Discernment Pt.6    Informal Fallacies 	11-11-2001

Each week I have been reminding you that most fallacies come not from an inability to reason, but from a heart that wants to believe something.  I keep reminding you of that, because it’s crucial to understand.

And it’s easy to illustrate.  It happens to every one of us.  We all use fallacious logic to “prove” something we want to believe.

How about this for logic: “Well, I’ve already blown my diet for today, so I might as well have that dessert.”  

Does that reasoning even approach making sense?  I’ve already eaten too many calories, so the solution is to eat a bunch more?

If you are looking for some place and see a sign and figure out that for the last three hours you have been driving the opposite direction that you needed to go, do you say, “I’ve driven so far in the wrong direction, therefore I should continue for another couple hours before turning around.

We hear the world’s ridiculous arguments against Christianity and ask, “How could someone be persuaded by such horrendous reasoning?”  

To find the answer to that question, you need look no farther than yourself.  The reason I’m “persuaded” by the reasoning that says, “I have overeaten all day, therefore I should have dessert” is not because I lack reasoning faculties.  

It’s because I’ll do anything to avoid saying, “I’m a gluttonous slob who has no self-control, and I’m completely governed by my appetites.”

So keep that in mind as you engage people in debate.

Having said all that however, I don’t want to suggest that we abandon debate.  It’s wrong to assume that no unbeliever has a genuine intellectual problem with Christianity.  Many people are willing to believe but just need to understand better.

Informal Logical Fallacies

There are two categories: Fallacies of clarity (where the meaning of the statements is not clear) and Fallacies of Relevance (where the statements don’t address the issues at hand).

Fallacies of Clarity

Word meanings:
Don’t waste your breath debating anything until you have defined all the terms.  

For example, if someone says, “The idea of An Eye for an Eye is barbaric and stupid.”

You might be tempted to fire back an argument for why you disagree.  But before doing that, slow down and ask, “What is it about that philosophy that you dislike so much?”

He might say, “I’m just against corporal punishment.  We don’t have any business gouging out people’s eyes.”

On the other hand, he may say, “It’s just so vengeful.  If someone does something to you, you should seek a peaceful solution.  Let the police handle it.  Don’t just hit back.”  

The issue with the first guy is corporal punishment.  If you agree with corporal punishment, that’s a significant difference that you need to address.

The second guy is just a little misinformed.  He thinks the Eye for and Eye command has to do with vengeance in personal relationships.

Fallacies of Relevance 

One of the best ways to respond to fallacies of relevance is to just simply ask, “Isn’t it possible that both my premise and your objection are true?” 

The Genetic or Origin Fallacy
This is the fallacy of asserting that an argument is right or wrong simply because of it's origin.

Practice:
“My religion existed thousands of years before yours.”
Isn’t it possible for an incorrect view to also be ancient? 

“You just believe Christianity because your parents taught you that.”
Isn’t it possible for a person to believe a true thing even though he learned it from his parents?  For example, should I reject a round earth just because my parents believed it?
“No.  It’s possible for your parents to teach true things.”
Then would you agree that what my parents taught me is completely irrelevant?

“Your morals are Victorian”
Is it possible…

The “Is it possible” response helps keep the debate from turning into a fight.  If you respond by saying, “What’s wrong with Victorian morals?”  and they say, “O brother!”  etc. you don’t get anywhere.

“I reject Pre-Trib because it is so new.”  (In Biblical arguments, there is some significance to why something that is supposedly plain in the Bible wasn’t discovered for two thousand years, but that alone doesn’t prove anything).

Straw man
The straw man fallacy is when you misrepresent someone else's position so that it can be attacked more easily, knock down that misrepresented position, then conclude that the original position has been demolished. It's a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made.

This is the error of someone who would go on and on proving that 3 doesn’t equal 1, and then claiming he has disproved the doctrine of the Trinity.

Trinitarians don’t believe 3=1.  That’s not our position.  We don’t believe there are three Gods but only one God.  And we don’t believe God is three persons and only one person.  We believe there is one God and three persons.

The best strategy for responding to a straw man is not, “That’s a straw man fallacy!”   

For one thing, now you have just accused them of being dumb, which will put them on the defensive and make them less inclined to be persuaded by you.

It also shifts the debate off the subject.  Now you have to waste time trying to prove it’s a straw man, rather than debating the real issue at hand.

A better strategy is to simply wholeheartedly agree.  That lets you get back to the issue at hand, and you have completely stripped your opponent of that argument.  

ad hominem
"argument directed at the man"; there are two varieties.
The first is the abusive form. If you refuse to accept a statement, and justify your refusal by criticizing the person who made the statement, then you are guilty of abusive argumentum ad hominem. For example:
"Your claims that Christianity is true cannot be valid because the church is full of hypocrites."
People have come up with all kinds of clever responses to this (“There’s always room for one more”), but what would be a more civil approach?

“Is it ever possible for a hypocrite to believe something that is true?”  If not, would you reject atheism if you discovered that some atheists say one thing and live a different way?”

This is a fallacy because the truth of an assertion doesn't depend on the virtues of the person asserting it. 

