The Answers Probably Aren't in Genesis, Part 2

The first part took a critical look at the very first line of the first book of the Bible, the Answers in Genesis (AiG) logo "1:1"; itself a very interesting website. Even more so if you have some understanding of science and history. Quite how AiG misinterpret the evidence against the Genesis account of Earth's chronology is spectacular. I recall one article¹, complete with testimonies from rather questionable 'academics', about the dinosaur Triceratops; unsurprisingly it places Triceratops well within the Bible chronology (the last 6000 years) making it much younger than paleontology/radiometric dating says it is, but that is perhaps a topic for another time. Let us return to the Genesis as it continues with the creation of the Earth...  

Now God has created the heaven and the earth Genesis states;

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Gen 1:2)

This is quite an interesting little passage as it appears to have taken a step backwards; Genesis 1:1 states that God created the earth but 1:2 states that the earth has no form - so how could it be the Earth?

There are, again, some possible explanations for this (the Bible thrives on ambiguity and it is not for nothing that literally everything is open to interpretation - something I will cover later); that God did not create the planet Earth but created earth, as in rocks and dirt and dust and that kind of thing - the solid constituents of the planet yet to be formed into a planet. The other option is that God did create the planet but it was simply blank, just a sphere of rock floating in space. The problem exists with the word 'form'. When something has a form it has a shape, it looks like something, it has structure. 

Without a form it is nothing; a car before it is formed is simply a pile of parts, there may exist all the parts of that car there, but it is not a car. However, there is no mention of God forming the planet out of anything so it leaves room for only the second option; that "without form, and void" means blank - a blank planet just hanging there in the universe, or not, it’s not explicit on whether the greater universe exists at this point, it never really says God made the rest of the Universe either. 

There is no mention of God creating the rest of the universe in the Bible, there is indeed no mention of God creating anything other than this planet. If we are to take the Bible as the word of God one has to consider why he would leave this out. If 'glory be to his name' would not it make sense to claim more than to have only done less than half a job...?

The next lines are equally ambiguous and in reality don't say very much at all; "...and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". We are again forced into a leap of faith with the second line here; that the world was without form and void, yet, there was water - which means that it wasn't really void. So when God created the earth it came with some basic stuff, like a starter pack I imagine. The darkness line could be regarded as fairly self-explanatory; anyone even basically initiated in the Bible knows that God has not yet created light (in fact the stars come a long time after light, not until 1:16 in fact. Go figure) so it is obviously going to be dark. What “The spirit of God moving along the face of the waters” means is very much open for any interpretation anyone could imagine to put on it.

So the second verse of Genesis is perhaps even more ambiguous than the first and this is primarily because it used more words, the meaning is equally obscure. Another argument that Creationists, and indeed the Bible, use a most of the time, it comes up right alongside the triple-fallacy that I discussed in part 1. However, this author is not deterred and plans to tackle the bible in spite of its supposed complexity and intimate details or lack of them. 

The second verse in the book of Genesis is also very much like the articles published on Answers in Genesis; spectacularly unhelpful at explaining anything in realistic terms. Something which I personally think the book of Genesis is actually an attempt at doing. However, when the people who wrote it tried to explain more complex things their lack of understanding in the area shows and of course they posit the old argument, in one of its many forms, that when something cannot be explained therefore it must be some higher being - God. Given the fact that this argument was fallacious 3000 years ago, although perhaps more excusable before the advent of modern scientific understanding, it calls into question how people can possibly still rely on this argument today?

Another point which this next passage will aim to cover is the problem with translation and interpretation of the Bible, particularly the earliest books, of which Genesis is one. 

It would, of course, be possible to give a far more rigorous treatment of the translation in the Bible, however, this would do no service to the content of these articles other than to highlight and exacerbate the problems of interpretation; the King James version, arguably the most widespread and available version of the Bible, dates back to 1611. Which would make that version alone over four-hundred years old; it is worth noting that other than when looking into history, there are no books that old that are used as a current reference for anything besides historical study; one would not base current medicine on books from periods even as recent as the 1970s. Indeed, academic textbooks are considered out-of-date within a couple of years. Such is the progression and speed of knowledge and understanding.

The top selling Bible is currently the New International Edition which still traces its roots to the 1950s with the rather ambiguous mantra of creating a, 

"faithful translation of the Scriptures in the common language of the American people”³. 

