists agree upon is the rejection of religion. I like to also consider what “science” means, for a start it is not an alternative belief system and there is no church of science. Although science can provide a reason to why religion is wrong, it does not aim to replace it as it deals with a completely different set of constructs. Although the rejection of the ideas of science and atheism in certain terms makes the point, what I want to argue is that rational understanding is the best way, something which includes the rejection of magic (religion) and unfounded ideas but includes in part accepting the tools of science as long as it is rational.
Did religion play any part in the final solution? It would be wrong to assume that just because Hitler rejected the Catholic Church as something very distasteful that it had nothing to do with it, after all he wanted to be the God so there was no need for any others, the centuries of discrimination towards Jewish people was a feature of religion. There are many reasons to why the regime came about but it must have not been helped by this, it actually becomes a justification in one of Hitler’s speeches about why the Jewish people are the cause of all known problems it ended in ‘… as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people’, he also cited Christian Love and the need to fight the Jews in the same speech (Cited in Letter to a Christian nation, Harris). It was yet another reason to why the politics of Germany could be helped by religion, has religion ever been outside politics? Well no this time, the Catholic Church agreed to make Hitler a saint upon his death and also ordered that on his birthday all churches in Germany to offer prayers for him. Why would the church care about the final solution since it achieved more in a few years than they had gotten done in centuries, it’s clear that between 40 & 50% of the SS, the ones that were responsible for the most killing and the final solution, were practicing Catholics none of them got kicked out of the church because of their part in such crimes. It is important to remember that Hitler was just one man and the SS were about 6 million strong, so the reason to why the Jewish people were considered subhuman thus making them not treatable as humans is in part due to the Church. The dogma helped to create the regime and their inaction against such a thing speaks towards what would have been the moral thing to do.
image.guardian.co.uk
Were Hitler and the Nazis rational? The German archaeologists of the first part of the 20th century fronted the way offering new methods and massive advancements, still during the time when the Nazis were in power none of these scientists would dare speak out against the notion of the Arian race. Nazi racial theory believed that the Arian race were descendants of the lost city of Atlantis, the blonde blue eyed survivors were the pure race, Atlantis was destroyed when the earth went through its last cycle and the moon crashed into the earth. When it comes to science the evidence must support the theory, it did not and this moves the theory away from rational belief and towards dogma. There is also another side to the wrongful claim of science and that is the notion of “survival of the fittest” which is also claimed that Hitler in particular was thought to believe in strongly and which also went towards the racial theory. This is an assumption based on the idea that we are still subject to that rule, which we are not in most part. Humans have been outside of this natural law for a long time; we take care of our grandparents for example, even past the point where they don’t provide a use. Altruism is common enough and is also outside of this simple survival of the fittest model of explanation. From this we can conclude that racial theory is not rational at all, it’s based on assumptions and fear which is never a real reflection of things. Science is often seen as rational and powerful, still science means knowledge and this is useful when trying to understand other regimes. For example Hitchens argues that the people of North Korea are kept away from knowledge as this is dangerous to the leadership. The knowledge that the Nazis did not want people to know is that there are no genetic differences between groups of people. Neither true science nor rational thought played much of a part in the Nazis creation of racial theory.
The new atheist movement is not just about pointing out that religion is wrong it is also about inquiry, Sam Harris in a debate with David Wolpe said something which was very powerful; the sorts of regimes that cause endless suffering and death are not the result of vast inquiry rather none at all. So to point the finger at atheists blaming them for such regimes is wrong since it is not what the discussion is about, the atheist discussion is examination. Religion is closest to the regimes than it is to the inquiry provided by the new atheist movement, most religious people feel more comfortable about just accepting and using speculation rather than trying to find the real answers. There are lots of examples of this; one is that of Stem Cell research, people that argue that it is wrong are often concern for a small number of cells than about human suffering because they have not been through the inquiry that strongly suggests stem cells are just cells and don’t have a soul. Religion helped create the final solution, it certainly did not help to stop it and of course rational understanding is not promoted within religion. These are the reasons to why not only atheism cannot be criticised for such regimes and more guilt, although admittedly not all, can be placed upon religion. Last of all Dawkins puts it like this, such regimes are not performed in the name of atheism, and in fact they are done in the name of unchallenged belief. So it is up to us all to challenge the non-rational and that includes religion.
