An Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics Part 9 (Logical Fallacies)

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An Introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics, Part 9, brought to you by RoarNoMore .com.

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We're going to start this morning by talking about logical fallacies.

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Some people really enjoy this, I'm someone who really enjoys this, some people find it a little dry. I'm going to try to make it interesting,

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I'm going to be doing the whole thing pretty much from this book called Discerning Truth by Jason Lyle. If you don't understand logical fallacies or want to know more,

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I would definitely recommend getting this book. There are two kinds of fallacies, there are informal fallacies, and there's a whole host of those.

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I have, I think, two pages full of those. And then there's formal, and there's really only two major formal fallacies. So I'm going to try to go through this as quickly as I can, but also with understanding at the same time.

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So if you have a question, don't understand, if I'm going too fast, just stop me and we'll discuss something.

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Yeah, why are they, what's the meaning of the informal versus formal way? Formal fallacies are fallacies that are easily recognizable in an actual statement of logic, like a syllogism, an actual argument.

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I can write it on the board and you can see, almost in a mathematical way, that this is a false argument.

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An informal fallacy is something that is an assumption that we make, a false assumption of some kind.

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We assume that because a scientist says it must be true. Well, I can't write that on the board and you can't see that that's a false premise.

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It's embedded in the argument. Right. It's more, yeah, exactly. It's just a presupposition that we come with.

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So that's the difference. Informal fallacies you're going to hear a lot more of. Almost no one, I haven't come across anyone yet who wants to use formal fallacies, like writing it up on the board to show me that God doesn't exist or something.

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But they will state it in an informal way sometimes and just, and we'll see that as we go through things.

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So let's go through the first one. Actually, let me read the first paragraph here. In order to argue effectively for the Christian worldview, believers should possess a basic knowledge of logical fallacies.

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Just as knowledge without wisdom is detrimental, so is knowing scripture without understanding how to use it.

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It is one thing to know that the Bible is true. It is another to discern the errors in all arguments that attempt to contradict it.

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The following is a basic glossary of both informal and formal logical fallacies. Feel free to add examples below each heading as you encounter them.

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You're going to find that each one of these examples is going to have different applications. When we talk about reification, that's the first informal fallacy here, which is attributing a concrete characteristic to something abstract.

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We can think of multiple examples. That would be like someone saying that Mother Nature did it. Mother Nature designed this beautiful canyon we're looking at.

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You see this in the national parks all the time. Well, as we understand what this fallacy is, you're going to think of more fallacies, more examples of people using that exact fallacy.

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But that's just to take one example from here. Feel free to write down examples. I'm going to give you a couple as we go through.

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And maybe you can even throw one out that you've heard and contribute to everyone else's knowledge on this.

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There's one other thing I wanted to say, and that is I have not memorized all these fallacies and their formal names.

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I've gone through this book before, actually I went through it about a year ago. I've gone through some other materials on logical fallacies.

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I think it would be helpful if someone, if you felt like you needed to memorize it, that's fine. I would encourage that.

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I have not found it completely necessary. I think it's definitely a good thing, but what

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I've done is I've gone through, I've kind of gotten each example, and then as I go through life, I just kind of notice things.

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And I don't know exactly what name to attribute to it, but I can usually pick out what the problem is. I might not be able to call something reification, but I know that what the problem is.

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You're saying that something is animate when it's inanimate. You're ascribing a personhood to something that is actually just a force of nature.

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So that's kind of the way I've dealt with this. But it's good to go through it and to understand it. And if you feel compelled to know more, then

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I suggest picking up a copy of this book. They're not too expensive, kind of short. I read it in one sitting, and very helpful.

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All right, so we just went through the first one, reification, attributing a concrete characteristic to something abstract. And I gave you an example of that.

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That would be like in a national park, you see a sign and it says that Mother Nature designed this, and I have seen those in national parks.

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What is Mother Nature? Is that an actual person? No, it's not. It's a force, right? If anything, it's some total of both the material and immaterial forces that make up the physical world.

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There's no personality behind that. There's nothing that feels emotion. There's nothing that has volition.

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None of the things that we ascribe to personhood actually have their essence in Mother Nature. But what does the

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National Park Service do, which, by the way, our tax money is going to? It says that that is a person.

