Gandhi Steps Up

Now that we have seen what Churchill has said about Gandhi lets listen to what Gandhi has to say when he heads towards London in 1931. Let’s just say that after reading this speech I realized they didn’t like each other very much…..actually on second thought I think I’ll expand my vocabulary and say it was pure hatred! Obviously it’s not like they were cursing each other through the media, but instead they used our old friend the fallacy.

Ad Hominem

“That law then which governs all life is God.”

It pretty self-explanatory as to why this would be fallacy. First of all we are talking about a preeminent leader of Indian nationalism who inspired movements of non-violence basically through civil disobedience.  This claim is very controversial after all what proof does he have of God being the ruler of all existence? I could easily write a book arguing on the falsity of the claim. The importance of all this isn’t about God and the law, it’s about the fact that being the role model he was he had to believe in God. What arguments did he have to support his decision? By reading this speech I would say none that actually count, therefore as an audience I just can’t believe what he says right?

Red Herring

“ He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith and since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love. “

I don’t know about you, but I definitely feel like he is throwing us off topic here! At first he is talking about God’s presence, which I have to point out is a pretty tough topic to argue even though  he seems to be rocking it thanks to the fallacies. Somehow he wraps his sentence up with “the supremacy of the moral law.” Well that escalated quickly! I don’t blame him I mean the basic idea is to “win” an argument, and in order to do this he probably felt he had to lead the attention away from the argument and to another topic.