God's Wrath

Question #1:

The statement that the plague was caused by God's wrath can be disproved in a couple of ways:

First, the Roman Catholic Church claimed that The Plague was caused by God to punish people's sin. According to the definition of a deductive fallacy, it is impossible for the premises of an argument to be true and have a false conclusion. If we put the church's claim into this perspective, we can clearly see that such claim leads to a false conclusion, especially because according to the Catholic Church we are all sinners. Example: (1) People who sin will be punished by the Plague (2) All people are sinners (3) All people will be punished by the Plague. According to the background reading only one-third of all people in Europe died. For this argument to be air tight all of Europe would need to be dead by the Plague. Also according to the background story even monasteries received the Plague.

Second, The church claims that because of the “sins’ being committed, God has shown his wrath like it has before using as an example the flood during Noah’s time and the destruction of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. If we apply this to a good inductive argument it will still be invalid. For example: (1) Because of their sins, God has shown his wrath with Noah and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in the past (2) And as such he has shown us his wrath with the Plague.
Clearly because something has happened in the past does not mean for certain that this is why a completely different incident has happened today.

Question #2:

I think that the Church used their statement to scare people. By making this claim they hope that more people try to “get rid of their sin” and attend the church more (therefore increasing their revenue). I personally feel that in our modern day, this would be a silly claim to make. But because of the time (and the lack of science and technology) I understand why people would believe this argument. To me, the most logical explanation for the Plague is that of lack of proper sanitation.

Sanitation...

The reason that the mayors and town controlling nobles had stated to the town was, "Poor sanitation leads to sicknesses."

In the reading, it states that the "plague" began from a crew ship that docked in the Black Sea in Messina, Sicily. First, at that time no one really knew what was the cause of these plagues and why people were dying. This was just an assumption just so that there can be a reason for what was going on.

Their evidence for this statement was that sanitation workers were the first people to die. Eventually people from the towns noticed that the sanitation workers were not dying and somehow believed that the workers became immune to the diseases or had magical powers. Everyone in these towns were at risk in getting the disease and dying. Just because the sanitation workers were the ones dealing with wastes does not mean that they were going to be the first and only ones to get the diseases and die. Everyone was at risk.

I believe that yes poor sanitation can lead to diseases being spread within a town. According to research, the orignial cause of the Black Plague was thought to be "Yersinia pestis" which is a bacteria commonly present in populations with infested ground rodents. Now it could be that if this information is accurate that because of poor sanitation, it lead to rodents multiplying their population which lead to the cause of some of the diseases. I also believe that this statement is false because if everyone knew the cause was "poor sanitation", then I assume people would have taken action to improve sanitation. And maybe it wouldnt have have spread the way it did. But, at that time no one really knew what was the cause of such massive deaths, just because there was no real information at the point in time.

"The Jews Are Poisoning The Wells"

I choose to discuss "The claim of the masses: The Jews are poisoning the wells." There are various obvious reasons that this hypothesis/claim is false, however, I will only be discussing two reasons.

1. First, according to the article, "The plague died out in the winters and was resurrected in the springs." Had the Jews poisoned the wells, the disease would keep killing people throughout the entire year and not stop during the winter. This clearly shows that it could not have been the water. It could possibly have been caused by plants, animals, and/or other reasons.
   
2. Second, the claim "The Jews are poisoning the wells," is an obvious discrimination against the Jewish religion. There is no proof that the Jews caused the plague and the statement also shows how ignorant people were at the time. It shows that the Jews were picked on and blamed for everything bad that happened at the time without any evidence to support the false accusations.

This claim is obviously absolutely false, as you can see, I explained above two of my many reasons. The "masses" who made this discriminatory claim just wanted someone to blame so they can make themselves feel better.

GOD'S WRATH

I am going to about the The Roman Catholic Church - God's Wrath which I will concentrate on the Formal and Informal Fallacies.

