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To: tumblindice

The Watchmaker “fallacy” keeps getting brought up because it’s never actually been refuted.

Huxley used a false analogy against Paley, and the tradition has continued ever since.


20 posted on 02/13/2017 10:58:24 AM PST by papertyger (The semantics define how we think.)
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To: papertyger

OK. Here we go again.

Teleological fallacy:
Conceptual Fallacy
Definition
When there is the claim that some object or idea has a purpose or necessary end point in the absence of evidence for that end point.
Example: Why would God have given us noses if he hadn’t planned that we should wear glasses?

Only after the existence of an end point has been evidentially established can it serve as a foundation for other dependent concepts.

Case Study One
According to Bertrand Russell, it was once claimed that rabbits were created with white tails so they would be easy for hunters to shoot.

Case Study Two
Evolution is often misunderstood as teleological as evidenced by suggestions that humans represent the apex of development. Evolution might be better understood as the genetic movement of a species to better align its genetic composition and related behaviors to the environmental context, rather than striving towards some genetic goal independent of an environmental context.

Case Study Three
One creationist infamously created a video purporting that the hand-shaped banana was evidence of a designer thinking ahead to when humans would grasp bananas. The fact is that modern bananas have been bred by agriculturists to have the shape they do.

I’m not saying that your position is wrong but your argument requires use of fallacies so the way you arrive at your conclusion is wrong.
The watchmaker analogy requires the formal fallacy of composition and the informal mistake of `begging the question’ and some more as well.
But believe what you want to believe. Like Paschal’s Wager, solipsism is a comfort.


24 posted on 02/13/2017 11:11:54 AM PST by tumblindice (America's founding fathers, all armed conservatives)
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