Chubby Nickel Audio Vlog

Common sense can be used very effectively with common situations, and with common things. Things a 5 year old can understand can be useful for things that are simple in nature, things that only require a basic understanding. So why do these two seemingly simple terms keep getting so misused in arguments? Yes this is going to be another partially religious post, but honestly, what doesn’t involve religion any more? Or more accurately, what doesn’t religion involve itself into?

“Common Sense” and “So simple a child can understand it” are two of the things dishonest bellenders like Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron and Kent Hovind use to try and persuade people. The intent is do a kind of “Emperor’s New Clothes” tactic to make people think that because it seems so simple, it must be true and the complex answer must be false. After all we should always be using Occam’s razor to determine the validity of things right?

Let’s go a little out of order here, first Occam’s razor is not a method for determining the truth of a thing, it’s a method for discovering the truth of a thing. Occam’s razor does not make complex solutions false just because they are complex, and doesn’t make simple solutions true just because they are simple. It only means that you should first try the simple solutions first to see if the simple solutions are true or not, not to just assume that the simplest answer is the true answer.

What is common sense? Why is common sense so uncommon? If I stole an apple from a store and that apple cost $0.55, then common sense would tell me that I just saved $0.55. However the result of my theft increased the price of all future apples by $0.01. Now my not so common sense would tell me that if I want to eat apples at a lower price for longer, then stealing an apple would not benefit me at all in the future and I would be losing more money than I would save from stealing one.

Now here is another analogy, lets say that you see some mold on a piece of bread and you are currently ill with Pneumonia. Common sense would tell you that if you ate the moldy bread that you would become more ill. Rational thought and the scientific method would tell you that you could turn that mold into something that would help you fight off your Pneumonia.

The reason for these analogies are to explain that common sense is not always the best tool for determining things.

Now onto the most ridiculous: “so simple a child can understand it.” If you are saying that it must be true because a five year old can understand it, then I have to laugh at you because you are a tool. Does a child’s understanding of how the Internet works match our understanding? No? Well then I guess its not real then, lets get the children to correct our understanding of the Internet. Does a five year old’s understanding of how a camera works match our understanding? No? Well then I guess we better consult some five year old children to tell us how cameras work.

Yes, why don’t we base everything on what a five year old understands, after all it was a five year old that discovered that mold can help cure people and that you can send moving images from one place to another through thin air using radio waves. Come on, seriously think about it before you fall for this dishonest tactic. Do you think we would have computers if we relied only on what five year old children can understand? Do you think you would even have a house? How about farming? How about the internal combustion engine? Would you trust the world to five year old children? No, you wouldn’t no matter what you may be saying right now.