I don’t understand why people use the tradition argument to prevent change, or even more simply, why people consider traditional things as somewhat better by virtue of having “stood the test of time.”
I came to the realization that everything we might think of as tradition was once a risk taken away from the status quo of the time. We hide behind the concept of tradition and fail to understand the very things that were founded so long ago were themselves changes. The passage of time is the only thing that a tradition has going for it. It doesn’t speak to the inherent wrongness or rightness of said tradition. Even the word “tradition” etymologically only references the transmission of ideas through time.
The Bible, that source for many “tradition” arguments, was written a long time ago. Who knows what arguments or debates might have taken place when deciding what beliefs the book should promote? Here I theorize that the Bible itself was written by men and not by a divine source. Even if we assume that the author(s) were unanimously in favor of a particular belief, it only became tradition when it was entered into this new paradigm. Before that, it was a bunch of people who decided to think the same way about something. We don’t know how they came to the conclusion, for example, that men having sex with men was a capital offense. There just happened to be a bunch of people afraid of or disgusted with that act who found they shared the same fear and disgust between them.
Those who believe that a divine power did write the Bible–well, I suppose that makes the tradition argument more an argument that the Divine Word should be taken as fact, although that kind of paints you into a corner, because if one part of it should be taken as fact, then every other statement in the Torah/Bible should be as well, and logically that might be difficult to back up.
But I digress. My point was meant to be about tradition in general.
I’d posit that those who espouse tradition as a reason for preserving a certain belief or law demonstrate their own close-mindedness much more than the unshakable faith or purity of belief they want to portray.
Custom makes our lives easier. It provides answers. We have our traditional phrases and responses, our “Good mornings” and “How do you dos,” our pleases and thank yous. We don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking of what to say: we have comforting traditional things to say.
Customs change over time, and it is universally the elderly who bemoan this, as it forces them to put aside the familiar and to learn new customs. They are the ones most likely to demand to uphold the continuity of tradition.
Yes, there is some validity to “the tried and true.” But mostly it’s just familiarity and comfort.
Many of the “traditions” generally ascribed to the Bible have very little to do with it. In the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament, and even in other Christian denominations, preachers/parsons/vicars/whoever talk about how marriage is a relationship between God and two people.
None of that is Biblical, or at least it doesn’t derive from the NT. Early Christians didn’t celebrate marriage at all. That all came from St. Augustine, along with a number of retrograde views on the role of women.
They’re so much easier to change than laws, you see. Someone does something new and you like it? A new tradition is born. The way we’ve been doing things doesn’t work so well any more? We stop doing it. Don’t need nobody to do no paperwork. Much, much more practical.
Now, when people use “tradition” to mean “it’s the way I like it”, that’s a different problem. It’s a problem with misusing language, not with tradition. pianodave - in a religious context, “tradition” refers precisely to those things which are not in the Bible (or Quran) but in later writings, or which are customary. So some of the things you find offensive about “tradition” appear to come from confusing “tradition” with “Bible-thumping” (a practice most common from those groups which don’t believe in religious tradition).
Imagine you had to have surgery and the surgeon offered two options. One has been tried thousands of times and has worked, the other is something the surgeon thinks will work but has never been tried before. Would you go with the traditional method or the new one? Most people would probably go with the traditional method instead of being the guinea pig for the new method. Since you only get one life, it usually makes sense to follow tradition since we know it works and not risk using the new and unproved.
This makes sense, of course. I guess my issue is more with the “Bible-thumping” as Nava said. I don’t like when people hold up anything, including the Bible, as beyond argument or beyond reproach. It irks me when people think they can win an argument without debating the current situation and issues—they just say “the Bible!” and that’s that. People are afraid to think for themselves, and to let go of their security blanket.
Yes, it prevents you from having to make difficult decisions. Especially for people who are extremely risk averse, it’s comforting to have a book that tells you what you should think and feel, and how to behave, because then you know that you are not making mistakes.
I am not a Bible thumper, but I am extremely risk averse. For most of my life, my way of dealing with this has been to stick to the rules. I’ve always felt like if I just follow the rules exactly, then I won’t make mistakes or get into trouble. As I got older, I started making my own rules for how I should live my life and sticking to them. The only problem is that as new situations arise and things change, you need to become more flexible. I’ve been working on it, and I’ve made some progress, but I’m still not there yet.
I have no sympathy for people who promote hatred and bigotry, but I definitely understand why sticking to tradition or to a rule book like the Bible, can be appealing.
