Ooh - a topic I can contribute to! Logical fallacy: "Most accidents are caused by inattentive motorists. Therefore all inattentive motorists cause accidents."
While the first statement may be true, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. Therefore, the statement that most wars are perpetrated by the righteous does not necessarily imply that all righteous people start - or are even involved with - wars. In fact, it would be logically consistent to say "Most wars (and other evils) are perpetrated by the righteous, however most righteous people are not evil nor do they perpetrate wars". However, the phrase "Most program bugs are introduced by Unix and Windows programmers, therefore all Unix and Windows programmers introduce bugs" is probably correct. ;-) Regards, Dean (having some fun today). ----- Original Message ----- From: "John H. Lang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 11:24 AM Subject: Re: Wars and Allies (was: The Fate of VM) > "These days, most war (and lots of other evil) is perpetrated > by the Righteous. " > > One really needs to beware of "Bumper Sticker Mentality", that of trying to reduce complicated issues into a few words. From the phrase above, one implies then that it is bad to be righteous and in fact that it is an evil thing. As usual with bumper sticker words, they don't hold up very well under scrutiny. Some examples: > > 1. Women were righteous in their belief that they should get the vote and be equal partners with men - was that wrong or evil? > 2. Martin Luther King was righteous in his belief that all men are equal and should be treated equally - was that evil. > 3. Ceaser Chavev was righteous in his belief that farm workers should get a fair shake - was that evil? > 4. Our forefathers were righteous in their belief that we should be separate from England - was that evil. > 5. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were righteous in their belief that Hitler needed to be stopped - was that evil? > > So while I understand what the phrase is trying to convey, it is wrong to say all righteous people cause war and do evil things. Righteous people can do good as well. > > JL > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO > Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