Koukl is a religious man and the main point of disagreement is based upon the idea the new atheists make assumptions in order to make their argument work. In particular he attacks Dawkins in the God Delusion based on the summary on page 188, although it is clear that most likely a summary of what is being said is only as strong as the arguments that precede it, he does not concern himself with that in this presentation. Unlike Koukl I’ve actually read the argument before I got to the summary so I understood where these comments came from. By the same measure I would be guilty of committing the logical fallacy of ‘straw man’ by suggesting that Christianity is appalling as it teaches that it does not matter what actions you perform, no matter how morally wrong they are, after all if you say sorry then you will be forgiven. Of course this is not true and is an oversimplification based on not knowing enough about Christianity. Koukl is making it seem very easy to discount what Dawkins is trying to put across, the fact that people are listening to him worries me greatly since he does not actually show why it is wrong. Saying “this does not advance the argument” over and over again as a criticism of Dawkins is at least hypocritical since, as Robin Ince puts it, the suggestion is the religious argument is “the magic man done it”. For this reason I think it is fair to cite religion has an inhibitor of generating knowledge as it is normally the end of the conversation never the start. Let’s go to Koukl’s points:
Dawkins summary point 1 is “One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect has been to explain how one of the complex, improbable appearances of design in the universe arises” Koukl responds to this by saying that statement does not advance the argument, it’s just an opening assertion and has nothing to do with the conclusion [post hoc: god does not exist]. This is really relevant, to give you a taste of it what Dawkins meant, he wrote about why it took us so long to see evolution as the possible creator of the complex things that are in our environment. That first makes it clear that it is difficult to understand the place we find ourselves in and also that we have the need or want to understand it at least in some form. In particular God is one of the possible answers, it fills the need that we all have. Dawkins highlights the argument of the worship of the gaps, in other words when we cannot explain something either by lack of intelligence, knowledge or ability then it is very simple to argue God did it. From what we do understand about our place in the universe it seem so difficult to us to imagine the forces that created the complex objects in it. I think this speaks to our psychology and it is relevant because it shows us explaining things is not only difficult it also goes to explain that we often get it wrong. This is why religion is here, not as a true account for things but as a useful tool set (to an extent).
Dawkins summary point 2 is “The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design with actual design itself…” Koukl responded by saying it is natural to assume design when things look like they have been and therefore, again this does not advance the argument. Dawkins is very clear on this point, mostly because Koukl missed out the second half of this statement. We see complex objects that are designed by us, for example a watch or computer, using this same form of logic we can then assume that in order for humans to exist therefore, something more complex than us must have designed us. In other words we cannot see that the horseshoe could have made the blacksmith, it is not how our experience allows us to think. Just because something comes to us naturally that does not result in it being true. Taking an example from another Dawkins book, the blind watchmaker, it is perfectly logical to see a beach where the large stones are set further away from the water and the smaller stones closer to it. If you don’t understand roughly the ideas of wave power and gravity then how could you assume anything other than someone sorted the stones out to make that pattern. Just seeing something which appears to be designed does not mean that it has been designed, that is just another assumption. It advances the argument because it challenges our assumptions of the forces that could have created living things, including us and the universe.
Dawkins summary point 5 is “although we currently have no natural explanation for the appearance of design but we should not give up the hope of a better explanation arising in physics as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.” Koukl responded by saying we don’t have evidence but maybe we will get some, these are irrelevant features of the dispute because yet again this does not advance the argument. Dawkins and Koukl, at least I think Koukl is, referring to the key numbers that allow for the right chemical and physics conditions which allow for living things to exist, such as the power of certain forces that appear to be constant everywhere. I have a problem with Dawkins, which I don’t have with many other writers, rather than sticking to the subject Dawkins talks about science as almost the replacement for religion. Don’t get me wrong it is and I can see how this argument is formed, it is just most people don’t understand science and it creates comments like Koukl’s. I think the correct response to Koukl is in the summary point made by Dawkins; we as yet do not know how the universe was created to which we may not have answers for a long time. Still the point is before evolution we did not see how the complex objects on earth could have been created without a creator, so the door is open for an explanation similar to that of evolution to explain the universe. This I suggest is much more of an honest approach than God done it. If we can get to an explanation for the universe which is equal to evolution in terms of its power, then the requirement for God is once again reduced.
