Right and Wrong

Historical archive only. New interaction is disabled.

Original Question

I was arguing with a religious person on religious texts being invalid or wrong. He said that religious texts could include both right and wrong so it is wise for us to remove the wrong and accept the right and also he added that there are such malpractices which religious books promote which might be right to do such practices at the time the certain religious book was written. So I replied him that rape and wife beating and other practices had been promoted by religious texts cannot be justified as good whether it is for past or present situation. But he kept applying his ad nauseam trick that whatever had been written in religious texts are good for the past situation and which we cannot know. So I want to know which fallacy had he committed by stating that wrong statements made by religious books were good ?

Answers

This can be seen as the Missing Data Fallacy : Refusing to admit ignorance to the hypothesis and/or the conclusion, but insisting that your ignorance has to do with missing data that validate both the hypothesis and conclusion.

P1: The Bible is morally perfect.
P2: Rape is endorsed in the Bible.
C. Rape must have been the perfect act given the situation.

Note that we can't even begin to explain WHY rape was "perfect," but we simply assert that it "must have been" and cite some missing data (some information we don't have.) We can use this same flawed reason to demonstrate the opposite:

P1: The Bible is perfectly evil (i.e., *everything* in the bible is wrong and evil)
P2: The Bible endorses being kind to others.
C. Being kind to other must be the most evil thing possible—we just are incapable of seeing it.

When we disregard evidence and stick with a conclusion that contradicts the evidence based on some hypothetical unknown reason, we are engaged in some seriously flawed (and dangerous) reasoning.

Want the full book?

Get the complete guide to logical fallacies by Bo Bennett.

Buy the Book

Master Logical Fallacies Online

Take the Virversity course and sharpen your reasoning skills with structured lessons.

View Online Course