Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
The following is a chapter from the book
Correlation does not imply causation.
AKA: false cause, after this therefore because of this
●
I stubbed my toe before watching the game last night
and my team won. I should probably stub my toe before each game, just in case.
●
We did it with our socks on and didn’t get pregnant.
Socks must prevent pregnancy.
●
The TV show Arrested
Development was canceled during the Bush administration and was brought
back during the Obama administration. Obama, a true man of the people, brought
back Arrested Development.
For your own safety, don’t tell an
NFL quarterback that their hard work and talent has no bearing on who wins
because your absurd game-day superstition determines the score. Many factors
determine if and when a woman will get pregnant—socks are not one of them unless
the man is wearing one in a very unorthodox way. Bush did not cancel Arrested Development. It was canceled by
The Fox Network, just like Futurama
and Firefly. This makes the offensive
rhetoric of Fox News only the network’s fourth largest sin.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (just “post
hoc” to his friends) is a fallacy used to claim that one event caused another
because they occurred in that order. A happened, then B happened. Therefore, A
must cause B. This is fallacious because correlation does not imply causation.
In other words, just because two things happen near each other does not mean
that one caused the other, or even that they are related in any way. To create
a valid argument, you would need to prove how the first event caused the other.
For the purpose of this book, we
can group post hoc together with its cousin, cum hoc ergo, propter hoc (with
this, therefore because of this.) While post hoc refers to one event causing a future event, the cum hoc label is used when the events occur at
the same time, the order they occur in is not deemed important, or the order is
unknown.
In our first example, the
anti-vaccination crowd maintains that since children with autism spectrum
disorder (ASD) only begin showing signs after they are vaccinated, the vaccines
must be causing the disorder. One problem with that theory is that when infants
begin receiving vaccinations (assuming a normal schedule), they would be far
too young for ASD symptoms to be recognized. An ASD diagnosis by age two is
usually reliable, and sometimes signs can appear by eighteen months or earlier.
The CDC suggests first screening for ASD at eighteen months, and for
developmental delays in general at nine months. Even by then, the baby will
have already received a number of vaccines.
It’s no surprise that symptoms
would appear in a child with ASD only after they had been vaccinated. That is
the expected order for those events. By the same logic, we could claim anything
that eventually happens to children (learning to walk, puberty, hating their
parents) is a result of vaccines. We could also use the same fallacy to show
ASD is caused by anything that happens in the first eighteen months, like being
held, listening to Mozart, or dad freaking out over baby food prices.
Another problem for this theory
would be the overabundance of research showing no connection between autism and
vaccines. Since their claim is only based on the post hoc fallacy, the
anti-vaxers need actual evidence to show a connection. They have so far been
unsuccessful in that endeavor.
Post hoc can also be applied to the
argument that marijuana is a gateway drug. People who use heroin or cocaine
often start with marijuana, so marijuana must lead to harder drug use.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, however, “The majority of
people who use marijuana do not go on to use other, ‘harder’ substances.” This
suggests that whatever makes people move onto harder drugs is probably not
marijuana. The organization also offers this theory:
An
alternative to the gateway-drug hypothesis is that people who are more
vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily
available substances like marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent
social interactions with other substance users increases their chances of
trying other drugs. Further research is needed to explore this question.
People might abuse substances in a
certain order, but that doesn’t prove each substance leads you to the next. It
also appears that cigarettes and beer could carry the same level of culpability
as marijuana, so a gateway-drug argument for keeping marijuana illegal should
also carry with it a ban on alcohol and tobacco. The organization admits more
research is needed before determining what leads users to hard drugs, but shows
that marijuana isn’t it. Apparently no one’s explained this to Gov. Chris
Christie. Here he is with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in April of 2015:
Hewitt: Right now, we've got the states of Colorado and Washington flaunting
federal law by allowing people to sell dope legally. If you're the President of
the United States, are you going to enforce the federal drug laws in those
states?
Christie: Absolutely. I will crack down and not permit it.
Hewitt: All right, next . . .
Christie: Marijuana is a gateway drug. We have an enormous addiction problem in
this country. And we need to send very clear leadership from the White House on
down through the federal law enforcement. Marijuana is an illegal drug under
federal law. And the states should not be permitted to sell it and profit from it.
Interesting how conservatives are
always fervent protectors of states’ rights except for the times they don’t
want to be. In March of 2015, Christie said, “It was the states that created
the federal government, not the federal government that created the states. We
need to get back to that philosophy.” Then in April, he wants to become
president so he can tell states they can’t make their own intelligent and
research-based decisions regarding marijuana legalization. Christie lands a
state’s rights 180° just by thinking about being president.
