November 23, 2009 at 12:53 pm (creationism, critical thinking, critical though, evidence, fallacy, free thinker, logical fallacy, logical thinker, rational, rational thinker, religion, science, scientific, scientific data, scientific evidence, skeptic, skepticism)
Unfortunately I have seen this logical fallacy used on both sides of the skeptic/believer debate. It occurs when ridicule or mockery is used in place of evidence in an “argument”.
As usual I will substitute the X’s for something cute and fuzzy.
The Appeal to Ridicule has the following format where X equals puppies:
1) Puppies (X), as some form of mockery, is aimed at the claim (C).
2) Therefor Claim (C) is false.
This sort of “argument” is fallacious because ridiculing a claim is not provable evidence that said claim is actually false. An obvious example would look like this “1+1=2?? That’s the most patently ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
This argument is of course based in the idea that we are working with a Base 10 system of counting.
I have heard this fallacy used as an argument so many times even in my own household. A real world example looks like this:
“Evolution is absurd! I’ve never heard of a monkey giving birth to a human!”
The ridicule here occurs in both the use of the word ‘absurd’ and the dismissiveness of the concept of human evolution as a whole. Usually that argument is made by Creationists who simply have not educated themselves or have chosen not to be educated on the current theory of evolution.
Another form of this argument is “reductio ad absurdum” or “reducing to absurdity”. This site http://bit.ly/2×6CEY has an excellent example of it. I’ll quote it here:
One form of this line of reasoning is known as a “reductio ad absurdum” (“reducing to absurdity”). In this sort of argument, the idea is to show that a contradiction (a statement that must be false) or an absurd result follows from a claim. For example: “Bill claims that a member of a minority group cannot be a racist. However, this is absurd. Think about this: white males are a minority in the world. Given Bill’s claim, it would follow that no white males could be racists. Hence, the Klan, Nazis, and white supremists are not racist organizations.”
Since the claim that the Klan, Nazis, and white supremists are not racist organizations is clearly absurd, it can be concluded that the claim that a member of a minority cannot be a racist is false.
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November 14, 2009 at 12:26 am (Uncategorized)
I’ve talked before about self analysis. Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we do what we do? Are we motivated for the right reason? Well here’s a little secret I’m sharing with you all.
I have pink hair.
Yeah. I Know. Not really a secret. Especially for those of you who have met me in meatspace.
There’s a reason for it and THAT is the secret.
You wouldn’t know it now but at one point in my life I was incredibly shy. I walked looking at the ground, didn’t meet people’s eyes, stayed to myself and was generally what one would consider a real dweeb. I tried to make myself as invisible as I possibly could. If I was invisible then people couldn’t pick on me or degrade me. I intentionally sought to make myself unnoticeable.
As I got older I began to overcome my shyness with the help of very good, very dear friends. I wouldn’t be who I am today without Carol, Eric and Joe. As I aged I still had long periods when I believed what others said about me over what I thought of myself. My self esteem was non-existent. I felt worthless.
One afternoon we were over at Carol’s. She’s a psych major. She has also known me longer than anyone other than my parents. So she can read me really well. She started talking about how she could see what I was feeling. I started to well up and she smacked me on the knee pretty hard. It was one of those “Wake up and pay attention” slaps.
She made me promise that every morning I would get up, go look in the mirror and meet my own eyes. Then I repeated to myself “I Am worthy” until I actually believed it. It took me about three days before it finally sank in and I began to overcome my old programming.
Once I accepted that I am a worthwhile person, I started adopting the “Fuck em” mentality. What IS the “Fuck em” mentality? I decided that if people didn’t like or accept me for who I was, fuck em. I didn’t need people like that in my life in the first place. So I proceeded to get rid of the people in my life who were dragging me down. It boiled down to a pretty short list but it was a burden off my back.
It was around that time that religion went bye-bye. I realized that I was a “believer” because i wanted to fit in and make others happy. Fuck em.
Not long after that, I dyed my hair pink. I had wanted to do it for a long time and had been afraid to because of what other people would think. Fuck em.
Part of it was that I was tired of being invisible. Part of it was simply because I was done living my life and doing things to please everyone else instead of making myself happy. Conforming makes me miserable. So I stopped doing what makes me miserable and started living a life that makes me happy and content.
