Tag Archives: Jeff Sessions

A.G. Jeff Sessions & Appeal to Athority

With all the talk going on about the taking of children away from their parents when presenting themselves at the border and AG Jeff Sessions citing the Bible as justification for this, I think it is a good time to just point out the fallacious logic.  To be more specific this is an appeal to Authority.  Specifically the sub-set of Appeal to God.

I shan’t go into the long, and somewhat involved, analysis of why Appeal to Authority can sometime be correct.  Nor how it can be done.  That is for  another post.  What I’m going to do here is just point out, as the Anchent Greek Philosophers did that when you cite God(s) as your athority there is no practical way to ask God(s) if that is really what they said or did.  They pointed out that even when you have a direct line to God(s), like the Orical of Delphi, what the Orical tells you is subject to wildly different interpretations.

As anyone who has been following the debat knows, when citing Biblical Scripture it is totally likely to end up with Dueling Bible Verses.  One of my favorite quotes, I don’t remember who but it isn’t original with me, “The Bible is a wonderful book, full of Sterling virtues.  Clarity is not one of them!”

In closeting I will leave you with the first thing I learned about Bible study. “The Devil cites Scripture.”