[Topics: Evolutionary Biology, Logic, Logical Fallacy]
The Microevolution Fallacy:

How a Mistake in Formal Logic Provides Otherwise Scientific Minds a Basis for Denying Evolution

 

Introduction:

Alfred Russel Wallace - microevolution macroevolution - philosophy of evolution denial - I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist - Frank Turek and Norman GeislerToday’s article is fairly straightforward, as it deals with an exercise in philosophy’s bedrock: logic and argumentation. The actual content of what follows concerns the fields of biology and religious apologetics, but you don’t need any background in either in order to understand it. All that is required is an attention to the arguments themselves.

In particular, this article refutes a rebuttal that is present in religious apologetics in response to modern experimental evidence for evolution by natural selection.[1] But I’ll be focusing on the philosophical and logical angle, and leaving most of the relevant scientific responses in the footnotes.

In light of such evidence, one prominent response from those who seek to deny evolution as an account for speciation of all extant life (including humans) is to grant that such evolution occurs without granting that it occurs on a large scale; such an individual would contend that what has been proven is not evolution per se, but merely microevolution. But taking this path means committing a simple logical error by failing to follow a line of thinking to its conclusion.

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[Topics: Evolutionary Biology, Logic, Logical Fallacy]
The Microevolution Fallacy:

How a Mistake in Formal Logic Provides Otherwise Scientific Minds a Basis for Denying Evolution

was last modified: March 19th, 2023 by Daniel Podgorski