“Better real darkness than false light, say the saints; better real confusion than false clarity.” -- Inaugural address of Fr. Thomas Hopko, Dean, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary (1993)
Fallacies of reasoning fall come in two kinds. Logic textbooks focus on formal fallacies, slips in inference: “If all dogs have tails, then all animals with tails are dogs.” So-called critical thinking instruction tends to focus on informal fallacies, tricks of distraction: “Scientific people don’t believe in ghosts, so there must not be any ghosts.” “If we don’t change our mind about global warming, we’ll all drown!” “Everyone knows the moon is made of cheese.” "How can you be so unpatriotic as to criticize the President's proposal?"
"Whatever deviates from the plain path of duty, or contradicts received opinions, seems to imply strength of will, or a strength of understanding, which seizes forcibly on the attention. Whether it is fortitude or cowardice, or both, there is a strong propensity in the human mind, if its suspicions are once raised, to know the worst. .... When once the fairy dream in which we have lulled our senses or imagination is disturbed, we ...
"The state exists simply to promote and protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden -- that is what the state is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time.” -- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 4:8.
Even when the Constitution flatly forbids doing something – for example, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging freedom of speech or press – courts often weigh competing considerations to decide whether the “something” may be done, pleading that the meaning of the prohibition isn’t clear.
The same people often assert both of the following propositions:
#1: I may have intercourse with anyone at any time whenever I feel desire, because I am only a body.
#2: It doesn’t matter whether I am having intercourse with the opposite sex, the same sex, or Martians, because I am not defined by my body.
We don’t often stop believing in God, then start looking for new sins to commit. We become attached to sins we don’t want to give up, then start looking for reasons not to believe in God.