Thursday, February 05, 2009

How Many Logical Fallacies Can You Spot?

A fellow blogger (I'm not going to give him/her the pleasure of a link) posted the following:

The fossils have lead to evolution.
Evolution has led to atheism.
Atheism has led to psychopathy.
Psychopathy leads to death, either through murder, suicide, addictions or failure to have children.

How many logical and factual errors can you spot in these thirty words? Twenty Wolf points to the person who lists more valid logical/factual fallacies than anyone else.

I've already spotted a few. I'll post my findings in the comments later.

The Wolf

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are just too many.
1) Fossils don't lead to evolution, it's the opposite, evolution leads to fossils.
2) How does evolution lead to atheism?
3) How does atheism lead to psychopathy?
4) Same for psychopathy.
5) EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE, that does not mean that everything else carries through as well. It's simple 9th grade logic class.

Ariella's blog said...

I would just point out that if these were the blogger's exact words, s/he is actually conceding that evolution exists in fact. What s/he probably meant to say is "the theory of evolution." Another note on text -- there is inconsistency in the spelling: the first sentence says "lead," whilt the next two say "led." The last one then switches to present tense with "leads."

Obviously, you don't have to be an atheist to be a psychopath.

I'm wondering, does the last statement mean that psychopathy bring on infertility? And has the person forgotten that all of us are mortal? Even those of us who have children are fated to die, even if we avoid murder, suicide, etc.

Nice Jewish Guy said...

Every word is fallacious. Every single statement.

And these statements could only have been by Jacob Stein (aka ("Jewish Philosopher).

-suitepotato- said...

NJG, were you just playing the odds?

Fossils lead to the theory of evolution in part but not by themselves so the claim is a distortion and a half-truth.

Evolution has only led to atheism in those who came to believe in it after believing unquestioningly and literally in biblical creation, and only a very few. For most of those it was one of many things, the largest component of which was the dumbing down of G-d into a literal believe it or be a heretic situation.

Atheism doesn't lead to psychopathy. Many of the world's psychopaths are very religious. They are not mutually exclusive, nor complimentary.

Psychopathy often leads to the deaths of others when left untreated but not in the majority of cases where people function well enough to survive in society. It's a relatively common affect.

And they have a good chance of siring or bearing offspring as psychos need sex too. Especially psychos.