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It treats it like it designed something, and it didn't design something. So that would be an example of reification.

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And when someone, perhaps such as an evolutionist or naturalist, tries to do that, we can pick that out.

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And I notice that a lot of atheists will do this all the time. The way I interpret it is they really do know

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God, and that's why they keep doing it. They feel compelled that they must bring some kind of a personal characteristic to an impersonal force, because that's their

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God -given image coming out. And in reality, there is no personal characteristic to that.

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So that is reification. The next one is called equivocation. Equivocation, we actually hear this.

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I hear a lot of these quite a bit. This is one I do hear a lot. Shifting from one meaning of a word to another within an argument.

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Can anyone think of an example of that, equivocation, where someone starts out using your definition of a word, and then they change it in the middle of the argument?

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I can give you some examples. There's some examples in this book, and I've actually heard some of these. Science is a very powerful tool, so why deny the science of evolution?

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What happened in that sentence? They started out with your definition of science, right?

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You assume that they mean the same thing that you mean, and then at the end, what do they say? That evolution is a science.

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We don't accept that, right? We don't believe that evolution is a science, but they just switch the definition of the meaning. Here's another one.

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Here's another evolutionary one. Evolution is a scientific fact. The evolution of bacteria becoming resistant is well documented.

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Okay, same thing again, just phrased a little different way, right? Here's another one. We don't deny the Bible, but it's your interpretation we believe to be wrong.

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We must always compare our interpretation of the Bible with our interpretation of nature to make sure they match.

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That's a little more complex. What happened there? What definition was changed? We don't deny the

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Bible. We agree with that, right? We believe the Bible is the primary authority. And then what does he say? We must always compare our interpretation of the

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Bible with our interpretation of nature. He actually changed a couple things here.

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He changed, number one, his authority, his concept of the Bible changed during it. But another thing changed here, interpretation.

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He says our interpretation can be wrong. We agree with that. And then he says later on that our interpretation of nature is superior to our interpretation of the

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Bible. We got to make sure that those match up. And I've heard this all the time. Actually when I was at law school,

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I remember when he came in and he said, when we look at the Bible, we see that there is a special revelation.

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There's a law that is codified in there. And when we look at nature, we also see that there's a law. And we have to make sure that those two things match.

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If they're in contradiction, then something's wrong. And my question was, well, which one has the primary authority? If you find the

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Bible doesn't coincide with your interpretation of nature, then which one do you choose?

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Your interpretation of the Bible or your interpretation of nature? So anyways, changing a definition of a word in the middle of an argument is equivocation.

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The next one is called begging the question. I think we're all familiar with this. We've actually talked about this a little bit at the beginning.

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Begging the question is assuming that your argument is true at the outset. Now that isn't necessarily a fallacy.

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It doesn't have to be, I should say. It doesn't have to be a fallacy. Remember that every worldview winds up in a circle.

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And our worldview, we believe, is valid because we can't assume it at the outset. We have to or else we're denying everything that's rational.

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So it doesn't necessarily have to be a fallacy. But in the vicious circular argument, it is a fallacy.

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If you look at a rock layer, right, I've used this example many times and said, the bones are this old because it's in this layer.

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And then you ask, well, how do you know how old the layer is? Well, because of the bones in it. We know that those bones are that old. You're begging the question.

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It's a circle, right? And it's not a circle that can't be denied, like the circle that says that without God we can't prove anything.

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It's a circle that can be denied. Here's another example. This is one that Christians can use. Jesus loves me, this

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I know, for the Bible tells me so. What's wrong with that? It just assumes that the

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Bible is true because the Bible says it is true, right? Now the difference in this class, what we've said is that the

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Bible is true because it tells us so, and what? And because without it we couldn't prove anything. There's a big difference there.

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It's still a circle, but it's not a vicious circle. So we've talked about this a little bit. I can actually give another couple more examples if you want.

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Here's another one. Evolution must be true. After all, it is a well -established fact of science. That's actually begging the question right there.

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You're assuming at the outset that it's true. We have confidence in the methods of science and induction because they have served us so well in the past.

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That's a classic example of begging the question. Induction is the idea that you can look at certain facts and induce from them something to be true.

