Truth. The word itself is controversial. Everyone seems to know what the truth is but universal agreement is in short supply. Of course there are things that we can all agree on, such as if you drop something it will fall towards the ground, or if you cut off a person's head they will die. You don't need faith in gravity for it to work on you, and disembodied heads have not miraculously sprouted new bodies. But as things get harder to understand, theories harder to prove, and evidence harder to come by, the truth about such things becomes more and more uncertain. Which makes it all the more odd that things which are either highly unlikely, or simply impossible to prove, are accepted by some as gospel truth. In a logical world, the more evidence supporting a theory, the more likely that theory is to being true, and thus the more confidence a person should invest in that theory. Likewise, theories with little or no solid supporting evidence should be viewed as weak and should inspire little confidence. But we do not live in a logical world.

The mind learns through conditioning, and any belief no matter how absurd can be accepted by a mind that is properly conditioned. Continual reinforcement is one method. If you are told something over and over again, with little or no exposure to opposing points of view, you will come to believe it. If you are told something over and over again and it is accompanied by some sort of reward you will come to believe it faster. This is all well understood. The ritual of saying grace before dinner is almost identical to the method Pavlov used to condition his dogs, but instead of salivating when a bell is rung, believers are conditioned to feel blessed when they are penitent. Through ritual, the abstract concept of a god is conditioned to be associated with all things that are good. Out of nothing, the word "God" gains meaning.

A single dramatic and deeply moving event is another method of conditioning. Often these events are brought about by extreme stress which puts the mind into an extremely vulnerable state. Things which relieve such stress bring about a powerful form of conditioning. A person who prays and prays for deliverance will have his faith reinforced when the dilemma causing them stress is removed or simply goes away, and the more miraculous appearing the deliverance, the stronger the resultant conditioning. Non- believers who are suffering from trying times often break down and embrace a deity, an act which in itself can relieve stress by simply letting go of worries and concerns. The feeling of relief is very real and becomes associated with the belief in a deity, and thus the conditioning creates a link between salvation and submission to a deity. Furthermore extreme stress can often result in a powerful psychological release, which combines extreme emotions, visions, hearing voices, and other psychical oddities as the stress breaks through its containment and forges new pathways in the mind. To the faithful these are known as religious experiences. To the neurologist they are known as temporal lobe seizures. These mechanisms have nothing to do with the truth, but they can serve to reinforce a belief within the mind of such strength that removal of that belief is impossible, even under extreme torture. Many believers have been put to death for refusing to give up their beloved bullshit.

But "truths" that are less well conditioned can be questioned, doubted, and removed from one's mental faculties. It would be best if all "truths" could be removed if enough facts to the contrary were discovered, but sometimes the mind allows for beliefs to be grafted permanently into its neural pathways. For all other beliefs, it would be best to organize them using a logical, methodical, and reasonable approach. But few things in this world are presented in ways which are logical, methodical, and reasonable, and so it is always good to understand the ways in which bullshit is sold as truth, given how commonplace these ways have become. For the following examination I will borrow heavily from Carl Sagan's excellent book "The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark", in particular the chapter on "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection". This should be required reading for everyone wishing to engage in critical thinking.

The following are fallacies that are often used to support untenable positions:

Argument from authority. We all respect the opinions of learned or powerful people, but we should never let them get away with convincing us of something without proving it. This is common sense but too often we give authority figures the benefit of the doubt. The biggest danger of believing authority figures without questioning them is that a cult of personality can gather about those figures. Asking questions is a necessary part of holding someone's power in check, and no leader should be permitted to wield unchecked power. Religion plays a dual role in supporting this fallacy, first by conditioning people to put complete trust in an all powerful figure (a god or a messenger or instrument of a god), and second by conditioning people to champion the cause of martyrs. When the authority figure is shown to be right, he is seen as righteous and he is supported. When the authority figure is under attack, he is seen as a martyr and he is defended. Battles between rival authority figures exacerbate these tendencies and drive people to support their leaders unquestioningly, surrendering their power to their leader in order to combat the growing power of the other.

Argument from adverse consequences. This is also known as fear mongering. A nightmare scenario is given for any deviation from a given plan of action. For example, electing Bush to a second term will result in a nuclear war. Fear is a powerful tool and can make people more emotional and thus more vulnerable to bullshit. The fallacy of adverse consequences is very close to the fallacy of…

The excluded middle. This is where you take two extreme positions and present them as the only alternatives, generally presenting the extreme that you are arguing against as being potentially disastrous or extremely stupid. For instance, a politician can say that either spending must be cut or else the budget will rage out of control. Of course there are other possibilities, but if you only focus on two and force someone to pick one, they will inevitably pick the idea that is presented as more favorable. For example, "Do you support gun control or do you want all criminals to have guns?", is a question which completely obscures the many complexities and possibilities within the issue. The excluded middle argument goes hand in hand with…

The straw man argument. This is where you build up a caricature of the opposition and attack that caricature in order to support your side. Some talk show hosts have based their entire careers on attacking one or more straw men. Whether you call someone a Feminazi, a Limousine Liberal, a Jack-Boot Thug, or a Fascist Wannabe, you can always find someone who loosely fits your description and who holds an absurd position which you can use to make your position sound reasonable by comparison. For instance, you can argue against animal rights by bringing up the absurd view of one radical animal rights activist who said that all animals should be made to wear clothes. Then you can argue that all animal rights activists are people that cannot be reasoned with and should be ignored.

