Re: Critique and refine my Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy argument please
- From: j.wilkins1@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins)
- Date: Sat, 10 May 2008 13:39:35 +1000
<bobbishtian@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi everyone,
This is going to be long, but I feel it's important.
I'm surprised to see that this the Texas sharpshooter fallacy isn't
used more against ID arguments since so many of them are guilty of it.
I'm in the process of making a video about it and posting it, but
would like your input on how to refine the argument so that even the
slowest people out there can comprehend it.
If you don't know what it is, the Texas sharpshooter fallacy
originates from a story about a guy, blindfolded, who fires a bullet
into the side of a barn. He then paints a target around the gun hole,
then claims to be a sharpshooter. By doing so, he made a completely
random event seem like it was non-random and caused by a skilled gun
man.
Another example would be a raffle. A million participants. The raffle
is drawn and Judy wins. However, Dan points out that the "odds of Judy
winning are a million to one. There's no way she could've won a
*random* draw by *accident*. She must have cheated and rigged the
raffle." Of course, the chances of anyone else winning the raffle was
also a million to one. If anyone else had won, Dan could've made the
same faulty argument and accused him/her of cheating. The truth is,
even if the chances of any individual winning is small, the chances of
*somebody* winning is 100% guaranteed. When the raffle was drawn,
somebody MUST win. Judy simply lucked out. Dan, paints a target around
Judy, then claims that she wasn't "shot" randomly, but rather by a non-
randomly by a cheating gunman. Again, Dan made a completely random
event seem non-random by placing emphasis/meaning to the outcome and
then calculating its odds.
So, several overarching creationist arguments make the same claim.
They say that "the odds of a protein sequence/gene sequence/the first
cell/the first multicellular organism/a fine-tuned universe/a tornado
sweeping through a junkyard assembling an airplane/etc. forming
*randomly* by *accident* is so small, it must have been rigged and
occurred non-randomly by design.
Taking a few examples, a gene sequence is GAAGTCCCAT, let's say is
part of the code for insulin. A 10 base sequence (for simplicity), and
4 different bases can be in each position, thus there are 4^10
different 10 base sequences out there. GAAGTCCCAT is one of them, and
thus, it has a 1 in 4^10 chance of forming "randomly." The creationist
would argue that because the odds of this particular sequence forming
randomly is so small, it must have been as a result of design. The
problem of course, like with the raffle, is that the chances of any
other 10 base sequence forming randomly is also 1 in 4^10. Equally
small. Just because you can assign meaning and function to the insulin
sequence doesn't make it any less likely to occur randomly than
another "meaningless, functionless" 10 base sequence. In the gene
raffle draw, even though the odds of any particular sequence winning
is small, the chances of one of these sequences winning is 100%
guaranteed. So long as the gene raffle takes place, randomly, one of
these 4^10 sequences was bound to win. The insulin sequence simply
lucked out, and it's not logical to claim it was rigged by design
simply because it has poor odds. (I'm also well aware that evolution
doesn't happen "randomly", so this argument goes out the window to
begin with, but I'm ignoring that for now and focusing on the fallacy)
As it was illogical for Dan to claim that "Judy's odds of winning were
a million to one. There's no way she could've won a *random* draw by
*accident*. She must have cheated and rigged the raffle." It's also
illogical to claim that "the odds of GAAGTCCCAT forming *randomly* by
*accident* is 4^10 to 1. Thus, someone must have cheated and designed
it."
Other arguments include the claim that "the chances that this universe
forming is so small, it must be designed, etc." Once again, we're
holding a raffle of the universes. Our universe has a sun, 8 planets,
a moon around the Earth etc. Universe X, which has twice the number of
stars, half as many galaxies than us, has purple planets with pink
rings, also participated in the raffle. Universe Y, which has more
pulsars and quasars, where the speed of light is twice as large, and
where all stars are binary, also participated in the raffle. And of
course, all the other different universe combinations also
participated in the raffle. The raffle was drawn, gases fly in all
directions and one of these resultant universes was bound to win the
raffle. Even if the chances of any particular universe coming into
existence is small, so long as the universe raffle took place, one of
these universes MUST win, guaranteed. Obviously, our universe won the
random raffle.
Just like Judy won the random raffle, so did our universe. It's a
Texas sharpshooter fallacy to claim that Judy's odds of winning are so
small, she must have cheated. And it's also the same fallacy to claim
that the odds of our universe winning is so small, someone must have
cheated and designed it.
All the other illogical claims fall into the same pattern.
So, I'd appreciate some critique so I can make this argument more
clear and convincing. I still feel that some people may not understand
it fully yet. Tell me any problems you see here, so I can better
explain it.
Thanks
Your second metaphor is known as the Lottery Paradox:
It is highly unlikely that I will win the lottery. Therefore I conclude
that I will not. Iterate for all members of the lottery, and conclude
that nobody will win the lottery.
Partly this is a problem of what are known to logicians as "equivalence
classes". Any single token of a class is unlikely but that doesn't mean
that *some* member of the class is unlikely - in fact some member of the
class might be inevitable.
In other words, it's unlikely that a particular organism will evolve, a
priori, but (given the existence of life) inevitable that *some*
organisms will (the same applies to intelligence - unlikely that *our*
intelligence would evolve, but likely that *some* would, as demonstrated
by corvids, parrots, and most social mammals).
By making the equivalence class contain only *one* sequence, the
creationist makes it almost impossible that something would evolve and
rejects evolution. But if one allows that there are a range of sequences
that can evolve, then it becomes nigh inevitable that one would, so why
not this one?
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
.
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