Yes, having pink hair makes me happy. I love the reaction I get from other people…mostly little kids. It makes them smile. Then their parents smile. It’s a happy thing.
Now that my reconstructive surgery has been successful (one more to go for nipple reconstruction. Check out http://www.boobcast.wordpress.com for more details and start at the beginning) I don’t care that I’m overweight. For the first time in my life I am content with who and what I am.
And I owe it all to pink hair, atheism and boobs.
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November 10, 2009 at 1:33 am (Uncategorized)
Religion: This is one topic I have tried to steer clear of. My personal outlook on the matter is of no importance. The only reason I’m bringing it up now is that I received a couple comments on my “Billboards” post from two weekends ago. It was a positive and helpful comment and I am happy to have those.
The poster brought up the recent billboard campaigns by non-believers (http://bit.ly/2cWEez). I am happy to see that atheists are working to educate the general public about atheism, religion, etc. The more people who understand that we’re not going to eat their children or small pets, the better.
I would just like to make the point that in order to be a skeptic, one does not have to be a non-believer. Many of us are. Some are not. Those who are believers have their own reasons for maintaining a belief in a divine being or beings. I will not judge. Though I may ask some hard questions.
Skeptics come in all different stripes, just like skepticism. All it really takes to be a skeptic is an inquiring mind and a bit of logic.
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November 9, 2009 at 9:16 pm (The Men Who Stare At Goats, animals, critical thinking, critical though, death, evidence, fallacy, logical fallacy, logical thinker, physics, rational, rational thinker, scientific data, scientific evidence, skeptic, skepticism)
As a skeptic this movie had me practically rolling on the floor. When Clooney’s character talks about stabbing an enemy in the neck with a pen to create “Psychic disincentive”, I practically fell out of my chair. Of COURSE if you cause someone severe pain they will be less lakely to attack you. They will, instead, be grabbing the pen in their neck and screaming.
The movie “The Men Who Stare At Goats” is based on the book, The Crazy Rulers of the World” by Jon Ronson. The main character, Lyn Cassady, (whose real name is Glenn Wheaton) played by George Clooney, claims to have witnessed a Green Beret kill a goat simply by staring at it.
From the perspective of a skeptic, I have to wonder what else was going on in the room at the time. I have seen news stories about a breed of goat that suffers from a condition mytonia congenita. When startled these goats faint. They become rigid and drop over for a period of 10 seconds or more. (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jimknapp/goats.html). While it is not an actual ‘faint’, it could be interpreted as the goat having died. So if someone startled the goat while the Green Beret was trying to kill it with his mind, the sudden tipping over of the goat could have been interpreted as success.
If anyone else has more information on the book, the movie or the people involved, I would love to hear it.
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November 7, 2009 at 11:10 pm (Uncategorized)
This evening Ken and I went to the local county fair. While we were there we saw a thrill show that involved a kangaroo. But that’s not what interests me. What really caught my attention was what happened before the show started.
Standing up front was a boy who looked to have been about 3 to 4 years old. He stood facing the stage area while pop music played in the background. Every few seconds he would yell “STOP!!” at the top of his lungs. No one was around him. No younger or older sibling tormented him and no one was speaking to him. He simply stood rigidly, tensed, bellowing “STOP!!” at the stage for probably a good five minutes.
No adult came to shush him. As far as I could tell, his supervising adult appeared to be nowhere in sight. So I leaned over and had a little talk with him. I explained that wanting something to happen wasn’t going to make it happen. I explained further that he couldn’t magically make a change in his surroundings simply by yelling at it.
At first he looked extremely ticked off that I had dared interrupt him. He even tried yelling towards the stage a couple more times.
Then, abruptly, he stopped. He stood staring at the stage for a few moments. Then, for no obvious reason he went and sat down.
Perhaps it’s wishful thinking on my part. I would like to think that he realized that perhaps the freaky pink haired woman was right. I’m hoping I made a difference tonight. More likely, however, is he just got tired of screaming. But a freaky pink haired woman can dream.
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November 5, 2009 at 7:06 pm (Christianity, critical thinking, critical though, death, dogma, logical thinker, magic, murder, rational, rational thinker, religion, science, scientific, scientific evidence, skeptic, skepticism, sorcery, spellcaster, spellcasting, spells, witchcraft)
Two days back I posted about a video I watched. The video showed five elderly people being beaten and burned alive in the western district of Kisii in Kenya. Why? They had been accused of witchcraft and/or sorcery and they were being punished for their crimes by being burnt.