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Actually, science relies on induction. Now, induction, though, relies on the past remaining the same as the present, that the laws don't change, that there is uniformity in nature.

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Well, in this statement, we have confidence in the methods of science and induction because they have served us well in the past begs the question because what are you saying?

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We have confidence that in the past things will be accurate because, well, in the present they're accurate.

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You've actually created a circle there. You're relying on the very thing that you're assuming.

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Does everyone understand that or do you want me to explain it further? So that is begging the question.

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Here's another one. This is called the question -begging epithet, using biased, often emotional language to persuade people rather than using logic.

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This is probably one of the most common ones. There's actually a couple of fallacies that are like this. Here's a couple of examples of a question -begging epithet, though.

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Evolution versus creationism, just that statement. What does that do when you say that?

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What does it assume? Yeah. It elevates evolution and it brings down creationism, but it assumes that they're on the same level, that it's either this one or that one and it's actually using an emotional type of argument with you.

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You don't actually realize it at the time that this is an emotional argument, but it's getting you to attach creationism with something that cannot be scientific.

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Now, that wouldn't happen to our minds, but to someone in the secular world who believes in evolution, that's a scientific fact. As soon as you phrase the debate that way, you've emotionally persuaded him that whatever his position is on evolution, the opposite is going to be the creationist position.

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Creation for science, that's the same thing. Here's one. Creation is so obviously wrong that I don't need to even argue my position.

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That's, yeah, very arbitrary, right? Using vulgar language can be part of this. The gist of this is that it is using an emotional argument rather than actually a rational one.

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We see this in the problem of evil, right? They're using an emotional argument with us to try to say that God can't exist because he does all these horrible things.

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That's not a rational argument. That's an emotional argument. How can we believe in a God that does so many horrible things?

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Here's the next one. Complex question. Attempting to persuade by asking a loaded question.

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I think we're all familiar with loaded questions. Who in here watches Sean Hannity? What does he ask liberal viewers so many of the times that he's on?

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Loaded questions. This is an extreme example and he's probably never asked anyone this, but when I do an impersonation of Sean Hannity or something, because I sometimes like to make fun of him, even though some of the things he does are very good with the support of the troops,

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I'm not saying that's bad, but he'll say something like, Mr. Liberal, have you stopped abusing children lately or not?

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That's a loaded question. If you accept the premise of his question, then you're accepting that you abuse children.

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The only question is, are you still doing it or not? Here's a couple more examples. Examples of complex questions are called loaded questions.

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If creation is true, then why does all the evidence point to evolution? We don't believe that all the evidence points to evolution, right?

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How can I answer that question? I can't accept the premise of it. If the world is young, then why does it look so old?

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We don't agree that it looks so old. Evolutionists do this all the time. Why are creationists against science?

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We're not against science. I can't answer that question. Everyone understand that one? Next one is called bifurcation, claiming there are only two mutually exclusive possibilities when there may actually be three or more options.

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Either evolution is true or everything we know about the world is wrong. Are those the only two options that we have?

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There could be a third option, right? Either you have reasons for what you believe or you simply take it on faith.

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Really, those are the only two options. I can never be a creationist because I'm rational.

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So, either creationism or rationality, you choose. You can't have anything in between. There's no third option.

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That's what bifurcation is. So, let's go to the next one. Oh, this is a good one.

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Ad hominem. Directing an argument against the person making the claim rather than the claim itself.

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Anyone ever had that happen to them? That's a favorite liberal argument. What do they say?

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He pushes his head like this. Yes. Here's one. If you don't believe in evolution, then you're pretty much just a moron.

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So, they try to just name -call you. You're just stupid. You're ignorant, right -wing, hater of children, whatever.

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I don't know if any of you have ever listened to the Glenn Beck show, but he's got a... There's a character that he impersonates on the show.

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He kind of talks like this when he impersonates him, and it's a liberal guy. You've heard of him?

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Yes. And all he does is the ad hominems after ad hominem. You just hate whales.

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You just hate nature. And meanwhile, the conservative is trying to be rational. So, that's my primary example there because I hear it on the radio.

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Here's one. The faulty appeal to authority. Endorsing a claim simply based on the person making the claim.

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So, you have your expert. You have your... Who's the guy? I keep forgetting his name. The guy that just said the world was going to end.

