Egalitarians and the Abuse of Logic - a response to Scot McKnight

I was amazed at how deceptive and manipulative a supposed Christian scholar could be when I read this article by Scot McKnight, "Complementarianism and the Abusive Male". So amazed, that I decided to write a response that would explain just how deceptive, manipulative, and ultimately stupid the argument is.


BEFORE CONTINUING: Read McKnight's article in full here. I don't want to block quote.

Done? Good.

A fatal problem with this yellow journalism [1] is as follows; [citation needed]. 
Especially towards the end, McKnight asserts a theory that complementarianism provides the culture for men to abuse their wives. He quotes a couple of books and their assertions, and... that's it. All assertions, no data. Now the books he does cite claim to use data to support the same assertion, but McKnight doesn't cite their supposed data, only repeats those assertions.

This is the first sign of manipulative yellow journalism. McKnight yaps on about "scholarly consensus" and "research" to give the appearance of an argument supported by science, without actually providing the science itself. And it's obvious why he won't give data himself; science is hard and boring, it doesn't persuade the masses. But strongly assert to the masses that your argument is in-fact scientific, and they'll follow your lead, because everyone wants to be on the side of "science" without doing the necessary, labourious due diligence of research.

But now I'd like to talk about McKnight's abuse of logic. Let's grant his initial assertions; there is a correlation between patriarchal views and abuse of women.

Okay, so what?

So what if you see a correlation, Scot? How does that prove your followup claim of causality? Why can't I just assert the other way around? Men with abusive tendencies are more likely twist and adapt a doctrine that marginally overlaps with their mentality. Why must the doctrine itself be to blame?

An analogy; Christian nations have historically been far more likely to abuse, belittle, and kill homosexuals than secular democracies. I don't think anyone would dispute this, given that we live under the dictatorship of the homophiles. But what should we make of it? Does Christianity's claim that homosexuality is a degenerate sin inherently lead to hatred and abuse of homosexuals? Is Christianity itself to blame? Or was the faith twisted to support such abuses?

Just about every Christian, including McKnight, would say the latter; the faith is about love and repentance, bringing people to the knowledge of the Lord, not killing those who live in sin. Yes, we have to refute evil and not closely associate with the degenerate, but to take that as warrant to abuse, belittle, and kill homosexuals is to distort true doctrine.

Great stuff! So why can't precisely the same be said of complementarian/patriarchal doctrine? Why should we believe the doctrine itself feeds abuse of women, rather than just abusers distorting a doctrine that doesn't actually support their actions? And I think McKnight at least hints at this being the case, since he states right at the start that complementarians condemn abuse. A nice gesture, only to be retracted and replaced with a backhand. Scot wants to have his cake and eat it too; say that #notall complementarians support abuse, but then credit their doctrine with maintaining abuse.

Every doctrine can be and has been twisted to support abusive activities, I doubt even McKnight would dispute this, but it's a point that destroys his own. Yeah, a doctrine has been often twisted to support something bad; so?

Is the doctrine of patriarchy itself right or wrong? This is such a critical point that McKnight does not deal with; complementarianism/patriarchy being twisted, however often, to support the abuse of women does not actually answer the question of whether the doctrine is right or wrong. Because if the doctrine was right, we couldn't blame the doctrine with abuse, but specific persons.

And this leads me to think that Scot and other egalitarians who harp on the abuse argument do so for reasons other than truth-telling. They know the obvious logical fallacy at play; someone doing something bad using a truth claim doesn't therefore render the truth claim false. But they still argue that patriarchal doctrine is used to abuse, therefore patriarchy bad. I speculate that they are wanting to construct a church-wide guilt by association with complementarian/patriarchal doctrine. They don't want laymen to be suckered in by the strong, comprehensive, historically-rooted arguments of gender hierarchicalists, so they build an emotional wall that most laymen will be too fearful and uneducated, to climb.

So that will be my exhortation to readers here; don't just swallow the bald assertions egalitarians, and don't fall for their abuse of logic.

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[1] - From the Encyclopedia Britannica: "the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation."