I Am Not A Sceptic. I Have Accepted The Lord Jesus As My Saviour

* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”

Straw man: Trying to refute an opponent's argument by misrepresenting it. Share on X

If I accuse you of being a climate sceptic you could use this (very obvious) straw man to avoid answering the accusation.

“I am not a sceptic. I have accepted the Lord Jesus as my saviour.”

Next, you follow up that statement with a series of arguments that paints a picture of you as a person of faith. In other words – you are a believer, not a sceptic.

Here, the straw man is that I accused you of lacking religious faith. Which, of course I did not. Still, that is how you have chosen to answer.

By doing this you are avoiding answering the actual question while still giving the impression that you have. First you have created a straw man – a false argument that you feel more comfortable answering, and then later destroyed it.

Another form of straw man is where you blow the argument out of proportion.

“I think we should make prostitution legal for consenting adults in publicly regulated brothels.”

“Hell no! You can’t just let people run loose and screw whoever, whenever and wherever they like. That’s fornication!”

Of course, the argument was made about prostitution, not fornication. And not wherever, but in publicly regulated brothels. And for consenting adults only, not whoever.

Still, what people listening to the argument will most likely take away from it, is that fornication was proposed and vigorously rejected.

© Merlyn Gabriel Miller