Knights and Knaves Fallacy

The knights and knaves fallacy occurs when some people are identified as consistently truthful and others as consistently untruthful without evidence that this is the case. Generally, this is coupled with an ad hominem fallacy or a genetic fallacy.

Examples of the Knights and Knaves Fallacy

Rocky: "If you want proof of this, just read (such and such article) at Creation.com."

Sandy: "I'm not reading that trash. All they do is lie. I only read the Secular Humanist scientific journals."

Now, let's look at the other side of it.

Sandy: "If you want proof of this, just read (such and such article) in the Secular Humanist scientific journals."

Rocky: "I'm not reading that trash. All they do is lie. I only read articles at Creation.com."

No Christian should fear reading the Secular Humanist scientific journals. In fact, http://www.crev.info reviews these journals and you can learn a lot about rational thinking from this site.

You probably won't run into the second example too often, but you will find the first one to be very common. It is good to hear the other person's point of view. Because of the way that logic works, it has end up either at something solid, Divine revelation, or something that is not solid. Those who deny Divine revelation have a problem in that they cannot come to anything solid. All that is left is infinite regress, circular reasoning, stories, arbitrary assumptions, or some other fallacious basis of thought. It is time-consuming ferreting this out, however. And fallacies can be very deceptive. On the other hand, a follower of Christ ultimately has no basis other than Jesus Christ Himself. There is no foundation other than Christ that they can depend on.

Not every Secular Humanist is willing to lie. Many of them have been raised with a Christian worldview, and they borrow the ban against lying from that worldview. Others are living a consistent worldview. All rules are arbitrary. Without God, there can be no absolute right and wrong. Ethics and morals would be a matter of opinion and social trends. Post Modernism is a philosophy that eliminates the possibility of moral absolutes. Most people who don't have Christ will pick and choose which of God's Laws they will obey. Without Christ, there is no logical reason not to lie. There are other religions that forbid lying, of course. Most of them have some work-around for that. And many Christians have picked up the Post Modern religious view and become cafeteria Christians who pick and choose the Laws of God that they will obey. If they had a real moment-by-moment relationship with Christ, they would not need the Law. They would fulfill the Law by grace, which is through faith as God leads.