The key word in this mission statement is 'faithful'. Faithful to what exactly? Faithful to the Classical Hebrew that most of the Bible was originally penned in, a language itself that goes back nearly 3,000 years? 

It is worth nothing something at this juncture; there are modern languages that share the same roots - such as Latin based languages - that some phrases and words simply cannot be translated through. Such as from French to English or Spanish to Italian, because the meanings are completely incompatible. In this case all the best linguistic scholars can do is get as close as they can. One can imagine the problem of trying to translate, accurately, something as old as Classical Hebrew. Linear A (c. 1800-1450 BCE) still has not been successfully deciphered, let alone had its texts translated into hundreds of other languages. If it weren't for the Rosetta stone we'd still be guessing about Hieroglyphs too.

In light of the this problem, if we return to the "faithful translation of the scriptures..." one can only come to the conclusion, based on the issues of working with even well understood modern languages, that the translation is faithful only to what translators believe the scriptures mean or what they want the scriptures to say, not to the what the scripture actually say. 

When it is clear that the Bible is open to such a large amount of interpretation at the level of translation and the level of reading, how could anyone base anything meaningful on this text, with any kind of surety?

Part 3 of TAANIG will look at the next five verses in Genesis in two sections; Gen 1:3-5 followed by Gen 1:6-7.

Thank you for reading as always.

Written by A.R. Bell (2015)

#LogicShotgun

@ARB_itrary

---

¹ Hell Creek Formation Tells a Tale of Triceratops (https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/bones/hell-creek-formation-tells-tale-triceratops/).

A very interesting article that is certainly eye-opening in more ways than one. The fantastic imagination of this piece is really only matched by the spectacular misinterpretation of the evidence and of course a rebuttal of evolution is a key theme in it as well, spurious though it may be.   

² Ronald F. Youngblood, Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, Steven M. Voth Zondervan. (2003) The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God's Word to the World : Essays in Honor of Ronald F. Michigan: Zondervan 

The Answers Probably Aren't in Genesis. Pt.1

In this series of articles I plan to have a deeper look into Genesis and evaluate its claims about the creation of the world and the universe. 

Genesis is a key book in the Bible, one that Creationists so fervently refer to and base their assumptions on, as seen in such typical theistic radicals like Ken Ham and Wendy Wright. Genesis, with all its fantastical stories, is the basis for something called Creation Science; which is a branch of Creationism that ‘strives to use legitimate scientific means both to disprove evolutionary theory and to prove the creation account as described in Scripture’¹. As others have textbooks on subjects from which they learn, so this is the Creationist’s textbook in a way. Though we should not regard it as a textbook in the traditional sense; Genesis is not a comprised of peer-reviewed and agreed upon information that we know is [currently] accurate. The origins of Genesis can be traced back to tenth century BCE² and one can make a reasoned argument that other than in translation, the text would have seen little revision or updating from that time until now.

I do not plan to tackle this evaluation of Genesis by a direct and exhaustive comparison with modern science so much as I plan to judge the text based on its own merits and failings. For instance, one could not judge Harry Potter’s magic by the modern laws of physics and biology, in this context it would be, as Wolfgang Pauli sharply put it, ‘not even wrong’*. I will be going through Genesis systematically and I will deconstruct the text and aim to find out its meaning, because there is meaning within the words, just perhaps not the meaning so often implied by Creationists and other perhaps less radical theists

~

To dismiss out of hand the Creationist’s world-view would be intellectually dishonest of me; one cannot simply come to a conclusion without first understanding the facts about why a person might believe something. Those facts are all around us; those facts that the Creationist believes are all the evidence they could ever need for the existence of God on the one hand and proof of creation on the other. It is easy to see why they believe this too.

The natural world is magnificent. 

There really is no denying its amazing majesty, from the grandeur and magnitude of things like the Grand Canyon and the larger animals and fishes to the intricate and wondrous microscopic world inhabited by all number of tiny creatures. What’s more is why, to the Creationists, the evidence is so overwhelming; how could all of this not be designed when it looks so well put together, everything seemingly so perfectly suited for its purpose? 

The Bible offers one explanation for this and, to many, a very persuasive one; it starts out as it means to continue with the supposedly irrefutable fact that God created everything - the pinnacle of intelligent design.

So let's take an objective look at this first, and arguably, most important book in the Bible because it is very relevant to the Creationists and other Christians alike on two fronts; it provides the creation story and provides indisputable evidence for God's existence and power. 