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Yeah, that's a faulty appeal to authority. Because he says so, it's going to happen. If creation is true, then why do the vast majority of scientists believe in evolution?

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Well, it is a good question, but it's also a question that's assuming that because a number of experts believe in something, then it must be true.

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And that's not necessarily the case. That doesn't make it true. Now, it may be something, a curiosity you might want to look into, you know.

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But it doesn't actually make your claim valid. Of course evolution is true. My biology text says so.

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Right? Well, if your biology textbook says so, how can you, you know... So, the problem with this one is it's a faulty appeal to authority.

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And I want to stress the fact that it's faulty. Because there is an appeal to authority that is accurate, right? We appeal to God as our ultimate authority.

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So, he created everything. He designed everything. He gets to have the say so in everything. That makes sense.

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If I talk to an expert who built something, whoever built my house, if I could talk to that person and ask him questions about my house, he would be a valid authority, right?

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That doesn't mean that because he says it, it's necessarily right. It's just something to take into consideration. The difference with God, though, is that he has all knowledge.

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He has a characteristic that makes him valid in all points. So, any interrogation that we can offer up to God will be answered with a valid answer.

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So, I do want to make that distinction because usually it's just called the appeal to authority, and I want to make sure it's a faulty appeal to authority because there isn't a right appeal to authority, right?

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If there wasn't, then there would be no worldviews at all because everyone's got their ultimate authority. The next one is called the straw man fallacy, misrepresenting an opponent's position and proceeding to refute the misrepresentation rather than what the opponent actually claims.

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This is a favorite. These folks at Answers in Genesis say that you have to believe in six days of creation in order to be saved.

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That's not what they say. But you're trying to refute a position that they don't actually give. Again, Sean Hannity show.

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This happens a lot. Creationists don't believe in the scientific method. They say you should just look to the

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Bible for all your answers. They're ascribing a belief to you that you don't actually accept, but it's close to something that you accept.

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It sounds like it's something you might accept. You're a Christian. You're with that Westboro Baptist crowd, aren't you?

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You hate gays just like they do, right? Because you're a Christian. They are a Christian. You could probably go on and on with examples of this.

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But that is what a straw man fallacy is. And that is probably... I keep saying that these are common.

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You know, this is common, this is common. Straw man fallacy actually might be the most common. I hear that one all the time because usually when you're witnessing to someone, you have to first knock down every preconception they have of Christianity before you can even get anywhere because they have a completely wrong understanding.

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Here's some other fallacies. We have the genetic fallacy, dismissing an argument because one objects to the source of the argument.

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If someone came in and said, Wikipedia told me that the acceleration rate of an object is 9 .8

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seconds per meter squared, then I shouldn't say to them, well, I don't accept Wikipedia as an authority, therefore it's not 9 .8

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meters per second squared. Well, Wikipedia, you know, even a blind mouse can find cheese once in a while.

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And it's the same way with someone who might be incredibly stupid. They might actually come up with something that's accurate once in a while.

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They might affirm the same things that we affirm. And I think it's true most of the time, but not all the time.

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I'm just using that as an example because, you know, the older generation doesn't like Wikipedia. We could go with anything.

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Obama loves his children and feeds his dog, therefore it must be wrong to feed your dog because you don't like Obama. Same thing.

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So here's another one. The fallacy of composition, arguing that what is true of the parts must also be true of the whole, or what is true of the members of a group is also true of the group.

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That's false. We went over this, actually, because some of the theistic arguments we use for God do this, right? We see design in nature.

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I see this chair is designed. It seems like I'm designed. This plant is designed. Therefore, all of creation must be designed.

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Now, we believe that all of creation is designed, but that's committing that fallacy. Just because you see design in a particular doesn't mean the whole is necessarily designed.

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You can actually go the opposite way, too, and I think that's the next one, the fallacy of division, arguing that what is true of the whole must also be true of the parts.

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We know... I think I used the example of the people in the church. We are a church, right? As individuals, we're not the church, but as the whole, we're called the church.

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And so if I were to say, Ed Cologne is the church, that would be wrong. He's part of the church. So what is true of the whole isn't necessarily true of the individual or the particular, and vice versa.

