A not unusual “challenge” that many Creationists put on the table for advocates of Evolution takes the form “show me absolute proof, with 100% certainty, that…” any number of things ranging from how a given biological feature evolved to what existed prior to the Big Bang. Yes, I know the Big Bang is Cosmology and not Evolution but Creationists tend to confuse Evolution, Cosmology, Abiogenesis and atheism with sickening regularity.
There are several fallacies in these “challenges.”
The most obvious is that nothing in the natural world can be proven with 100% certainty. Absolute proof is only possible within the framework of mathematical systems. It is unattainable in the natural world. One can come close to absolute certainty, but the natural world deals in inference and probabilities.
The second fallacy is this that there is somehow something inherently wrong with saying “I don’t know.” If you don’t know, that’s ok. Perhaps someday you will know.
The final fallacy is what is known as a “false dichotomy.” In a false dichotomy questions are presented in an “either-or” manner which assumes only two possibilities. Since there are only two possibilities, if one can be proven FALSE that validates the second as TRUE.
The problem with that approach is that in the natural world there are a multitude of possibilities. Proving evolution wrong does not prove Creationism, or anything else for that matter, right.
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