Spot the Errors Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, book review, Darwin, David Sloan Wilson, evolution, fundamentalism, game, logic, rationality, science, straw-man.add a comment
Let’s play a game.
Here is a paragraph taken from a book review article (more on this later):
We can put this point in a syllogistic form for the sake of convenience and handy usage. If evolution is true about everything, then we are doomed to live in a world without truth, beauty, and goodness. If we are not doomed, then evolution is not true about everything. And if evolution is not true about everything, then there is good reason to think that it is not true about anything.
How many errors, confusions and/or logical fallacies can you find in this single paragraph?
In the spirit of not quoting it out of context, here is the background. The article is written by a professor named Stephen Webb as a book review. The book is “Evolution for Everyone“, written by David Sloan Wilson.
The “point” mentioned in the paragraph refers to one of the main theme of the book, that Darwinian thinking can be applied to “all things human”, such as the way languages and cultures change and adapt over time, how we perceive beauty, and so on.
So the first error, I would say, is the straw-man argument that the book claims evolutionary truth in everything. That is not the point of the book, and the rest of the paragraph can be ignored.
Evolution Space 