Paul's Great Ad Hom

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
81

I disagree.
It’s not merely that ad hom’s were valid forms of discourse then that was my point.
The point was that an ad hom is a valid form of premise when the discussion is within a social dynamic of exclusivity and difference with preexisting communal solidarity and regards the metric, usually axiomatic, for determining the solution for preservation of the group from dilution.

That’s why I also highlighted Churchill.
I am not suggesting that an ad hom is de facto valid, or in sterile isolation of the concept of ad hom itself, valid.
Instead, I mean that it is inherently a familial format which has been used in humanity as far back as historical records run which has aided in the preservation of a specific group of peoples regularly.

Validity only goes so far. It’s not all-together the king of rule for producing vibrant movements of human solidarity.
Bonds, however, do.
And the first step to a bond is a negative description of what is not to be the definition of a group.
Those who do not fit, are inherently wrong to the group for not abiding by the group’s ideologies.

But this assumes an axiomatic foundation which already supplies the reason for employing the group’s ideologies - often found within the groups ideologies themselves.
Again, Churchill.
He assumes free right of mind is better, yet supplies no evidence logically for this.
It is axiomatically given because the demographic he is speaking to already believes this based on a background built from the proofs to its own society that free right of mind is principle to sound society.

A few great ancient Chinese rulers would strongly disagree; so would a few Roman rulers; and so would a few Holy Roman leaders through time.
That is to say nothing regarding the philosophical arguments revolving around free will being an illusion, or free will within the utilitarianism society, which would contest the very foundation of axiomatically proposing free right of mind to be superior ideological governance for civilization and therefore inherently creating a placeholder that all that do not hold to this are inferior nations and peoples by de facto.
Nor is there a valid philosophical argument in declaring that the motive for not being a free right of mind government is only fear of freedom for the people governed.

Ad hom is a social glue.
It has no place in pure rational reasoning, but pure rational reasoning is far removed from the discourse at hand with the context of Paul and those who he is writing.
He is writing for preservation of the group - not sound ideological rationalism.

You can say it is not valid because it is logically disconnected, but not when you are the people in discussion weighting the difference between trusting a Nazi soldier telling you, a Jew, that they want to take you to a new job.
The ad hom is a call to the amygdala to remember the emotional desire to preserve by pointing to that which has socially been experienced or defined previously as worth fearing by negative impact upon those who make up the given countering group.

It’s an incredibly alien idea today in our politically correct indoctrinated society now on the sunrise of unapologetic globalization.
Today, what Churchill said then is about as convincing as Bush Jr.'s arguments regarding the, “Axis of Evil”.
We’re far less interested in preservation of an isolated group at the risk of harm upon other groups today than ever before.

But, as I said, yes…it’s an ad hom.
Paul would have gotten no where with anyone he was addressing had it not been.

The part I think is worth paying attention to isn’t that his arguments are ad hom, but instead that his arguments suggest another option than race as the defining factor of inclusion and exclusion from the social group.
Paul; an ass as he may possibly have been in many regards - and pretentious in tone to go with it - was pretty progressive in what we would call today, human rights.

The Hebrew’s version of human rights after the Maccabean revolution, by comparison, was - in some popular parties (what we would call them) -, “Not a Hebrew, sinner and evil”.

Again, today our society on mass looks at this and, if note is taken of what it is, recoils.

That all said.
If you are trying to find Paul’s validity now, regarding his arguments for his position?
No, you won’t find a valid argument.
You are not part of that group; you have no emotional investment for solidarity of your group at the threat of loss that bears weighing the soundness of his words.
And it is here, because of this, that his remarks are evident to us as invalid.

82

#1 That is meaningless nonsense and obfuscation.

I don’t see the relevance of Churchill.

Repeating a fallacy for a long period of time doesn’t make it valid.

See response #1 above.

Which means to me that after much circumlocution, you concede that I was substantively correct. Thanks.

