My Dear Nephew Grubworm,
Congratulations on your recent promotion from apprentice demon to journeyman. As your uncle, I must tell you that it is truly in my own best interest to aid you in your duties as your performance does reflect upon me. Indeed, I will most certainly not ever hesitate to persuade you through “ad baculum” meaning a use of force to impress upon you the seriousness of fulfilling your duties properly. As they say, the “crap” rolls both uphill and downhill. My own superiors are not hesitating to apply “ad baculum” to me and therefore, if necessary, I shall also not hesitate to threaten your agreement with all I say with a terrifying consequence. You know what that is, so do your job excellently.
However; on to happier things! I am most excited that of all potential human clients that you have managed to obtain a politician! You must have truly impressed those in the rest of your upline to receive such a plum assignment. Your best tool for most of his life will the misuse of certain aspects of human logic. The silly humans having no idea, usually, of the etymology of the word “logic” or its use in scripture cannot even apply it most of the time when they do know. This is very good news for us. It will be very easy to distract your client.
As I begin, it is imperative for me to define your tools which, ironically, are definitions. Definitions lead to clarity of communication and this must be avoided, perverted and thwarted at all costs. Your client will hear many propositions as a legislator. A proposition is an idea which is universal. As an idea, it does not belong to any particular language. However, all propositions must be articulated in sentences which are in language and this is where we have our tools. Sentences in language usually possess cognitive meaning, information, and possess emotive force. The emotive force is the words in the sentence which elicit an emotional response and in legislation; there is almost always an emotional response in any factual sentence. Emotions often cloud the thinking. Whether this emotive clouding occurs to your client or simply with those presenting the ideas doesn’t matter. As long as the conversation can first be confused with passionate or even violent emotion, nothing positive for humanity can be achieved.
Now, as these propositions are being presented and the emotive force is well in play, the opportunity for ambiguous terms which have more than one meaning and can be equivocated, or confused for one another, bring about vague sentences. At the onsets of discussions start by integrating the extensional definition and the intentional definition. While I should hope they covered these terms during your apprenticeship, nephew, I will ensure your knowledge and my ultimate success. Extensional means when one term (the actual subject of the statement) consists of the set of things to which the term applies. For example, organizations under the “Faith-based initiative” could include Muslim, Baha’i, Christian, Jewish or any other entity serving the community which has any belief in a deity.
The intentional meaning is a little more specific because it describes specifically the attributes needed to be included in a group. In our In our case, we require that the inclusion of this bill be carefully worded to favor greatly those groups which are more oppressed or underrepresented. This could easily be understood as anything other than Christian.
Our best weapon for this is to use a number of fallacies. Start with the “part to whole” and the “whole to part” logical fallacy. Now, these are all informal fallacies which make them much more subversive than an outright obvious error in straightforward thinking. Though often not caught, they can easily sound so ridiculous that they are more likely to be noticed. So, the informal fallacy it is. For example don’t put together something like the following
1. If the faith based initiative passes, Christian groups will get government money.
2. Christian groups getting government money might be perceived as violating separation of church and state.
3. Therefore, faith based initiatives violate the separation of church and state.
Straighforward logic like this can be too easily picked apart because anyone regular “Joe” will point out that there are more than Christians in the intiative. This will not help our cause. So, instead you want to use the devices I have laid out throughout this letter.
I believe it will well do for you to first focus on destroying any government support of Christian-specific organizations. Begin not with attacking Christianity, but with working to support the other faiths as being “underrepresented”. So, first beg the question, or infer, that the real motive of the faith based initiatives is to help underrepresented and oppressed faiths who help others. If this then becomes the definition of faith-based organizations, then the intensional definition can be thwarted to mean that all faith-based organizations are those which are underrepresented and have aid programs.
If those petitioning your client need to convince him of the importance of sticking to these definitions, then please use only those resources which are opposed to Christianity and not those which can show or prove Christianity. Anecdotal evidence and sob stories are good for this. If you get these and get an abundance of them, you can use the following:
1. Ad populum – so many people already feel this is the definition. In the political rule, the opinion of the populous often is perceived as a declaration of truth. At the very least, this is so the politician can be reelected.
2. Straw Man – Present that either Christian organizations are simply too close minded to be included in the proposed initiatives OR that the other organizations don’t get enough support and require much more funding. It doesn’t matter if this is true or not.
