Logical Gerrymandering
I have been using the term "logical gerrymandering" for a few years now to describe what some Christians do in unfairly "redistricting" what people like me say out-of-context, in order to gain an unfair intellectual advantage, or to ridicule us.
I also use this phrase to describe what Christians do when caught in a logical inconsistency. Calvinists, for instance, claim God decrees (or ordains) everything we desire to do and everything we do, yet they want to describe God as good, and blame us alone for everything bad we do. With a flood of words they logically gerrymander around this logical inconsistency. [See this article on gerrymandering for what the term means politically].
I also use this phrase to describe what Christians do when caught in a logical inconsistency. Calvinists, for instance, claim God decrees (or ordains) everything we desire to do and everything we do, yet they want to describe God as good, and blame us alone for everything bad we do. With a flood of words they logically gerrymander around this logical inconsistency. [See this article on gerrymandering for what the term means politically].
The first person I know of to use this term outside of political spheres is Walter Kaufmann, in his 1958 book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, although he merely calls it "gerrymandering." He claimed that "many theologians are masters of this art. Theologians do not just do this incidentally: this is theology. Doing theology is like doing a jigsaw puzzle in which the verses of Scripture are the pieces: the finished picture is prescribed by each denomination, with a certain latitude allowed. What makes the game so pointless is that you do not have to use all the pieces, and that pieces which do not fit may be reshaped after prounouncing the words 'this means.' That is called exegesis."
Sam Harris calls this same approach to exegesis, "cherry-picking," because Christians will cherry-pick the good out of the Good Book, and reinterpret or ignore what they don't like in it. Harris argued, and I agree, that Christians decide what is good in the Good Book.
In his 1961 book Faith of a Heretic, Kaufmann wrote about how Christians view Jesus in the New Testament: "Most Christians gerrymander the Gospels and carve an idealized self-portrait out of the texts: Passen's Jesus is a socialist, Fosdick's is a liberal, while the ethic of Reinhold Niebuhr's Jesus agrees, not surprising, with Niebuhr's own."
Anyway, Kaufmann knew in advance there would be theologians who would gerrymander the words in his book. He said: "This Critique is exceptionally vulnerable to slander by quotation and critics cursed with short breath, structure blindness, and myopia will be all but bound to gerrymander it."
Kaufmann said:
"Quotations can slander
if you gerrymander."
[Pages 219-220].
Of course, The Principle of Intellectual Charity is pretty much the exact opposite way to deal with intellectual opponents, and is akin to what Christians themselves believe they should do with people in general (I Corinthians 13). If we followed this principle when dealing with our opponents, we will be less likely to commit the informal fallacy of attacking a strawman, and thereby less likely to make a fool of ourselves.
Sam Harris calls this same approach to exegesis, "cherry-picking," because Christians will cherry-pick the good out of the Good Book, and reinterpret or ignore what they don't like in it. Harris argued, and I agree, that Christians decide what is good in the Good Book.
In his 1961 book Faith of a Heretic, Kaufmann wrote about how Christians view Jesus in the New Testament: "Most Christians gerrymander the Gospels and carve an idealized self-portrait out of the texts: Passen's Jesus is a socialist, Fosdick's is a liberal, while the ethic of Reinhold Niebuhr's Jesus agrees, not surprising, with Niebuhr's own."
Anyway, Kaufmann knew in advance there would be theologians who would gerrymander the words in his book. He said: "This Critique is exceptionally vulnerable to slander by quotation and critics cursed with short breath, structure blindness, and myopia will be all but bound to gerrymander it."
Kaufmann said:
"Quotations can slander
if you gerrymander."
[Pages 219-220].
Of course, The Principle of Intellectual Charity is pretty much the exact opposite way to deal with intellectual opponents, and is akin to what Christians themselves believe they should do with people in general (I Corinthians 13). If we followed this principle when dealing with our opponents, we will be less likely to commit the informal fallacy of attacking a strawman, and thereby less likely to make a fool of ourselves.