83

I found your dismissals unfortunate.
That said, I said that I agreed that it was an ad hom and invalid by logical reasoning a while ago.
I was hoping you would take a look how the invalidity of the comment as it stands today was not what mattered in determining the validity of it to these peoples then.
They wouldn’t care if you stated it was invalid. They would accept the reprimand and instruction, not an argument, regardless of the fact that it is invalid outside of their emotional investment.

People don’t form social groups based on rationalism (except for Sheldon).
And, as I said before, Paul wasn’t writing for the audience of eternity as canon.
Neither was Churchill; they were making social pleas banked on leveraging a cultural identity of conscience.

Even the Declaration of Independence falls prey to being invalid as a logical pursuit.

That’s entirely missing logical evidence.
It even states it: “self-evident”.
It doesn’t even bother trying to make a logical argument.
It just says, “Fuck it, either you agree and are therefore with us, or you don’t and are therefore not with us.”

So I suppose my point about Paul’s Ad Hom is; and?
Because it doesn’t change the validity of its meaning to those of its circle.

Just the same as irrational racist claims by the KKK still function extremely well for their purpose.

84

Why would that matter to us except as an academic exercise?

Who were “they”? How do you know how people living 2000 years ago felt?

Romans is read as the Word of God by millions of Christians. So the logic of the text has existential importance to some people.

Churchill is irrelevant.

Irrelevant

Those of it’s circle don’t get a special definition for what is a valid argument. The primary issue is whether or not the existence of God is self evident or not. There is a tendency of Christians to think it is and to argue that anyone who claims they don’t see it is a morally deficient. That’s what Paul seems to be doing here.

That doesn’t make their arguments valid.

85

Nevermind Felix.
You’re hung up on philosophical logical validity where I’m moving past that as, when it comes to religion, logical validity is not the primary motor for communication.
Logical proof is a very poor existential analog.

86

I’m afraid not.
Paul explains why God has done something. That explanation involves the actions of others and is thus an “ad hominid” (a reference to the person/s). But there is no logical conclusion being drawn stating that “statement A is false because of the behavior of person A”.
There is no logical fallacy or validity involved.

Paul was not trying to prove God, but explain God’s choices.

87

Yes I’m “hung up” on logical validity because I’m aiming at the truth, and I don’t see how I can get to it without it. By “moving past” logical validity, you are moving into a zone where questions of validity are unresolvable. That’s logical suicide. Reasonable people will miss you.

This is special pleading for religion again. It’s been your argument all along. It’s why as moderator you set up a special section for “theology” that was protected against arguments for validity. But few participated because what drives philosophy is the quest for truth. If religion isn’t after the same thing, then it fails philosophically.

Illogical “proof” is worse.

88

I think I’m with Jayson on this as I too have felt since the OP that you are too focused on logical validity Felix. I think that’s a poor approach to take toward Paul and any other philosopher for that matter.

But let me clarify that a bit. It is not to say that we shouldn’t expect coherence or consistency in what Paul is saying. We absolutely should (and I think we find it). Rather it is to say that Paul can’t be critiqued on logical grounds alone. (Identifying a fallacy in an argument constructed from a small segment of his letter is not enough to refute him.)

Such an approach is insufficient for reasons that I’ve been trying to make and that Jayson has probably made more clearly through his historical-critical approach on the matter.

That said, there are certain things that are simply beyond logic or more important than logic. Logic provides more of a toolkit or methodology for presenting a point of view in a coherent-consistent format. It doesn’t and can’t say anything final about the truth-value of that view.

For instance, Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore yes, Socrates is mortal. But how is it that we know that Socrates is a man? How is it that we know that all men are mortal? The logic here is perfect but there is always a remainder that you simply must take for granted, which is to say without any logical support.

89

Closed-mindedness and aggression, for instance? Because in the case of Paul, that is the issue at hand. Or, for the Christian… would Jesus approve of Paul’s approach?

90

Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. He was trying to share his faith with the world. He was not a closed-minded Jew intent only upon the salvation of the Jewish people or Christian-Jews but rather he was an open-minded cosmopolitan thinker who wanted to extend salvation to all.