3. Ad Misericordiam – after straw-man, appeal to the pitiable situations of the other groups. Relay that they need the money so much more due to their oppressed status in the world.
4. False Dilemma – Due to “separation of church and state,” note that the only options are to either support these organizations or to withdraw funding altogether. Either is completely reasonable because if all funding is withdrawn because they won’t exclude Christianity, simply publicize the lack of funding for the oppressed and underrepresented organizations. Either serves our cause.
5. Tu-quoque – If your patient balks at any of this, simply remind him that he could not possibly publicly support funding Christian groups as he, himself, does not even regularly attend church. Ignore any reference to his busy schedule and travel. That can be gotten rid of through the following:
6. The Complex Question (also known as the loaded question) – At this point, urge a reporter to publicly ask the following, “So, do you still not bother to regularly attend church?”
7. Amphiboly – Then, make sure to take any reasonable remark he may make and skew the sentence to paint him in the worst possible light or to portray support for the new specifications. For instance, should he say, “The allegations of my not being able to support this initiative for all faiths including Christianity due to my lack of regular church attendance is unfounded.” This should now become, “The allegations, of my not being able to support this initiative for all faiths … due to my lack of regular attendance is unfounded.”
Your Affectionate Uncle,
Ducttape
My dear Grubworm,
I cannot tell you how completely disappointed I am in your lack of progress regarding this initiative. I know that you have complained his staff is simply too astute to allow so many of the fallacies to get passed on to him or through into the media. However, I will ever so magnanimously extend a small token of clever savvy for my own benefit because if I do not, it will be the worse for me.
Perhaps I was not clear enough in the set up of what good definitions are before showing you the more intricate tools of our trade. Allow me now remedy this lapse in your education.
First is the ostensive definition. This is a type of definition which points to an example for illustration. Do not use this. The Christians will quickly declare that they are a faith-based group. The easy retort would be that so were the Branch Davidians and the people at Jonestown.
Second is the enumerative definition which names those members of the extension individually. This you do not want! You do not want those groups mentioned specifically because then it will take a lot more work and time to get their names removed. After that is a more specific example called the definition by sub-class. These are to be avoided at all costs. Do not under any circumstances let the language of this law specify particular faith groups. Always keep the language vague enough to promote our own cause.
The Lexical definition is that which is the conventional use of any term. Please confuse this in all writing with the stipulative definition which supplies the definition of the term in a more technical way which doesn’t always agree with the lexical definition. As an example for our cause, the term faith-based usually means a group believing in a deity. Confuse this with a stipulative definition which now declares the faith-based group to be those whose beliefs are not widely appreciated across most of North America.
The way those good at logic work to keep the above from happening is to use the précising of a definition. Always provide a distraction; make your client hungry, let the phone ring, drop papers on the floor, or let someone receive a text message. Just prohibit the understanding of the précising of the definition. And by all means do not let theoretical definitions come in to play. As an example, if humans really understood from where logic came (the…uh… creator) they would learn to study and revere it. We never want this to occur.
Finally is the very upper level summary of everything that is often used in the rules of a fair argument. Whatever you do, promote the opposite of everything on this list. This is true upper level knowledge and while I could get into a lot of trouble for sending it, the ends justify the means, don’t they? All will be forgiven if you succeed in your quest. Feel free to use this not only for legislation, but also invade your client’s personal relationships so he is too distracted to think clearly in any way.
The rules for a fair fight:
1. Definitions should always be clear and set up before the conversation begins. They should never be ambiguous.
2. Definitions should not be circular. (Just a note, I love how in evolution, we’ve gotten them to overlook that bones are dated by the rocks they are in and the rocks are dated by the bones within them! What a victory for eliminating the creator!)
3. A definition should never be what something is “not” but only what something truly “is” as often as possible.
4. Definitions should not be too wide or broad to prevent confusion.
5. Definitions should not be too narrow so they don’t inhibit conversation.
6. No definitions flawed by terms which do not even relate to the argument. Hey, getting this one backward should be so very easy. The red herring is the best invention in the world for us!
Now, let me warn you that should you fail in any of these, I will be bringing you in before my own superiors to answer for your faults. You have been given a simple assignment and should you continue in this manner, we may just have to bring you in for feasting upon if we cannot have your client. We do, as they say, eat our own!
Your Affectionate Uncle,
Ducttape.
