Spot the logical fallacy

This week I've spotted a couple of daft articles and letters that demonstrate the general lack of critical thinking around today.

The first one was in the National Trust magazine. There were a couple of letters in response to a recent NT article on gardening by the phases of the moon. On the face of it, it sounds a bit weird, but should be testable.

I found a couple of interesting resources on moon-planting. One is a calendar that advises which things to plant according to the phase of the moon and other astrological signs.

Here's the letter

I was interested in the article on planting by the moon. This is something I've been doing for years - and have been teased because of it! But I swear by the method Ed Ikin described, and to prove it, this year I planted some runner beans before the end of April - although the new moon was to be later in May. Result: only two beans germinated. I planted a second batch on 5 May and within less than a fortnight had 90 per cent germination. The best method is to cut the inside of a kitchen roll into three, fill with soil and pop a bean into each. The whole lot can then be planted with little disturbance to the roots.

Apart from the obvious point that the second batch were planted at a later date (probably warmer condition, though it's hard to tell in this country), it's so typical that someone will try a particular technique, find it works and then prescribe the success to that technique without considering the other factors at play.

The other item was in my local paper, The Weston Mercury. It concerned the sad story of a couple who have both recently contracted cancer. She was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins lymphoma in November 2007 and he was diagnosed with leukaemia in February 2008. It's an awful thing to happen to anyone - my dad died of cancer, but the reason for the story being in the paper was that they claim that their illnesses result from being caught up in the Asian tsunami in 2004.

They say they can

trace their ill health back to the day when they were forced to shelter on an iron roof after the wave struck.

They

asked doctors if there could be a link - they told her it was possible but nothing could be proved

The wife says

I'm convinced it has something to do with it. Before the tsunami I was fit and healthy, but afterwards I was having five or six weeks off work at a time...It was like I had my immune system lowered. I would get ill all the time

 

The husband says

I'm a bit more scientific about it, but the tsunami is the only common factor. Everything has gone downhill since that date and we have not been able to pull ourselves out of it

It's a weird kind of non-story. They don't appear to be trying to gain anything from the story, just stating what they think is to blame for their illnesses.

Maybe cancer can be triggered by stress, maybe not. I'm not doctor (well, not that sort of doctor). The point in both these cases is that people seem to be happier if they can find some pattern or reason for what happens to them or around them. I'm there are more than one logical fallacy in each of these cases, but they definitely seem to come under post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. assuming that a temporal relationship between two event implies a causal relationship.

More business for Claims Direct?

Now here's an interesting development...

The church of scientology is being taken to court in France for 'organized fraud'. There are some more details in here on the BBC and here in the Washington Post. This particular case is related to a woman being persuaded to hand over money in return for items such as courses and books that would, I guess, improve her mental and spiritual condition. She then claimed that these were fraudulent. I'm not really up on scientology, but are their claims for the wellbeing of their 'clients' significantly different to that of any other religion?

Would it be possible to sue the church of scientology if their claims were accepted to be true? Would it be equally possible to sue some other religions based on their claims?

Leave them kids alone

As the parent of a child who attends a local village school (and a second one starting this week) that has the misfortune to be Church of England Voluntary Controlled, I was concerned to see this report from the National Secular Society. We don't send our children to a VC school out of choice - the church controls almost all village schools in the area. In fact, a quick check on the net shows that there are 7 primary/first schools in the area and they are all controlled by the Church of England. To compound the problem, the middle school and secondary school that take children from the area are also C of E.

The history of the VC and VA (Voluntary Aided) status seems to be a hangover from the donation of land or buildings by the church in the distant past. The annoying thing is that the church still gets a say in the running of the school and the appointment of teachers even though they don't contribute anything towards the upkeep of the school or the teachers' salaries. The money comes from our taxes

The report from the NSS shows that the government are trying to make the situation worse. It's bad enough that the schools are obliged to employ a teacher who can teach RE. Now a proposed change in the law makes it possible for a VC school to restrict the post of head teacher to someone who has the 'right' religious views. Previously, it was not permitted for a school to restrict the head post to so-called 'reserved teacher'. The actual definition in the Act (School Standards and Framework Act 1998) is

(5) If the school is a voluntary aided school—

(a) preference may be given, in connection with the appointment, remuneration or promotion of teachers at the school, to persons—

(i) whose religious opinions are in accordance with the tenets of the religion or religious denomination specified in relation to the school under section 69(4), or

(ii) who attend religious worship in accordance with those tenets, or

(iii) who give, or are willing to give, religious education at the school in accordance with those tenets; and

(b) regard may be had, in connection with the termination of the employment of any teacher at the school, to any conduct on his part which is incompatible with the precepts, or with the upholding of the tenets, of the religion or religious denomination so specified.

