Reading a book of evangelical theology this afternoon, I realized that there are a few reliable ways we can be sure that an author is a liberal weenie, and that the text he has written is therefore ideologically driven, ergo tendentious (whether witly or not), and probably wrong in its arguments. It is very simple, at least in books of theology. We can be sure that an author is a weenie if:
- He uses “impact” as a verb.
- He uses “image” as a verb.
- He avoids using masculine pronouns in referring to God.
- He uses “gender” to indicate sex.
- He uses “gender” as a verb.
If furthermore there is ever in a writer about ancient texts anything like environmentalism or feminism, egalitarianism or communism, relativism or nominalism, we can be sure that he has read them anachronistically, and therefore wrongly. We can, in short, be pretty sure that he is a hopeless idiot, and what is worse, not even therefore much useful to his sinister god.
What can we take from this? That we should never, ever, ever in a million years commit any such howlers.
Probably I have missed a few. I welcome correction of any such omissions.
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Amen.
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The author speaks in a liberal dialect therefore he is a weenie therefore we should discount his argument. Isn’t this the ad hominem fallacy?
An ad hominem attack or criticism is not necessarily fallacious.
Correct but irrelevant.
The contention is not irrelevant. You fail to take into account Kristor’s multitudinous posts attacking the ideology of liberalism itself.
I never said anything that would suggest an ad hominem attack was necessarily fallacious. I merely observed that the argument he made in this particular OP seems to commit the ad hominem fallacy for the reason I explained upthread.
Your reasoning above was fallacious. That is the point.
Nice back peddle.
No. The ad hominem fallacy argues that a proposition is dubious on account of the dubious character of its proponent. We don’t discount the liberal’s arguments because he is a weenie, but because, as incoherent, they are plainly and risibly wrong. A weenie is a weenie because he credits these ridiculous arguments, and kowtows to liberal pieties like a pathetic weakling, when he ought to know better, and indeed might know very well better.
I have read a few writers who deploy the liberal argot, but who make it evident (either implicitly via their arch tone, or explicitly in a preface) that they do so only to squeak through the editor’s PC wicket and reach publication. They are like Havel’s grocer. They can be selling nourishing goods.
Nevertheless the liberal argot is a reliable sign of inveterately liberal arguments otherwise quite sophistically disguised, and it is not wrong that it should raise our suspicions along with our hackles.
So the argot is the indicator of the liberal argument. I see what you’re saying.
There is no “liberal dialect.” It would be a falsification of “equality” dogma.
What “we” perceive are “tells.” What “we” sense are the liberationist’s perversion of the Logos.
It’s not “dialect.” Far from it… It’s primitive.
A self-annihilator mainly employs the ad hominem fallacy as the means of cloaking a self-abnegating messenger. Ergo, when a self-annihilator speaks (t)ruth, it will always be towards total annihilation. The sheer odiousness of a self-annihilator taints his every utterance even when such utterances are (t)ruthful (and he points, correctly, at an ad hominem used fallaciously).
Cries of “ad hominem fallacy” are largely the desolate declaration of disguised demons.
Or of their hapless victims and hosts, whom they oppress. In my years of writing online, I have been surprised at how often my adversaries have taken my destruction of one of their arguments as a personal attack upon them. It is as if the only way they can understand a difficulty is as an ad hominem attack. This is why they so often get so angry, I suppose, at their discomfiture.
wrt ancient texts, another is using BCE/ CE instead of BC/AD.
This is a particularly gratuitous type of anti-Christian subversion/ virtue signalling since it continues to date everything relative to the birth of Christ, but elaborately pretends to ignore the fact.
Ah, yes, that one drives me up the wall.
Formally, it is analogous to a lot of liberal virtue signalling. It says, in effect, “I disparage this category that I cannot do without and am now using as essential to my own purposes.” Jesus was just a guy, but we must still date everything from the year of his birth. There is no such thing as sex, so we must ensure that the sexes are equally represented in the nicer jobs. There is no such thing as race, so we must ensure that the races enjoy equal benefits. And so on.
What also drives me up the wall is their approach to theodicy. For example, if a young child dies they ask how God could allow such a terrible thing. Of course, it is only terrible if one bases one’s view on the non-existence of God and therefore the child is consigned to hopeless oblivion. If one believes God exists, although it may be a terrible temporal loss for the child’s parent and siblings, there is the consolation that this innocent person now posseses the Beatific Vision and is really the fortunate one. Liberals seem keen to blame the God they don’t believe in for the troubles of the world.
If there is no God, then there is no such thing really as troubles. All troubles then are private illusions. So if the atheists are correct in their argument that the evils of creation rule out God, then the evils of creation disappear – they are not in fact evils, but rather just stuff happening for no reason, that has therefore no true moral or aesthetic character. The objectionable evils of creation are not therefore truly objectionable, but are rather only speciously objectionable; and so therefore they cannot tell against God. As autophagous, the Problem of Evil then corrects itself.
Here’s one that just came across my desk, in this University’s president’s response to President Trump’s announcement that he intends to rescind DACA.
“I stand committed to statements made earlier this year and last November, that all students, faculty and staff of Texas A&M University are here legitimately, working and/or pursuing their degrees, and that we benefit from their presence in many ways including scholarship and friendship.”
The weeny word is legitimately, which here means, not legal, but approved by me! Of course, any potentially affected parties are presently “here legitimately,” but only because of DACA. Thus, if DACA is rescinded (and no equivalent put in its place), those parties will no longer be “here legitimately.” The president may wish at that point to argue that they have a moral right to be here, but they will no longer have a legal right. But that won’t stop him from helping himself to the word “legitimate.”
The words of a weenie are often weaselly.
Yes, technically correct, but stated in bad faith and with maximal virtue signaling.
“Legitimate” is another word for “legal.” “Legal” is another word for “moral.” “Moral” is another word for “the way I see things.”