sophism

Within the framework of democracy a new ideology, born of sophism, took root and proclaimed the rights of the individual in all spheres, political as well as moral.

The hope of improvement is a quality at once so strong and so excellent in the human mind, that I, for one, disapprove of any sophism—or, if you will, argument—that tends to repress it.

What! No demonstration of the Being of God! No abstract arguments! No proofs a priori! Are these, which have hitherto been so much insisted on by philosophers, all fallacy, all sophism? Can we reach no further in this subject than experience and probability?