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So that gets into some of our theistic arguments. I shouldn't say ours, but a lot of the theistic arguments that are used.

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But even Christians can get these things wrong. It's not just the atheists and the people that we consider to be antagonistic to our faith that get these things wrong.

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We do sometimes, and so it's important that we use valid reasoning as well. So that's the fallacy of division and the fallacy of composition.

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Hasty generalization. Drawing a generalization from too few specific examples.

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Okay, so a Christian bombs an abortion clinic. All Christians must be in support of bombing abortion clinics.

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Hasty generalization right away. Sweeping generalization. Applying a generalization to...

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Actually, you know what, the one I just said is more of a sweeping generalization because that's an exception. So if I had a couple

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Christians that bombed abortion clinics, then that would be a hasty. If I had one, that's an exception. I'd have a sweeping generalization.

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Either way, it could be combined. It's a generalization. Generalizations are sometimes useful,

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I guess. Apparently Mr. Ryan believes that Scotsmen are cheap, so that is a generalization of Scotsmen.

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But he only has one friend that he could cite, so he's actually making a sweeping generalization there, which is a logical fallacy.

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But I could come back with a generalization of Mr. Ryan and say he always gives hasty generalizations because he did it in this one particular instance.

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All right, the next one is called the No True Scotsman Fallacy. The No True Scotsman Fallacy. When an arguer defines a term in a biased way to protect his argument from rebuttals, the examples from which the name is taken is this.

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Person A asserts that no Scotsman put sugar on his porridge. Person B refutes this claim by providing a counterexample.

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Angus is a Scotsman, and he put sugar on his porridge. Person A responds by saying, ah, but no true

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Scotsman put sugar on his porridge. He has essentially redefined the term Scotsman in such a way that his original claim cannot be wrong.

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But since his definition is fallacious, so is his argument. So we can see an evolutionist would say no scientist believes that God created everything in six days.

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Creationists and rebuttals. Well, the scientists and answers in Genesis believe that, and the evolutionists can say, well, no real scientist actually believes that.

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So that is the No True Scotsman Fallacy. I feel like there could be a better name for this, but it's probably the only one you're not going to forget.

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Here's another one. Special Pleading. Fallacy of Applying a Double Standard. That's almost self -explanatory.

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The theistic creationist on the Christian side says, we will give you the preconditions, an example of the preconditions of intelligibility, a way to account for them, and that is the

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God of Christianity. And the evolutionist says, well, we don't have to do that. You have to do that. So he's putting the complete burden of proof on the creationist, and then not taking any burden of proof for himself.

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That's the double standard. You have to prove to me that God exists. I can just sit here and try to shoot down your arguments.

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I don't have to give any proof for my worldview. In reality, both worldviews have their ultimate authority, so they actually have to prove both of them.

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There's none of this burden of proof on one side or the other. They both have a burden of proof that they have to bring to the discussion.

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So, Special Pleading. I was going to say the Double Standard Fallacy. See, that's how I think of most of these things.

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I don't know the official name, and I don't think you do have to, but you know what the fallacy is.

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Right. You see a double standard, you say, that's a double standard. You don't say, you're doing Special Pleading, because then the person is going to be like, what does that mean?

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Here's the next one, False Analogy. Making a comparison between two things that are alike in only trivial ways, irrelevant to the argument.

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Here's one. Believing in creation is like believing in a flat Earth. Well, there might be some similarities there, right?

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It could be a minority of scientists believe in a creation, and a very small minority of scientists believe in a small

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Earth, or a flat Earth, but that's where the comparison pretty much ends. So, that is also a fallacy.

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Fallacy of analogy. So, actually what you're doing here is you're trying to come up with a counterpart, something that comes alongside and is,

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I guess I can only use the word that's given, analogous to what you're trying to disprove. That's used a lot on the science, promoting evolution, saying an analogy is something else, and it becomes something very trivial.

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That's true, I didn't think of that. It doesn't really even match. Birds came from dinosaurs because they both have a similar head.

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Without our attention, what about the center of gravity of the animal over the head? So, it's more or less the same animal, but the similar head is very close to each other.

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Makes sense. I'm really picking on the evolutionists today. So, that was, let's see, the false analogy.

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The next one is the fallacy of false cause, attributing a false cause and effect relationship between two events.