Note that the previous three fallacies are often found together in a single argument. A straw man is marched out who supports an extreme position which will bring disaster if it becomes public policy. Any compromise in the middle ground is excluded from the discussion and whatever alternative is being presented becomes the only right way of doing things. Note that the "only right way" may be every bit as extreme as the position being attacked, but a good presentation can make it seem mainstream.

The slippery slope. This fallacy is assuming that if one concession is given up for a particular issue, all manner of extremes in the same vein will soon be conceded. For instance, a slippery slope argument would go as thus: if we allow gay marriage, the next thing you know we will be allowing incestuous marriage, polygamy, bestiality, and sexual abuse of children by allowing adults to marry them. This is a fallacy because people have always been able to set limits on things and enforce those limits. Allowing killing in self defense has not led to legalizing all forms of murder.

The confusion of causation and correlation. This is where two factors which are unrelated or linked to a third factor, are seen as one causing the other. For instance, believing that your favorite sports team plays worse when you are watching them on television, or believing that dogs howling causes the tide to come in (when both are caused by a full moon rising). A lot of superstitions come from people confusing unrelated events as being causes and effects and omens such as "If a fox runs into a public square, that town will be devastated", or "If a town is set on a hill, it will not be good for the dweller in that town", follow a similar illogic and make no sense whatsoever. Confusing causation and correlation becomes an easier mistake to make the more complex a system becomes. The human body is an extremely complex system and thus sorting out causes and effects can be extremely difficult. All too often symptoms are treated rather than their underlying causes. Similarly, things such as the economy, the ecosystem, and the interpretation of history are fraught with complications. It is easy to make a quick study of any of these subjects and draw erroneous conclusions.

Half truths. This is telling the truth only up to the point where it supports your position and not telling the rest. This is not a fallacy per se, and one can always claim ignorance when confronted, but it is a common way to abuse one's authority by appearing to have studied an issue while presenting a one-sided case. Omitting known evidence can be a surprisingly effective way of controlling people's beliefs, even in an open society, as the news media demonstrate on a daily basis. An equal fallacy, but not intentional, is drawing a conclusion without knowing all the facts. It's difficult to know everything about a subject, but a lack of knowledge doesn't stop a great many people from pretending to be an authority on a given matter.

A sample size of one. This is not necessarily a fallacy, but conclusions drawn from a small set of data, or just one example, will often be completely wrong. It is important to eliminate luck, spurious relationships, and random fluctuations in any study of cause and effect and using a large number of samples helps to minimize these things. But it is common for people to select one or a few examples of unusual occurrences and characterize them as being indicative of the whole. Discrimination of all kinds is often the result of the bad behavior of a single individual creating a stereotype in the minds of others. The most common usage of a sample size of one comes from people believing that their personal experiences are closer to reality than what anyone else claims is true. This fallacy is closely related to the half-truth fallacy in that a person who has seen very little of the world does not know enough to draw conclusions about it, but ego-centric people have no problems holding up their beliefs as being the truth and are often described as being "off in their own little world". If people talk about you in that way, it's time to reexamine your positions and why you hold them.

False analogy. This is simply making an analogy between two things that are not very similar. For instance, saying that our economy is like a train and that tax cuts are like fuel for the fire that makes it go faster. Analogies make things easier to understand but they can be abused to the point where they are completely irrelevant or just plain wrong. Be cautious when people try to dumb things down for you by using analogies. Analogies can easily obscure the truth.

Begging the question. This is also known as assuming the answer, where you ask a question in such a way that there only seems to be one answer. The classic example is "Who created the universe if it wasn't God?" It is already assumed in the question that someone created the universe, which inevitably leads to the answer: God did. Who else could it have been? But excluded from the question are any other possibilities for the existence of the universe. A good retort is to ask, "Who created God?", and then to use whatever answer is given, such as "God has always existed" as the answer to how the universe exists.

