A subtle fallacy
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I observe a very subtle fallacy commited by intellectuals, religious priests and some members in this community. This fallacy is somewhat hard to explain. If you understand it or recognize it, please elaborate it further on this post. Please also let me know if I'm clear or not. (I use this forum as a testing ground for discussing ideas with non-muslims. Your feedback is thus very valuable). Let me try.
Assume there are two belief systems. (They could be religions or societies or anything). Belief system A and belief system B. These belief systems have statements. The systems look like this
Belief system A
Statement a1.
Statement a2.
....etc.Belief system B
Statement b1.
Statement b2.
....etc.Example of above generalization
Belief system A Traffic laws in the US.
Statement a1 Driver seat on the left side of the car.
..etc.Belief system B Traffic laws in the UK.
Statement b1 Driver seat on the right side of the car.
..etc.The intellectual fallacy is as follows
While attempting to verify the importance, strength or validity of a statement in a belief system, instead of looking for contradictions WITHIN the system itself, instead of looking at the behaviour of a statement WITHIN the system where it is contained, the fallacious thinker compares the statement with some OTHER comparative system. (phew).
Comparing it with the generalization,
While attempting to see how statement a1 works in belief system A, the fallacious thinker 'sees' the working of a1 in Belief system B, where it does not necessarily belong.
Taking the example of traffic laws, the thinker commiting the above fallacy makes a statement as follows
"A driver's seat on the left side should be against the law in the US. This is not how we do things in England".
Who cares about England? Compare the driver seating with what is in the traffic laws in the US.
Then you may say,
"Well, can't I compare the results of statements in a belief system, with results of statements in other belief system?". Yes you CAN compare observational results.E.g,
Traffic laws in US
You cannot drive while intoxicated (drunk).Traffic laws in Guam (arbritrarily chosen)
You can drive while intoxicated.From the observation of traffic deaths in the US and Guam, you will notice that more people die in Guam than in the US. You can thus conclude that it is not a good idea to drive while being drunk. While reaching this conclusion, you have seen the death rate in GUAM ITSELF (NOT US), and compared with death rate in US ITSELF (NOT GUAM), and thus avoided the fallacy.
Summing up in Islamic context,
While thinking about e.g, why sex outside marriage is prohibited in Islam, we may start to think about how presence of free sexual intercourse has no apparent effect on the US. We should instead, think about how free sexual intercourse will affect an ISLAMIC society (unfotunately in our thoughts so far) and other statements of this society.Im afraid I have commited this fallacy a number of times myself. Sorry about that.