Appeal to tradition may be a fallacy - it depends on how it is used. Sometimes, an “appeal to tradition” is simply a shortcut for “this has survived the test of time and so it is preferable”, which isn’t fallacious (if there is evidence to back it up). Or, to put it another way, ‘this has worked repeatedly in the past and so the burden is on you, proposing something new, to demonstrate it will work as well or better’.
Bible-thumpers are a subset of what I call “people who have a lot of faith in Authority”.
It may be the Bible. It may be people whose world quakes if they hear their managers admit to ignorance, or if a subordinate addresses a superior as “Joe” rather than “Mr. Matheson” (something they view as unacceptable even though Mr. Matheson has already said “call me Joe please”). Or one of my favorites, people who claim that “the procedure can’t be changed because it is the procedure”.
Often they are terrified of what may happen if they make a mistake… much safer to follow what the Hyerarchy says, because The Boss is always right and that’s it.
As a child I was told time and again that I had “a problem with authority”. Eventually I started pointing out that what I had a problem with was “because I say so” as a line of reasoning: that ain’t no real answer, in my book. For these other people, “because I say so” is the ultimate reason so long as that “I” is an Authority.
In Latin there is Autoritas and Potestas. Potestas is what we now usually think of when we say authority: “the ability to decide, for oneself or for others”. Autoritas is expert knowledge, as in “he’s an authority in his field”. My problem was (and still is) with Potestas without Autoritas, bossiness without knowledge or logic; for these people, Potestas confers Autoritas. The boss is always, always, always right… and so long as they can believe that, they feel a lot more comfortable than under the notion that the boss may actually be an actual, normal, fallible human being.
Other way around, an appeal to tradition is a fallacy but does not preclude other elements of a debate. The fact it is a “Tradition” does not validate the argument on it’s own and really doesn’t add to the argument in the way you posited, it was the other factors that made the element a non-fallacy.
But there is some purpose for traditions. They give meaning and a sense of common bond between people, through a shared tradition. Most people have traditions that they share with others, whether it be with family, classmates, co-workers, citizens etc.
Singing the national anthem at sporting events is a tradition that even strangers share, that many people miss if it is not done.
You may want to look up the words in the exceptions there:
Applies to religion and other “faiths” which are not subject to logic in the first place as by definition they are irrational beliefs.
tentative evidence points at a hypothesis, without testing, and presented on it’s own it does not negate other, newer ideas just based on existence.
This exception also requires more data and evidence, it does not stand on it’s own.
Let me clarify my point, by its self any argument made based on tradition, or age of an idea is a fallacy. And outside of pure irrational fields of study like theology it in itself has no value in an argument and/or debate. Nothing in your cite discredits my claim.
I am not going to chase a moving goal post, if you have evidence that, on it’s own, basing a claim pure on the age of said claim is valid please provide a cite.
E.G. the value of “Traditional Marriage” or “Historical flags” are recent examples. As an recent example of this the confederate flag was added to mississippi’s flag in the 1950’s due to Brown vs. the Board of education. Claiming that it is “traditional” in no way provides any evidence that it was not racist ideas which drove that law, it is a pure misdirection based on a lack of a real argument.
How is any of that any different to what I said? To repeat:
I never said “on it’s own, basing a claim pure[ly] on the age of said claim is valid”. What I said was that "Appeal to tradition may be a fallacy - it depends on how it is used. " (See above for full quote). Which happens to be true.
It only becomes absolutely a falacy if, no-true-Scotsman style, one defines what one means as being a claim based only on age, and nothing else. Then, yes, it is a fallacy. No true argument based on tradition is not a fallacy.
The advantage is threefold at least.
It is impossible to figure out life entirely on your own. What is the best relationship arrangement?, how should you figure out who to marry?, how should you raise your kids?, what should you do for work?, what morality is best?, etc,. If you had to sit down and come up independently with the answers it would be awfully hard and unless you are a super genius you will probably come up with the wrong answers. So you look around and put your faith in a belief system. But the question is which one.
The Bible is thousands of years old. Thus it has been tried for hundreds of generations. If you follow the news you will have found out that coffee is bad for you, then good for you, then bad again, then good again. In contrast the Bible has said the same thing for thousands of years and you know it won’t change.
The Bible is followed throughout society. Thus if you follow it many people will understand and respect your belief system. They will feel they know what to expect from you and you can know what to expect from them. If you have a question about it there are many people you can go to with a question and find an answer. If you were a Zorastrian that would be harder to find a mentor.
