Scarabin, on 2013-October-22, 20:51, said:
Put very simply, I think you are confusing neutral statements such as "If religion does some good, so be it." with loaded questions like "Has Trinidad stopped beating his wife?", to which even I would object.
I also said that I did not think you would find any support for your view in Fowler's "The King's English"
OK?
It's now clear what you meant, thanks. It is also clear that we disagree.
To me, a loaded question goes a step further than an "if statement":
You start at 0, nothing is on the agenda.
Then there is the if statement: "If Trinidad is beating his wife, what should we do about it?" which suggests the possibility of Trinidad beating his wife and puts it on the agenda: "Suppose the condition is true, what then?". As long as nobody stands up saying that the condition is false, arrangements will be discussed assuming the condition is true. We will be discussing what to do about a wife beating Trinidad.
Now,
logically, an if-then statement is perfectly neutral, but humans are not computers. And,
psychologically, the suggestion of the possibility and the fact that we are devoting our precious time on what to do if Trinidad would beat his wife, suggests that Trinidad is beating his wife: Why else would we have a discussion (and spend the resources) on what to do if he beats his wife? Or to put it back into logical terms: Would any human programmer ever write a piece of code like:
If 1=2
then
Do a lot of complicated things
Do more complicated things
else
Do nothing
Of course not. He would not waste his time on this. He only programs if-then statements where he considers that the condition might be true.
Finally, there is the loaded question. It goes a step further and poses (often, but not necessarily, implicitly) something that is false as if it were true: You cannot stop beating your wife, if you weren't beating your wife to begin with. A loaded question is pretty much a (perhaps implicit) lie in the form of a question.
An "if statement" is not a lie. I haven't claimed that either. But it contains a
suggestion.
And I don't like suggestions that religion might prevent people from being psychopaths, particularly since I think that religion has been the cause of a lot of psychological suffering, some of which so extensive that it is pathological.
Rik
P.S. To give you a very uninformative answer to your loaded question: No, I haven't stopped beating my wife.
I want my opponents to leave my table with a smile on their face and without matchpoints on their score card - in that order.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!), but “That’s funny…” – Isaac Asimov
The only reason God did not put "Thou shalt mind thine own business" in the Ten Commandments was that He thought that it was too obvious to need stating. - Kenberg
Help
). This is one of the most preposterous interpretations of John 14:6 but OK I guess 1st century illiterates understood such poetic images more readily than we do.