After further research I found that I came a bit late to this particular party. The original video I posted appears to have first surfaced in April of this year. This is also not the only incident of people being burnt, beaten, ostracised or otherwise tortured for supposedly practicing witchcraft or sorcery. This is, according to this article by the BBC (http://bit.ly/WYaSP) is so common a practice that there are no longer any elders to consult.
In my previous article I spoke at length about how stunned I was that such a thing could happen in the 21st century. My husband reminded me that it isn’t really the 21st century there. In remote villages in Africa, it IS 200 years ago. Perhaps some of modern civilization touches these areas but not enough science and logical thought are being introduced to these cultures.
This article from the New York Times (http://bit.ly/3t7NkW) blames apartheid for the burnings. The article further claims that these burnings have been growing steadily since the 1980’s. The Chief talks about the “ungovernability of the young” and talks about how the old ways are being lost. There was once a less violent way to handle “bewitchings”. Now the youth are taking things into their own hands and the police do nothing.
Another opinion posed by this article (http://bit.ly/2I7u0c) by the Associated Press blames the increase of Pentecostal churches. According to the reporter, the number of burnings have increased in proportion with the number of churches. “Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”". Some parishioners who attend churches have taken the teachings back to their village where it gets mixed with African traditions. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Then there are those who let the power go to their heads. There are pastors who perform exorcisms and extort exorbitant fees from the parents for this “service”. Children have been hurt and maimed during these supposed exorcisms. The mere mention of certain church names is enough to cause a group of happily playing children mentioned in this article to become frightened.
Unfortunately this is a complicated issue and there doesn’t seem to be a solution. If you remove the churches, then you remove food and medicine that secular organizations simply can’t cover. I would be interested to know what, if anything, the UN is doing about this. Are there any human rights organizations addressing this problem? There is still research to be done on this and I will be talking about it further in the future.
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November 4, 2009 at 8:45 pm (critical thinking, critical though, evidence, fallacy, logical fallacy, logical thinker, rational, rational thinker, science, scientific, scientific data, skeptic, skepticism)
Since I had to write a breif article for a newspaper I’m applying to, I thought I’d post it for your enjoyment as well.
Today’s logical fallacy is called Appeal To Flattery. This fallacy has the following form:
1) Person A is flattered by person B.
2) Person B makes claim X.
3) Therefore X is true.
A real life example looks something like this:
1) A job applicant (Person B) claims the following while applying for a position with The Examiner: The Examiner.com (Person A) is the best online news magazine EVER! (Claim X) It deserves a Pulitzer!
2) The claimant is applying for a writing position with the magazine.
3) Therefore the claimant feels they deserve the job.
The basic idea behind this fallacy is that flattery is presented in the place of evidence. This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because flattery is not, in fact, evidence for a claim.
In other words, the claimant is not necessarily the best person for the job based solely on the applicants use of flattery. The claimant is using a logical fallacy as a basis for their qualifications for hiring.
Let’s break this down further. The job applicant (Person B) is making a statement designed solely for flattery. Claim X would be that the magazine is the best ever and deserves a Pulitzer. Simply because Person B made Claim X, the claimant then posits the argument that they deserve the job because they offered some form of flattery: In this case, the claim that the magazine deserved a Pulitzer.
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November 3, 2009 at 9:11 am (Uncategorized)
I had heard rumors that such things were true. Now I have evidence. Randi.org published this video and article (http://bit.ly/eaUzr) concerning the brutal murder and subsequent burnings of, and I quote, “those suspected of witchcraft”. Five women were beaten and burned to death because they were suspected of performing witchcraft.
This is not some kind of fluke. Children and toddlers are being beaten and turned out of their homes because they are suspected of witchcraft. The fear of sorcery and witchcraft is widespread in this part of Africa. Innocent people are being beaten and killed because of these superstitions.
Please know this video IS graphic. It is not for the faint of heart
I still can’t make my mind make sense of what I was seeing. It’s as though suddenly the world is a jumble of three dimensional puzzle pieces and nothing is fitting into the spot labeled as “Maria’s World View”. This is So alien to me that even watching it a second time I just…I just can’t make this make sense in my head. I don’t understand how, in the 21st century, there can be any place where a human being drags another INTO a fire because they’re a witch.
