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2nd edition now out of stock

New Third Edition — More Fallacies, More Cartoons

What is a fallacy? A fallacy is an error in logic – a place where someone has made a mistake in his thinking.

These are fallacies:

“A cloud is 90% water. A watermelon is 90% water. Therefore, since a plane can fly through a cloud, a plane can fly through a watermelon.”

“This new book, The Fallacy Detective, must do a good job teaching logic. It has been on the bestseller list for months.”

We wrote this book to meet the needs of Christian parents who want a do-able text for introducing logic and critical thinking to their children.

• Fun to use – not dry like a math textbook.
• Self-teaching – not intimidating, starts students with skills they can use right away.
• Each lesson has exercises for students, with an answer key at the back.
• Covers logical fallacies and propaganda techniques. We divided the most common fallacies and propaganda techniques into thirty-eight lessons. We explain how you can spot fallacies, and we give exercises to stretch your abilities for detecting fallacies.
• Geared for ages twelve and older – we suggest using The Fallacy Detective before advancing onto more difficult logic programs.
• Includes The Fallacy Detective Game, giving you and your friends an entertaining way to spot and make up your own examples of fallacies.
• Christian view of logic. Many critical thinking texts introduce political correctness. This book does not.
• Can be used before or after The Thinking Toolbox
• Cartoons to illustrate the logical fallacies discussed, including Peanuts, Dilbert, Calvin and Hobbes, and several original cartoons

This book is for fallacy detectives. We’ve designed this book to be a handy-dandy text for learning to spot the errors in thinking that you meet everyday on the street, in the newspaper, or on television – or errors you make yourself.

Book Contents

Introduction: What Is a Fallacy?

The Inquiring Mind

1. Exercise Your Mind

2. Love to Listen

3. Opposing Viewpoints

Avoiding the Question

4. Red Herring Fallacy

5. Recognizing Red Herrings

6. Special Pleading

7. Ad Hominem Attack

8. Genetic Fallacy

9. Tu Quoque

10. Faulty Appeal to Authority

11. Appeal to the People

12. Straw Man

Making Assumptions

13. The Story of Aroup Goupta

14. Assumptions

15. Circular Reasoning

16. Equivocation

17. Loaded Question

18. Slippery Slope

19. Part-to-Whole

20. Whole-to-Part

21. Either-Or

Statistical Fallacies

22. What Is a Generalization?

23. Hasty Generalization

24. What Is an Analogy?

25. Weak Analogy

26. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

27. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc in Statistics

28. Proof by Lack of Evidence

Propaganda

29. What Is Propaganda?

30. Appeal to Fear

31. Appeal to Pity

32. Bandwagon

33. Exigency

34. Repetition

35. Transfer

36. Snob Appeal

37. Appeal to Tradition and Appeal to Hi-Tech

38. Find Some Propaganda on Your Own

The Fallacy Detective Game

Answer Key