Theos-Talk Archives (October 2001 Message tt00082)

Many thanks Jerry: I will be more guarded in the future (if
possible)

I really opened a trap and was unaware of it.

Dal

=========================

-----Original Message-----
From: Bart Lidofsky [mailto:bartl@sprynet.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 5:45 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World RE: Where are the Masters?

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



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