Understanding vs. Validating

This recurring fallacy never seems to go away. Understanding, appreciating, and rationalizing how somebody came to adopt a certain stance has no bearing on that stance’s legitimacy.

Yes, understanding the decision-making process of others could undoubtedly influence how we view and treat the people who adopt these views, but it is irrelevant when it comes to the ruling on the actual views themselves. Views are not validated by how their adherents come to adopt them.

This disaster of a fallacy is why we have religious “pluralists” validating all religions and why we have “open-minded Muslims” lending their sympathies to heretics and deviants and consequently legitimizing their moral right to preach their nonsense to the masses.

We need to end this harmful fallacious reasoning at once and call it out when we see it.