Problems With Logic

Some time ago, I read an essay on common problems that people face with logic, or thought processes. I wish I could remember where I read it (or even all of what it said), but it was interesting, and I will try to reproduce as much of it as I can:

Circular logic: circular logic basically starts with an assumption, and then uses logic to prove it true. Of course, if you eliminate the assumption from the proof, then the proof falls apart. For example, I had a man tell me that he had come to realize that baptism was not essential to salvation, that as long as one believed, that was enough. When I asked him how he reached that conclusion, he tld me that he had noticed that every time someone got baptized in the Book of Acts, that didn't get baptized until after they were saved. I countered that I wasn't aware of any place in the Book of Acts that it ever said anyone was saved. He opened up his Bible, and proceeded to show me several instances where individuals made a statement of faith before they were baptized. So I asked him where did it say that they were saved, and he pointed to the verse where it said they believed. If I start with the assumption that all you have to do to be saved is to believe, and then check the scriptural timeline, substituting the phrase 'they were saved' for each time someone makes a confession of faith, then, yes, people always 'got saved' before they did anything else. On the other hand, can you find any instance where someone believed, but didn't get baptized? Okay, let me stop there; the idea is not to argue baptism, but logic. I'm just trying to point out the flaw in his logic.
"Ugly baby syndrome" is the name given to the situation where a responsible person (business manager, church leader, or other similar position) is directed to solve a problem or find a new way to do something. The come up with an idea that seems feasible, but, as the organization devotes more and more money to it, it becomes more and more obvious that this is not the way to go. Except to the person who came up with it. The term comes from the concept that, 'It may be ugly, but it's my baby, and I'm not abandoning it!' Some of these people will go down with the ship, rather than admit that the ship has a design flaw.
Jumping to conclusions, or arriving at a conclusion with insufficient evidence. I actually remember the example used in whatever it was that I referred to earlier: "My car won't start. Rogue clowns must have stolen my spark plugs." Put that way, it sounds ridiculous, but most of us engage in something similar more often than we would care to admit. Something evil befalls me, and a person across the room laughs. What I don't know is the person next to them just told a joke, and they didn't notice what happened to me. If I follow my gut, I'm probably going to confront them in such a way that their bewildered denial sounds less than convincing. And so it goes. The Navy actually has a regulation on the books that forbids speaking a foreign langauge in the workplace (unless you are acting as an interpreter) because there have been problems in the past where two foreign-born servicemen were joking around in their native language, and some other sailor got his feeling hurt, thinking that they were laughing at him.
Biased research: Deciding ahead of time what you want the results to be, before you do the research, and then ignoring any data that doesn't support your conclusion. Sometimes this isn't even done consciously. Ernst Haeckel was a biologist that published a series of drawings (in 1874) purporting to show similarities between species at various stages of embryonic development. It was his contention that theses similarities showed that there were vestigal remnants of evolutionary ancestors that were apparent at certain stages. More recent technology has allowed us to photograph embryos from these different species and it makes it clear that, at best, Haeckel exaggerated the similarities, and, at least in some cases, it really looks like he falsified his data. Realisically, for what? Darwin's theory certainly doesn't depend on such things. Was it to make a name for himself? I suggest that it may simply be a case of him getting careless with data that didn't support his theory. You can read more about Ernst Haeckel here and here. By the way, I purposely linked to pro-evolution web-sites because I'm trying to talk about logic problems, not evolution.

Unfortunately, that's all I have time for now. Until tomorrow.