Sunday, May 31, 2009

The fallacy of suppressed evidence

For some months I've been trying to apply the rigors of logic to the Origins debate. In this post I want to look at the fallacy of suppressed evidence. (As Hurley tells us, logic is the process of examining arguments, for the purpose of determining their validity or falsity.)

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Chapter 1 explained that a cogent argument is an inductive argument with good reasoning and true premises. The requirement of true premises includes the proviso that the premises not ignore some important piece of evidence that outweighs the presented evidence and entails a very different conclusion. If an inductive argument does indeed ignore such evidence, then the argument commits the fallacy of suppressed evidence. - Hurley/164

- Evolutionists continually commit the fallacy of suppressed evidence. (This is one of the fallacies of presumption.) They give arguments for the truth of evolution, but ignore the unwanted evidence from OOL experiments, and ignore the fact life only comes from life (Pasteur). Scientists know of no way simple chemicals can spontaneously arrange themselves into living organisms. This important piece of evidence leads to the conclusion evolution is impossible. i.e. if it can't get started how can it be a valid idea? (e.g. if X never came into being, X doesn't now exist.)

- The E. is actually saying; since we don't have any idea how simple chemicals can spontaneously arrange themselves into living organisms, we know that evolution (M2M) is true. (Doesn't look like a good argument to me.)

Notes;
1. 'This fallacy is classified as a fallacy of presumption because it works by creating the presumption that the premises are both true and complete when in fact they are not.
- the argument pretends that all you need to do to prove evolution is to show some kind of change. No. To prove E. you also have to show how the whole show got started. (This the E.s don't do.)
2. M2M = molecules to man (evolution)
3. A common e. argument goes like this; 'if we look at the fossil record we see that the life forms of the past were superseded by those that came later. We assume the earlier ones were transformed into those we now see. This change (or transformation) is conclusive evidence that e. is a fact. The fallacy here is suppressed evidence. Evolution (M2M) can't be a fact if simple chemicals can't spontaneously arrange themselves into living organisms; and as far as we know they cannot. (This has been admitted by most e.s and atheists; including Dawkins.)
- for this reason E.s don't like to talk about OOL issues; and if pinned down will simply shrug and say; 'we know it happened, we just don't know how.' That isn't science; that's merely their metaphysical bias. (Which we all have.)