The Age of Sophistry

According to Meriam-Webster's dictionary sophistry is "subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation." In other words it when a person takes a truth but manipulates its claim to advance a falsehood. An example from our current history would be something like, "Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, therefore he was an immoral man in all areas of life." The truth stated is that Jefferson was a slave owner, however the conclusion that "therefore he was an immoral man..." is deceptive reasoning based on that fact. Jefferson may have been immoral in other areas of his life, but one cannot make the claim that he was immoral all the way through on the basis of his view on slavery alone. Why not? Because the issue of slavery in his day was not viewed as the way it is in our day, first of all. But also because, it stands to reason that just because a person may have moral failures in one area of life does not mean that they have not contributed greatly to society or the common good in other areas. As a matter of fact, as I have written in other spaces, even the Bible is filled with stories of men who sinned greatly at times, but were still used of God in mighty ways for the good of His people and for the progressing of redemptive history. Yet the use of logical fallacies and the claims of moral superiority based on the manipulation of facts has only increased in our present age.

We live in an age of relativism. Whether it is Truth that is described as relative or morality, the intelligentsia of our day want to keep the ability of "knowing" loose and vague. This is most obviously recognized with the idea of gender fluidity, fluctuating sexual preferences, and historical revisionism that is taking place all of the country. One story sums this up pretty well when you simply look at the actress Ellen Page who recently came out as transgender. Before she has come to that realization she had come out a few years earlier as lesbian, and now she was coming out as transgendered. Since coming out as a man, she has now divorced her "wife", but without an explanation so far as to what this might mean for her sexual identity. This story also relates to historical revisionism because as soon as Ellen decided she ...