Hat Hangers

How many times have you heard someone use an analogy to explain a concept, only for the receiving party to point gleefully to a flaw in the analogy as though it undermines the entire argument? I'd like to help out any of you who may be suffering under the tyrannical weight of such a deluded practice.

Analogies are imperfect. Just like the perfect hair-do, the perfect analogy simply does not exist. To be a little more specific about what exactly I mean by that (I'm sure you've recognized by now that when I start making short, blunt, general statements, I actually have a very specific thing in mind), I'll put it to you this way:

Analogies are imaginary (most of the time, sometimes real) scenarios used to teach a principle or illustrate a point. There's typically one, two, or three (or if you're an amazing apologist, even more) key parts of an analogy that support arguments being made. However... there are always parts of the analogies that aren't applicable to the argument being made and are therefore irrelevant. There are also misapplications of the analogy. You would think that wouldn't become a distraction, because, as we're all imperfect people who live in an imperfect world, make imperfect arguments, and communicate imperfectly, one would think that we'd be used to and tolerant of this phenomenon by now.

Au contraire, my friend. Au contraire.

Mature arguers, can take the hit of a good analogy and counter through legitimate means. But the world is full of immature arguers who, rather than doing the intellectual heavy lifting necessary, latch onto irrelevant parts of the analogy that make no contribution to the conversation, and attempt to exploit them in a sort of straw-man demagoguery in order A: to make a part of the analogy that condemns their point of view seem less relevant, or B: to make the opposition sound like a blithering idiot.

The truth is that they are the idiots, no matter what the audience may think. (Typically audiences are very susceptible to demagoguery, being stricken with the sanctimony characteristic of the mob or of the third-party observer--thought the combination of these two is by far the worst.)

People like that are "Hat Hangers". They're constantly looking for a place to hang their hat in order to get out of something, typically cognitive dissonance. (I saw these folks on my mission all the time. Even though they knew that God expected action from them, they cast their eyes around unceasingly until they found a little hook--a "flaw"--on which to hang their hat and justify their continued laziness. They drove me up the wall.) Even the parables of Jesus Christ Himself could be diced apart and misused. But in this example, who comes off worse--Christ and His argument, or the hat hanger?

The legitimacy of an argument does not depend on either the arguer nor on the eloquence of the argumentation, but purely on the correctness of the principle being argued for. Beliefs and principles (which are what arguments are typically about) rise and fall on their own merits. Analogies are merely a sort of conversational condescension from a higher plane of pure thought down to our mortal level to help us better understand.

If you damage the rope being lowered down into your hole to rescue you, how does that affect the rescuer? Not in the least. So also will you be the only one adversely affected if you insist on misusing or abusing your opponent's analogies in an argument, whether you're in the right or not. And you can hang your hat on that.

(P.S.: there are some people who legitimately re-use their opponent's analogy, or a different facet of it, to prove their own point. That is an acceptable debate tactic. However, these are by fat the minority. Most folks who engage in this kind of behavior are hat-hangers, and it is them I upbraid in this post.)