~

Genesis opens with a bold statement;

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" 

(Gen 1:1).

From this opening line the expectation of belief is immediately and explicitly presented to the reader; there was nothing before this event apart from God because he just had to be there, otherwise how would he have created the heaven and the earth? 

There is a beautifully unbroken piece of circular reasoning in these first few words of the Bible; God must exist because he made the heaven and the Earth, therefore everything that exists is proof of God (Hempel’s Raven paradox springs to mind here, itself being an exercise in inductive reasoning - something which theists employ almost irrespective of contradicting evidence; a confirmation bias). The opposing side of this, as most Creationists put forward, is the position that if it was not God then it was random events that caused the creation of the Earth. This argument is three fallacies rolled into one; a straw man, a false dichotomy and an argument from personal incredulity; it misrepresents the nature of the creation of the Earth to make the argument for God seemingly more credible – unguided things could not make a complex planet/life; it proposed that there are only two possibilities (God or random events) when there are more than that and it makes the argument, from the false dichotomy position, that random events could not have possibly brought about the creation of the Earth because it’s too improbable (Hoyle’s junkyard tornado**).

Sadly there is no explanation of how God did this; how did God create the heaven and the earth, what did he use? It could have been written, for instance, that God collected all the dust and rocks from the universe and created the Earth from it, which would be more plausible. Also, as implied by the first line, God is already there (wherever ‘there’ is) then *poof* - we have the heaven and the Earth.

What is also implied, or perhaps assumed, is that it this blink of an eye God created the entire universe as well. Though the meaning of the word 'heaven' here isn't explicit and two options are available and should be weighted as to which one is more probable (assuming the passage is trying to describe something real); the first is that ‘Heaven’ is the atmosphere surrounding the planet Earth, or ‘Heaven’ is the entirety of the universe as a great big blank canvass waiting to be filled. The problem here is that heaven is used again, a little later in regards to a ‘firmament’ (Gen 1:8) but we’ll come onto that in due course.

It seems we are looking at cosmic terms “the heaven and earth”. The Earth at least is a celestial body so from this we can make the reasoned assumption that ‘heaven’ is the universe, or galaxy, at least. There is one last option; it could be Heaven, as in the place you supposedly go when you die as long as you are a good person - sorry Westboro Baptist Church-goers, although morality is often agued as subjective, in many ways I’m pretty sure God would have much to say about hating on innocents. Oh, nope, he drowned them all in a flood one time; men, women, children and animals, indiscriminately.

This God, who apparently is pre-existing in this void before the universe is created, raises the question of where did God come from? This question highlights the problem with the Creationist’s argument for irreducible complexity so often deployed against evolution, among other things. It falls down in the face of a God who is, by definition, irreducibly complex. God suddenly decides to create the universe and the Earth from nothing, what is more is that it is not explained why or, more importantly, how God did this – he just did. 

Genesis 1:1 is the Creationist's 'Big Bang' if you will,

 just lacking the theory.

- - - - - -

Thank you for reading as always.

Writen by A.R. Bell (2015)

#LogicShotgun

@ARB_itrary

Part 2 of TAPNIG will look at Genesis 1:2 and the problems with translation and interpretation.

* Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), a noted theoretical physicist, is quoted to have said of a theory or position that was so wrong it was not even falsifiable and as such did not belong in the realm of science, although often posing as such, that it was “not even wrong”. - Peierls, R. (1960). "Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, 1900–1958". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 5: 186. And; http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Pauli.html

** Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) proposed that “the chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” It should be noted that Hoyle was a noted Astronomer, Fellow of the Royal Society and atheist. – Burbidge, G (2003) “Sir Fred Hoyle. 24 June 1915 - 20 august 2001 Elected FRS 1957” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 49: 213. (http://rsbm.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/49/213)

1 Petto, Andrew J.; Godfrey, Laurie R. Scientists Confront Creationism. New York, London: Norton

2 Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress.

The Dissemination of Detritis

The internet is a fantastic medium; at no other time in human history could one ever connect with so many people so effortlessly. 

At the click of a button you can find people on the other side of the world and engage then in discussion; glean insight into topics that you didn't know existed and learn more about people that you've never met than the people that you run into everyday. 

There are ordinary people, not celebrities or other personalities, who have thousands of followers on things like Google+, Twitter and FaceBook. Thousands of people are interested in what they post, thousands of people want to know what they think. Isn't that amazing?