"You anti-abortion people don’t care about these poor, pregnant women."
That’s not true, but suppose it were – does that address the question of whether or not a baby is human?  Isn’t it possible that the baby is human, even though there are some jerks that agree?
Are there any jerks who believe abortion is a good thing?
If someone uses this argument with you, instead of trying to prove how much you care or pregnant women, just grant their accusation for the sake of argument.
I agree there are anti-abortion people who don’t care about women.  But is it possible that the fetus is a human baby, and some of the people who realize that also happen to be obnoxious people?  Is it possible for an obnoxious person to know something true?
If not, would you drop your pro-abortion position if you discovered that somewhere out there in the world was someone who was pro-abortion and who also didn’t care about women?
Circular Argument
This fallacy occurs if you assume as a premise the conclusion you wish to reach. Often, the proposition is rephrased so that the fallacy appears to be a valid argument. 

Capital punishment is wrong, because it does something we have no business doing – namely, taking another person’s life.”

The conclusion they are trying to prove is that capital punishment is wrong.
The proof of that is that we have no business taking another person’s life.

This is often referred to as begging the question, although that is a slightly different error.  Begging the question is when you assume as a premise any point that is in dispute.  

Both come down to the fact that you can’t start out saying, “If A is true and B is true..” if your opponent doesn’t agree that A and B are true. 

The pro-abortion apologists are the worst offenders in circular reasoning.  If you ask one of them for a list of 20 arguments supporting their position, chances are you will have a nice list of 20 examples of circular reasoning.

This is because almost every one of their arguments, in order to be valid, requires that you assume the fetus to be a non-human.
•	Poor women won’t have access if abortion is illegal (Would they argue against a law prohibiting the killing of your 8 year old on the basis that it’s unfair to poor women, because it would be harder for them to get away with breaking such a law?  The argument only has force if you start by assuming abortion is not murder.)
•	There will be too many children
•	Children will grow up in abusive homes 
•	The children will be welfare cases.
•	A woman has the right to free choice

If the baby is a human baby, then even the pro-abortionists would agree that these arguments wouldn’t apply.  They only apply if it’s not a human baby, which is exactly what is supposedly being proved.

False Analogy
Analogies are very useful for clarifying or illustrating a point.  But they do not, by themselves, prove a point.

The key is to realize an analogy is only useful up to a certain point, at which the analogy breaks down.  When someone uses an analogy in a debate, make sure you are both clear at which points it is a valid analogy, and exactly where it breaks down.

So if someone says to you, “Believing in Jesus is like believing in the tooth fairy.”  

Instead of responding by shouting, “Is not!” how about if you just agree?  

“I agree that believing in Jesus is like believing in the tooth fairy in the sense that both involve believing in someone you can’t see.  But are you suggesting that believing in Jesus is exactly like believing in the tooth fairy in every sense?”

“Wouldn’t you agree that there are some senses in which believing in Jesus is different than believing in the tooth fairy?  For example, how many scholarly treatises have been written on the historical evidence for the tooth fairy?”

 Logic of Holy War Article: 

Left Column 
PP 1 Straw man
PP 2 Self-contradiction (We shouldn’t point fingers & the acts are unjustifiable.  Also, in the next pp he implies they are justified)
PP 3 Appeal to the age of an argument
  
Center Column 
Conclusion: All war is morally wrong.

The only reason we engage in war is to generate profit.
This places money as a higher priority than human life.
Therefore all war is wrong.

Remember his second point – that this war is immoral because the concept of an eye for an eye justice is outdated?  For that point to be valid, isn’t he saying that at least part of the motivation for this war is justice?

If so, he has just refuted the first premise of the third point – that our only motive is profit.

Right Column
“Either bombing children in Palestine is evil, or flying a plane into the Trade Center is not evil.”

False dilemma.  (Aside from the fact that Palestine is not really in Afghanistan), this is a false dilemma, because there is a third option: targeting the military targets of terrorists is not evil, and targeting innocent civilians in the Trade Center is evil.

The next sentence is another false dilemma.  Either all war is evil or all war is good.  Obviously there is a third possibility: some war is evil and some war is good.

The next two sentences he assumes his conclusion.  This war is not an issue of good against evil.  That’s the conclusion he is trying to prove.  

To prove it he says, “If we adopt that kind of thinking, we are hypocrites.”

The entire next pp also assumes his conclusion.

This is also the error of thinking that if you repeat a proposition enough times, that constitutes an argument.

The final pp is a false analogy that again refuses to engage the opponent’s actual argument (That there is a difference between vengeance and justice).

 

Anecdotal evidence
One of the simplest fallacies is to rely on anecdotal evidence. For example:
“Jeep Cherokees are unsafe.  My neighbor got rear-ended and his car exploded into flames.”
One anecdote doesn’t prove anything.  For all you know, it’s the safest vehicle there is.  If your neighbor’s is the only one that has ever had a problem, it may be super safe.
There are a lot of errors that result from a limited sample.  (Emergency room people think scooters are too dangerous, because their sample is so skewed – they don’t see the millions of kids who don’t get hurt).
"There's abundant proof that God exists and is still performing miracles today – my friend had a tumor one day, and the next day it was gone."

