Clearly religion’s purveyors often use Manichaean (good vs evil) analysis without much room for nuance. It’s funny when the tactic gets turned on religion itself. The Manichaean tactic combines many logical fallacies, but the one that mosts interests me is Appeal to Emotion. Demonizing the opponent without sufficient evidence of malicious intent is the most primal fallacy. Scaremongering in general can be done without words, simply by acting frightened or wary in the presence of the opponent. So how do we protect ourselves from demonization/scaremongering?

All political groups use scare tactics, and we use free speech and high-tech media to correct rhetorical distortions, and we use courts to arbitrate and hopefully correct unfounded allegations of malicious intent. But this does not seem enough. Scare resistance needs to be built up culturally. We usually shake off scare fads by discrediting the scarer(s). The Red Scare dissipated with the censure of McCarthy. The Global Warming Scare is dissipating after the revelation of corruption of key science on which the doom case is built. The terrorism scares come and go, but Israelis still go to markets.

I propose we counter scares with debunks and by ridiculing the scarers. Satire is effective if it is based on more truth than the target of the satire has presented. The air must be cleared of alarm bells and screams before debate can occur, and the alarmists must be ridiculed and ostracized by journalists who want to retain credibility, and force them into kook forums. The MSM AND FOXNEWS are largely kook forums, due to their hunger for ratings…they sold their skeptical souls for attention. Even before Bill OReilly did so much time on Tiger Woods, I knew it wasn’t about being “Fair and Balanced…it’s about being Scarier and Scariest.

I’m waiting for SNN, the Skeptic News network, to apply a rational filter to the latest scares, hoaxes, potential epidemics, miracle cures, and get-rich-quick schemes… and use the most wicked satirists in the world to excoriate the scarers. I would probably watch no other news if such a channel existed.

Good work, Andrew.