Just twenty years ago, if you wanted thousands of people to know who you were you would have needed to be a celebrity of some kind, have written a best selling book or been globally notorious in some way. How safe the world has become when global recognition is but a profile picture, witty bio and a few hundred inconsequential posts away.    

There is a problem with this though. A big problem.

We live most our lives based on incomplete or inaccurate information at the best of times and the internet has made it even more easy for this detritus to be disseminated; but instead of maybe a couple dozen people being poorly informed by a piece of wayward and spurious information with the further ease of dissemination made somewhat awkward by lines of social separation, now thousands of people at a time can be deluded and/or mislead by poorly researched 'fact sharing' almost instantly.

The skill of scientific inquiry might be foreign to many people and most other people seem to have zero critical reasoning skills but surely when you disseminate information it only serves to better yourself to take a little time and research what you are sharing.

Sadly, people don't. We're all guilty of this too; "that looks interesting" and hitting 'share' without a second thought. 

The problem is we've grown up on analogies and believing what our parents have told us is true because they are the ones who said it. We are, in a way, hardwired to accept things as a given because it come from a source other than ourselves, a source that has a website maybe or a news publication or magazine, because only people who really know what they are talking about are allowed these... right?  

However, it is not just the general populace who are guilty of this spurious fact sharing through a lack of homework. Major news publications and magazines can get things wrong or omit important information based on their own bias. Hell, even academic journals have had some real doozies slip through the net and get published; how do you think the 'vaccinations cause Autism' rumour started? That came out of the The Lancet, a very serious and credible academic journal. After it was published it was immediately retracted and the author discredited but the damage was done, the story took on a life of it's own. That's all it took and people believed it and ran with it and are still running with it 17 years later.

Nowadays it is absolutely possible for a single person on the internet to have as much influence as an academic journal. On the ambiguous and anonymous world of the internet you can be anyone you like, few are completely honest. So if Dr John Doe PhD posts up a persuasive article that appears to be from a good source, who are we, these mere mortals, to question it?

Take a look at Answers in Genesis for a fantastic example of this. They have genuine academics putting their names to the things they publish and to someone unlearned in the areas, which can be quite technical at times, these are credible and believable sources of information. They are cleverly written too, so even when you check the information out much of it turns out to be true but the devil is in the detail here; single snippets of information or statistics may be true but when applied to the whole article they are false. 

Take this example from the "venerable" Answers in Genesis;

New Australopithecine species said to show diversity in humanity’s evolutionary history.

https://answersingenesis.org/human-evolution/ape-man/what-can-lucys-neighbors-tell-us-about-human-origins/

"Haile-Selassie’s team found the two lower jaws and a partial upper jaw unearthed by erosion near the Burtele tuff in Woranso-Mille area of the Afar Region. Based on radiometric and paleomagnetic dating of the strata in the region, Haile-Selassie and colleagues believe Australopithecus deyiremeda to be 3.3 to 3.5 million years old. This overlaps with the age of 2.9 to 3.8 million years old currently assigned to Australopithecus afarensis fossils, which are also from the Afar Region." 

[This part is TRUE; as is verified by a number of different credible sources to the discovery of this new species http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7553/full/nature14448.html]

"Evolutionary scientists consider this fossil discovery to be significant because it demonstrates that diverse species of early human ancestors coexisted in time and space. [...] However, while there may well have once been multiple species of australopithecine apes in Africa, australopithecine fossils are the remains of extinct apes and have no connection to humanity’s lineage [...] Convinced then that people are just highly evolved animals, evolutionists connect the dots between fossils, comparing their characteristics and adaptations in an effort to draw a path to man."

[This part is FALSE; primarily because it is a tactful but fantastic misinterpretation of what science actually says about human evolution]

The difficult thing for most here, once you start digging for validity, is that the author of this is Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, who really did get her degrees from real Universities and now writes for Answers in Genesis. A real academic commenting on a real topic. However, as I said, the devil is in the detail and the mix of real facts and made-up biblical nonsense is smooth enough to fool most people. 

So how do we, as commentators and active members of social media, avoid sharing spurious information? 

1) Well, screw your thinking head on is job one. Basically speaking, everything should be treated with equal levels of open-mindedness and skepticism. You might like the information in the article but is it accurate?

