My summation of The Six Principles of Critical Thinking from the third chapter of my upcoming book The Korihor Argument Extraordinary claims - Carl Sagan is famous for saying that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Extra-ordinary is anything above and beyond what is expected (e.g. “Praying to my Lucky Martian Leprechauns gives me good fortune.”) This isn’t to say that it is impossible for something to occur which one would not expect - if that were the case, then learning would be impossible and scientific endeavor pointless. It is simply to say that the more outlandish, the more skeptical one ought to be and the stronger evidence one ought to require. Falsifiability - Claims that are postulated as impossible to disprove are necessarily suspicious. If I say, for example, that “the detergent that I have invented is completely bio-friendly, you could drink it without harm but don’t go doing that” then you would necessarily want to know why, if I am so certain of the benign chemistry of my product, I would attempt to dissuade you from testing it. Similarly, any phrase that begins with “It’s obvious” or “Everyone knows that” must be able to stand up to the scrutiny of the question “How is that obvious?” or “Suppose that I didn’t know that - how would you convince me?” Occam’s razor - If two hypotheses explain a phenomenon reasonably equally, the one that requires fewer presumptions is the more likely. Evolution is just as popularly accepted an explanation for the origin of all animal species as is Creationism. But where the one is built on evidence that is consistent across disciplines of study, the other requires that we cherry-pick circumstantial information built first upon the assumption that the the Universe exists (even if only in the Matrix), then that this Universe had a beginning (believe it or not this is a topic of serious cosmological debate), that this beginning could not have happened spontaneously (again, a huge presumption to be made), that this non-spontaneous beginning can only indicate a “Cause” that necessarily has a “Purpose”, that, unlike the Universe, this first Cause is itself un-caused (which we have absolutely no reason to believe outside of extraordinary claims) that this Purpose of said Cause must be perfect and benevolent and cannot possibly be malignant toward life on our planet or any others and that this this benevolent, compassionate Creator is better described by Yahweh or Allah or Christ or Vishnu or Horus or any of the other Creator-Gods throughout human tradition than any of the others or even worse: an amalgamation of these deities. Whereas Natural Selection presumes that the Universe is real (because it is observed to be real), that we are real (at least as real as the Universe is) and that we can learn, hence the evidence that we gather leads us to conclusions and whatever is newly proven is accepted until antiquated by new knowledge. Observe that this makes evolution falsifiable: if it is disproven in favor of something else, science would embrace that something else, instead. Compare this to Creationism which insists that the existence of God is taken as a constant - that if “the Bible tells me that 2+2=5, I wouldn’t question God’s Word. I’d accept it as true and then work it out.” Replicatability - if it is true in one lab, it must be true in other independent labs, also. I can demonstrate gravity at any point on the earth with consistent results. Similarly, I can demonstrate gravity on the Moon (if I can get there) and show that the Newtonian principle of gravity is consistent on different celestial bodies. However, the most expert of Master Shipwrights with the most advanced of modern science to-date cannot build Noah’s Ark out of wood per the dimensions in Genesis and make it even remotely seaworthy. Rule out rival hypotheses - If you don’t know, then you don’t know. Go out and find out and take the truth Nullius in Verba, “on the word of no one”. Correlation vs. Causation - Two related things do not necessarily indicate that the one caused the other. For example, our Sun and the star Mu Arae both belong to the same classification of stars and both of the solar systems have corresponding planets that orbit the star but this does not mean that ours caused theirs nor theirs, ours. Similarly, in the Old Testament, Abraham is required by God to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, and in the New Testament God is said to have sacrificed his Only Son for the sins of the world. But this does not mean that Abraham’s near-sacrifice is a prophecy of the crucifixion. Of course, the Apostle Paul preached that it was (Heb. 11:17-19) but he had the benefit of hindsight, which discounts the alleged 2,000 years of Hebrew history wherein this prophecy’s true purpose was supposedly unknown until it was fulfilled and clairvoyance that makes a statement and then simply waits on-hand until a circumstantial claim takes advantage of it makes for a very pathetic prediction, indeed. I report, you decide. The Critical Thinking questions to ask oneself are as follows: 1. Is the “The Reverse Tinkerbell Principle” an extraordinary claim? 2. Is it admissible to say that it can be proven false or must be expected to be believed and not challenged? 3. Does it have fewer presumptions than standard epistemology? 4. Can I arrive at the same conclusion, following the same method, independently? 5. Have all other alternatives been considered? 6. Does it presume that because certain things are similar in properties that they cause one another?
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 18:17:57 +0000
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