The proposed law change means that it is possible for a school to reserve the head teacher role for someone who meets the criteria above. So, now the head teacher has to live a 'Christian' life in and out of school and if the governors of the school decide so, no non-Christian would be allowed to take the role of head. By the way, the local vicar always gets a seat on the board of governors.

To be fair in our case, the amount of religion that the children are 'taught' is minimal and so far we have managed to counter it in our son by letting him know that people believe lots of different things and that you shouldn't believe something just because someone important tells you that it is true. He knows that we don't believe in god, but we aren't telling him what to think, just that he is allowed to work it out for himself.

There has been a lot of discussion in the media over the last few weeks about faith schools (like here and here). A big problem I have with the supporters of faith schools is when they talk about the ethos of the school as if there are certain aspects of behaviour, ethics  or morality that could be taught in a religious context. I've found through a recent diocesan inspection of our local school that you pick out all the good bits, like politeness, good manners and hard work and call them Christian values. Parents who send their children to religious schools do so because they appear to get better results. Of course, allowing a school to select its pupils on any grounds gives it the opportunity to weed out less able pupils and less interested (and possibly less wealthy) parents. The sooner we removed all religion from schools (apart from some healthy Comparative Religion classes), the better. If anyone can provide some evidence that faith schools are better because of their faith, then I'd like to see it.

The Genius of Charles Darwin

Just watched the 3rd part of The Genius of Charles Darwin (presented by Richard Dawkins) and I must say that this was Richard's best TV performance yet.The tone and pace of the programme was perfect. I'm now getting less frustrated by the collection of ignorant creationists, as Richard's technique of letting them talk their way into deeper and deeper holes just makes them look like the idiots they are.

I was not impressed by the wishy-washy science teachers who didn't want to offend the feelings of their students by emphasizing the truth of scientific evidence over the 'evidence' of their religious beliefs.

I thought the segment with the Archbish of C was quite funny. He really was squirming when Richard pushed him on whether he thought that the virgin birth was a scientific fact and all but admitted that his views were a bit silly and didn't make any sense as a truthful representation of the world. It was good of him to appear on the programme, but if he is the top guy in the C of E, then we don't have much to worry about!

Why does ethics have to equal religion?

I've been keeping a close eye on the lead up to the US elections. I'm not sure whether I've become more politically aware, or whether I've just been following more US blogs and podcasts over the last few months. One story that I spotted today was on the good old BBC, however. It was a debate between McCain and Obama. Nothing unusual so far. The odd thing in this case was that it was billed as a 'religious forum', hosted by the pastor of a mega church (that phrase makes me shudder) called Rick Warren.

The reports I've read so far don't really spell out why the questions asked of the candidates were particularly religious and why they couldn't have equally been asked in a secular context on the ethical and moral beliefs of the two men. Abortion, same-sex marriage, teen pregnancies and, more personally, "What was your greatest moral failure?", "Who are the three wisest people in your life?", "Why do you want to be president?".

Why do questions like this need to be asked in a religious setting? If I wanted to vote for someone, I would want to know how he came to hold his views on a particular subject. If somebody is against same-sex marriage or abortion in any situation, then I'd expect to hear reasonable argument about why that is a sensible position to hold. Just saying "That's my position because my religion says so" doesn't give me a lot of confidence in someone who has to make important decisions based on many sources of evidence and opinion.

To pick out one of these "moral" issues, I find the obsession with same-sex marriage particularly annoying. Apart from the obvious point that it's nothing to do with anyone else, the argument often seems to over a matter of semantics. Obama was quoted as saying that marriage should only be a "union between a man and a woman", but he supported same-sex civil unions. If there is no legal difference between a marriage and a civil union, then is the argument just over m-word? Some even argue that the only true marriage is a religious one. Of course, what they mean by this is a Christian marriage ceremony, pushing away other religions as well as secularists.

I once heard someone from one of the humanist organizations suggesting that we could leave the word 'marriage' as the description for the Christian ceremony and everyone still goes has to go through a civil process to formalize their union. At first I thought this was a good idea. Of course, everyone would still refer to the civil unions as 'marriages' and 'weddings', whatever the formal designation. The other reason it would be a bad idea is that marriage didn't ever start off with religious connotations. Marriages were going on long before it became a Christian ceremony in the Middle Ages. The Romans even had legal same-sex marriages!

It would be interesting if any politican who made a statement on a moral matter actually explained why they held that view rather than just refering to the standard line of the party they belong to or the religion they happened to be born into.

Atheist Blogroll

My blog has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

Name that tune

When I was watching the Olympic highlights on the BBC yesterday, I thought I recognized the music they were playing. I realised that it was Hong Kong Garden by Siouxie and the Banshees (incidentally, the first single I ever bought), but played in a plinky-plonky Chinese style. I wonder what they are planning for London 2012? Anarchy in the UK performed by the London Symphony Orchestra?