Critical Thinking Homework 8    Name _________________  Class # _______

Circle the name of the person who gives the weaker argument in each pair, and indicate the problem with that argument.

1. Quinton. Judah has not produced a shred of evidence to corroborate his story of dead aliens at Roswell. Everything that was actually seen at Roswell has been fully explained for decades. He might be sincere, but he has not given anyone any reason to think that he's telling the truth.
Judah. I claim, and I continue to claim that I saw dead aliens at the Roswell UFO crash site, and it is up to my critics to prove me wrong. No one has ever done so, and so it should be obvious to all of you that I'm right about this.

Circle the name of the person who gives the weaker argument.

Quinton		Judah

Circle the name of the fallacy committed by that person.

Irrational Proof Standard     Special Pleading      False Burden of Proof

2. Sarina. I think we can all see that it must have been Mrs. Green. After all, Professor Plum holds a doctorate, and is a highly respected teacher, so he couldn't possibly have done it.
Kelly. But Mrs. Green also holds a doctorate, and she is also a highly respected teacher!
Sarina. Don't be fooled by credentials! And highly respected people have committed crimes before! No, it was her all right!

Circle the name of the person who gives the weaker argument.

Sarina		Kelly

Circle the name of the fallacy committed by that person.

Irrational Proof Standard     Special Pleading      False Burden of Proof

3. Zarkon. Now, your Book of Vuntag contains stories that describe events that you call "miracles." Each of these "miracles" is an event that strongly violates the laws of nature as we understand them now, and have understood them for the last thousand years. Everything we know about the way our universe works says that these "miracles" could not have happened. Since we have an absolutely enormous amount of evidence for our understanding of the laws of nature, and absolutely no evidence that they can be violated in the way that these stories say they were violated, we therefore have an extremely good argument for the conclusion that the Book of Vuntag simply isn't true. 
Muscatel. The problem with that argument is that the evidence for the laws of nature is only enormous. It's not perfect! It is still logically possible that our understanding of the laws of nature is incomplete, and it is logically possible that the laws were violated in exactly the way that the Book of Vuntag says they were. So you don't have any argument against the Book of Vuntag, let alone a good one.

Circle the name of the person who gives the weaker argument.

Zarkon		Muscatel

Circle the name of the fallacy committed by that person.

Irrational Proof Standard     Special Pleading      False Burden of Proof