Ray Dillinger wrote:
same). your problem is that it works perfectly well the other way around: james who says that the nazis are evil is wrong because he is himself evil, and he is evil because the nazis say so (because if he says bad things about the nazis, he must be part of the jew world conspiracy). on a pure logical level, these two statements have identical truth values. since they collide, the only possible conclusion is that they're both wrong.
That's true, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
To start with, james, who is not nearly as famous for his crimes as the nazis are for theirs, can be assumed not to have committed nearly as many atrocities as the nazis. Murders on one side -- six million (est.) Murders on the other side -- unknown, but I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about someone who committed more than a few hundred. The logic as presented flawlessly distinguishes the evil ones in this case.
you are ignoring that "the nazis" is a far larger group than james is. also, you're only arguing body count. the nazis were not arguing that the jews were KILLING the "aryan race", at least not in the immediate murder sense. of course the comparison is flawed. to make it more equal, one would have to compare two groups, say the jews and the nazis. both thought of the other as the ultimate evil. the nazis went to kill the jews, justifying their deeds with the fear that the jews would otherwise be doing evil to them. according to james' definition, they (the nazis) were actually the GOOD guys! that's the point. you can use the "evil people are those who harm others, good people are those who fight evil people" definition to justify ANYTHING. now I definitely don't say the nazis are good (my grandfather died in a nazi prison). I just say that even though I would agree calling them "evil", that is still a subjective category, and I don't demand that the rest of the universe agree with me.
The fact that each side can say the same things about the others is beside the point. I can say that pigs fly, and I can say that birds fly. On a pure logical level, these two statements are identical. Hence the only possible conclusion is that they're both wrong? Uh, no. The only possible conclusion is that it's necessary to observe pigs and birds and *see* which statement, if any, is true.
the difference is that your "I say" are comments about actual, observable events in the outside world. james' "I say" relate to non-observable phenomena, where a "verification through observation" approach isn't in the range of options.