Excerpt: Before getting into the discussion of how a lie can become a major world religion let us consider a few logical fallacies that surround this subject. Argumentum ad antiquitatem: This fallacy asserts that a belief must be true if it has survived a long time, or because “thats the way its always been.” This fallacy is a favorite argument of Muslim apologists. In Arabic it is called Taqrir. The fallacy states that Islam has lasted for 1400 year and therefore it must be true. There have been many theses that were upheld for thousands of years that were eventually debunked. One such theory was geocentricity. Up until Galileo, the majority, if not all of mankind believed that the Earth is the center of the Cosmos. This belief was as old as mankind. The Sun the Moon and the entire firmament were believed to revolve around the Earth. Few challenged this thesis. Yet despite its long-held track record and antiquity, geocentricism proved to be false. Argumentum ad numerum: Another logical fallacy that Muslims cling to is the claim that since a great portion of humanity believes in Islam it must be true. They argue: “How can so many people be wrong?” Argumentum ad numerum asserts that the more people support or believe in a proposition, the greater is the likelihood that it is true. Just as something true does not become untrue if no one believes in it, something that is not true does not become true if many people believe in it. Truth cannot be staked on the consensus of the majority. Facts exist independent of beliefs. We cannot decide on truth by running an opinion poll. The Earth was never flat, even when everyone believed so. Argumentum ad populum: This is a variation of argumentum ad numerum. Argumentum ad populum asserts that something is true because it is appealing to a lot of people. You commit this fallacy when you try to win the legitimacy for an assertion by claiming it is liked by a large group of people. This form of fallacy is often characterized by emotive language. For example: “Islam has existed for over 1400 years and has had billions of followers. Islam has had a great impact on people’s lives. It has given the world Algebra and many sciences. The streets of Baghdad were illumined when Europe was engulfed in Dark Ages. Islam is the fastest growing religion. Are you implying that all these people are mistaken fools? So, why has Islam succeeded? Paradoxically, Islam has succeeded because it is a big lie. Adolf Hitler, in his Mein Kampf, (1925) wrote: “The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one”. If anyone should have known the power of the big lie and that the bigger the lie the more believable it sounds, it was Hitler. Another good statement is that of George Orwell, author of Politics and the English Language. He wrote: “Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 18:38:18 +0000
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