The Ever-Present, All-Powerful Ad Hominem
by Bill Muehlenberg, Culture Watch:
If you have done even the smallest amount of culture wars activities, you will know something with absolute assurance: you will be attacked, abused and vilified for making a public stand. It simply goes with the territory, and sadly we have to expect it.
Whether we are standing up for the institutions of marriage and family, or seeking to defend the unborn, etc, we will be attacked, insulted and abused. So we had better get used to it. It is simply the way it is in today’s harsh and hostile ideological, political, cultural and spiritual climate
When I teach Christian students on the basics of how to reason, how to think, how to assess, and how to use one’s mind for the glory of God, I of course always have to have a section on the various logical fallacies. We need to know how to argue and how to make our case – and how not to.
At the top of my list of fallacies is the ever-present ad hominem attack. This is Latin for ‘to the man’ or ‘to the person,’ and has to do with attacking the man you are debating with. Instead of making an argument and instead of responding to the argument of your opponent, you simply attack him.
Usually, this fallacy involves two steps. First, there is an attack against the character of the person making a claim or argument, and second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making or trying to present.
Of interest, one even finds this in the Bible. In fact, just this morning in my daily reading I came across an example of this. Consider Mark 6:1-6:
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