Logic and Misery: Walton's Appeal to Pity

Appeal to Pity: A Case Study of the Argumentum Ad Misericordiam 1

The appeal to pity, or argumentum ad misericordiam, has traditionally been classified by the logic textbooks as an informal fallacy. The particular case studied in this article is a description of a series of events in 1990-91 during the occupation of Kuwait by Iraqi forces. A fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah had a pivotal effect on the U.S. decision to invade Kuwait by testifying to...

Misery and Freedom: Reply to Walls

In this brief reply to Walls’ challenging critique, I try to do two things: first, clarify the most fundamental point on which I think Walls and I disagree, and second, argue that, as surprising as it may first appear, Walls’ free will theodicy of hell requires that God interfere with human freedom in inappropriate ways. For a number of years now I have considered Jerry Walls to be one of my be...

Pity the stinking yew

image indicating the health of normal (top) and diseased (bottom) leaves of Torreya taxifolia (the Florida torreya or stinking yew), an endangered conifer endemic to Florida and Georgia. A close relative of the torreya, the Pacific yew Taxus brevifolia, produces the potent anti-cancer drug taxol — so the torreya's rapid decline to the scant 1 500 trees alive today is of even greater concern tha...

Ecology's appeal to theology

I NVITED TO REFLECT ON THE RELATIONSHIP between theology and ecology, and to explore why that relationship might seem to have 'lost its appeal', I decided to look at the Christian theological tradition and the demands that a fruitful and appropriate relationship with ecology might make on it. Do theology's anthropological postulates encourage the kind of theological freedom needed to respond to...

SA's happiness-and misery-index.