I'd like to ad a new fallacy to the fallacy index.

We've all heard of ad hominem fallacies. This happens when you make a personal attack on someone instead of his or her argument.

This fallacy can vary in many cases. For instance, I might claim that since Ted Haggard is a raving lunatic and hypocrite, all of his arguments are false.

This is not true, however. It is certainly reason enough to be skeptical of Ted Haggard, but suppose he argued that the sky was blue. This is a true statement, and simply because Ted Haggard is an idiot, this does not make his arguments false by default. They stand on their own and should be judged independently of his actions.

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I believe there is an opposite form of this fallacy. I suppose I call it a "reverse ad hominem fallacy" for technical lingo. But if you want something more fun, I might go with the "My Shit Doesn't Stink" Fallacy. OR, perhaps the "Midas Touch Fallacy".

By this, I mean that in SOME cases, one could take everything that one person says to be true simply because he or she is heroic, important, authoritative, an "expert", a celebrity, or anything else positive.

This is similar in some ways to the appeal to authority fallacy, but slightly different.

For instance, one might be persuaded to believe EVERYTHING Einstein or Newton ever said simply because they were both very prominent and intelligent physicists.

But this is a serious mistake. Just because Einstein is Einstein doesn't make all of his statements true. Every claim Einstein makes stands alone apart from him, and his intelligence should have no bearing on our assessment on his truth claims.

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Here's where it relates to God... Christians often claim that everything that happens in this world is ultimately good at its core and part of God's plan. Every ACTION that God takes is BY DEFINITION good because GOD is GOD.

So when God kills someone in the Bible, it's automatically defined good by the fact that God is defined as good.

So to get a bit deeper, I would argue that this type of fallacy is essentially a mistake of language and a misuse or bastardization of semantics... Ultimately, using this kind of logic that all of God's actions are good because God is good makes language confusing and meaningless.

Would it make any sense to say that if the Pope killed thousands of people personally with an uzi at an Easter mass, that his actions are good by definition because the pope is an emissary of God?

Would it make any sense if the President did the same to call his actions good because he's the president?

How about Bill Gates? He gave a bunch of money to charity. He's a good person, so all of his deeds must be good too, right?

WRONG. The assessment of the "good" or "bad" of a particular act OR argument must be made independently of the status of the actor.

Hence, no one shits gold all the time, not even God. Simply because you're a good person doesn't mean that every act you do is good by definition. If you do something bad, and your act looks and smells like shit, then it's shit. You cannot use tricks of language to define BAD things you've done as good things.

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One could also draw from the Midas Touch story in which a king is able to turn everything he touches into gold. Obviously, even a good person does not simply do good with everything he does just because he is good...

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And finally, for philosophy buffs, I think this is an encapsulation of the battle between Voltaire and Leibniz.

Leibniz argued that since God exists and he is all good, this is the best of all possible worlds. We may look at the bad things in this world and make our own judgments, but ultimately, God made everything perfect... It's all a matter of perspective.

Voltaire argued against this belief, in his book, "Candide," in which he satirizes Leibniz, "All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

I think this "My shit doesn't stink" fallacy is what Voltaire was trying to describe... but in a fictional story.

If God does something that would be considered bad for a human, it is bad for him too. God does not get a magic free pass just because he's God and perfect by definition.