Koukl misses out large parts of the summary points, there is of course 187 pages before Dawkins makes the summary points so no one is better to explain how Dawkins got there than Dawkins. The point is missed and although I have only highlighted certain issues you can see the general direction and how it does provide the all important advancement to the argument. Koukl argues that all these points of at fault due to Circularity still this is not how I see it. Go and read the book for yourself because the answers are all in there, it is a shame that Koukl did not really bother to do that. Stating Dawkins summary point 1 is the start of the argument does show that he either did not read or did not understand all the pages leading up to summary points on page 188. Koukl is guilty of not advancing the argument and circularity, he does not understand critical thinking and reasoned thought, and that is what is wrong with Christian views – they are unable to see how other people don’t think like them! Dawkins added something to the debate, Koukl did not!
Before I go on please let me introduce this is a theoretical concept to which some of it is based on the truth, while other facts are just media excitement about Haggard to which they might not have any truth about them, I don’t want to be sued. He was the spiritual and religious leader to many being the head of a form of evangelical Christianity in America and by creating energy he turned faith into a business where millions of dollars came in. In a lot of European countries churches, especially more traditional versions of religion, are finding it difficult to get funding to stop the walls falling down however, the new life church had an ‘campus’, so ignoring the personal investment for the moment there was a lot of money going into these places. Haggard himself attacked evolution and in Dawkins’ documentary told him to get out, after saying that Dawkins was arrogant, a word which would very closely reflect my opinion of Haggard. So let us turn to what this man of God has to say about people who are gay, don’t worry this is not the normal attack of me calling him a hypocrite that would be easy to do, he said that the bible is the word of God we don’t need to discuss what we believe since it is already written and therefore, it is not necessary to discuss ‘gay people’ because we all know what our position is. The bible says that it is a sin and those that are gay should be put to death, of course this is not word for word still it is the overall feeling of both Haggard and the bible. A couple of years ago the New Life Church had this to say about Haggard “Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct.” (1) In other words he took drugs and had sex with a man which, let me check, yes is a sin in the eyes of religion (all not just the version Haggart promoted). The focus is very much on the gay act rather than the drug taking. This is very sad and I mean that!
These are some of the words Haggard uses in a letter to the New Life Church which is reported in the Gazette of Colorado Springs on 5th November 2006 about his demise as the religious leader of about 30 million people: betrayal, horrible example, embarrassment, guilty of sexual immorality, problem, I am a deceiver and a liar, dirt, repulsive and many other terms which are all basically the same as going I did something really bad all of which are directed at the gay sex thing not the drugs (2). So let me be the judge, I find Haggard Not Guilty on the following accounts; taking drugs, having sex with a man and telling lies. Of course drugs and lying are very bad things still I don’t hold him accountable to his mistakes if he intends to work on them and change. He had every right to do those things if that is what he chooses to do, as long as it does not end up hurting anyone else in the process. There is no guilt with being gay and it is not immoral on any account, so I will reject the notion that Haggard as a free man should not do that sort of thing if he wants. Haggard is not guilty of being human! He is Guilty of promoting fear and hate being the former head of the New Life Church, it is an assumption if he did not believe and promote those things then he would be openly gay and perhaps remove the drug taking and lies which could be considered evidence of internal difficulties after the denial of himself. He is a prick don’t get me wrong and hypocrite along with arrogant; still he would be more of a man if he admitted the Church was wrong and his feelings are justified. Of course he will be forgiven has long as he keeps on denying himself after all there is only one ‘sin’ that could not be forgiven being that of denying the holy ghost. I think that it is very sad that he just cannot be who he is and the only reason I can tell stopping him from doing this is a dishonest, unjust, unclear book filled with lies and made up stories.
