The arguments from analogy and their ridiculous (ab)use

laguna117
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The arguments from analogy and their ridiculous (ab)use

We see a lot of arguments from analogy in atheist vs theist discussion. I saw the "trouble with atheism" video on youtube (a british report) which abused it ridiculously by comparing science to religion, darwin being the prophet and "the origin" being the bible.

 Analogy arguments are often sophistic. This is much more a "metaphor" but not a real analogy. The characteristics of religion is that the sacred text, by definition, is sacred, whereas Darwin's work is considered a major advance in biology, but not unquestionnable at all. If you read evolution theory papers of the last 80 years, most papers published and acclaimed are the one which contradicts the details of the basic theory. Scientists are more than happy to be able to question this so-called "sacred book" (see the Neutral theory of evolution e.g.) and thus the analogy stops here. The only thing which is really unchanged since the book was published is the fact that life DOES evolves, but merely because it's such an obvious and observable fact (and it was actually hypothesized before darwin).

 So i would like to use this thread to discuss the analogy arguments and to express their fragility. Theists, you should stop using them, it really doesn't make a lot of sense in most cases and proves ignorance more than anything else.

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.


triften
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See Also: The Watchmaker

See Also: The Watchmaker Analogy.

It doesn't work because unlike watches, we've only seen one universe and no universe factories.

-Triften