First of all: sorry my computer wasn’t accepting me yesterday. I couldn’t do a second Fallacy Friday. But here’s a late one!

Today’s fallacy? The Tone Argument. This isn’t extremely related to religion, but whenever Christians or other theists attempt to dismiss arguments by irreligious individuals on the basis of something resembling anger, that’s this fallacy. It’s a fallacy/irrelevant argument because it doesn’t directly deal with the argument at hand. An example of this could be someone hearing an argument, and as a response them claiming something along the lines of “Why are you so angry?”. In the context of a debate, though calmness is preferred, objectively someone’s emotions aren’t particularly important. The tone of the person is almost completely irrelevant to their arguments. In religious arguments, whenever you hear someone say “you sound so angry” or “why so much hate?” ignore that part of the statement. If that’s a stand-alone statement, point out that your “anger” or “hate” is irrelevant to whether or not they are correct.

This type of argument is considered a “red-herring” because it’s a distraction. It’s meant to move the conversation in another direction, especially when it’s used by individuals who have knowledge of philosophy, arguments, and fallacies. If you actively debate with Christians or other kinds of theists you’ll probably hear this a lot. This is the “they hate God!” argument. Although calling statements like that “arguments” is stretching the word’s definition a bit much.

This can be a difficult fallacy to overcome until you learn to recognize it. Once you can spot it, it’s not difficult to overcome. It’s a simple matter of pointing out that this argument is fallacious and why. Because at no point does this argument deal with the arguments that provoked it. But it’s important to remember that if there is another comment, or a further statement, accompanying the tone-argument, that OTHER argument doesn’t get thrown out just because the tone-policing argument was. If you think it does, that’s actually a type of fallacy as well. It’s called the “Argument from fallacy”. It’s tricky to deal with, but it’s important to know. Fallacies can exist without necessarily corrupting an ENTIRE argument, or somehow automatically invalidating any possibility that the conclusion could be true.

A conclusion can be correct, but still have been realized by someone who got there through fallacious reasoning. This is part of why understanding WHY something is the way it is, is important as opposed to just understanding the conclusion.

Do you have any suggestions for Fallacy Fridays? Sorry about the lateness!