Questioning Paul is a Slippery Slope and Other Fallacies

When we started questioning the writings attributed to Paul, we were lambasted from the pulpit by the “pastor.” I have seen the exact same thing coming from people who are in the Torah and Faith community. Brothers and Sisters, this should not be happening among us! You attacking someone for questioning ANYTHING is counterproductive to what you are hoping to accomplish, unless what you are hoping to accomplish is to push that Brother or Sister farther and farther away from the community and the support of the community. You attacking them is not being supportive at all, is it?

The biggest accusation thrown at someone is “it’s a slippery slope to question Paul.” The last time I checked, Paul was not Yeshua. You are elevating him above his station. No one is above questioning; not me, not you, and not the writings attributed to Paul.

First, I would like to address what a “slippery slope” really is. Anyone who has taken college level academics, should know that there are several prominent errors in reasoning that lead to someone placing their beliefs in something that is misleading, unstable, defective, or flimsy. In other words, it is faulty reasoning that is used to support an argument that if you examine it closely, you will realize that what is used to support the argument can’t hold itself up, much less support the argument. Many of fallacies, like the strawman, slippery slope, ad hominem or red herring can typically be seen in their blazing glory (sarcasm) during pollical speeches.  The root word of fallacious is false; so when someone uses a fallacy to support their argument, they are using, you guessed it: FALSE LOGIC.

I will give a brief overview of the 15 types of fallacies, so if you’ve never heard of them or did not have a firm understanding of what they are, hopefully you will be a little wiser for reading this article if not for how the slippery slope fallacy is used as defense of the writings attributed to the apostle Paul. I am going over all of the fallacies, because many of them are used as a defense for the writings attributed to Paul. We should be aware of what they are so we can recognize them and dig for the truth instead of falsehoods.

Slippery Slope: This implies that one thing will always, automatically, and inevitably lead to another thing which ends in a “slippery slope” to the bottom of the hill that is always some horrible place that you don’t want to be. The slippery slope takes a starting point that is, in and of itself, safe or benign and spins it to where through a number of small steps, each one leading to the next, ending in some bizarre and improbably extreme ending point. No matter how ridiculous or unlikely the outcome predicted, the slippery slope fallacy assumes that the outcome is inevitable, regardless of what the evidence does or does not support. This one is the GO-TO argument against anyone who dares to question anything in the writings attributed to Paul.

Strawman: Imagine the scarecrow of the Wizard of Oz, because the goal of this fallacy is to attack and discredit the opponent’s argument IN-directly by trying to twist the opponent’s argument into something that it never was. Instead of defending their own stance, they attack the lifeless “straw” of the strawman they created through lies, misrepresentations, and unreliable “sources.” They try to make their stance look better by comparing it to a fabrication of their opponent’s stance. The strawman argument is like “dust in the wind;” you may see it, but it’s not really there or not really what you’re led to believe it is.

Ad hominem: This literally means in Latin “against the man.” An ad hominem is a personal attack at the man, instead of addressing the actual argument. It is a verbal attack on the person, and it is not logical and usually is not even related to the subject matter. This is a favorite of politicians. This is also happening in the Torah Faith community.

Red herring: A red herring is a distraction. Red herrings were so pungent and (to the dog) delicious that they used to be used as a test to see how well hunting dogs could keep the scent of what they were hunting. Red herrings are often used in politics to “bait and switch” questions that politicians do not want to answer to a safer topic. Its usually only afterward you realize that the politician never did answer the question he or she was asked. This one was used so much by the Biden team during the 2020 presidential election that I doubt anyone could count just how many times it was used. Of course, they are not the only ones who use this fallacy. We ran into this one a lot when we were searching for answers ourselves, a lot of distractions, but no answers.

Appeal to ignorance: Ignorance simply means that you don’t know something. We are all ignorant of many things. Saying someone is ignorant does not prove or disprove anything except that there is something that you do not know. Many times, this fallacy can be used on both sides of an argument, which invalidates it as support. If you can’t get Paul to agree with himself, much less the other disciples, the Torah, and Yeshua, then you are ignorant. This is just more false logic.

Appeal to authority: This fallacy uses authority (either real or imagined) in an illegitimate way to “support” a stance. An example would be using a statement by an actor with no education in ethics to support a statement about ethics, or a statement by a bariatric surgeon to support a claim about neck pain. This too is readily pulled out in the Torah Faith community to argue the authority of the men who self-appointed decided which books should and should not be included in the canon of the Bible….BTW if you look into it, there was a lot of political pressure and a lot of hidden agendas on these men. I bet that would not affect their decision at all…huh?

Appeal to pity: This is an argument seeking sympathy or compassion; while sympathy or compassion may be appropriate, like any appeal to emotion, it is irrelevant, because emotions are neither true or false in providing proof or support for an argument.

Tu quoque: This is the “you too” or hypocrisy argument. Do we ever see this in politics and on the news on a daily basis now? This deflects criticism by offering the distraction of accusing the opponent of doing the same thing, i.e. “hypocrite”.

False dilemma: This is also known as the black or white fallacy. It limits outcomes to only two possibilities, but it is only a fallacy, if there are actually more than two possible outcomes. Saying if someone disregards the writings attributed to Paul, then they are either going to deny the Messiah or leave belief in Yahuah and Yeshua completely. Well, that is a false dilemma fallacy, because there are many other possible outcomes.

