Sunday, October 07, 2007

The Worst Argument Ever Made

Perhaps the worst argument that any human has ever said, adopted or suspected of being correct is :

It doesn't matter what you believe in as long as you are sincere.

I don't even know how this most nonsensical argument ever came to cross my path, it should have been bashed right there and then by the first person to ever say it, or the first person to have ever heard it at most. It displays a very big short circuit to thinking surrounded with an air of fakery that people refer to as tolerance.

It's actually a big waste of time writing about it or even reading about it but unfortunately the first person who heard it was a bigger fool than the first person who said it because it appears he must have repeated it, and somehow those words made their way to me. The one and only context that people will use this sentence is religion, or to be more abstract anything they don't want to think about or want to link with reality. It fails miserably and it contradicts itself. It's one small sentence and yet has the amazing power of contradicting itself.

I would agree about the first part, sometimes it doesn't matter what you believe. I can accept that because what you believe can on occassion not matter at all. The trouble is when adding the 'as long as you are sincere' part. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't what you sincerely believe totally determine what your actions are going to be? Isn't all the drive for our actions a result of what we believe? How about our decisions, aren't they based on what we sincerely believe?

If anything it matters what you believe in as long as you're sincere. All answers in a test are a result of what you believe to be true and sometimes sincerity isn't even an issue. The only things that don't really matter are things you aren't sincere about, these are the things whose resultant actions are not fixed in stone and can be rather random. If anything and not to be too Wildeian I will have to rephrase that erroneous argument:

It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're insincere.

1 comment:

Deeeeeee said...

That had the same effect on me as "الغاية تبرر الوسيلة"!