by Chris Alexion, Copyright December 17, 2005, all rights reserved. 180 views
"Who is it that is always defending CCM? Who is most vocal in arguing that CCM is actually good? Aren't CCM's primary defenders a) the unsaved; b) teenagers who, if they are Christians, must certainly be babes in Christ; or c) people who have only a questionable claim to being Christian? I'm struck by how no spiritually mature men that I know rally to the defense of contemporary Christian music. In other words, it is the spiritually weak that argue that CCM is good."
- Dr. Rob Spinney
Yeah. Who is it that's always breathing oxygen? Who eats food? Isn't it the unsaved and the–oh, wait. Everyone does those things. So maybe the people associated with a particular activity or line of reasoning don't themselves determine truth or falsehood.
When we resort to attacking persons instead of ideas, we commit what logicians call the ad homiem or "to the man" argument. There are basically two types of ad hominem arguments. Abusive ad hominem attacks focus on the character of your opponent. "Dr. White believes in evolution, but did you know he skins cats as a hobby?"
Genetic ad hominem fallacies argue against the origin of a belief. "Don't you know that interpretation came out of pagan superstition smuggled into the church by the famous heretic Upansius?" C. S. Lewis pointed out a similar fallacy that he nicknamed "Bulverism." Bulverism begins by assuming your opponent is wrong, and then going to great lengths to show how he came to hold such ridiculous beliefs. There's also the ad eminem, but that fallacy requires too many bleeping sounds.
Dr. Spinney may also be begging the question here. We can't tell for sure, but it would be interesting to ask him how he knows that most defenders of contemporary music are "spiritually weak" or "babes in Christ"? Is it because they listen to CCM?
1 • Rob Spinney • May 04, 2007 • 1:38 PM
You're right. My argumentation was weak. I wrote this for a Sunday School class about fifteen years ago and no longer hold the position expressed in that article. I wrongly treated CCM as a monolithic entity (which it is not). I'm trying to get the article pulled from the internet, but it's difficult to locate the people who posted it.
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