TO REFUTE IS EASY

By
Brij Sachdeva

Nothing does it take

-What does it take to find contradictions in the statement or a point made by a speaker or an author?

-What does it take to refute the very fundamental wisdom of a religion?

-What does it take to criticize others with an utterly closed mind out of sheer confirmation bias?

-What does it take to use ambiguous evidence and illusory correlation to support one's existing position?

TO REFUTE IS EASY, TO RESPECT IS DIFFICULT.

It takes minimalistic intelligence to refute anything. If you are a little clever, you can find tons of contradictions in something that does not support your existing position or confirmation bias. It is one of the easiest things to do. There is no greatness in it. You can do it very easily by escaping out of the context and perspective or simply out of utter ignorance.

As far as my viewpoint is concerned, I think there is no point which can not be refuted successfully.  For example, If I say, pointing towards a fan, that this is a fan- you can find something like- a screw missing- and refute my statement by saying that I can’t call it a fan because a the screw Is missing. If I insist that it is obvious that this is a fan, you can prove your point by asking me “If all the blades are missing then?” If I further insist -“ If the motor and blades are missing then?” Certainly, you can’t call it a fan when the blades and body are taken away. At the most, you can say that this is the part of a fan. Then how can you call it a fan when a screw is missing? When parts of ‘The Ship Of  Theseus’ were removed and replaced by new ones, one by one, the question was raised whether the ship was the original ship or not.

 So, it is the easiest task to refute the statements and opinions of others. People are doing this in routine conversations with such ease and quickness that they are not aware of how they are doing it without any deliberation.

Here is an example just to arouse your sensitivity towards this. On a certain day, I was explaining to my friends the meaning of corruption from an existential (Universal) perspective which is far beyond the economic perspective. I said, “As fire is hot and water flows downwards, similarly man is essentially corrupt by nature.” One of my friends refuted my statement by saying, “We make the water flow upwards using a motor pump.” I said, “That is the nature of the motor, not water.”

Respect the wisdom

So, this is the way we escape out of the context and perspective, and become insensitive to the significance, the beauty of expression and the wisdom of the speaker or the author when we are bent upon finding contradictions, especially when we are incompetent in the argument. We do not respect the frame of reference, context and emphasis from which the author or the speaker is expressing a certain situation. In my blog post named 'RAVANA DELUSION' ( Brij Sachdeva Blog), I have explained how easily people can refute the very fundamental wisdom of a religion, just out of utter ignorance.

See also

Argument