It just doesn’t make sense.
And I’ll be saying that for a very long time, I think.
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November 2, 2009 at 4:20 pm (Christianity, atheist, critical thinking, critical though, crystals, data, evidence, fallacy, free thinker, homeopathy, logical fallacy, logical thinker, rational, rational thinker, religion, science, scientific, scientific data, scientific evidence, secular humanist, skeptic, skepticism, woo, woo woo)
Just like Baskin-Robbins, there are many different flavors or types of skepticism. As a whole skepticism can be described as making a judgement about a claim based on the evidence presented. That evidence must be testable. Those results must also be repeatable within a specific margin of error ala statistics. In other words it is a logical fallacy to claim that just because one test yielded a specific result, that result proves the claim conclusively. (For new readers please see previous entries concerning the various types of logical fallacies.)
For instance I read on a science forum that some people are able to see into the near infra-red spectrum. This could explain the claim of being able to see auras. I have not had an opportunity to investigate this claim. There may be evidence to support this. There may not be. In the mean time I am keeping an open mind.
There is a fine line between skepticism and cynicism. A cynic dismisses claims out of hand because they may sound far-fetched like seeing “auras” in the above example. A skeptic, on the other hand, does the research and examines the data looking for credible sources to either verify or refute a claim. It can be really difficult not to be dismissive of a claim that you have already dismissed or accepted. That’s part of being a good skeptic though; learning how to put aside what you think you know and investigating the data even if it is personally uncomfortable or even painful.
I use to believe in all manner of things that do not have supporting testable scientific data. UFOs, magic, Reiki, crystal healing, psychics…name the woo and most of it I believed. Thanks to Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit” on Showtime I was introduced to the reality of psychics, auras and many other things. I was also introduced to logical thinking and skepticism. Their shows are a great place to start out. So is George Hrab’s Geologic Podcast http://www.geologicpodcast.com/
As I mentioned in the title of this post, there are many different flavors or types of skepticism. James “The Amazing” Randi, a personal hero of mine, has spent his life debunking psychics and those who cause harm with that practice. Other skeptics “debunk” ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and Nessie.
Other skeptics work on educating the public. At http://www.whatstheharm.net there is information on the kind of harm caused by medical quackery like homeopathy. There are case studies and articles about people who have been permanently harmed or killed by colloidal silver, homeopathy and more.
There are those like the Skepchicks http://skepchick.org/blog that covers a wide array of feminine-related skepticism.
There are skeptics that deal solely with religion. They try to educate people about the fallacies in organized religion. As I said, sometimes being a skeptic can be painful. This is one of those sore points with many people, Here on Fledgeling Skeptic I generally try to avoid mentioning religion since it IS such a sore point.
Then there’s skeptics like me. I try to educate those who are new to the skeptic movement. I talk about what logical fallacies are, how to evaluate evidence, how to use skepticism in daily life and in between I talk about my own experiences and thoughts as a Fledgeling Skeptic.
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November 1, 2009 at 11:48 am (Christianity, critical thinking, critical though, data, evidence, free thinker, science, scientific, scientific evidence, secular humanist, skeptic, skepticism)
Driving through the rural areas in the South I find myself noticing billboards just out of boredom. Most of them are your standard advertisements. You know…hotels, restaurants, fruit stands. And then there are the religious billboards. These are the ones that say something vaguely snarky followed by the signature ” -God”.
“Don’t make me come down there.”. – God
From what I understand of the Christian religion, don’t they WANT the Second Coming? So why would they NOT want God to come down? As a former Christian I had looked forward to that. I also lived in terror of it. After all when you don’t know if you’re “good enough” and not being judged so means roasting and torture for all eternity the idea of being judged inadequate the idea of a Second Coming is a terrifying thing. It just doesn’t make sense to me to keep living in fear.
I have seen lots of those billboards. What I HAVEN’T seen are billboards for skeptical thinking. I’d love to see some that say simply “Think About It” and then some skeptic website. Maybe one like mine that introduces the basic premise of skepticism and the ideas behind logical thought.
Christians have billboards, TV and pint media. Atheists have busses. It’s about time skeptics have some kind of media exposure. I’m thinking about possibly starting a foundation for just such a purpose. Anyone interested in helping me organize this should email me.
Welcome to my new readers from NaNoBloMo! I hope you enjoy what you read here.
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