Sunday, August 23, 2009

Evolutionists: Two Wrongs Make a Right

Evolutionists have a plethora of reasons why their religious theory is a fact beyond debate. Many of these reasons are fallacious, such as the Tu Quoque argument they often use. As one reader wrote to me regarding my review of Jack Szostak's and Alonso Ricardo's article in Scientific American:

Your article contemptuously dismisses the authors’ hypotheses regarding abiogenesis. For all the scorn you heap on their theories, though, is your work any more reliable? Do you have anything else to show that makes your theories more credible?

This is the tu quoque argument, a form of the ad hominem fallacy. It goes like this: If someone criticizes a theory, such criticism is invalid if that person does not have a better replacement theory.

This is a protectionist device which I have seen used many times by evolutionists. Imagine if this device were used in science? Lousy theories for hard, unsolved problems would remain unscathed. After all, criticism would not be allowed except in the rare cases that the critic comes with a better theory.

But with evolution this fallacy is standard fare. They bring religion into science, claim it to be a fact, and rebuke skeptics because they haven’t solved the problem. This fallacy opens science up to all manner of speculation and sophistry, and misrepresentation of the science as in the Scientific American article.