Using Kids as Political Pawns to Avoid Criticism

In the category of Viral Videos That Won’t Matter in a Week But Still Give Us a Snapshot of Society, a 16 year old girl, Greta Thunberg, delivered a fiery speech to the UN over climate change.  The speech was heavy on emotion, accusation, and alarmism but light on facts and logic, which isn’t exactly surprising because she’s, well, 16, and she has clearly been brought up in a certain narrative that she does not question.  Normally, we don’t take sixteen year olds this seriously because most teenagers have a pretty limited grasp of the world, and we forgive their overconfidence as natural growing pains.  This is not to say that there aren’t especially bright teenagers who have interesting things to share, but even for those who are unusually intelligent for their age, they often lack the experience required to temper their sweeping conclusions and give complexity to their worldviews.

However, what we also do is correct them so that they can learn.  Or at least, that is what responsible adults should do.  Instead, for some bizarre reason, certain young people are being elevated as wise sages that should not be questioned, and if you question them, you are proven to be a heartless monster to whom nobody should listen.  Even if they spew bad arguments and falsehoods, any sort of critique is seen as being insensitive and mean-spirited.  I guess it’s kind of like how we would view an adult who suddenly corrects a small child’s belief in Santa Claus: We don’t praise him for telling the truth but villify him for being a jerk who ruined a child’s fantasy.

The result of this is that children are being used as political pawns to avoid criticism and attack the characters of anyone who disagrees.  It is pretty disingenuous, and it makes it worse that it is also very hypocritical.  It also doesn’t guide anyone to the truth or help these young people mature, as I have pointed out with the media’s treatment of David Hogg.

The Fallacy of Naming Fallacies Without Understanding

As someone who studies philosophy and teaches a logic course, I obviously value critical thinking, clear arguments, and sharp reasoning.  I therefore think it is very helpful for people to familiarize themselves with common fallacies that are utilized ubiquitously–by politicians, by journalists, by your youth teacher, by your pastor, by your coworkers, etc.–in order to see them in other people’s argument and try to avoid them.  I’m not so much concerned about knowing the names of these fallacies but in recognizing when there is an error in reasoning that makes the argument weak, invalid, irrelevant, or otherwise ineffective.

Here’s the problem with many people though: They do care a lot about naming the fallacies because it’s a quick way to sound superior and smart, and they often do so without actually understanding what the fallacy is.  It leads to somewhat embarrassing situations when they brazenly but wrongly accuse others of committing a fallacy.

There are a plethora of examples of this, but I’ll start with a recent personal example.  In a Facebook Christian apologetic group, someone posted an article where the author refuted the notion that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, using many sources and quoting historians.  The idea that Hitler was a devout Christian and faithfully applied Christian doctrine has no basis in historical evidence, and it is a position that is not only rejected by most historians, it is even rejected by atheist popularizers and heavy critics of Christianity like Sam Harris.

An atheist angrily replied by accusing the article of two fallacies: The Strawman Fallacy and The No True Scotsman Fallacy.  I normally do not post things in this particular group, but I decided to respond to him by telling him that it didn’t seem like he understood what those fallacies actually were.  I asked him: In what way did the article strawman anyone?  How did it commit The No True Scotsman Fallacy?