Silence is the greatest persecution -Blaise Pascal

Lies, Half-Truths, and Affirmative Action Seminary Profs

Argumentum ad ignorantiam on display at Anthony Bradley’s “reformed” weblog. This logical fallacy consists in argument to the effect that something must be true simply because it hasn’t been proved false, i.e. that Kinism is indistinguishable from the beliefs held by the Ku Klux Klan. We come across this “deposit” of knowledge not through direct interface with Kinists, but through a link to this site from one of his “articles”. I must be out of the loop, since this article has been there for quite a while. Over a year in fact. I only come across it by virtue of a fan of Anthony’s clicking the link to the -GASP!!- shocking evidence.

To further manipulate the suggestibility of his typical reader, he presents us with an inglorious picture of menacing looking KKK members in full regalia. But the connection between Kinism and KKK views is that which is to be proved, as they say in forensics. Furthermore, the attempt actually being made here is your typical guilt by association ploy in which it is hoped that the misdeeds of the KKK, whatever they may have been, are associated with Kinism through the specious comparison above. Using this tactic, Kinism becomes guilty of the sins of the KKK.  Thus, it is Quod Erat Demonstrandum to the mental giants that frequent his shuck and jive website.

But the fact of the matter, and something that this dishonest man is very well aware of, is that Kinists are not and will never be guilty of the crimes that the KKK is supposedly guilty of: Kinists have never burned a church, never lynched a black, never committed any similar crime or malfeasance, and in fact, have never done anything except to assert their right to interpret scripture the way they see fit, to use logic and evidence to demonstrate the validity of their ideas, and attempt to present a case why their philosophy is superior to that which governs what is called “reformed” schools of thought these days -schools, we hasten to add, which are at tremendous variance with the immediate fathers of that branch of the Faith: men such as J. Gresham Machen, or R.L. Dabney. We’ll let our readers and guests decide whether bearing false witness is worse than espousing an unpopular, but patently orthodox view of the scriptures.

Dangerous, radical stuff, this challenging of the received opinions of the age, much like the nailing up of a few dozen theses. The article by Bradley (we should rather call it a “broadside") is a veritable trove of logical fallacies, a short list of which would include: argumentum ad novitatem (argument that something is correct simply because it is recent), audiatur et altera pars (unacknowledged assumptions or premises), argumentum ad populum (appealing to the gallery), argumentum ad numerum (appealing to the popularity of a view), and like others of his ilk argumentum ad baculum (a thinly veiled threat of force that Kinists will be “exposed” individually for holding such “heretical” views). Poor stuff for a seminary professor. But Bradley’s the affirmative action Prof. at the otherwise lily-white institution where he teaches. He’s taken his cues from Morris Dees, another smear artist and scandal monger with little or no pretensions of scholarship or care for the facts.

Decide for yourself if his rhetoric is tendentious and misleading or not.

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