Miriam Boeri, Associate Professor
of Sociology at Bentley University, wrote about Christie and others who point
to marijuana as a gateway drug. She questions that claim, writing, “As any
junior scientist can tell you, correlation does not mean causation.” She also
explains that other factors including poverty, mental illness, social
environment, and even anti-drug laws and their enforcement can be much more of
a gateway to hard drugs than smoking marijuana is.
The gateway theory is a way to
distract attention from the real argument. There’s definitely some red herring
and slippery slope involved. Your audience might not find marijuana to be scary
enough, so you have to connect it to scarier drugs. This is especially odd when
the argument is against marijuana for medical use, since we already have
prescription drugs similar to heroin (Oxycontin and Vicodin) and cocaine
(methylphenidate).
Post hoc loves to come out on rainy
days. Whenever a natural disaster strikes, you can count on someone from the
religious right blaming the catastrophe on homosexuality. Gay marriage, gay
soldiers, families not disowning their gay children—these can all lead to
tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes. Scientists might argue that a hurricane
is caused by water vapor creating a low-pressure area over the ocean surface,
but they're clearly ignoring the obvious. America is becoming less hostile
towards the LGBTQ community, and sometimes the weather is bad. There must be a
connection!
Pat Robertson, host of the
Christian News TV show The 700 Club,
blamed 1998’s Hurricane Bonnie on homosexuality. When the storm was predicted
to hit Florida, Robertson explained this was clearly punishment for Disney
World holding a Gay Days Weekend. His weather-gaydar was off though, as the
storm ended up missing Florida and instead hit just about every other state on
the east coast. Those would be the states where Disney World had not held their
Gay Days Weekend. It gets even better. According to the National Weather
Service, most of the damage caused by Bonnie was in the Hampton Roads area of
Virginia, where Robertson's own show is based.
Since hurricanes are punishments
for our sins, we have to wonder what Robertson did to invoke the wrath of the
heavens. Maybe it was his time spent posing as a faith healer. Or when he
compared non-Christians to termites. Could be that child he had before he was
married. Or the time he called Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists
“the spirit of the Antichrist.” Or the time he called feminism a
"socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave
their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism,
and become lesbians.”
Whatever the reason, the big
question is why didn’t Robertson simply use the power of prayer to keep the
hurricane away? We can’t know why for certain, but it might have a little
something to do with what happened the last time he tried to publicly pray the
weather away. In 1985, Robertson did pray for Hurricane Gloria to avoid his
show's headquarters in Virginia. His prayers came true that time as Gloria hit
states north of Virginia, resulting in $9 hundred million in damages and causing
eight deaths.
It’s not only homosexuality that
can cause natural disasters, according to Robertson. In 2010, a terrible
magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the country of Haiti. Estimates for the resulting
death toll range between around one hundred thousand to one hundred sixty
thousand. Given the awful nature of this event, Pat Robertson felt it was
important to explain the real reason for this earthquake. If you guessed
seismic waves caused by the breaking of underground rock, you would be
incorrect. The culprit here was a pact with the devil made by the Haitians
during a 1791 slave rebellion. Events like this make you think that maybe post
hoc isn’t a fallacy after all. If Haitian slaves make a deal with the devil and
a catastrophic earthquake hits only 219 years later, how could there not be a
connection?
To be fair to Robertson, we should
emphasize that he is not the only right-wing nutcase making such claims. For
example, the lesser-known John McTernan makes Robertson look reasonable and
sane by comparison.
McTernan, founder of Defend and
Proclaim the Faith ministries, believes that Hurricane Sandy was God’s way of
punishing the U.S. for not being able to find anyone better than Obama or
Romney for president. On October 28 2012, McTernan posted to his blog:
A
pro-homosexual Mormon along with a pro-abortion/homosexual, Muslim Brotherhood
promoter, Hard Left Fascist are running for president. And there is no cry of
repentance from God’s people! I see this storm as a warning from the LORD to
call His church to repentance, This might be the last call from the Holy God of
Israel.
You’re probably wondering, why
don’t we just put an end to homosexuality and see if natural disasters
continue? That’s definitely what you were thinking. Luckily for you, a pastor
by the name Charles Worley has laid out his own plan to rid the nation of gays
and lesbians. On May 13 2012, Worley had these fine words for the congregants
of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, NC:
Build
a great, big, large fence, 150 or 100 mile long. Put all the lesbians in there.
Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the
homosexuals, and have that fence electrified till they can't get out. Feed 'em.
And you know what? In a few years they'll die out. You know why? They can't
reproduce.
Worley may not have thought this
one all the way through, but hey, nothing says Christian values like an internment camp. He does seem oddly concerned about
his homosexual captives having something to eat though, which is nice. In this
short excerpt from his rant, he pushes the food twice. He’s like the Jewish grandmother
of bigoted psychopathic pastors.
.........
If you enjoyed this segment, read the full book HERE!