2) Background searching - If the article or link isn't initially from a credible source can it be followed back to one? Often you might find blog entries that don't cite sources or website articles with no author or references. That's fine, just Google the topic or heading and see what pops up. If you have an author for the article then just Google them and see what pops up first. If it's an academic page like a .edu or .ac.uk or other credible source then that is a good start. 

Most times a quick Google of the author or the topic will be enough to figure out if the article in question is worth sharing or complete BS. 

But then what happens when you run into an Answers in Genesis type situation where the article contains both junk and credible information and written by someone credible?

This is where step 3 comes in; Research! 

Yeah yeah, I know, boring right? But if you think it's worth sharing then it's worth looking into. This is the part where you put your detective's hat on your thinking head.

This can be a little more involved but in return you become much better informed and the more you do this the less time it will take you to research something, even something you have no experience dealing with. Eventually you will not only amass a great deal of knowledge and understanding in many different areas but you'll also be able to smell the detritus hidden in an article by the first paragraph.

Take this article recently posted on Google+ community Forbidden Archaeology which is a community with a rather annoying mix of very good archaeology related posts and pseudoscience/conspiracy theory rubbish. Sadly the latter outnumbers the former most of the time.

The article headline reads - 
A 38-Centimeter Long Finger Found in Egypt; Evidence of the Nephilim? 
The source? www.ancient-code.com
The Author? Ivan Petricevic.

Firstly approach with open-mindedness and skepticism - a 38-centimeter long finger!!? Your next question is probably; what the hell is a Nephilim??

Google 'Nephilim' - first hit as always; Wikipedia. It's as good a place to start as anywhere else; 

The Nephilim were offspring of the "sons of god" and the "daughters of men" before the Deluge according to Genesis 6:4 the name is also used in reference to giants who inhabited Canaan at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan according to Numbers 13:33. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim]

Hmmm, ok, Bible references, not typically a good place for accurate information but let's not jump to any rash conclusions at this stage, let's see what the bulk of the article has to say. The article also starts with a quote from Genesis. Maybe the author is just setting the scene, so again, no rash conclusions. Let's do a quick scan in the article fro source material and references...

Nope, no sources at all. So not a greatest start as far as informative writing goes. Let's look at some more content and see if we can get to the bottom of this. In the opening paragraph the author makes two statements of fact; that the finger has a "certificate of authenticity" and it was "published in one of Europe's leading newspapers BILD.de in 1988".

Let's Google 'Nephilim Finger' - There is a section on the Wiki about misidentification of fossil remains; ah, it dates to a supposed finger discovered in the 18th century, likely not this one. The Google search returned only this article and a host of other articles from various websites like Before it is News, GameFaqs and NW Creation Network. Not one credible website, certainly no mention of a certificate of authenticity, which is in itself odd. This isn't looking good.

Let's check out the author, there is a bio page on ancient-code; it has a number of articles written by him seemingly centered around extra-terrestrial interpretations of various subjects from Nikola Tesla to underwater circles in Croatia made by UFOs, he has no academic affiliations and it doesn't list any kind of educational background, which is not uncommon, though it would be nice to see.

OK, so far this isn't looking like anything more than vague speculation and story telling. 

The article headline proposes a question; is this "artifact" proof of the existence of Nephilim? Which we now know are apparently giants who inhabited Canaan (present day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine Jordan and Syria). 

So if the headline or title poses a question, should it not address it in the text and then reach a conclusion? So what does it conclude? Well, actually..., nothing. It doesn't answer the question posed in the heading. It ends rather ambiguously with the same question just after concluding "researchers have mixed feelings when it comes to this ancient relic" [no citation to say which researchers though].

This took me less than 15 minutes to figure out that this article, though possibly containing some accurate information about the various people involved, does not contain anything worth sharing as it appears to be entirely speculative and full of analogy and outright fiction. 

What's the problem here? People like fiction and analogy can be a valuable tool in sharing information. 

Yes, this is true. However, when the article makes statements of fact which are in no way substantiated by any form of reliable evidence from any kind of reliable source what it is essentially doing is lying to you; passing off fiction as though it were fact and hiding behind the lack of evidence (which makes it difficult for you to find out the truth). 

This lack of evidence/references/substantiation is a common tactic in the dissemination of detritus. It's effect is twofold.

Firstly, it makes it very hard to get to the bottom of what is being said. 
The reason why good factual writing contains references and bibliographies is so you, the reader can not only check the validity of what is being said, the original author(s) of referenced work get the correct accreditation but more importantly, you also are given avenues for further reading to better your knowledge of the topic. 

