Creationism is demonstrably wrong yet disturbing popular. A new analysis has confirmed it's also riddled with fallacies.
It's clear that to tackle this topic facts aren't enough. You also need to be able to deal with these bad arguments.
Because this research confirms that you will encounter them. The analysis identified some fallacies that are almost universal in creationist literature.
Of course, these facts should come as no surprise to anyone whose spent any length of time dealing with creationists. So I'm curious, how do you veterans deal with these shoddy arguments?
Common creationist fallacies
This analysis examined dozens of creationist articles from several different sources; including many of faux-creationist "Intelligent Design proponents". These ranged from Answers in Genesis to Finnish creationist textbooks (and of course, the classic Of Pandas and People)
Nobody here should be surprised by the results. Almost every article examined had a fallacy within it. In fact, every single ID article used the "you too" fallacy (i.e. claiming someone is acting inconsistently with a belief evolution, thus it is false).
All in all, the analysis describes the following fallacies that were found in >60% of the creationist or intelligent design (or both) sources:
- Ad hominem. Attacking an opponent's character instead of evidence.
- The "you too" fallacy. Instead of evidence, an opponent's past actions, words or motives are put under suspicion.
- Poisoning the well. Claiming that the opponent cannot help being opposed to an argument and, thus, the opponent can be discounted in advance.
- Appeal to authority and ad populum. The argument is right because an authority (or majority) says it is right.
- Appeal to consequences and guilt by association. Instead of evidence, a theory is rejected based on its alleged consequences or linking the opponent's viewpoint to distasteful and evil phenomena.
- Slippery slope. Appealing to an undesirable sequence of events in order to oppose an argument.
- Straw man. The opponent distorts the arguments attacking the distortion.
- Hasty generalization. Conclusions are based on limited evidence and/or some evidence is suppressed.
- Argument from incredulity. Attacking a proposition based on lack of definite evidence; accusing a theory of being irrational without presenting actual evidence.
- Emotional appeal instead of presenting actual evidence.
That's a fairly hefty list. And that's just considering the fallacies present in the vast majority of creationist writings. A large minority included even more, as the following graph shows.
Fallacies in evolution too
Now, the more eagle eyed readers amongst you will have noticed that chart contains a third column, labelled "EVO". This refers to anti-creationist literature.
(the paper itself calls this pro-evolution literature, but I'm not sure it really counts as most of the sources are focused on dissecting creationism than educating about evolution).
And, interestingly, these EVO sources also contain a fair few fallacies. Whilst they are nowhere near as common a the fallacies seen in creationist writings, ad hominems in particular remain common amongst the anti-creationist crowd.
How to deal with it?
Of course, pointing and laughing at how bad creationist arguments are doesn't really get us anywhere. Previous research has shown that we need to improve how we educate people about evolution. Clearly we have to step up our anti-fallacy game as well.
Which of course raises the question, how should that be done? Is simply pointing and laughing enough? Or should we be more pro-active about it? Even that raises a whole host of further questions about the best tactics for trying to address fallacies and correct the misunderstandings they may promote.
So I'm curious as to how others handle this sort of situation. No doubt most of you reading this blog will have stumbled across a bad creationist argument or two in your time. Putting aside the actual facts behind it, did you even bother to address the fallacies. And if so, how?
And then there's perhaps the most interesting question of all: should this same standard be applied to anti-creationist sources. Clearly ad hominems are also common there. Is this something that needs to be addressed?
