How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic (2006)

36 How to Win Every Argument

that certain things must be true, and ends up with a conclusion

which flatly contradicts them. If the conclusion is not consistent

with the arguments used to reach it, then somewhere there is a

hole in the reasoning through which the logic has slipped silently

away.

'Son, because nothing is certain in this world we have to hold on to what

experience tells us. '

'Are you sure, Dad?'

'Yes, son. I'm certain.'

The fallacy is identified by the inconsistency. If the conclusion
contradicts the premises, at least one of them must be wrong.
This means that our conclusion is either false itself, or derived
from false information.
The conclusion which denies its premises constantly slips
uninvited into religious arguments. People are so used to
thinking of divine beings as exceptions to every rule that they
tend to use the word 'everything' when they mean 'everything
except God.'

Everything must have a cause. That, in turn, must result from a previous

cause. Since it cannot go back for ever, we know that there must be an

uncaused causer to start the process.

(But if everything must have a cause, how can there be such a thing

as an uncaused causer?)

The fallacy has a most distinguished history, being used

(although not identified as such) by Aristotle and Thomas

Aquinas among many others. It has many faces. The 'uncaused

causer' can be a 'first cause,' or even a 'first mover'. It can be

reworded in many ways, but never without fallacy.

Attempts to make a divine being the allowable exception to