This is the eighth in our series of posts about types of predictions. We saved the most deceptive for last. God hates lies. Lies are an abomination to God. Lies oppose God. Sometimes, ungodly thinkers commit fallacies of prediction to oppose God. This quote explains one level of prediction. Some levels of prediction are helpful. Others are deceptive. Speaking about predictions without pointing out the difference between various levels of prediction is deceptive. It’s an equivocation fallacy and a package deal fallacy. You can look those up in The Encyclopedia of Logical Fallacies free for download from RealReality.org.
<quote from Real Faith & Reason, vol 2>
Level-7 Predictions:
Level-seven predictions pretend to prove theories, but they’re actually affirming-the-consequent fallacies and Texas-sharpshooter fallacies.
Examples:
Evolutionists’ predictions are level-7 predictions. If an observation proved a theory, the theory would no longer be a theory. We could see it. We could watch it. It would be an observable scientific fact.
Imagine a scenario. You’re in your bedroom, and you hear a crash in front of your house where you had parked your car on the road. In your mind, you form a theory that someone has crashed into your car. But the theory is gone as soon as you look outside to see a cement truck just demolished your car. Observation replaces the theory, so observation can eliminate a theory by either confirming it or showing it false. The theory stopped being a theory. The theory was no longer theoretical. All theories are theoretical, so the theory vanishes. You have an observed fact. Your car has merged with a cement truck. You can see it.
However, we can’t confirm or falsify some claims by observation because we can’t observe them. For example, we can’t observe events of the distant past repeatedly or confirm the observations by multiple witnesses.
Ed, the owner of a small gas station in the 1960s, owned a phone booth on his property. He controlled the light in the phone booth from a switch in the gas station. When someone came into the phone booth at night, Ed would wait for a while and then switch off the light. The person in the phone booth would react by doing something like pounding on the door, rattling the door, tapping the light, or hitting the phone. It didn’t matter. Ed watched and flipped the light back on and waited a while before turning the light off again. The person repeated what “worked” the first time to turn the light back on. Ed never disappointed these people. Whatever they did the first time “worked” the second, third, and every time after that since Ed watched and turned the switch back on.
Each of these people predicted a way to turn the light back on. “If I pound on the door (or whatever), the light will go back on.” They each tested their hypotheses. They verified them. They thought their hypotheses were valid theories. Then, they converted their theories into facts in their minds.
This story doesn’t mean God is tricking us by creating a false cause and effect. It does mean we often think one cause is responsible when that cause isn’t responsible. God doesn’t trick us. We trick ourselves. Persuaders trick us. Satan tricks us.
Affirming the consequent tricks us. What is affirming the consequent? We covered it earlier, but it’s tricky, so we’ll cover it again. It’s saying, “If such and so is true, I would expect or predict this other thing.” We could write that like this:
If A is true, I would predict to see B.
I see B.
Therefore, A is true.
That sounds like it makes sense, but it doesn’t. Consider the following classic example.
If it’s raining outside, I would predict the sidewalk would be wet.
The sidewalk is wet.
Therefore, it’s raining outside.
Here’s the problem. It’s not raining outside. Someone sprayed the sidewalk with a hose. There could be another cause. Affirming the consequent tricks us.
Since scientists can’t observe their stories about the distant past, they have a problem. They want to confirm them. They like those stories. What do they do. They affirm the consequent. They say, “If the stories of evolutionism were true, I would expect to see rock layers with fossils in the rock layers sorted from smaller and simpler to larger and more complex. I almost observe that. Therefore, the stories of evolutionism are true.” Just like the hose and the sidewalk, another explanation exists. God says He brought a worldwide flood about 4,000 years ago. That flood predicts the same rock layers and fossils. And what we see looks more like a worldwide flood than billions of years.
<end quote>
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