Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Pat Hayes and the Logical Fallacy of False Analogy

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Pat Hayes at Red State Rabble tries to present the face on Mars as an example in false positives equivalent to the appearance of design in cellular machinery. When will uncritical thinkers like Pat Hayes cop to the fact that seeing the Virgin Mary’s face in a tortilla is not the equivalent of seeing design in an interdependent network of subcellular biological nanomachinery so complex it makes the US Space Shuttle and all the supporting infrastructure at Cape Canaveral, right down to every nut, bolt, transister, and bit of software code, look simple in comparison?

Adding to the false analogy, after 60 years of Natural Selection having been granted exclusivity in the classroom by judicial fiat as the only theory of evolution, only 1 in 3 people believe it. The face on Mars meanwhile is something, by Hayes’ own admission, which only a few cranks still think is real after NASA’s little publicity stunt was scrutinized.

And speaking of uncritical thinkers like Pat Hayes there’s Richard B. Hoppe at Panda’s Thumb trumpeting Red State Rubbish as something that should be on everyone’s reading list. Does RBH have National Enquirer on his reading list too? There’s a true analogy. At least we found out where Hoppe gets his news and information from. 🙂

Buy a clue, Hayes. You can find what you need in the Idiot’s Guide to False Analogies.

Comments

Hey Dave--
In this post: https://uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/835#more-835 you complain about someone else's use of argumentum ad populum, but use it yourself here. What's up with that? And all that complaining about Panda's Thumb trackbacks not working, and they don't seem to be working here either. Odd, that. Have a look here:
http://jswynne.typepad.com/gropes/2006/02/_at_uncommon_de.html

Touche. -ds JimW
February 20, 2006
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Dave,
Just my humble advice. I don't think it's a good ideia to call people morons ;)

God bless

When in Rome... -ds Mats
February 20, 2006
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"Phillip Johnson and William Dembski, for example, were taken in by the Bible Code hoax a few years back. Believers -- aka, the gullible -- thought they could detect phrases and clusters of words embedded in coded form in the text of the Bible. They even thought this code could predict the future. Both Johnson and Dembski wrote favorable reviews of Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover. In a 1998 review written for First Things, Dembski wrote:" I read the review by Dr. Dembski that he's linked to. I don't know if Dr. Dembski was "taken in", but I didn't actually get that impression from the review. The book review seemed to say that the Bible Code investigation was an interesting project that raised some fascinating mathematical issues and might somehow validate the Bible Code, but that it had not yet proven anything.russ
February 19, 2006
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Good job, Dave! I was gonna blog on this, but you beat me to it. It's really sad that some people would not be able to tell that this object is the product of intelligent design, as opposed to this. Karen, "About what percentage of ID people believe in Jeffrey Satinover’s Bible Code theory?" I don't think there's any way of telling. Right now, I'm sitting on the fence without enough information to go one way or the other. However, I do know that Red State Rabble, PT, and Talk Reason are not the places to go to get fair and unbiased information!crandaddy
February 19, 2006
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About what percentage of ID people believe in Jeffrey Satinover's Bible Code theory?Karen
February 19, 2006
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