|
|
Review Exercise Ib: Mixed Fallacies |
| Identify the fallacy that occurs in each passage. These will be fallacies from various categories. |
||
|
|
||
| 1. The Mars Lander failed to phone home. It must have been abducted by little green men. | ||
|
|
||
| 2. You say the more expensive stereo system is better quality, but you'll get a bigger sales commission if I buy it instead of the cheaper system. Clearly your claim is worthless. | ||
|
|
||
| 3. The study shows that, on average, people have sex more often at age thirty than at age forty. Well, I'm forty, but my wife is only thirty. Should I divorce her because she has sex more often than I do? | ||
|
|
||
| 4. Golden Worm Tequila. Recommended by people who really know their tequila. | ||
|
|
||
| 5. Drink Duff Beer and you will be surrounded by beautiful women in skimpy bikinis. | ||
|
|
||
| 6. Wildfires threaten suburban neighborhoods, and "Is your child safe from strangers?" Stay tuned at 11:00 for these and other stories. | ||
|
|
||
| 7. Democritus conceived of the atom in 300 B.C.E., but his works were lost when the great library of Alexandria burned to the ground. If the works of Democritus had survived the fire, we would have discovered atomic energy hundreds of years sooner, and blown each other up by now. | ||
|
|
||
| 8. I heard that children around the world can read about Harry Potter in sixty different languages. We in the United States really need to catch up in teaching languages to children! | ||
|
|
||
| 9. If we allow gay marriage, we will eventually be forced to recognize polygamy and group marriages, or even to people marrying sheep! Let's not go down that road. | ||
|
|
||
| 10. There are some in the Democratic Party who oppose freedom for Iraqi citizens. That's why we can't let the Democrats win. | ||
|
|
||
| 11. The few. The proud. The Marines. | ||
|
|
||
| 12. Britney Spears supports the President. That's good enough for me. | ||
|
|
||
| 13. John Kerry actually got more votes in the 2004 election, which explains why early exit polls suggested he would win. But we'll never be able to prove it because the Diebold Company's touch-screen voting machines don't issue a paper receipt and no one but Diebold executives (who are hard-line Republicans) know how the machines were programmed. | ||
|
|
||
| 14. Our Volcano God does not approve of your god-who-dies. After you built a church here, Volcano God destroyed whole village. | ||
|
|
||
| 15. In Vanuatu, people have built a religious cult around an American serviceman named John Frum, who has promised to return some day, bringing wealth and prosperity to those who remain faithful to traditional customs. It just shows that all religions are silly. | ||
|
|
||
Go to: WELCOME EXPLANATION of PRINCIPLES TABLE of FALLACIES EXERCISES INDEX