Thursday, July 9, 2009

Disproof of one theory does not validate another.

This is a common logical fallacy committed by Christians, Creationists and other religions the world over. Disproving an aspect(or attempting to disprove) of someone else's theory does not suddenly give yours more credence. This is the fallacy of the False Dichotomy- the idea that there are only two choices. This usually goes hand in hand with the idea that two things are inseperably related - "Are you a patriot and do you support the war, or are you a terrorist and you are against it?" is a common theme, but there are others. "Do you reject God's Teachings and believe in evolution or are you a righteous person and reject evolution?" is another.
These are loaded questions and serve no purpose other than to confuse the listener into believing the proposition.

Tearing down someone else's argument does not validate your own- for all you have actually done is proven them wrong. This does not mean your idea has any validity- proving that one religion is false does not prove that yours is true, nor does attacking evolution create a case for creationism.

Many people believe Creationism is the "default" and that evolution is the one who must bear the burden of proof, when this is not the case. Creationism has no proof behind it- there is no evidince of design or forethought to any genetic structure or to any creature's actual biological structure. Even if evolution were to be torn down and discarded as a theory, creationism couldn't be accepted on these grounds as they have offered no proof of their own.

Because of this, the current "Teach the Controversy" method of getting Christianity in the classroom will fail because it lends itself to this falacy. Upon giving precedent to theories not accpeted by mainstream science being taught in the classroom things will certainly go very arwy for science classes, as equal time must be given to other unaccepted theories.

As you can see, this kind of thinking is dangerous because it does not take into account any kind of diversity of thought at all, as well as having the unfortunate tendancy to lump people into categories they would not typically fit into.

1 comment:

  1. The title of this article is absolutely true, and it needs to be said, understood, and remembered.

    However, I would like to point out that the Christian argument is in response to a false dichotomy by Atheists. In the case of Darwinians, if not Darwin himself, the argument goes that the existence of a viable theory of evolution is evidence (if not proof) that there is no God. The correct response to this is basically the one that Liz has posted: "no, sorry guys, that's a good theory, but it doesn't prove anything about God." In the forward to one of my favorite books, A Brief History of Time, Carl Sagan claimed that Hawking showed that the Universe as presented in the book had no room for a God at all. I did not find this to be a particularly accurate statement, even if it were possible.

    Unfortunately, though, instead of just pointing out that it was a silly thing for Atheists to say, Christians have played along and tried to fight back by trying to disprove evolution. The truth is, no scientific theory can ever disprove the God of the Scriptures, only certain theories and traditions that religious people have made up, all of which are fairly irrelevant anyway.

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