My college buddy Jered, who’ve I’ve spent several posts on responding to, in one of the comments he recently left used the appeal to consequences logical fallacy. These are often rooted in eschatology, his in the Adventist variety. Before I jump into it, let’s look at the more standard one.

If you reject God you’ll burn in hell for all eternity. This is clearly fallacious because it provides no evidence for either the consequence or the conclusion. Someone who doesn’t believe in God would also not believe in a hell, so the statement is at best meaningless and at worst insulting and infuriating.

Adventists don’t believe in a hell of eternal torment and suffering. Instead they believe that when you die you rot in the ground until one of two resurrections, if you’re in the second one you then face judgment and annihilation. So from that mindset if I’m right I’ll rot in the ground once and if I’m wrong I’ll rot in the ground twice. Since that’s not a very significant consequence to appeal to, Adventists also have to appeal to emotion, namely pride. Jered said it well, so I’ll just quote him:

I know you don’t believe this scenario. However, in the event that this scenario happens, think about how your chosen worldview sets you up for the fall. Since empirical evidence–the sight of your eyes, etc., is what you will always go with, there’s nothing to keep you from being broadsided by the overwhelming deception that will sweep this planet. You can’t deny that there is both incredible good and evil here on Earth. When the Arch-Enemy makes his appearance, masquerading as God, (in whatever forms different people believe to be God, naturally) you will go for it, because he will have power to do incredible ’emprical’ (sp) things. Healing, bringing down fire, etc. etc.

This tactic’s only chance of working is by suggesting you might be wrong and that empiricism is the very thing that would cause even greater deception. That appeals to nothing but pride and in a very insulting way. Skeptics aren’t afraid of being wrong, at least not good skeptics anyway. By being wrong you have the chance to learn from your mistake and to be more right. That should be what every skeptic always hopes for, always becoming less wrong about things.

Only one non-hypothetical assertion is made in this statement, and that is “that there is both incredible good and evil here on Earth.” However, due to the vagueness of the statement I have to disagree with it. Those aren’t random forces floating around the ether (or even an ether to begin with) and there’s no evidence that there are unseen agents behind them. What we do have evidence for is that there are people who are generally ethical, people who are ethically dubious, and there are people who are clearly unethical. The only time there is great good or great evil is when there is a great person (as in a lot of power) who is either good or evil.

Aside from that, if the “Arch-Enemy” were to appear, I would be quite curious as to how he conjured his tricks. My assumption would likely be that he was an alien from another world with highly advanced technology since in sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and advanced technology is significantly more probable than than said magic.

As much fun as this exercise is, there is no evidence that this scenario would ever happen. It is nothing more than an appeal to consequences and a logical fallacy.

Oh, and what if religion is the overwhelming deception that has already swept the planet?