Hebrews 6:2, for example, speaks of ‘eternal judgment,’ yet certainly God isn’t continually in the act of judging people for eternity. Conditionalist: “It does say that, but what does ‘eternal punishment’ mean? Does it require the continual act of punishing? Not at all.Matthew 25:46 says that there is eternal punishment.” Traditionalist: “Hell is a place of eternal torment.
Consider the following hypothetical conversation, inspired by many years of spending time on message boards: Application to HellĪny time an argument doesn’t logically connect to the idea it is trying to prove in regards to hell, but instead just distracts from the actual issue, it serves as a red herring. A red herring is a logical fallacy because ultimately, there isn’t even an argument made, at least not in a meaningful sense. And yet, Candidate 2 basically evades the question by giving an answer that in this case doesn’t even make sense, but successfully diverts attention from the topic at hand.
Candidate 2’s shouting out buzzwords doesn’t answer the question about his tax plan, let alone answer it well. The argument doesn’t even address the point. The above is an extreme example, but you get the point. Think of something like this:Ĭandidate 1: If you cut the top marginal income tax rate to 5%, how do you plan on expanding government services, as you have promised?Ĭandidate 2: Uh…Well, uh….Freedom! Patriotism! Jobs! God! Equality! America! For the purposes of illustration, think about the exaggerated moments in sitcoms and satires. This fallacy pops up often in politics, especially in campaigns. Rather than simply not addressing the issue, a red herring gives an answer that distracts from the actual issue at hand but poses as a legitimate response. What distinguishes the red herring from the non-sequitur is that the red herring has an element of distraction. As traditionalist Matt Slick (of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry) defines it, it is “introducing a topic not related to the subject at hand.” 1 Matt Slick, “Logical Fallacies or Fallacies in Argumentation,” Christian Apolegetics and Research Ministry, n.d., (Accessed on April 21, 2014).This fallacy is closely related to the non-sequitur, as discussed in Part 1. A simple, classic example of a logical fallacy is the red herring.
0 kommentar(er)