The route of Ted Haggard demise is inbuilt into the evangelical church, if not all religion, since it offers denial at all levels. Children are infected within this church to believe that gay people are at the subject of disgust and fear. The church also teach that abortion is wrong, Good things come from Jesus, bad things come from evil, that Global warming is not happening, that nonbelievers are subhuman, ghost or magical stories are disrespectful (apart from the magic that happens in the bible), that science is wrong and anyone not like they are should be punished. If children do things naughty they are accused of walking away from Jesus and will be punished at the highest level. They call this the Jesus Army and if you preach such things then of course children will grow up to deny themselves and hating others. There version of Jesus is not love, compassion and forgiveness! Whatever comfort or community that is created by the church is at a price that is too high. Where will it end? Artax13 points to the most disturbing result but conceivably the clearest perspective I have heard from in a while, responding to Haggard’s views about gay people, commenting that anti-Gay is just the same notion the Nazi’s had about Jewish people (3). That is where this will end; the parallel between anti-Jewish feelings promoted in Europe for a long time that caused the final solution among other acts and the views on every single person outside the evangelical church being directed towards children within the church is very much alike. That scares me and it shows we have not learnt what we should have. It also makes me sad that children are filled with foolish nonsense they did not ask for and do not need.
Logical fallacies are errors in reasoned thinking and they happen to appear a lot, these are simply the result of a method of argument that appears to work on the surface but which does not stand up when questioned. I tend to view fallacies not as bits of knowledge that have been created rather they are concepts direct from intelligence, so the more you learn about them the better you will be able to think. It also links with critical thinking which is something that I tried to do although don’t always succeed in and something that I hope will remove the ideas of religion and superstition. There are both informal and formal fallacies, the former describes mistakes in reasoning based on interferences and the latter arguments to which will always be wrong from the way they have been constructed, both are forms of deductive reasoning. See my earlier post on how science uses induction; it explains the difference between the two forms of reasoning. An example of an informal fallacy would include differing definitions and concepts, such as freedom must be preserved at all times, freedom is relative when dealing with freedom of religion since it also includes freedom to live without religion. This is why I don’t really like using the word freedom. Formal on the other hand might be; all men are born free therefore, all women are born free. Since the original statement only refers to men, it is illogical to conclude that women are born free based on the original statement. Both of these are present in the ideas of religion and these are some of the ones that I have come across during my travel of blogs and websites.
AdHominem – attack the person making the argument rather than the argument, this includes saying the person is a racists therefore, anything that person produces is the result of that. Atheists get accused of this; there unwillingness to believe in a God is more important than their arguments to why they should not believe. Even within this blog I have been accused of being an “atheist” so the things I say are implied to be less relevant still if I was a believer and made the same comments it is sort of suggested that they would be worth more. The arguments are the arguments deal with them rather than who I am. Of course people tend to seek justifications so they can place a comment or article within a larger perspective, this is normal still they should self ban involvement rather than encourage it, after all if you cannot deal with others that don’t think like you do then you are simply unable to understand the points that are being raised. There are two fallacies in this area; the first is that of abusive which Pat Condell if he was a weaker man would react to! The death threats or personal attacks force someone into defending themselves rather than discussing the arguments. The second is Circumstantial which is the attack of a position, as I said being an atheist of course I would not understand metaphysical feelings of God; this is often an assumption and allows the argument to be dropped. Overall it is a distraction of the topic!
Circularity– as the name suggests it is just an argument that goes around and around, if you believe something then you already know the reasons to why you believe it, if you don’t believe then nothing will be able to convince you that the argument is true. This is what a lot of arguments about the metaphysical are based upon, you have to believe that there is something if you don’t then you cannot just understand it so the implication is that you have to assume that it is true before it can be justifiable. This could include believing in something and then seeing the arrangement of life in accordance within that belief, in other words using evidence to support your conclusion rather than the correct way in looking at the evidence and then coming to a decision. The original argument is the purpose of any further argument for example; the bible is God’s word therefore God is real, the notion of God’s Word is required in order to show the God is real. God is required to be real in order for the bible to then be God’s word; this does not say or add anything. Likewise saying we do something since it makes us lucky is often based on this type of logic, a lucky rabbits foot is a useful thing since it brings me luck, is all based on the first assumption in the first part of the sentence of ‘lucky rabbits foot’. I have also heard that Reiki will only work if you give it a chance, this is a notion that should always be rejected, it only assumes that it will work if you have belief in it. We should always reject this if Reiki works then it will work regardless of the level of belief that is invested into it
Correlation not causation – my favourite saying is that religion is not born from poverty, it simply benefits from it. They are found together still it cannot be said that either one causes the other. Let’s go one further and argue that religion causes good things to happen; they might be found together in some cases still this does not promote the goodness of religion. If it is a causational relationship then religious people should only be the ones that commit good actions, this is not the case plus religion can cause really negative acts as well. People sometimes commit good acts while others sometimes commit bad acts, this is a far more honest statement. There might be many reasons behind good acts and to simply assume religion is the cause is to ignore a great deal of other factors. It is like saying the more music I listen to the more cavities I get in my teeth, since the older I get the more my teeth get damaged although it is also true the older I get the more music I have listened to, the two have nothing to do with each other. Likewise when people say they have had a metaphysical experience when they walk into a cathedral it does not necessarily have anything to do with the cathedral being a religious place. The authoritative aspect, the size, the colour, the music, the smell and many other factors could set off a reaction inside your head which you think has to do with God but to assume that it is, even if you strongly believe it so, does not add weight to those feelings.
