Klinghoffer talks about red herrings ... I mean heifers

David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, has a blog on Beliefnet where he specializes in, amongst other things, making grandiose claims for intelligent design creationism and then completely ignoring the counter-evidence offered by commenters. In today's post, he starts off by letting you know this is his M.O.:

... believers in Darwinism can't open their eyes and see when presented with scientific evidence of design in nature. (Note to Darwinist commenters: This is not a blog concerned with presenting that evidence...

No kidding. Although he is kind enough to direct us to where we can find such a response, and it doesn't come from him.

However, if you'd like additional information on the subject, why don't you read Stephen Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell. After you have read it, then I would be very curious to hear your thoughts about the evidence of intelligent design in DNA.)

Never mind that some of his commenters have read Meyer's new arguments (which are the same as the old arguments), Klinghoffer chooses to remain mum on the subject.

But I digress.

My point is that in today's post, Klinghoffer delineated the difference between god-made laws (chok) and those that laws that were revealed by god but man very well may have come up with on his own (mishpatim). The difference; god's laws are irrational. Sort of:

Sometimes a chok is called a "suprarational" law. That doesn't mean it's irrational. Instead, the rationale behind the law, its significance when considered rationally, can only be perceived from within the system of Torah thought -- the worldview of the Hebrew Bible. From outside, it indeed appears irrational. An alien worldview, like secularism, blinds a person to being able to see the law's sense, the insight and beauty it reflects -- "worldview-induced blindness."

I know that such "statutes" aren't irrational because Jewish tradition has much to say about their meaning.

And, because he is David Klinghoffer, he has to wonder what this has to do with the gays.

The verse doesn't tell us which laws are which, but maybe we can speculate that the laws against incest would fall under the former category [mishpatim or ordinances], and against homosexuality, under the latter [chok or statutes].

I'd like to point out that this is an often used, though little recognized, logical fallacy called the genetic fallacy. By providing a rationale for his argument, Klinghoffer hasn't really answered any criticism against his argument; he has only deflected the issue and presented a red herring. In this case, he claims that there is some special knowledge that we are lacking. However, that special knowledge is not something that is relevant to the topic, which (apparently) is "Should there be moral prohibitions on sexual behavior, in our present day society?". Klinghoffer says yes, because god told him so. And if you don't hear the same thing, you aren't listening hard enough.