Ad hominem. This is attacking the person who presents an argument rather than the argument itself. Personal attacks should never be a part of any debate, but regrettably they are common. Generally these attacks are obvious, but more clever are the attacks on a person's credibility by bringing up their past arguments. While it is true that a person who has been wrong a lot in the past is more likely to be wrong now than a person who has been right a lot, past performance is not good enough by itself to decide an issue. A dumb guy might actually have the smartest idea once in a while. Also, personal attacks are often used to incite anger in one's opponent. Angry people tend not to think clearly and often make emotionally charged remarks which may be wrong or inconsistent. A clever debater can incite a person to make such comments and then disparage them for making those comments. It may appear as if the person who makes personal attacks on another is winning an argument, but in reality little is happening. When you hear personal attacks, it is best to simply ignore them, especially if they are directed at you.

Appeal to ignorance. This is to claim that something is true because it has not been proven false. You will often hear appeals to ignorance supported with the phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". While true, the fallacy which tends to follow is a shifting of the burden of proof. Can you prove that alien abductions do not happen? Can you prove that God does not exist? Can you prove that Santa Claus doesn't have a secret toy shop buried deep in the ice at the north pole? Of course you can't. You cannot prove a negative. But pointing towards a complete absence of credible evidence does little to discourage true believers. Conspiracy theories often fall into this category, where facts which seem to refute the conspiracy become evidence of a larger conspiracy. Theories which can always be modified so that no evidence ever produced can refute them fall into the final category…

Non-falsifiability. Non-falsifiable theories are like viruses of the mind. They are true castles in the sky: beautiful, defensible structures that are held aloft by no conclusive evidence whatsoever. Instead they are attached to an idea, like a belief in a god, or the notion that humans have souls, and around those ideas an elaborate web of explanations are woven which make every piece of data gathered seem to support the idea and which allow no data to contradict it. While it is true that a proven theory is one that has never been contradicted, a theory that cannot be refuted by any conceivable data is a fallacy. This is what sets scientific theories, which are by definition falsifiable, apart from others. Scientific theories, such as evolution, can be disproved by finding data which contradict that theory, such finding fossils from one epoch within layers of rock formed at a time that the animals could not have existed. There can be no such find which refutes the idea that a god simply designed everything, or any other non-falsifiable theory. In the case of the existence of a god, any evidence that can be found that seems to be contradictory or irrational can be explained away as being part a divine plan that humans are not intelligent enough to understand. But a good non-falsifiable theory has more than one explanation for things that seem out of place, and age-old religions have no shortage of explanations, arguments, and pieces of inconclusive evidence which are used to deflect refutations. One classic tool is a retreat into Solipsism where one can claim that there is no objective reality and that believing in something is enough to make it true. Due to the way the mind works, simply believing in a non-falsifiable theory is enough to make it seem true to the believer. As I previously wrote, non-falsifiable theories are like viruses of the mind. Once they are inside they are constantly reinforcing themselves since everything can be made to support the basic thesis. And since nothing can refute the thesis, the virus cannot be easily removed. Once a person is well versed in all the explanations that make a non-falsifiable theory feel well grounded, that person is infected for life, and can spread the affliction to others not yet inoculated.

Even if you know the common fallacies it is not easy to detect them. Most people take a passive role when they take in information, their brains falling into an alpha state where critical thinking takes place rarely if at all. So you must always be vigilant when you are exposed to information, especially information which you tend to agree with. Too often we let our prejudices color the information we see without thinking about it. We are too critical of what we do not like and not critical enough with what we do. This can often lead to hypocrisy as we can hold information to different standards depending on content.

I invite you to become familiar with these and other fallacies and encourage you to use them to examine your own beliefs and statements. If you are like me you will probably find that you use them more than you desire. Purging yourself of the need to use them is a positive step, and admitting when your knowledge is lacking is another good thing. Ask yourself how facts are supported, seek possible flaws and possibilities that are overlooked, and do not surrender your objectivity to anyone who seems to know what they're talking about, me included.

Once you become proficient at spotting fallacies, watching news and commercials will be a much different experience. You'll be surprised at the number of fallacies which are presented without any indication that something is wrong. Spokespeople are the worst, and "experts" used by the media to give insights are often so severely slanted that everything they say is a fallacy. A world full of bullshit will appear before your eyes, but don't blame me, I didn't create it. I only woke you up.

Finally, you should have been taking notes, since there is a test at the end of the lecture. Spot the fallacies in the following statements. The answers are after the commercial.

1. You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.

2. Don't trust the French, they are "surrender-monkeys".

3. Don't let the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud.

4. The WMDs exist, but they are so easy to hide that they can never be found.

5. Is the world a better place without Saddam Hussein?

6. Saddam Hussein is evil and thus would not hesitate to use WMDs against the US if he had them.

7. Saddam Hussein is like the Arab version of Hitler, thus we must stop him.

8. Iraqi's have welcomed US troops with open arms.

9. If we let Iraq be run by Muslim extremists then the whole middle east will end up as Islamic fundamentalist states.

10. As your president I have top secret information that Iraq has WMDs.

11. Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.

12. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi is cooperating because of the war in Iraq

13. God is on our side.