That is a fallacy.  The atheists use the exact same fallacy – “There certainly isn’t a merciful God.  My niece died of cancer at age 12.”

So it’s wrong for us to try to prove miracles with anecdotes.  On the other hand, Christianity is based completely on the trustworthiness of eye-witness accounts of miracles.  Are we guilty of this fallacy?

No.  Once enough evidence is provided, it is reasonable to believe something happened, and eye-witness accounts constitute good evidence.  But one story or one person’s experience is not good enough evidence.

One good response when someone tries to prove something from anecdotal evidence is to simply say, “That’s not enough evidence to convince me.  Obviously I can’t accept something based on one person’s report of his experience, because people have conflicting experiences.”

Lack of Knowledge
There is a hard boundary to the usefulness of logic, and it’s the boundary of knowledge.  It could be that some piece of information out there would overturn your reasoning.

In 1893, the Royal Academy of Science were convinced by Sir Robert Ball that communication with the planet Mars was a physical impossibility, because it would require a flag as large as Ireland, which it would be impossible to wave.

That’s why it’s much harder to prove a negative than a positive.  You can prove something is true by producing evidence for it.  But it’s much more difficult to demonstrate something isn’t true.

You can prove there is such a thing as a skunk by finding one and pointing it out.  But to prove a certain kind of animal doesn’t exist is much more difficult.  

There are only two ways to do it.  One would be to observe every place in the universe all at the same time, and even then it would only prove it didn’t exist only during that moment.

The only other way is to prove that it can’t exist.

Argumentum ad populum
This is known as Appealing to the Gallery, or Appealing to the People. You commit this fallacy if you attempt to win acceptance of an assertion by appealing to a large group of people. This form of fallacy is often characterized by emotive language. 

Basically this is the fallacy of mocking your opponent’s view because it is unpopular.  “You believe the earth is 6000 years old?  (snicker). Don’t you know the vast majority of scientists believe in an old earth?”

We respond to this argument by pointing out that some correct views have been held by minorities.

Over-Simplification
When someone takes a very complex issue, and reduces it to some overly simplified issue that ignores crucial elements.

This is the error of someone who asks, “Do you interpret the Bible literally?”

Someone might say, “Divorce is wrong.  All we need to know about divorce is this – don’t do it.”  But that doesn’t address the issue of what to do when someone has been divorced, or abandoned, etc.

It’s easy to fall pray to an argument that is an over-simplification, because it doesn’t really say anything wrong, it just ignores relevant factors.

I believe much of psychological theory commits this error.  Human behavior is extremely complex.  There are millions of factors that go in to what we do and how we behave – in many cases more than we are able to consider.

When someone has a certain problem, we try to figure out what caused the problem, and how to fix it.  Psychologists will identify a couple dozen relevant factors, but there are thousands more they can’t identify.

In other sciences, you can isolate what you are trying to study.  If you want to know what effect does salt have on buoyancy, you can have two identical pots of water, in the exact same environment, and put identical items in and observe the difference in flotation. 

But you can’t do that with people.  If you have two children born at the same time, one grows up in the city and the other in the country, you can observe differences in those children, but how can you draw conclusions since everything else wasn’t equal?

The differences you observe may be due to other factors besides where they lived (genetic differences, experiences at school, etc).

Even when you have identical twins growing up in the same home, there are still countless factors.  One of them walks down the street and has an experience that the other one doesn’t have.

One of them has dreams the other doesn’t have.  One of them has different experiences with discipline from the parents who are not perfectly consistent.  

And that’s to say nothing of the fact that one may be targeted by Satan or bad people more than the other.  One may have been given more illumination by the Holy Spirit than the other.

That’s why when there is a problem, it is much better to simply follow Scriptural guidelines than psychological theories.

Over-Complication
This is not in any logic book, but it’s a favorite fallacy of our culture.  Sometime an issue really is fairly simple, but in order to avoid committing one way or the other, someone will accuse anyone who takes a stand of Over-Simplification.  

It’s too simplistic to just say “Adultery is wrong.”  It’s a complex issue.  There are a lot of factors that must be considered…”

All that is happening is the person wants to allow for adultery, but he knows he can’t just come right out and say, “I believe adultery is good.”

See the Ellen Goodman article.  The issue is very simple.  People who fly planes into buildings are evil people.  Opposing those people is good.

But she doesn’t feel comfortable calling anyone evil, she doesn’t feel comfortable with the USA being on the side of good, but she obviously can’t say the terrorists are good, so she just muddies the water and over-complicates the situation.  

When you do that, you can avoid using your brain, and still place yourself above everyone else as an intellectual elite.

Sometimes psychologists are guilty of this as well.  They take an issue that is very clear in Scripture (such as discipline for children) and over-complicate it with endless theories.  

Sweeping generalization 
When you apply a general rule as if it applies to every specific situation.

Fallacy of division
Assuming that a property of some thing must apply to its parts