Mr D(octrinaire) proposes the following:
D: ‘If you do not follow my doctrine, you are evil’
Mr C(onformist) says
C (i): “This statement is true,” and
C (ii): “I will follow this doctrine”.
Messrs D and C regard C as good.
Mr B(igot) says
B (i): “This statement is true,” and
B (ii): “I will not follow this doctrine”.
Mr B is evil.
Mr A(nalytical) says
A (i): “This statement is untrue.”
A (ii): “(Without a true assertion relating to this doctrine,) whether I follow the doctrine or not is irrelevant to how evil I may be”.
Mr D decides that A is evil. It is against his doctrine to question his doctrine, and therefore he judges A to be evil. Since A has been established to be evil, statement D has been confirmed (not disproven, which for a D is the same thing).
Mr A
decides that Mr D is stupid, because his logic is circular. He has used a
conclusion from his premises to justify his premises. For those who don't follow this, see the end.
Some Ds
then go even further, claiming that logic is a tool of oppression used by
cis-white patriarchal imperialist ruling classes. This statement is also
untrue.
It does not matter whether your doctrine is Christian, feminist, racism-related,
Islamic, trans, socialist, free-market or anything else. All doctrine is evil…
because it aims to stifle thought and therefore progress. It is anti-truth
because doctrine fights against the mechanism by which we reach truth: that of
logic, reason and discussion. Doctrine refuses to be questioned or change, which almost guarantees that it is wrong.
Imposing
doctrine through the use of emotional blackmail is wrong because both doctrine
and emotional blackmail are wrong.
I regard myself as an A. Not only that, but because I find the very act of
making statement D wrong, (and, importantly, I have reasons for doing so, as explained in the previous paragraph), I
will argue against it even if I had never intended to do anything that would be
against that particular doctrine. By trying to impose doctrine, D has persuaded
me to do something he finds evil.
Most B(igots) do not openly acknowledge their bigotry. They also claim to be A(nalytical). This is not a reason to assume that all people denying the truth of doctrine are bigoted. That is another logical fallacy (called a non-sequitur, I believe: just because all things of one type are in a category does not mean that all things in that category are of that type. ‘All chocolate cakes are cakes’ does not necessarily imply, sadly, that all cakes are chocolate cakes).
The way to approach such truth claims is not to dismiss them as bigoted but to determine if they are correct. If so, then statement D is wrong and conclusion Aii is right: there is no way to tell who is a bigot. If statement D is found to be true, then everyone making statement Ai will have to pick a different option or show themselves to be bigoted against truth.
I know it’s annoying to be uncertain about someone's true nature: bigots will continue to find reasons to make statement Ai, more and more spuriously. Very few people regard themselves as evil and admit to it. But every D who is so caught up in self-righteousness that he refuses even to engage in questions of truth is doing something ‘evil’ himself, since acting on the basis of untrue moral precepts risks causing suffering unjustly, which is pretty much the definition of immoral.
In summary then, Mr D, making an assertion, and Mr C, thoughtlessly complying, are the immoral ones.
It doesn't matter if you assert that gender is performative and that pronouns refer to gender; or if you assert that God exists and He instructs us all to avoid wearing clothes of more than one fabric; or if you assert that the private sector is always better than the public sector. You are wrong.