Generalisations – we take the small cases and apply them to the whole situation, this is something that I am at times guilty of. It differs in some situations, still normally when the particular cases are somehow very different to the normal process. Someone pointed out to me that I was using a small number of occasions where Islam mistreated women causing me the formation of opinion and I have to reject their arguments on this one. What I always am referring to is the scope of things that is allowed for under a set of believes still I use statistics to show the general trend of things. Of course it is always wrong of anyone to say Islam is bad because something happened, that was not my point rather it was to show that the core belief is different from my own and perhaps under the banner of human rights certain things are wrong. It does bring us to the question though of how to deal with religious people since they are meant to believe the same things but often don’t. Still generalisations are conclusions only based on a small number of cases so if you can include a larger base then you will never be guilty of this although it is sometimes justifiable to look at small numbers.
Straw Man – is a misrepresentation of a position in order to reject it, although it leaves the position alone and does not address the necessary issues. The misrepresentation does that, it shows the real situation in a different light and thus ignores the original factors or effects the caused the situation in the first place. This differs from Ad Hominem since rather than attacking the person making a statement, the statement is taken out of context or further along than it was meant to. Conclusions are made from the first statement to which nothing ever referred to them and then these conclusions are rejected on perhaps better grounds than could be achieved on the first statement. The line of reasoning would first start off with a particular statement about Jesus being able to forgive your sins then making further reasoning on the matter by saying it does not matter what you do since Jesus will forgive your sins anyway. It is a lot easier to see why we should reject Christianity based on the further reasoning even though the original statement never said this.
These are just a few of the ones that I liked still there are many more, watch out for them since we are all guilty of making logical errors.
A little more on this matter…
The amazing atheist did a video about this and he goes through a lot of other logical fallacies in his usual manner. It is interesting to watch…
The MMR vaccine, an all-round method for protecting children against measles, mumps and rubella, was first used right at the end of the 1960’s it was clear to see it was an ever effective method of disease control. This vaccine was the result of scientific methods and the empowerment of people to see something that required effort & attention in so dealing with it; this has saved around an estimated 1.8 million people. As well as stopping these diseases from causing death it also had the effect of removing some of the other common results of the illness such as mental defects. So when the level of measles starts to rise and the first child died from it in 2006 in the UK after 14 years of no measles related deaths, we have to really start to understand why. Most of the answer was due to Dr Andrew Wakefield who was guilty of bad science in his report suggesting that there was a link between MMR and autism. Is it right for me to blame just one person for the increasing measles cases or do we all need to bare some of the responsibility? Wakefield’s report argued that there was an inherent risk from the MMR vaccine and suggested that single vaccines would reduce the risk to the child. The conclusions were based on the observation of 12 children all of who were determined to have shown symptoms of autism type behaviour 8 of which were reported within two weeks of the MMR vaccination. This is bad science in two main ways; the first is no control group which is the base of children that have received the vaccine without showing any symptoms of autism without this group it is impossible to determine whether the MMR vaccine did cause autism. The second problem is that if you are only dealing with 12 children all of which are showing symptoms, of course this will alter anyone’s perception of what is going on, since we tend to see patterns naturally even if they are not there.
