{"id":109,"date":"2005-07-19T12:38:27","date_gmt":"2005-07-19T16:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=109"},"modified":"2006-08-17T12:37:17","modified_gmt":"2006-08-17T16:37:17","slug":"false-comparison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"Give me that old time religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the year we\u2019ve been in business we\u2019ve seen plenty of ironic fallacies\u2013these are the fallacies people commit by accusing others of committing fallacies. During the election the favorite was the reverse ad hominem\u2013accuse someone else of attacking (thereby ignoring their justified attack and attacking them in turn). Here\u2019s another variation on that theme\u2013the reverse ad populum<\/a>:<\/p>\n

>These things come in waves, of course, but waves need to be resisted, even if the exercise leaves you feeling like King Canute. The new wave is fashionable doubt. Doubt is in. Certainty is out.<\/p>\n

So Charles Krauthammer (famous for his use of the reverse ad hominem) would have us believe that since doubt is fashionable, people who believe it must do so simply because others do, not because perhaps they have a reason to doubt. This is a nice way of abdicating your responsibility for an argument against their view. That doesn\u2019t make it right. And worse, I\u2019m not sure if Krauthhammer knows this, but just because your belief is deeply held or profoundly felt doesn\u2019t mean it’s *true.* <\/p>\n

Of course, Krauthammer\u2019s jeremiad (he used that word) on belief is really just a set up for his main argument.<\/p>\n

>The Op-Ed pages are filled with jeremiads about believers–principally evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics–bent on turning the U.S. into a theocracy. Now I am not much of a believer, but there is something deeply wrong–indeed, deeply un-American–about fearing people simply because they believe. *It seems perfectly O.K. for secularists to impose their secular views on America, such as, say, legalized abortion or gay marriage. But when someone takes the contrary view, all of a sudden he is trying to impose his view on you.* And if that contrary view happens to be rooted in Scripture or some kind of religious belief system, the very public advocacy of that view becomes a violation of the U.S. constitutional order.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at this a little more closely. Embedded in the usual tripe about anti-religious feeling in the liberal media, is a familiar argumentative trope: religious [think Christian Evangelical not Muslim] versus secular. These two things do not rightly belong in the same category (at least in the way Krauthammer arranges them), so any attempt to compare them is bound to mislead. Besides, *legalized* abortion is not imposed on anyone the law recognizes; gay marriage (wherever it is legal) is not imposed on anyone either (barring probably unlikely shotgun weddings). These are activities, not views. Views cannot be imposed on anyone; activities can, but these activities can\u2019t\u2013unless your parents force the gay lifestyle on you; or force you to get an abortion. To avoid gay marriage, don\u2019t go to gay weddings, or don\u2019t be gay; to avoid abortion, give birth to any children you conceive. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the year we\u2019ve been in business we\u2019ve seen plenty of ironic fallacies\u2013these are the fallacies people commit by accusing others of committing fallacies. During the election the favorite was the reverse ad hominem\u2013accuse someone else of attacking (thereby ignoring their justified attack and attacking them in turn). Here\u2019s another variation on that theme\u2013the reverse … Continue reading Give me that old time religion<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,15,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ad-hominem","category-appeal-to-the-people","category-krauthammer","category-plain-bad-arguments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}