I was listening to a radio discussion about correct Bible interpretation. One of the three men dismissed the entire conversation with this comment:
“There’s something wrong about 3 white guys talking about how to understand the Bible!”
What struck me was the following thought: What does the identity of the one(s) advancing the argument have to do with the force of the argument? What about examining the reasons for one’s interpretation of the Bible? This dodge is simply a reverse of a common fallacy, Appeal to Authority.
Appeals to authority work like this: in lieu of reasoning with care, the advancer of a point of view avoids giving any support for his assertion by informing his audience that So-and-So believes it. The assumption is:
So-and-So is a well-known authority
Whatever he believes must be right
He shares or has endorsed my point of view
Therefore, my assertion is correct
Back to the three gentlemen discussing the Bible. The one I quoted tried to weaken the entire discussion by dismissing it before it got off the ground. In essence he was saying:
- We can’t possibly come up with a sound and full-orbed understanding of God’s Word due to our gender and race. Our viewpoint as men is one-sided and incomplete, a priori.
That’s absurd! That’s akin to claiming that women are incapable of researching and writing with any degree of accuracy about war or likewise men have nothing credible to say about rape. Dismissing one’s ideas due to one’s identity is faulty!
This reverse of the Fallacy of the Appeal to Authority can sometimes be an example of the Genetic Fallacy.
This red fish announces that since he is red, he is irrelevant. The implication is that nothing he might advance has merit because of what he is.
I often hear people marginalize a point of view by this derisory comment:
- You only say that because you’re a _________!
My experience has been that many of us resort to fallacies when we don’t have a watertight argument OR worse, we have NO facts or evidence for what we believe. Yet, we desperately want to discredit the other guy’s argument. So the fight instinct kicks in and we clobber our opponent with a sound byte and then fall back on fallacies because we are bereft of reasons.
What’s the solution?
My advice to this logical gal (me!) is
- don’t articulate an opinion until I have done a bit of research
- and when asked my views, resist the temptation to respond by instead asking some clarifying questions IN ORDER to gain some information
Easier said than done!
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