Yes, he was aggressive toward and hated evil. But what is wrong with that? Shouldn’t we be haters of evil?!

91

He was mistaken about what is and isn’t evil and he proposed killing people for minor moral offenses. That is evil. Misguided, anyway. O:)

92

Call me naive, but I think there is a difference between warning people that God’s wrath is coming to those who persist in their evil ways and “proposing the killing of people for minor moral offenses.”

I don’t recall any such proposals in Paul’s writings! But I could be wrong.

93

From the OP:

32Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die

94

Felix at best what you will get is a more internally consistent idea. But the truth of the prepositions is something you take on faith. After that fact, that jump, then you can either be good or bad at fixing up your argument to defend what you believe prima facia against disbelievers. Logic and it’s use are rationalizations that come after the fact.

95

Paul says they deserve to die, yes, but does he propose killing them? Not that I can see.

Look at Jesus and the adulteress. Did she deserve to die for what she did? Maybe. Maybe moreso if she continued in her hurtful ways. But did Jesus propose killing her? Absolutely not. (“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone…”)

This example should at least stress that they are separate. Saying that someone deserves something and proposing that we do it. We should give Paul that much credit.

96

By moving past, I meant that it was established…now what’s the point, because that is not what people approach religion for.
That is one of the reasons that some secular counters to established religion despise it in principle; because it is rooted in invalid presentation according to logical pursuits, and then from that people can be compelled to act without logical rationality as motive.

Why is my character of matter?
What I did or did not do as moderator has no bearing on the matter of whether there’s more to Paul and his work than simply logical validations, or whether religion, in practice, is primarily conveyed by logical validations.

And as a side note: the theological section wasn’t for exempting logic - it was for axiomatic discussions of further tangents within a given religious theology. An example would be if a person wanted to discuss the context of Baptism within Protestant Christianity and the arguments for and against the concept in all fashions, but did not wish to have a thread ripped apart in discussing the axioms of Christian belief just to get up to the point where the discussion may hope to talk about Baptism.
At the time, there were such discussions started previously that ended in railed off discussions of the validity of the divine in general.
It wasn’t an exemption of discussion on logic. I did not suddenly shut down the main religious section proper and force axiomatic dogma upon the forum.
But this is a side-note, for clarification, and not the tangent.

And no, I’m not making a special case for religion.
Religion is approached by people with a special case in their sensation.
People don’t practice religion, nor belong to the community therein, by logical rationality from which they have deduced the conclusion of better weight in rational value in return by adhering to a given religion as if they are all Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.

I’m not saying that in a rational examination that the premises and conclusions of a theological foundation are excused from being invalid.
No, but what I’m saying is that you can chant that a thousand times at any pulpit or temple top and it will have next to no effect upon the adherence of those to their theological holdings which are derived in motive from personal proofs of emotion rationalized only in reflection when pressed to do so.

Which circles back around to what I said previously: even with Paul being invalid, it doesn’t change the weight of his words to those he wrote who were part of this new forming cultural community and identity.

The very basis of existential transmission from one human to another effectively is irrational.
Music, painting, the core impulse for religious involvement; these are not logical analogs of one person conveyed to another whereby the receiver can then adopt the perspective of the transmitter in shared conception on existence.

Religion, by default of employing the keystone of emotion, is illogical before it begins to speak.
We can talk of Religion logically, but being in the middle of it? No.

To circle back around:

And you were looking into the truth of what exactly?
The existence of a god based on the logical validity of Paul’s writings?

Because Paul is invalid, therefore his god is not self-evident universally; therefore what?
What’s the point?

I could point out several, probably hundreds or thousands, of logical fallacies in any given canon of Abrahamic fashion (or any religious text for that matter).

