Oh God

In 1931, BBC invited Gandhi to Kingsley Hall for the sole purpose of recording his point of view. Although the recorders wanted him to speak about politics, Gandhi refused and decided to give a speech on God and what he believed about him. He chose to donate all royalties to an association in India. It can certainly be a touching speech, where Gandhi explains that a universal force rules us benevolently, but if you look closely at what he says, he's building up an idea without real proof to support it. Gandhi admits both that there is no reason in his argument and that he doesn't fully believe in God. He constructed his speech all on fallacies to build a spiritual argument that has no proof. I'm not sure whether he wanted to earn royalties, popularity or recognition, but his ideas are fallacious and his conclusion artificial.

Gandhi begins his speech with a contradictory statement. It's not part of Heinrichs' fallacies, but there's a conflict between what he says, and he uses a proof that doesn't support the conclusion. He says, "There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything, I feel it though I do not see it." The conclusion is that there is a power, but what he puts as a proof disproves it. If he can't see it, it's surely not pervading everything, not his eyes at least. After talking about the mysterious power, and saying that it can be reasoned to an extent, which he contradicts later, Gandhi switches his topic to God. In a false comparison, Gandhi assumes that the force and God are the same. Once he has stated that God's rules are everywhere, he goes on to observe why we don't see them.

He mentions that some poor villagers in India didn't know who ruled their town but said that God ruled it. If God's rules are everywhere, and they know God rules them, then they did know who "rules" their town. That pathos-oriented anecdote about the villagers has a disconnect between the proof and conclusion. Gandhi says that, just as supposedly they didn't know who ruled them, he didn't know who rules him, although he said it is God. He admits to feel the orderliness of the universe and the existence of a universal law, falsely comparing himself to the ignorant villagers. Then, in a hasty generalization, he affirms that "it" cannot be a blind law because blind laws never work. A typical hasty generalization offers too few examples that prove the conclusion, he offers none. Gandhi mentions that Sir J. C. Bose proved that even matter is life, distracting the audience from anything that's relevant to what he just said. He uses a red herring also to be pathetic, as he's mentioning an important Bengali. Gandhi ends that paragraph saying that since he doesn't know much about the law-giver, he cannot deny his law, which is clearly an ignorance as proof fallacy.

Apparently no king ruled Mysore (where he talked to the poor villagers) from this palace

Gandhi continues to talk about his denial of the certainly existent power, as he jumps into a series of consecutive fallacies. "Since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is," says Gandhi in a fallacy of ignorance. Then he assures that He can be either malevolent or benevolent, and that he's certainly the last. It is a false dilemma because, as far as we know, God could be kind of good or both good and bad. He says that God is benevolent because he persists in the middle of life and death, truth and untruth and light and darkness. Therefore, says Gandhi, God is life, truth, light, live and the supreme Good. He achieves that conclusion by a wrong ending fallacy. Gandhi states a lot things as if they were facts or truths about life. He says that, "God to be God must rule the heart and transform it," and that he must express himself in definite realizations beyond our five senses. These facts he states use the wrong ending fallacy, again, because there is no connection between the proof and the conclusion. It is partly a tautology as well because for God to be God he must do what people often think of as God. 

Gandhi ends his speech by saying that since prophets have felt God in realizations beyond their senses, God exists. He bases his argument in saying that what we feel beyond our senses is infallible, which uses no proof for his conclusion. Then he uses a bad example, as he says that as prophets have felt God, he is real. What a few prophets think is not the truth about the world or representative about what everyone thinks. It is also a tautology as prophets, by definition people who proclaim the will of God, obviously "feel" God. Gandhi concludes his speech saying that, "Faith transcends reason." Just like reason can't explain God, his logic couldn't either. The whole speech is based on contradictions and presumed facts. There is clearly a disconnection between the evidence and conclusions of his arguments, making his explanation of God completely fallacious.