People prefer certainty. There's a psychological need to explain events or phenomena rather than accept one's ignorance, to say ???I don't know??? when faced with insufficient evidence.

A man fires a gun several times at the side of a barn and then draws a circle around a cluster of most of the bullet holes. Drawing a target retrospectively like this doesn't prove the shooting skills of the gunman ??? no one would consider him a sharpshooter if they knew what he'd done. When the equivalent of this happens in other circumstances we call it the Texas sharpshooter fallacy . As with many fallacies, it may not appear fallacious (...) at first inspection. (shrink)

Dene Bebbbington explains, and criticises, the intelligent design creationism of William Dembski.

In issue 12 of Think, Rodney Holder developed a version of the fine -tuning argument for the existence of God, claiming that certain features of our universe make the probability that God exists high. Here, Dene Bebbington responds.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.