The Roman Catholic Church during the 1300's was very powerful and there were more Catholics than any other Religion, especially in Europe; however all the Catholics believe in one God and not committing any "sins". The Catholic Church has never said that you should go and murder, commit suicide, etc. But instead it taught you how to behave, do no mistreat anyone, be respectful, love life and don't harm others without doing any bad to you. The Church is talking to us or to it's people based on the Jesus Christ words that he told his apostles before he was crucified, and Church does not have any favor in regards to how human beings are behaving but it only relating what Jesus has left behind. In this Plague we are not able to judge the truth or the false on why people back then died and from what they died from, because there is not that much evidence rather it's from the weather or their improper behaving and thinking. In my thinking this is the same as the Formal and Informal Fallacies.

"The Jews Poisoned The Wells"

I choose to discuss the last claim which is: “The Jews are poisoning the wells” There are many reasons to prove that this statement is totally false. I will demonstrate only two reasons:

Firstly, according to the documents cited above this problem occurred during the spring and disappeared in the winter. Therefore, this statement proves the water was not poisoned; it was a seasonal infection caused by other factors such bad sanitation, another fluid or animals.

Secondly, I believe that any social groups which are facing any adversities always make another group or ethnicity of their society responsible of their problems. At this era, maybe the Jews were the most hated groups of this society; therefore the people of this community wanted to eliminate or expel them. Thus, they emotionally accuse them to poison the water.

This claim is totally false because as I illustrated above, the water was not poisoned by the Jews. Those accusers who probably hated this group used this calamity to force them to leave the community or to make their life more difficult.

God's Wrath?

The claim that Roman Catholic Church made has committed at least two logical fallacies as I comprehend. The claim says " it was a punishment for the people's sins." The first problem is the word "sins" has different meanings in different contexts or in different people's believes. Here, "sins" is ambiguous word which can be interpreted in different ways by people with different moral law. If one thinks wasting time is a sin, does he deserve to die when he wastes time? According to the background reading, the black plague killed one third of Europe, however there is no proof that shows all the people died were any kind of sinners. The second problem is the claim is totally based on religious perspective. It is bias and lack of objectivity if the claim is made under a single dimension, in this case- religion. It is also too extreme if the claim ignores all the other possibilities. Such claim as this one could easily misguide a people with poor education. The Catholics have a strong evidence that "the poor and anyone else living in close quarters died at a higher rate" and "the death rates among the nobility and the nobility of the church were very low", but, virtually, it is showing that "sinners" weren't all killed and some "good" people weren't killed.Underlying assumption of this claim I think is the Roman Catholic Church were using this accident to advocate their religion and persuade more people to join them. It sounds reasonable on the surface, but disclosing the logical fallacies of this claim will overthrow everything.

"The Jews poisoned the wells"

I have chosen the last (but not least) "reason" for the Black Plague discussed in the blog. Please, find my short analysis of logical fallacies presented in the "evidence" below.

Logical fallacy #1: “Christians tortured "confessions" out of Jews.” The argument commits Appeal to Force fallacy. It makes no attempt to provide for the validity of the claim through any formal analysis, but asserts the righteousness of the claim by means of fire, scaffolds and swords. As cynical and cruel as it was, the oblivious masses were satisfied with the Jewish cries of desperation obtained under “Say it or Die now” condition. Obviously, the Medieval Do-Gooders religiously believed in the Exitus Acta Probat principle (lat. for “the outcome justifies the means.”) Interestingly enough, the majority of the Jews did not cooperate with those persecuting them by giving false self-incriminating testimonies but chose death instead. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia “… the Jews for the first time took active measures against their oppressors ... but finding the task of freeing themselves hopeless, they barricaded themselves in their dwellings, and when the alternative of starvation or baptism faced them, set fire to their houses and perished in the flames.”[http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1114&letter=B]

Logical fallacy #2: “The Jews were believed to be "jealous" of the Christians (because, it was thought, the Jews knew "in their hearts" that they were damned).” This argument is a great example of the Appeal to Popularity logical fallacy. The mere fact of popularity of a certain idea does not prove or disprove of its validity (E.g. the geocentric system of universe of the Medieval ages.) In fact, jealousy does look to have played a key role in the issue but from the other end. In contrast to mostly Christian European peasants of the time, who were poor and illiterate, the Jews represented the class of urban bourgeois that engaged in the business of trading goods and money lending. The peasants seemed to have found a scapegoat for their misfortunes and been blinded by the jealousy for Jewish wealth and lifestyle set out on their crusade.