Hey guys, what’s up! Welcome back to another episode of the podcast that helps you get smarter every time you listen!
Let’s start with a quick review of a fallacy we’ve covered in the past: the Bandwagon Fallacy. The Bandwagon Fallacy is when someone tries to get you to believe, think or do something just b/c a whole bunch of other people are already believing, thinking or doing it. It’s the “everybody’s doing it so it must be right” fallacy. And yep - you've probably heard the phrase before having to do with “jumping on the bandwagon” and that’s the same thing we’re talking about today.
The Bandwagon Fallacy is trying to convince you that something is good or desirable, or that something is bad and undesirable simply b/c so many other people also think that.
If you want to hear more about this fallacy, check out Episode 20.
Ok, today’s new fallacy is the Weak Analogy Fallacy. The Weak Analogy Fallacy is when someone draws an analogy or a comparison between two things that really aren’t that similar in order to make an argument. It’s also called a False Comparison or False Metaphor.
So, a simple example of a weak analogy happens in an old TV commercial i used to see where an orange juice company shows a picture where instead of a sun in the sky, it’s an orange in the sky with little orange rays coming out from it. They’re wanting you to associate orange juice with the sun rising and eating breakfast, and used this in their ad to be cute because both of them are round. Cute, yes. But are oranges and the sun really that much alike other than being the same shape? No, not at all.
That’s a pretty cute & innocent-enough example of an analogy used in advertising, but sometimes analogies are not so cute & innocent as I’m going to share in the next few examples, which is why you have to be able to recognize this fallacy when it comes up!
Here’s another example of a weak analogy, and this is actually a real analogy that is sometimes used by atheists who are arguing against the resurrection of Jesus. They’ll say something like this: “Believing in the literal resurrection of Jesus is like believing in the literal existence of zombies.” So in this example, they’re trying to make the analogy between Jesus who died and was resurrected and was alive again after death to zombies which are people who die and then somehow become “undead” and go around killing more people. The similarities between Jesus & zombies is sketchy at best, and the differences are overwhelming. This analogy is a pretty far stretch, which is why we would call it a weak analogy.
It’s important to note that analogies aren’t really called right or wrong, they’re typically either called weak or strong. Or sometimes we’ll say that it’s a bad analogy when the comparison just doesn’t work.
What’s wrong with these weak analogies is that they make the assumption that just b/c two things are alike in one way, they’re therefore alike in other, many or all ways. And they’ll use that assumption of alikeness to connect those two things in ways that they’re definitely not connected.
One of the most heart-breaking examples of this fallacy is when people compare unborn babies to parasites. They’re saying that just b/c both a paradise & a baby are “attached” to another living being that they’re therefore exactly the same and deserve to be treated the same. And of course, this analogy is used by people who want to argue that abortion is ok. Their thinking is, “just get rid of it like you would any parasite.” But just b/c they have found one far-fetched similarity between unborn babies and parasites absolutely does NOT mean that those two things are the same or are even close enough to make for a good argument!
So here’s the question to ask yourself if you think you’re facing a weak analogy fallacy: “Are these two things really that similar or are they more different than they are alike?”… *repeat*
Alright, I’ll see you next time, and
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
