Debunking myths about the religious right.

Husker - A quick note on your 60% of 1st time white delegates with no attachment to religion statement. I am curious as to the exact number that this affects. The total amount of 1st time W/delegates could have been as low as, lets say "6". 60% of 6 would in fact, be a very low number. While your stated % gives the appearance of a large number, hence the non religious moniker attached to the Dems, the number may be much lower. Please expound. Thanks.

I still can't comprehend equating non-religious sorts as "the other end of the religious spectrum". To me, that's like saying that people who don't love the color green must love the color red.

husker, I'm not sure why you posted this on the Philosophy & Debate Board rather than the Religion & Spirituality Board. But since it's here rather than there, I'll use this opportunity to make a philosophical observation:

This is an excellent example of the "fallacy of equivocation," where "a word essential in an argument is used ambiguously in such a way that it makes the argument appear sound when it is really not" (D. Walton, "Toward a Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy," p. 61).

Here, the essential word is "extreme." In the first sense, it means "extreme in terms of religious doctrine or practice." In the second sense, however, it is used to mean "extreme in terms of public opinion." The author of the above apparently wants the reader to assume that both uses of "extreme" are identical, whereas they clearly are not. Consequently, such an ambiguous usage is logically fallacious.

This kind of fallacy is often encountered in political essays and internet discussion forums. So thanks for the opportunity to point this out, husker.

Interesting observation, joe. I'll watch for this.

Recently this has been cropping up a lot and members here have been referring to it as a "binary approach".

What happens is that through the seemingly fair "all have sinned" mantra the qualitative difference between sins is obfuscated.

great everone's piping in when I forgot what I was after - LOL

Joe
So you really don't think he means this for both groups?

Suppose someone says: "Joe is a liberal in politics, and husker is a liberal spender. Therefore, we can fairly say that both of them are liberals." Is that a logically defensible statement?

Clearly, the author of the argument that you cited wanted readers to elide the difference between the classes described (i.e. religious "extremes" and popular opinion "extremes") and consider all "extremists" to be alike. Otherwise, why mention the two in the same context?

Religious extremists and "popular opinion extremists" (or "fringe" people) may very well represent the same percentage of their respective classes (which is why they're both "extreme), but they belong to different classes and they're judged by different standards. Religious extremism refers to specific religious doctrines and practices (or, more to the point, the zeal of their adherents): "fringe" extremism refers to a "bell-curve" type of outlier on the spectrum of popular opinion. We don't consider Congregationalists, for instance, to be religious "extremists," even though they represent a tiny minority of Christians, because we don't apply the same sort of "bell-curve" definition of "extremism" to the spectrum of religious opinion. Likewise, we typically don't call a bored, apathetic, lazy atheist an "extremist," even though atheism is a minority opinion on a bell-curve standard. Conflating the two types of "extremism," then, is intellectually dishonest: it applies the standards of one inappropriately to the other.

on A2K
:wink:

Well, that might represent a true fringe group here. But show me a bored, lazy, apathetic atheist and I'll show you someone I can relate to.

I think there is a huge difference between "debunking myths about the religious right" and "trying to rationalize some of the excesses of the religious right in a way that makes it seem closer to sane and logical."

The author of those quotes seems to have missed that point.

I suspect the "miss" was intentional.

Kudos to LittleK and Joe for being more specific about that.

Joe really did a much better job than I. but thanks for noticing my little post, Frank.