Is there a Sherlock Holmes Fallacy?
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
This quote belongs to Sherlock Holmes, the famous fictional, hyper-rationalist detective imagined by the ironically anti-rationalist, paranormal-believing Arthur Conan Doyle, who was for a time friends with skeptic Harry Houdini and who at least one historian has linked to the infamous Piltdown Man hoax of 1912 that creationists are still citing as some great evidence that Evolution is a massive scientific conspiracy.
Though interestingly, in 2002, Sherlock Holmes was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry — the only fictional character so honoured — in appreciation of his contributions to forensic investigation.[7]
Anyway, here Steven Novella improves upon the logic of the famous Holmes quote. (though his is perhaps less poetic):
“Within the set of known phenomena, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true. If the entire set of known phenomena are eliminated as impossible, then the solution is simply uknown until a new phenomena that can serve as a solution is positively established.”
What is the “Ancient Code?” And is it the key to unlock the mysteries of existence? – “Ancient Code” is another crappy movie jumping on “The Secret” and “What The Bleep” bandwagons of New Age nonsense that’s also trying to market itself as being like “The Da Vinci Code” but true. As they say on the website:
“It’s bigger than The Secret, more powerful than What the Bleep, more dangerous than The Da Vinci Code, and this will affect us all… because it’s real…”
Hmm. I wonder if the secret to unlocking the mysteries of the universe revolves around ending sentences with unnecessary ellipses to pretentiously suggest the infinite possibilities.
ATHEIST NEWS
RichardDawkins.net is banned in Turkey – This is the post that led to the ban.
Cowardly creationist picks on PZ Myers’ daughter
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
Flightless Bird Evolution Theories Challenged – “Large flightless birds of the southern continents – African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi – do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed. Instead, each species individually lost its flight after diverging from ancestors that did have the ability to fly, according to new research conducted in part by University of Florida zoology professor Edward Braun.” -Damn, I’m going to have to listen to creationist propaganda about how this one correction debunks all of evolution for some reason.
September 20, 2008 at 5:26 am |
[...] weeks ago, I posted that RichardDawkins.net has been banned in Turkey by Muslim creationists. Well now those Muslim creationists are trying to explain their side of the [...]