The Man – the threat was simply based on a theory, he suggested that the combined vaccine overloaded the immune system of the child which in turn caused a bowel disorder and later a form of autism. Wakefield views were dismissed time and time again by experts in the field, as he never proved clear evidence to link the vaccine to autism, even though there was an increase in the reported levels of autism. In most studies cited by Wakefield there were children who had autism which also received MMR although a smaller number had also received the single vaccines. Although it could be suggested that the measles vaccine could trigger the onset of autism this would also indicate the single vaccine could also possibly be a trigger. Wakefield used bad science since he only ever looked at small numbers which violates the conditions of the scientific method of reliability and validation. Wakefield faced professional misconduct charges for performing unnecessary procedures on children and he was also questioned about his position in research in this area and his role as an expert in MMR litigation. The parents of the 12 children used by Wakefield in his initial investigation were seeking to sue the producers of the vaccine. The GMC described him as dishonest and brought a number of charges of wrongful conduct.
The Media – the media ran with the story and like any good business they used it to sell the media they were producing. They helped to present a confusing picture for parents by introducing doctors that backed the withdrawal of the MMR vaccine without ever considering the level to which they should be placed in context. In a sense those doctors who back each side were given equal weight and offered a personal dilemma that parents had to face, despite the fact the official position as always been there is no link between the vaccine and autism. The focus was on autism and not the potential harmful disease that the vaccine would protect against. The Parents – often people react more to the thing which is less likely to happen but offers more worrying and unknown consequences. The threat of something that is unknown is much more powerful as a fear than that to which we think that we know more about. As the result of the fear of MMR fewer children were protected from the known diseases, the disease increased and children suffered as a result. Of course, the single jabs were always available still these left gaps between when the first vaccine was given and the last one, this was sometimes the only opportunity required for illness. Countries like the UK also refused to pay for the single vaccinations since there was no evidence MMR was linked to autism and the extra cost could not be justified within a limited budget. This left many children without any protection!
The truth – A couple of months after Wakefield suggested a bowel disorder could cause autism a 14 year long study found that around 0.001% of the children given the MMR vaccine suffered any bowel problems, all of which never showed any signs of autism. Even if we take that number, 0.001% as having the possibility of developing autism and let’s assume that they do, this is still less likely than the other two major results of measles. There is a 0.033% chance the measles will result in mental retardation and there is a 0.01% chance that someone will die from measles (this is an estimate; this is reduced to a degree with modern medications although those children unprotected from measles often end up in hospital). There is a higher chance of dying from measles than from the assumption that every bowel disorder will cause autism. Reported cases of autism numbers are on the increase this might be due to many factors, only a small percentage of the cases have strong genetic links. In a Japanese city were the vaccine was withdrawn the numbers of reported autism cases still showed an increase. If the MMR vaccine was to blame then the trend should have started to go down rather than up, as it did. There is a real issue of genetic predispositions and environmental factors which is still unclear, to say that is more acceptable than spreading fear and concern for something that might not be the real cause, MMR has shown to not be the real cause. The truth is the more parents that don’t have their children vaccinated then it puts everyone else at risk, only one person needs to bring the disease into a community to infect all the unvaccinated children. While medical resources are used to treat the outbreak it is not being spent on other things, so if there is a known cure being that of the MMR vaccine can anyone be justified at putting other people at risk by diverting money away from treating other conditions? There is perhaps a more worrying end to all of this, while antibiotics are losing the battle with disease why should we risk using them to treat diseases like measles when that could result in them being less effective for other illnesses that we currently have no proactive defence for. It is clear that the benefits of the MMR vaccine outweigh the risk!
This is a prime example of risk taking behaviour by large parts of our own societies, the risk from measles, mumps and rubella has always been greater than that of autism. So why did we act in such a strange way? This is not just about awareness of the issues that are at play it is about how we perceive information, it was the fault of Wakefield, even though he acted against what doctors are meant to uphold, he was perhaps stupid and dishonest. It was not the fault of the media after all they represent things in such a way that allows them to get people’s attention. It has to do with us and how we use critical thinking in order to understand things. It might be argued that we cannot all understand such medical terms and its language; we can use our brains and go find the information though. We could go and look at logical fallacies for ourselves. At the heart of it, it is about how we come to understand risk we see ourselves in and for the most part inaction appears like the most sensible course of action, still this is not! If you can understand why a loving and caring parent would make such an error in judgment then perhaps you can also see the reflection when it comes to Reiki or homeopathic medicine, or even maybe the relationship we might have with horoscopes. Things might appear to hold less risk than they actually do while others are more dangerous than they are given credit for.
