Divine fallacy

The divine fallacy, also known as argument from incredulity or personal incredulity,[1] is the logical fallacy that, because something is so incredible/amazing/ununderstandable/unimaginable it is wrong. It is a type of informal fallacy called a non sequitur.[2] It often happens when people say something must be the result of superior, divine, alien or supernatural cause because it is unimaginable for it not to be so.[3]

Arguments from incredulity can take the form:

  1. I cannot imagine how P could possibly be true; therefore P must be false.
  2. I cannot imagine how P could possibly be false; therefore P must be true.[4]

References

  1. ↑ Carroll, Robert T. "divine fallacy (argument from incredulity)". The Skeptic's Dictionary. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  2. ↑ Divine fallacy – European Society for General Semantics
  3. ↑ Sen, Madhucchanda (2011). An Introduction to Critical Thinking. Pearson Education India. Retrieved 2016-11-26.
  4. ↑ Personal incredulity – yourlogicalfallacyis.com


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