O tempora o mores!

Fig. 1: Ancient Roman Historians

Raising questions about an expert’s qualifications, motivations, and possible conflicts of interest is good practice.  However, a fundamental principle of argument says  that time is short and that one must therefore dispense with the bullshit.

This principle was violated by Fox News’ religion correspondent, Lauren Green, when she spent several minutes of an interview with well-known religious scholar Reza Aslan puzzling over why a Muslim would write a book about Jesus:


This not on its face a stupid question, but that was pretty much the only question the interviewer had for the next several minutes.  Her implication was that there is something suspect or inappropriate in a non-Christian’s writing about Jesus.  This is a variation on the fallacious variety of the ad hominem circumstantial: you’re just saying what you say about Jesus because you’re a Muslim out to terrorize Christianity with scholarship and footnotes.

That’s obviously silly and does not deserve refutation.

Sadly, having watched the interview, I have no idea what the book is about or whether it is any good.

Diverting from the topic matter






No, that isn’t actually a rule.


When I was a child, I thought like a child



That’s when people started calling me a “whore.”


I feel disappointed.







You don’t say


A Picture of Obviousness




Hearing this made David Brooks reconsider his position on these laws:


Nice work, Professor Obama.


Old man yells at cloud

NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran a program on young people who challenge common forms of gender identification.  Here’s a snippet:



Fascinating stuff, of course.  This lead to the usual letters and such, among them was this one:

CORNISH: Amy [Redacted] North Carolina, disagrees with that last line. She writes: How about abused and neglected children? They certainly do not have the luxury of sitting at Oberlin College defining themselves as tractors or determining what gender pronoun they’re going to use at any given moment. Lawton goes on: While I believe that these people have the right to choose whatever pronoun they’d like to refer to themselves, by no means are they the most marginalized members of society. Finally, it seems like there are more pressing issues to address around here than rewriting the gender binary.

This is really terrible criticism.  Not to defend NPR, but a search for the exact string “Child Abuse” produced 400 results on the NPR web page.

Now here’s the question.  I imagine NPR had lots of choice here in selecting among the responses to their story.  Did they have to pick such a cranky and ill-informed one?  It seems like they have an obligation to select strong (that is, relevant and cogently argued) responses.  Here’s another question: is it fair to the cranky letter writer to publish his/her silly letter?  Seems not.

Common sense

Fig 1: “a uniform we all recognize”







Your argument’s fine, but I don’t like your friends

Gideon Caplin, Benjamin Gourgey and Josh Goodman over at AmSpec have piece on the “lawfare” of Muslim student associations and the Councilon American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).  The issue is whether Muslim students should have permission to pray during school hours. Caplin, Gourgey, and Goodman concede that the case can be made for student-led prayer under certain conditions. But then they turn ad hominem circumstantial:

Despite the fact that student-led prayer in public schools that adheres to the above criteria can be carried out within the law, Muslim students undermine their cause by directly inviting the assistance of CAIR, an organization that has been accused of financially supporting the terrorist activities of Hamas.

The trouble is that it doesn’t matter who CAIR has given money to (or has been accused of giving money to). If the students have the right, they have the right.  It’s not clear what the implication is or how this circumstance is supposed to undermine a case.  If the implication is that CAIR gives money to Islamic exteremist groups, and this student rights group gets support from CAIR… so they must be extremists?  Or is it that their case is undermined by the fact that they lose their rights to free religious expression because they have someone standing up for their rights that also supports Hamas?  Can someone lose their First Amendment rights of free expression just because they have radicals for friends?  Can someone’s argument be worse by virtue of the company they keep?

Contested concept equivocation











