Ranthropologist

Tag: religion

  • Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Popularity

    Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Popularity

    A few days ago I was in Staples buying some supplies for a new craft project, and the cashier inquired whether I had a Staples preferred customer card. When I answered in the negative, he asked if I wanted one. I declined. He persisted: “But our customers are so happy to be in our program! Millions of people can’t be wrong!” On the contrary, I replied; they very well could be wrong. I did end up joining the program because it’s free and might save me some money – but his reference to millions of happy customers had no bearing on my decision.

    This logical fallacy is known as the appeal to popularity. It is one of the many irrelevant appeals that people use to back a particular point of view, and like the ad hominem argument from my previous post, it is very easy to explain: just because a view is held by many people does not make it correct. Yet, it is a very common argument. I often find it used in defense of religious beliefs, e.g. God must exist because most people believe he does. How could all those people be wrong? As appealing as that argument may be, it is not rational, logical, or based on facts. Over the thousands of years of human history, millions of people have shared countless incorrect beliefs. Physicians used to treat patients without washing their hands or their instruments, because what we now call the germ theory of disease hadn’t yet been formulated (thank you, Louis Pasteur and your predecessors). Instead, doctors believed that disease spread from what they called miasma, or bad air. They had no conception of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, or invisible particles of virus, or even tiny parasites. Millions of people, including the physicians responsible for treating them, believed in miasma… and they were all wrong.

    None of this is to say that the opposite of the appeal to popularity is true; that is, that the truth is only known by a select few and the rest of the world is simply mislead or deluded. This kind of thinking is common amongst conspiracy theorists. Much of their certainty comes from the feeling that they have access to rare, special knowledge that others don’t know or won’t accept. They convince themselves that they have extra sharp powers of logic and perception because they accept things others won’t, even when the facts aren’t on their side. Conspiracy beliefs make the believer feel like they are part of a special, rarefied group of the truly knowledgeable, and may actually work against the appeal to popularity by saying that the more people believe something (e.g. that fluoridated water or childhood vaccines are safe) the less likely it is to actually be true. This means we have to beware not just the appeal to popularity itself, but how it is deployed. Be extremely wary of any argument that goes along the lines of “But that’s what they want you to believe!”

    It is also important to remember that plenty of things that almost everybody in the world believes to be true are actually true; but they aren’t true because we all believe them to be true – they are true because they are facts. In other words, our belief in something, or lack thereof, is completely irrelevant to the truth value of what we believe in. And the number of people who believe in something – or don’t believe in something – is equally irrelevant to the truth value of a given argument.

  • Be Good, For Goodness’ Sake

    Be Good, For Goodness’ Sake

    There’s something chilling about the lines of the classic Christmas song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good SO BE GOOD, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE. Creepy. Funny thing is, if you substitute Jesus for Santa Claus, this song becomes a rollicking hosanna to the return of the Son of God: You better not shout, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why! Jesus Christ is comin’ to town! He’s makin’ a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty or nice, Jesus Christ is comin’ to town! Um, okay. Instead of presents, Jesus’ naughty or nice list lets you know who gets into heaven. How are these two things different? Well I’m here to tell ya: early in their lives, children learn the truth about Santa: he’s all made up. As for Jesus, they get told that he’s real, oh yes indeedy, and you’d better be good FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! But I ask you: what’s the difference?

    Those of you who know me probably aren’t the least bit surprised by the foregoing. We tell children that Santa is a story, but we don’t say the same about Jesus, and for some reason the kids buy it. I honestly think Santa is more convincing; I mean, aren’t the presents there as real evidence of Santa’s visit? Where are the presents from Jesus? Real presents, that is; not the dangling carrot of the present of eternal salvation (whatever that means). And of course, some of the more manipulative practitioners of the Jesus myth will find ways to explain that Christ’s presents are of a more spiritual nature. Heaven is the ultimate present, and you’d better stay off JC’s naughty list if you want to get there.

    Hypocrisy. Lies and hypocrisy. The truth is that the most important line in the song is “be good, for goodness’ sake.” Let me reiterate: FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE. Not for God’s sake, or Christ’s sake, or Buddha’s or Vishnu’s or Odin’s or whomever your anthropomorphic spiritual guide may be. Be good, because it’s the right thing to do. Be good, because humankind has developed rules, over eons of evolution and cultural development, for how to best get along with one another. Be good, because most of those rules apply cross-culturally, and can be summed up in the rule that as you would have done to you, so you should do to others. This rule exists, in one form or another, in every culture in the world. It is not based on religion or God or spirits or the supernatural; on the contrary, the rules came first, and the religions came later. Be good, because our survival NOW, not in some imaginary afterworld, depends on it. Ask yourself: do I do good because I am afraid of God’s punishment or going to Hell, or because it’s the right thing to do? Ask any atheist, and you’ll get your answer. You don’t need God to be good; you just need goodness. So, be good, for goodness’ sake.

  • Less Than Perfect

    Less Than Perfect

    Lately I have been musing about how people define their terms. A long time ago, I read somewhere that most arguments boil down to differences in how people define things. That simple concept has always stuck with me, and I have often found it to be the case in arguments I have been a part of. Of course, having that perspective does not always solve the argument, because people can cling pretty ferociously to their personal definitions. At that point the argument often distills into a debate over whose definition is more accurate. I strive to be very specific in defining my terms when getting into an argument, so that the real issue at hand can be addressed. It is always gratifying when the argument is solved by acknowledging differing terminologies.

    Let’s bring this discussion into focus with a specific example. Today I saw a bumper sticker that said “Next time you think you’re perfect, try walking on water.” Given the opportunity, I would have asked the driver of the car how he or she defined “perfect.” Perfection, in my definition, is attainable. You can bake a perfect cake, or turn a perfect cartwheel, or find the perfect gift for someone. Perhaps this could be considered a sort of proletarian definition of the concept, but certainly I am not the only one who uses it in this way. As for the bumper sticker, it got me thinking about the nature of perfection. Since when does perfection include the ability to perform supernatural acts? I believe that there is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal – there is only the natural and the normal, and things we haven’t explained yet. Given that walking on water is humanly impossible, how can that enter into the definition of perfection? Of course the logical conclusion is that perfection is also humanly impossible, hence the unspoken but clear context of the sticker: Only God/Jesus is perfect, and don’t you forget it, you flawed sinner you! This goes back to an old post on LiveJournal when I ranted about a different, but related, bumper sticker. What gives with people and the religious blame game? I’d like to define my terms: human beings can be perfect. We came up with the whole concept of perfect. We also invented the hocus pocus that positioned god/gods as the frame of reference for perfection (and incidentally gave us an out to explain all those “paranormal” and “supernatural” phenomena, such as, say, lightning, for which we had yet to find a natural explanation). Well, I have decided to reclaim the definition of perfection. You don’t have to walk on water to be perfect; you only have to do the absolute best that you can with what you are given, with the circumstances in which you find yourself, in your relationships with other people, and with your life in general, and those moments of perfect will happen.