Secondly; It asks something of you that no factual writing should ever ask - to believe what is being written; to take what you have read as fact simply because it is presented as such. 

What counts is not what sounds plausible, not what we would like to believe, not what one or two witnesses claim, but what is supported by hard evidence rigorously and skeptically examined. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

- Carl Sagan

~

Thank you for reading as always.
A.R. Bell 2015

#LogicShotgun

@ARB_itrary

Conspiracy Theorists and the Edge of Reason.

Recognising a Conspiracy Theorist and other bad thinking.

When considered, the title Conspiracy “Theorist” might lead someone to believe that what this person thinks is somehow based in fact and evidence. The word ‘theory’ rings synonymous with scientific research to many people; theorising is something learned intellectuals do. However, when one goes deeper into the opinionated and fallacy filled world of conspiracy theorists it becomes clear that the title in itself appears rather oxymoronic. Conspiracy Theorists, or perhaps a better title; Conspiracy 'Assumptionists', come in all shapes and sizes but like most Assumptionists (Creationists, Anti-‘Vaxers’, etc) there are common trends which make then easily identifiable. Furthermore, it stops you wasting your time trying to discuss things with them. It seems that in recent times the internet has become full of these self-styled Assumptionists, maybe it is the lax rules for joining the internet; one only needs a router an something capable of connecting to it after all, there is no entrant’s exam. Maybe it’s the lack of decent training in Critical Thinking. Maybe it has something to do with gullibility and how suggestible certain people are.

There are certainly links between gullibility and conspiracy Assumptionist behaviours, indeed, Stephen Greenspan defined gullibility as referring to  “...a pattern of being duped, which repeats itself in different settings, even in the face of warning signs”¹. It could be fairly argued that Conspiracy Assumptionists are prone to believing wild and inconceivable things despite the evidence that points to the opposite. Though there is indeed little research around the area of gullibility, so we shall have to suffice with sighting the warning signs before getting sucked into a world of crop circles, chem-trails, far reaching government conspiracies and Big Pharma.

The trend usually starts with an outright rebuttal of established fact/s. However, on closer inspection one will discover that it is not a rebuttal proper. It is more a cobbled together group of assumptions that vaguely (strongly, in the mind of the Conspiracy Assumptionist) support each other by way of very select and cherry picked evidence, outward denial of contrary evidence and various forms of confirmation biases and logical fallacies. Here I have compiled a top X of things to look out for...

1) Use of unqualified statements of fact. 

You've all heard it "Vaccines cause Autism"², "At least 33% of people have been abducted by Aliens", "It it well known that...". Unsubstantiated statements of fact are the enemy of intelligent discussion and debate. A Conspiracy Assumptionist will come out with some truly wild claims, however, they will never back them up and if they do it will be with...

 2) "Spurious References" 

If a Conspiracy Assumptionist ever does back up a wild claim it will be from a very select source; one that ultimately is heavily biased in favour of their position on the subject. It will almost never be and academic source and if it is they will cherry pick it, typically you can expect to see Blogs, Conspiracy websites and YouTube videos cited as "references" or as they like to call it; "proof". Yes, the Bible/Quran falls under this heading too – just because it’s old and millions of people think they are right does not mean they actually are (argument from popularity and anachronistic thinking).

3) Higher conspiracies as an avoidance of facts. 

Often when challenged about some fact they will retort not with a qualification but a get out clause "it's a [government] conspiracy". What they mean to say is that they have no clue what they are talking about; therefore it must be a conspiracy.

4) The "TRUTH". 

The majority of Conspiracy Assumptionists are obsessed with the truth. But their truth and actual reality are very different things. What constitutes as “truth” to a Conspiracy Assumptionist is anything that supports their argument. Anything that doesn't support their argument is a conspiracy.

5) Lack of Reason and Logic 

Conspiracy Theorists have one agenda; to push their agenda and ignore everything else. They are not interested in discussion unless it supports their argument; they are not interested in debate unless it concludes that they are right. During a debate or discussion you can expect to see a good load of logical fallacies fielded in support of their claims (see; list of logical fallacies most encountered when discussion something with a Conspiracy Assumptionist). 

6) Mixing philosophic and subjective 'experiences' with established logic and/or scientific facts. 