I’m not saying Paul is my man; I think you know I’m not a huge fan of Paul’s theology or his philosophies.
But I really don’t quite understand what the point was at this stage, considering the only derived point I can conclude since you keep wanting to remove any other conversation save for that which is already agreed upon…is implicitly something akin to, ‘Paul is illogical.’

And?
What’s the “truth” bearing in this?

Perhaps this would have been something of shock two or three centuries ago, but I’m not really seeing what the point was if all you want to discuss is how a guy’s personal addresses to some people long ago regarding their community bond through religious culture, and the retention of it therein, fails to meet logical validity of rationalism.

Are you attempting to accomplish an absolute truth or some such?
As I said before, to them…Paul would not be invalid…because they weren’t in a rationally logical discourse; they were in an emotionally spiritual discourse - specifically ones rooted in axioms negligent from this citation.

It is as if I just wrote:

Var1=x Var2=y Var3=z Var4=Var1+Var2 If Var4 = Var3 { True } Else { False }
It really means nothing until we know what the variables contain.
As of the above, they are just empty.

So are Paul’s variables.
We don’t know their values.
On their face, because of this, if they are attempted to be used by any as evidence of his god; then they are logically invalid due to a complete lack of information - with or without the ad hom.

But I don’t think that was Paul’s point.
I don’t think Paul was actually trying to prove the existence of his god to his reading community.
It appears instead, that he is resting his argument on the assumption that they agree already that their god is self-evident and that therefore the warnings are valid on the conduct of behavior; which summarizes to something akin to, ‘people are bad without (our) god; we have seen their actions. We do not approve; therefore let us not be as they and deny (our) god or we shall suffer the same as they do.’

Which, as I said just above, is littered all through any related canons.
How many times do the Israelite’s in the text compare others to their own selves in such manners?
How many times are peoples of other cultures declared as bad because they deny the obvious deity of the protagonist peoples; and therefore have unruly culture?

Has anyone stopped practicing Judaism because these declarations are invalid?
Is it the logical validity and invalidity in rational focus that people trans-induce spiritual evocation from at the praying wall?

I don’t care if Paul is invalid or not; great.
The guy looks to be a philosophical invalid…so…what now?

97

Thank you for giving this issue some thought James. “Statement A” is implied. It is the position of the ones Paul refers to as “men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. They charcterize divinity in a different way then Paul. Paul condemns them for it.

I agree Paul was not trying to prove God. He accepts God as given. He presents a series of interlocking arguments for humanity’s universal need for salvation—in other words that “all have sinned.” First he presents an argument for why God gave them up. Each sentence that begins with the word for or because is a premise leading to the conclusion that God gave them up which is preceded by the word[i] therefore[/i.]. Its an argument in the form of a syllogism.

98

As I have explained before, I became interested in this passage because it seemed to imply that God is self evident. That is an interesting topic to me. If God is self- evident why doesn’t everyone believe in “him”? Paul provides an explanation for that which seems to be a standard one used by fundamentalists today.

That said, there are certain things that are simply beyond logic or more important than logic. Logic provides more of a toolkit or methodology for presenting a point of view in a coherent-consistent format. It doesn’t and can’t say anything final about the truth-value of that view.

Right. Logical structure isn’t everything. An argument must also be factually correct. But even if we have the facts right, the reasoning can be fallacious and therefore, the conclusion wrong. However, I disagree that we must take the “remainder” for granted. We should look at the empirical evidence for verification or falsification. Much may be taken for granted that hasn’t been.

99

Yes, Paul supports this conclusion with the premises that God’s nature and character are self evident so people have no excuse for their idolatry. The short term penalty for idolatry is to be given up to homosexuality according to Paul’s gospel.

100

Go to your already chosen enemies (anyone resisting enslavement) pretending to be their friends.
If you mess up and get caught as their enemies such that they declare war on you, then murder all of their males and take all of their women and other possessions as your own.

Judists worship the “Invisible Assassin” (“The Most Subtle Serpent”, “Image of God/Invisible”).

But back to the point;
Paul was never proposing a logic argument. Thus there is no fallacy or validity involved.