All expressed here is only of my own opinion and does not represent the opinions or work of the authors, writers, lecturers or others I have made comments about. Offensive or abusive comments, e-mails or posts to my blog will be ignored and deleted, opposing opinion is always accepted. I have a new blog which can be found here: Rational Understanding Site.
Before I go on please let me introduce this is a theoretical concept to which some of it is based on the truth, while other facts are just media excitement about Haggard to which they might not have any truth about them, I don’t want to be sued. He was the spiritual and religious leader to many being the head of a form of evangelical Christianity in America and by creating energy he turned faith into a business where millions of dollars came in. In a lot of European countries churches, especially more traditional versions of religion, are finding it difficult to get funding to stop the walls falling down however, the new life church had an ‘campus’, so ignoring the personal investment for the moment there was a lot of money going into these places. Haggard himself attacked evolution and in Dawkins’ documentary told him to get out, after saying that Dawkins was arrogant, a word which would very closely reflect my opinion of Haggard. So let us turn to what this man of God has to say about people who are gay, don’t worry this is not the normal attack of me calling him a hypocrite that would be easy to do, he said that the bible is the word of God we don’t need to discuss what we believe since it is already written and therefore, it is not necessary to discuss ‘gay people’ because we all know what our position is. The bible says that it is a sin and those that are gay should be put to death, of course this is not word for word still it is the overall feeling of both Haggard and the bible. A couple of years ago the New Life Church had this to say about Haggard “Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct.” (1) In other words he took drugs and had sex with a man which, let me check, yes is a sin in the eyes of religion (all not just the version Haggart promoted). The focus is very much on the gay act rather than the drug taking. This is very sad and I mean that!
Logical fallacies are errors in reasoned thinking and they happen to appear a lot, these are simply the result of a method of argument that appears to work on the surface but which does not stand up when questioned. I tend to view fallacies not as bits of knowledge that have been created rather they are concepts direct from intelligence, so the more you learn about them the better you will be able to think. It also links with critical thinking which is something that I tried to do although don’t always succeed in and something that I hope will remove the ideas of religion and superstition. There are both informal and formal fallacies, the former describes mistakes in reasoning based on interferences and the latter arguments to which will always be wrong from the way they have been constructed, both are forms of deductive reasoning. See my earlier post on how science uses induction; it explains the difference between the two forms of reasoning. An example of an informal fallacy would include differing definitions and concepts, such as freedom must be preserved at all times, freedom is relative when dealing with freedom of religion since it also includes freedom to live without religion. This is why I don’t really like using the word freedom. Formal on the other hand might be; all men are born free therefore, all women are born free. Since the original statement only refers to men, it is illogical to conclude that women are born free based on the original statement. Both of these are present in the ideas of religion and these are some of the ones that I have come across during my travel of blogs and websites.
The MMR vaccine, an all-round method for protecting children against measles, mumps and rubella, was first used right at the end of the 1960’s it was clear to see it was an ever effective method of disease control. This vaccine was the result of scientific methods and the empowerment of people to see something that required effort & attention in so dealing with it; this has saved around an estimated 1.8 million people. As well as stopping these diseases from causing death it also had the effect of removing some of the other common results of the illness such as mental defects. So when the level of measles starts to rise and the first child died from it in 2006 in the UK after 14 years of no measles related deaths, we have to really start to understand why. Most of the answer was due to Dr Andrew Wakefield who was guilty of bad science in his report suggesting that there was a link between MMR and autism. Is it right for me to blame just one person for the increasing measles cases or do we all need to bare some of the responsibility? Wakefield’s report argued that there was an inherent risk from the MMR vaccine and suggested that single vaccines would reduce the risk to the child. The conclusions were based on the observation of 12 children all of who were determined to have shown symptoms of autism type behaviour 8 of which were reported within two weeks of the MMR vaccination. This is bad science in two main ways; the first is no control group which is the base of children that have received the vaccine without showing any symptoms of autism without this group it is impossible to determine whether the MMR vaccine did cause autism. The second problem is that if you are only dealing with 12 children all of which are showing symptoms, of course this will alter anyone’s perception of what is going on, since we tend to see patterns naturally even if they are not there.
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