This is used as a way to interpret something which would not typically fall within the sphere of a particular subject in order to support an argumentative position on that subject. You’ll often find things like quantum mechanics cropping up in places that it has no place in, like a philosophical debate about ethics. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle seems to be a favourite, the Conspiracy Assumptionist of course ignoring the fact that it has nothing to do with uncertainty or probability in a general sense. Thermodynamics and laws of entropy, because of their links to the mathematical concept of chaos, are often fielded wildly out of context as well.

7) Ad-hominen. 

When all else fails with the Assumptionist don’t be surprised when they start hurling abuse in your direction; “you’re just f*cking ignorant”, “you wouldn’t know the truth if it f*cked you in the ass”, “why don’t you do your reading you f*ggot” are just some of my favourites.   

8) Esotericism. 

Nothing inflates the Conspiracy Assumptionist ego quite like the belief that they know something that no one else does. What they have actually done, however, is usually one of two things; either they have misinterpreted something to such a degree that it has become something that often bares little or no resemblance to the original thing or they will have simply made it up completely.

9) Cognitive Dissonance. 

Overtones of the ongoing conflict with reality will really start to ring when the Conspiracy Assumptionist is challenged heavily; when they begin to run out of answers and don’t know enough about their own subjects to comment on it. Some truly believe what they are saying, like devout creationists, for most their investment in what they believe is not so strong and the cracks of the conflict of what they think is true and what actually is true will start to open.  

10) Making up their own “reference” material. 

Nothing pleases a conspiracy Assumptionist more than being able to cite various references as proof of their assertions. This leads back to the spurious reference material and quite often a Conspiracy Assumptionist will point their opponent to their own blog/YouTube channel/website as a place to find supporting evidence for their position. In these places one will typically find copy-pasted materials or opinions from other biased sources. Creationism has gone a step further and has an “academic” Journal; the Journal of Creation. Which claims to feature “in-depth, peer-reviewed comment, reviews and the latest research findings that relate to origins and the biblical account of Creation”³. Naturally their peer-review process is in complete support of the biblical creation account rendering the entire publication extremely biased in favour of creationism. Subsequently, outside of Creationism The Journal of Creation is generally not considered to be a reliable academic source for anything other than religious opinion.

11) Parroting.  

Because a Conspiracy Assumptionist typically has one agenda (to push theirs) and sources all their information from very select sources that agree with their opinions when asked to expand on a topic they are discussion or debating they simply cannot; usually they end up parroting what they have already said, some of the more creative ones will change some words and rearrange the sentences but it will still be a carbon copy of what they have already said.

In summation

One thing you may have noticed about this little list is that there is one glaringly obvious trend running though everything; bad thinking. There is a reason why people often fall into the bad thinking hole and seem not to want to, or be able to, climb out again. The reasons were discussed in an article by Joel Achenbach, in March 2015, in the National Geographic. In relation to scientific method he tells us that quite often it leads us to conclusions which are not only hard to swallow but are also inherently counter intuitive. When, in the 17^th century, Galileo claimed that the Earth spins on an axis and orbits the sun he was not just refuting established doctrine – he was asking people to believe something that defied common sense – it looks like the sun goes around the Earth.

Most people’s understanding of the world comes from personal experience and anecdotes, writes Achenbach. We prefer to rely on stories rather than statistical evidence. We are prone to rejecting things that counter common sense as concluded in a study by Andrew Shtulman⁴ which showed that even people who were professional scientists still had to think a bit before responding true or false to questions like “Does the Earth orbit the Sun?” (counter-intuitive). While questions such as “Does the moon orbit the Earth?” (intuitive) were answered with much less thought.

People like to feel safe; whether that is in their home, while on holiday or in the comfort of their mind.  Personal experience and anecdotes are safe, they do not require going out on a limb or into the unknown. If they surround themselves with supporting “evidence” and like-minded people they can extend that wall of safety that protects them from anything that might infringe on their world view. This is why, when challenged, a Conspiracy Assumptionist will simply retreat to a position of safety by parroting or resorting to fallacious evidence and arguments. They are not trying to convince you that they are right as much as they are trying to reaffirm their position for themselves. 

Does this grant them some concession in logical discussion or debate however? 

No. Every instance of fallacy or bad thinking should be called out and challenged.

Commonly encountered Conspiracy Assumptionists;Though there are essentially distinct areas of conspiracy thinking many cross over and the assumptions in place in one will be present in a different form in the others as well.

Creationists – Odd though it may seem, Creationists absolutely fit under the umbrella of Conspiracy Assumptionists for the fact that they display all of the qualities above.

