Personal incredulity fallacy

MD Shahriar Mahmud

Discussion board 7: Personal incredulity fallacy

Many types of fallacies exist in our day to day lives. One of the most common types of fallacy is personal incredulity, which argues that something is false or untrue to you just because it contradicts your expectations or beliefs. This idea is especially true for scientific theories that you cannot seem to believe that could have happened as explained (Manninen, 2018). A good example is an argument that you cannot think of the theory by Charles Darwin concerning evolution, where humans evolved from a single-celled organism. It cannot be true because you are a religious person, and you believe that we were all created by God. This example is perfect for explaining how personal incredulity fallacies occur in our day to day lives. We all have deeply embedded beliefs that contradict other beliefs or theories. This claim is especially valid for scientific or religious views, which have their ideas or opinions. This fallacy is often misleading because people who rely on upon it often resort to it even when there is an excellent explanation for what is being said. People who use this fallacy tend to give alternative reasons for what is being said. For example, “There is no possibility of life after death because they lose all consciousness when someone dies. The only reason people are told that is so that they might not be scared to die or put their minds at ease.” This kind of fallacy is also intertwined with the divine fallacy because the idea is that the only explanation for a particular phenomenon is divine intervention or supernatural force. After all, you cannot explain the phenomenon or cannot imagine it any other way (Campbell, 2021). A good example is “God is the only one that can give life. There is no way that scientists can create life using their chemicals and test tubes in a lab.”