Fail Quote: Vox Day’s confused logic about religious identity

Vox Day

The whole of Vox Day’s latest post about how atheists are supposedly wrong to complain about persecution when Christians have been attacked throughout history is expectedly dumb, but this bit is just ripe for the picking:

Richard Dawkins likes to assert that a child cannot have a religious identity. But the fact that a child can be killed for a nonexistent identity clearly disproves that assertion.

Okay, let’s try to parse that for a moment. Richard Dawkins says that children shouldn’t be imparted religious or otherwise ideological labels because they cannot reasonably choose for themselves. Then, Vox Day says that someone who kills a child in the name of a nonexistent identity (thus referencing the killer’s own motives) disproves Dawkins’ claim.

Therefore … the act, itself, of killing a child over said child’s supposed religious identity – which, again, is the killer’s motive for committing this act – imparts upon that child a religious identity?

In other words, Vox is arguing that if you do something to someone because of what you think that person is – even if that person is not whatever you think they are – then ergo, they can assume that identity.

I could start listing examples until the cows come home and eat all the provolone (the greedy bastards), but I hardly think it necessary. (Plus, I have a movie that needs some watching.) Now, I readily admit that I might not possess the raw brainpower that Vox claims to behold (though I am skeptical of his assertions on the matter, given the shining gems of idiocy we’ve come to expect of him), and that therefore, I may have significantly missed the point or otherwise misunderstood what he meant. But exactly how an act committed upon a child is supposed to, ad hoc, prove that said child does possess a given ideological identity is beyond me. And I will posit that this is not due to any lack in logical reasoning on my part.