Monday, May 05, 2008

More for the fallacy files

Via Molly, this bit of wisdom from Ben Stein, speaking to the Trinity Broadcasting system
Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.
In general, I'm having a hard time figuring out what the hell is going on with this line of thinking. I know it comes up under the general heading "fallacious ways bring up the Nazis in a political discussion." He could be using a straight fallacy of the undistributed middle, the central tactic from Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.You could also call this a variation of the ad hominem, one that probably deserves its own subtype, along with ad hominem circumstantial and ad hominem to quoque. It could be the ad hominem "oh yeah, that's what Hitler thought." This would be a useful subtype to teach to undergraduates, who are used to thinking that ad hominem is simply a fancy term for insult. Here the fallacy occurs not because the speaker accuses the person holding a belief of being awful. Instead, he says the belief was held by someone else, who was awful.

I'm particularly distressed by this line
I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed
Wait. Scientists ran the death camps? And haven't done anything since? Remember that the next time your doctor tells you to get more exercise: the last time a scientist gave any advice about anything was when famous scientist Adolf Hitler greenlighted the final solution.

PS: I can't find the Unfogged thread where we brainstormed Republican Communism. I'd include a link if I could.

3 comments:

Orange said...

Crikey, the Stein line about scientists running the death camps went right past me. Sneaky bastard!

ccmoira said...

I love how he equivocates by saying 'it's just an opinion' - well, the Nazis had opinions too, didn't they, and look what happened.

Anonymous said...

That's about like saying "the last time any of my relatives interacted with a Catholic priest, it was during the Inquisition and look what happened then."