Equivocation: This fallacy is also called “equal voice” or intentionally being ambiguous when a single word can mean two or more things. It is the intentional use of ambiguous words to confuse, manipulate, mislead, or deceive by making what you say sound like you mean something else entirely.

Bandwagon: I’m sure you can guess this one. This fallacy is making the assertion that something is true because one or more people agree with it…jump on the bandwagon. Just because the whole world may agree on something does not make it true. I have seen so many people in the Torah Faith do this as well. First they are supportive of the person in their quest for the Truth, then they are on the bashing bandwagon.

Hasty generalization: Republicans and Democrats disagree. That is a hasty generalization fallacy, because it is stereotyping, an illicit assumption, overstatement, exaggeration, or draws an unsubstantiated conclusion without the necessary evidence to support it. I have seen this fallacy used in the Torah Faith community as well.

Circular argument: A circular argument is just what it sounds like, an argument that chases itself. It is saying: Statement 1 is true, because Statement 2 is true, and Statement 2 is true because Statement 1 is true. There is no evidence that either statement is true, but it assumes one is true because the other is. This is another fallacy that I have seen in the Torah Faith community particularly in relation to questioning writings attributed to Paul.

Sunk costs: An easy way to explain this one is not abandoning a boat, even though it is sinking. In a sunk cost fallacy, one refuses to abandon an argument even though it has been proven to be false. It is when one gets too emotionally attached to an argument to let it go in favor or a more accurate one. To be honest, I believe this is a fallacy that some fall prey to because their pride and ego will not permit them to see the situation honestly and realize that, "hey, I could be wrong."

Casual: A causal fallacy is a broad category under which several smaller casual fallacies fall. Basically, without boring you with all the smaller categories, assuming a cause (or conclusion) without evidence and cause versus correlation: assuming Situation B happened because Situation A happened first. A causal fallacy is a breakdown of logic about the cause.

I love persuasive writing, but using fallacies in persuasive writing (or talking) is a pet peeve of mine, because it means that you do not have evidence to support your claim for any of the reasons mentioned above. The slippery slope argument is so overused that it is nauseated in many arenas of life, but I seem to see it quite a lot in regard to faith-based belief systems. A slippery slope argument is very sad and has no substance at all. It is a fallacy that asserts taking a specific step will lead to a chain of other similar events that will culminate in a specific significant event, in this case leading people away from faith in finished work of Yeshua and the accuracy of the Bible, and that you’re going to lead other people astray.

STOP IT!! There is no slippery slope! Saying that questioning Paul is a slippery slope is a fallacy…i.e. it is a false statement.

STOP IT! There is no slippery slope. Let me repeat this once more……there is NO slippery slope. There is absolutely no foregone conclusion that can be drawn, based on FACT, when or if someone starts questioning the writings attributed to Paul. Saying that questioning Paul is a slippery slope is a fallacy…i.e. it is a false statement, a lie. Do some people slide into denying Yeshua and/or the accuracy of the so-called “new” or “old” testament? Yes. Do all people? No, absolutely not.

I actually agreed with the slippery slope concept, that this could cause people to fall away from faith, until a few months ago in prayfully taking these questions to Yahuah. The Holy Spirit opened my understanding. That slippery slope fallacy, excuse my swine reference, is hogwash. If disregarding Paul’s works leads someone astray and they lose faith in the rest of the Word, then they NEVER had faith in the Word and the finished works of Yeshua to begin with. Please read that last sentence again and really let it marinate.

If someone “falls away” from faith in Messiah or the Torah, due to questioning the writings attributed to Paul, then that person’s faith was wrapped up in Paul’s works and the works of the men at the Council of Nicaea and all the other fallible men who decided which books would be included in the canon and which ones not…there are more than one canon of scriptures. These men excluded many books that we consider to be Holy Spirit inspired and decided that these 66 to 81 books are the only books that are inspired.

Then you have that pesky little fact that the Bible was revised again at a later date and some of the books that were once “inspired” were removed. Why? ………. Were they no longer inspired? How does that work exactly? Then you have that there were at least 4 more different councils that created their own “inspired canon of scriptures.” Which canon is right? Are they all right? Are they all wrong?

I do know that in all of our searching to understand the writings attributed to Paul, no one has used the WORD to support Paul’s teachings, because except for Paul’s own teachings, the WORD contradicts what is in many of the attributed Pauline letters. We are still searching out the scriptures. We have not fully reconciled Paul’s works, but we also know that Paul did battle his human sin nature as we do, and do we not struggle with pride and other disobedience to Yah’s commandments from time to time as well? Just something to consider.

We also know that in Paul’s own letter, (coincidentally, one of the letters that does study out in agreement with Scripture), Paul says in II Thessalonians 3:17, 17, “The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.” He also said in II Thessalonians 2:2, “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as if from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.” Keep in mind that II Thessalonians is ONE letter that has been divided up by man into chapters. Doing a line by line, precept upon precept study, you can see that Paul knew that someone was writing letters pretending to be him or “us,” referring to either the other apostles or Paul’s own disciples.

I am not a leader of anyone, but I would suggest that we not put our faith in Paul or in the Council of Nicaea or any preacher or teacher. Put your faith in Elohim: The Father, Yahuah/Yeshua, and RUACH HAQODESH. We as a community need to stop attacking one another. It does not matter if someone has faith in the letters attributed to Paul or not; they are not necessary to understanding the Word. It is also not necessary to attack our fellow man for doing what we should all be doing: TEST ALL THINGS!!