Posted on August 1, 2019 By God Evidence

“Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?”

…quipped comedian Groucho Marx. Humor can be achieved with an equivocation, which is the use of two different meanings of a term, as if they were the same. In Marx’s joke, the second usage of the term institution is a reference to a mental institution.

But using different meanings of the same term, as if they were the same (equivocation), is often used for a darker purpose than humor: misdirection and outright deception.

A fallacy of equivocation occurs when someone uses a term in more than one sense, thus making an argument misleading or deceptive. It is crucial that genuine truth seekers learn to spot this fallacy. As an illustration, consider the following example of an equivocation fallacy which uses the term fine in two different contexts, as if the term meant the same thing in both contexts:

Context 1: The sign says, “fine for parking here.”
Context 2: The sign says parking is fine.
Conclusion: It’s OK to park my car here.

Perhaps no term is used in a more misleadingly equivocal fashion than evolution. In fact, the next time I see an atheist use this term equivocally, I might need to be sent to an institution, lol!

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