Theos-Talk Archives (October 2001 Message tt00055)

dalval14@earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> Wednesday, October 03, 2001
> 
> Dear Bart:
> 
> Thanks for the clarification. You speak of something I am
> unaware of.
> 
> So I would like clarification further as to what you imply by the
> labeling.

OK. Your original quote was: "The main point is that those who are
truly WISE never attach themselves or endorse any temporal
ORGANIZATION." The contrapositive of this (and therefore, given the
initial statement, logically true) is that if one does attach oneself to
or endorse a temporal organization, then one is not truly wise. People
don't like to be thought of as not truly wise, and that tends to put
most of them either rejecting or pretending to reject their associations
to appear to be truly wise, or falling back on the defensive.

But a third path is to point out that the statement is logically
fallacious. It gives no logical reason why one should not attach oneself
to or endorse a temporal organization. It gives solely an appeal to
emotion (which is SO 4th root race). 

To show the error, I gave another example of the same fallacy, but
strongly enough worded so the fallacy was obvious ("Only an idiot would
believe what you just said"). It worked a little TOO well; several
people reacted emotionally, without realizing that my statement was
DESIGNED to be logically fallacious and I had stated outright that it
was on an emotional, rather than logical level. Which just goes to show
how dangerous this form of logic can be (take a look at its use by hate
groups, and note that this is to allow people to do research to see
evidence of the fallacy's danger, not a proof in and of itself of the
fallacy's danger). 

Bart Lidofsky