Logical Fallacies
The Fallacy of False-cause
(Also known as the “Reductio ad Hitlerum” and closely linked with the Fallacy of Irrelevance)
It is committed when someone concludes an incorrect cause-and-effect relationship between two events. For example: “Fossils can be arranged in sequence from simpler to more complex. It is therefore clear that the more complex forms evolved from the simpler forms“. The fact that some fossils come before others in a sequence does not imply that they caused the others. Another example “Creation is becoming more popular in the United States, and test scores are dropping dramatically. Clearly creationism is destructive to education!“. The idea that the first event caused the second does not follow, and so the argument is a false-cause fallacy.
It is committed when someone concludes an incorrect cause-and-effect relationship between two events. For example: “Fossils can be arranged in sequence from simpler to more complex. It is therefore clear that the more complex forms evolved from the simpler forms“. The fact that some fossils come before others in a sequence does not imply that they caused the others. Another example “Creation is becoming more popular in the United States, and test scores are dropping dramatically. Clearly creationism is destructive to education!“. The idea that the first event caused the second does not follow, and so the argument is a false-cause fallacy.
