Quote of the week #25 - AV on the “reason = evil” meme
Posted on May 11, 2008 by Bruce
In response to Ben Stein and Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor claiming that Soviet Russia and NAZI Germany were the result of reason.
“You can do all kinds of reductios with Stein’s claim. Scientists were involved in the Holocaust, therefore science is evil. Trains were used to transport Jews to the death camps, therefore trains are evil. The railway tracks were made of metal, therefore metal is evil. And so on.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, on the other hand, cuts directly to the chase: thinking was used in the planning of the Holocaust, therefore thinking is evil.”
(AV, 2008 )
Colour this blog evil.
~ Bruce
Filed under: Ben Stein, Culture Wars, Expelled, Logical Fallacies, Quote of the week, Religion | Tagged: Add new tag
person A: “so, person B, tell me, why do YOU believe in God?”
person B: “I have my reasons”
person A: “hah, so you admit it, you’re EVIL!!!”
It’s a debate killer really. All an atheist, or a scientist (atheist or theist) or otherwise reasonable person has to do with their anti-reason interlocutor, is point out that a few of their arguments are reasonable and therefore evil.
“The Cardinal makes a good, reasonable point, therefore leading to evil!”
Of course, you can appeal to them and be unreasonable as well. Throw logic out the door!
“The Cardinal is being quite unreasonable! And since reason is evil, he is being evil by being unreasonable. I know that doesn’t make sense at all, but seeing evil is reasonable according to The Cardinal, I decided to be unreasonable. Which has a kind of logic to it… Oh poop! I’m evil!”
With standards like the Cardinal’s, you can make anything evil, which is precisely the point. It comes down to which in-group can shout the loudest, rather than make the most sense.
Which is how NAZI and Soviet dogma came to power in the first place.
It would be easier if we were all vegetables, wouldn’t it? Vegetables don’t think, do they? Do they? I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.