Intellectual Dishonesty

One thing that drives me nuts is when someone makes an argument, but isn’t intellectually honest about it…

For instance, there’s a conservative, legalistic Christian radio host who plays sermons on his show and rips them apart for being too “liberal.”  He’s done this with my sermons, which is fine.  But he carefully picks them out.  He’ll choose one and then deride me for not talking about sin or repentance or hell, acting like I’m too liberal to address such topics.  But he doesn’t mention that the very week before my sermon was about sin and repentance and hell.  How convenient.

Or there’s the movie Religulous, where Bill Maher sets out to prove how stupid people of faith are.  But he only chooses to talk to uninformed people of faith who can’t answer his questions, though they would be easy for many to answer.  For instance, the Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law is a Christian who tried to disprove the gospels but instead found them true. Does Maher debate with him? Nope, instead he debates truckers at a truck stop chapel service. Maher also makes absurd claims like that there is no evidence that Jesus ever lived.  (Really?!)  And he uses “facts” against Christianity, but facts that have been proven untrue repeatedly.

It’s like if you’re going to make an argument, at least be honest about it.  And if you can’t make your argument without being honest, maybe you shouldn’t make your argument.