InvoSpec

by Hiram R. Diaz III
If you’ve been paying attention to the prophets of the faux-pocalypse, then you’re probably aware of their collectivist moral exhortations. These exhortations not only echo the aggressive “Mao era”-style fear sloganeering of current day Communist China (see here) intended to manipulate the public into compliance with draconian social control measures, they are also examples of the appeal to pity. The appeal to pity, or argumentum ad misericordiam, is a logical fallacy in which …pity or a related emotion such as sympathy or compassion is appealed to for the sake of getting a conclusion accepted.1 This fallacy is usually employed when one cannot logically justify his conclusion. Consider the following hypothetical scenario:
Person A: Did you know that the official COVID-19 story is probably not true? COVID-19 did not come from an infected bat or pangolin,2 …

by Hiram R. Diaz III
[Continued from Pts. 1 & 2] 
Under the cover of fighting “fake news,” Facebook is currently attempting to mute views on the COVID-19 “crisis” that are not in lockstep with the popular narrative. Many people understand that the “independent” “fact checkers” are anything but independent,1 and do not actually refute the claims made by many of the posts they mark as containing “false” information. But what isn’t usually discussed, as far as I can tell at least, is their justification for their judgments. 
Here is what usually happens. An article claims that some person or organization has said something about COVID-19, or any of its many tentacles. The article’s claim takes the following form –  Bill Gates says x about COVID-19 treatments. The article is labeled as “false” because it asserts that Bill Gates has said x, when a perusal of Gates’ words does not record him as having explicitly stating x. Rather than treating the asse…

by Hiram R. Diaz III
In part 1 of this series, we looked at how some articles utilize “headlinese” in order to get readers to do the dirty work of committing logical fallacies. The reader, once having committed the logical fallacies, would likely accept the conclusions of their invalid inferences, acting in accordance with their false conclusions. In this article, we will be looking at how some publications use the red herring and category error fallacies to support their narrative and, simultaneously, draw attention away from the truth. The philosophy department of Texas State University defines the fallacy as follows –
“This fallacy consists in diverting attention from the real issue by focusing instead on an issue having only a surface relevance to the first.”1
While valiant attempts were made by “alternative” media outlets (e.g. Project Veritas, Infowars, The Corbett Report), as well as independent …

by Hiram R. Diaz III
In a time of great distress, the worst thing we can do is act impulsively. Yet that seems to be the very thing we typically do. Rather than calming down, praying, and thinking through whatever issue it is we are facing, we resort to doing what feels right. This is more than irrational and unwise, it is sinful. For if we are emotionally impulsive, subjecting rationality to our feelings rather than subjecting our feelings to the truth/reason, then we are not exercising self-control, and that is evil.1 Moreover, while we are not emotionless fleshly robots, we also aren’t a-rational animals who are not morally culpable for acting out of pure instinct. We are the image of the living God, whose very word (logos/reason/rational revelation2) is life.3 It’s incumbent upon us, therefore, to think first and emote later, and in a manner corresponding to the truth. 
We fail to do this when we don’t think through the ways i…

Biblical Trinitarian: Yehoshu'a and Yeshu'a: Christ in the Book of Numbe...: by Hiram R. Diaz III I.Introduction: Joshua and the New Generation of Israelites In the book of Numbers, there are numerous typ...