Crop-Circle believers – This, in a way, fits under the Alien Theorists category, but some have differing views about what causes crop circles.

Alien Theorists – No I do not mean those that support and make an effort to understand the work of the SETI institute, I mean the ones who believe ardently the stories of abduction and probing.

Government Conspircists – This often rears its head as an outward rejection of the government or ‘system’ as a dysfunctional machine that requires urgent resolution. Though this may or may not be true in some cases, the Conspiracy Assumptionist when pressed will rarely if ever provide an effective alternative. They much prefer to pick holes rather than solve the issues they complain about.

Refuters of Established Education – This often comes as extension of the greater government conspiracy and shares much of the same thinking; again preferring to poke holes in established education rather than seek an effective alternative. Oddly enough, many Conspiracy Assumptionists seem not to have had much experience with established education. 

Commonly Encountered Fallacies

Confirmation Bias – Searching for only that which confirms ones preconceptions about a topic or point. People who quote the bible in support of the bible for instance show astounding amounts of confirmation bias.

Strawmen – Misinterpreting the opponent’s argument in order to make it easier to attack.

X: “We should have tighter gun laws”

Y: “No, we shouldn’t. Because then crime would run rampant if people were not allowed the right to defend themselves.”

Y has exaggerated X’s position for the sole purpose of attempting to make it harder to defend - X did not say anything about restricting people’s rights to defend themselves.

False-Dichotomy – When someone proposes that there are only two options, when there are in fact more. Probably one of the most famous false-dichotomies ever was made by President Bush in 2001 when addressing Congress. The infamous words were of course “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”.

Reductio ad Hitlerum – Where someone makes an observation that their opponent’s views are comparable to that of Hitler or the Nazi part. Essentially this is a form of ad hominen.

X: “Well I honestly think that Atheism gives us a better and clearer world view”

Y: “Hitler was an atheist you know”.

Ignoratio elenchi - Presenting an argument that may or may not be valid but nonetheless fails to address the point/topic; an irrelevant conclusion.

X: A Welshman smashed into my car the other day; I’d like to use the unwritten law allowing an Englishman to kill a Welshman with a longbow.

Y: No judge is going to recognise that unwritten law.

X: Well, they should.

Whether the any judge should recognise it is irrelevant, the point is that murder is illegal under the current judicial system.

Argumentum ad lipidem – Dismissing something as absurd or outrageous without providing proof of its absurdity.

Historian’s Fallacy - Occurs when one assumes that decision makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision.

Argumentum ad ignorantiam - It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option; which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false.

Argumentum ad infinitum – Constant repetition of the argument until no one cares to discuss it further. Once this point is reached the person repeating the argument assumes victory. The most common reason people resort to argumentum ad infinitum is that they have no other means of supporting their position.

~

A good counter to a suspected logical fallacy is Reductio ad Absurdum or to ‘reduce to absurdity’. When a suspected fallacious argument is analysed, or reduced, into its logical parts it will more often than not reduce to absurdity; take the following example borrowed from (http://www.logicallyfallacious.com):

X: I am going into surgery tomorrow so please pray for me. If enough people pray for me, God will protect me from harm and see to it that I have a successful and speedy recovery.

Now to reduce - We first assume the premise is true: if “enough” people prayed to God for her successful surgery and speedy recovery, then God would make it so.  From this, we can deduce that God responds to popular opinion.  However, if God simply granted prayers based on popularity contests, which would be both unjust and absurd.  Since God cannot be unjust, then he cannot both respond to popularity and not respond to popularity, the claim is absurd, and thus false.

Please share this and help to stop the rampant spread of stupidity, because ultimately, it affects us all.

Democracy does not mean- “my ignorance is just as good as your fact”.

~

¹ Greenspan, S., (2009). The Annuls of Gullibility; why we get duped and how to avoid it. Praeger Publishing: Westport.

² The doomed paper by Andrew Wakefield that linked MMR vaccines to Autism was thoroughly debunked and called out on its fraudulent conclusion. If you’re of a scientific bent you might still like to view the paper though; http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.pdf

³ http://creation.com/journal-of-creation

⁴ Shtulman, A., & Harrington, K. (in press). Tensions between science and intuition across the lifespan. Topics in Cognitive Science. Sourced: http://sites.oxy.edu/shtulman/vitae.html

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Written by A.R Bell 2015