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We started allowing creation to be taught in our science classes, and the test scores dropped. So, do you see what teaching creation does?

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Actually, I don't think that was the case. I think it's the opposite of that, but if something like that were to happen, that there was a shooting at the school after creation was taught, they could be completely unrelated events.

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Slippery slope fallacy, arguing that a particular action will set off an undesirable chain of events when in reality other factors would tend to prevent such a result.

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I've got to put a preface on this one. I don't think this is actually always an invalid thing, but I'm going to make a little distinction here.

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The slippery slope fallacy goes like this. Here's an example. He's got one here somewhere. If we allow for a possibility of miracles, then science will come to a halt.

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We'd never know if we are studying a law of nature or an act of God. Now, that is a slippery slope because you're saying that because a miracle happens, therefore, because natural laws, what we call natural laws or God's laws, are suspended, then, therefore, we can't do science anymore because Jesus turned the water into wine.

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We can never do any more experiments on water because what if a miracle happens and it becomes wine?

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This sounds stupid, actually, but this actually is given. I have heard it given that because there are miracles in the

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Bible, it's not scientific. How about the argument that Christians use against same -sex marriage?

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Yeah, that's what I was going to use as my good example. Multiple marriages, marrying dogs...

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I like those, but I'll tell you why in a minute. That was actually the example in my mind that I said why I have to make a distinction.

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So the problem here with the miracle one is that miracles are, number one, they're rare, very rare occurrences, and number two, they always have a specific purpose in God's plan.

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God doesn't just arbitrarily throw out miracles all over the place. He has a very specific reason for doing the miracle, and it's usually explained.

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In fact, every time Jesus did a miracle, it was for some kind of a reason, an explanation. And I don't recall any scientist ever doing experiments while a miracle was happening.

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It was always for some reason outside of that. So you can't use a slippery slope in that instance because it fails to understand really what a miracle is and how rare they are, and also that God is the one that upholds the laws of nature.

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So really you can come back to how you know there are laws of nature and they're uniform and all that. So the difference,

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I think, with the same -sex marriage thing is that it's logically consistent. It's not the fact that same -sex marriage is allowed that we say that these other things are allowed.

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It's the fact that there is no definition of marriage that we say that these things are now allowed. There's a big difference there.

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If you take away a definition and say it can mean anything you want, then it can mean anything you want.

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The people that are promoting same -sex marriage, it's not like they're saying a marriage is between two people that are consensual.

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And we're just going to leave it at that. It's set in stone. That's always been what a marriage is, and that's what it is. People really won't say that, that promote it.

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What they'll say is society evolves over time, different strokes for different folks. You can believe your definition, I believe my definition.

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Why should I be discriminated against? So what they've done is they've destroyed a definition that is over everyone, a definition that is invariable and absolute.

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And in so doing, then that means I can take any idea or conception I have of marriage and bring it to the table, and it should be valid according to their logic.

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So that's why I make a distinction there and say that that is a valid slippery slope because you're being consistent with the premise that they're giving.

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What you're actually doing is you're taking their premise and you're bringing it to its logical conclusion. You're taking the roof off of their whole argument.

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When an atheist says that they can't do science because of miracles, they're not being logically consistent.

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In fact, they're misrepresenting our worldview in order to make the claim. They're not taking our worldview and bringing it to its logical conclusion.

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They're bringing it to a very illogical conclusion because Christians don't believe that, the Bible doesn't believe that. In fact, the

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Bible does just the opposite. It gives us a reason for doing science. So I hope that's understandable.

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That's why I say that the slippery slope isn't always invalid. But that's the way to figure out if it is. Are they being consistent with the worldview that they're trying to refute?

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If they're not, then it's a slippery slope that's invalid. Next one.

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I probably should end right now. Let's see, what could we do? Okay, I'm going to go a couple more, I guess. We're not going to finish.

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I wanted to get to the board and do some formal fallacies, but these are easy to look up. You can actually even just Google any of these and you're going to come up with what they are if you're interested.

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Or pick up a copy of this book. Again, it's really good. It will show you all about that stuff.

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Okay, so next one. Fallacy of irrelevant thesis. Proving a point, but not the point at issue.

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Why is the universe so ideally suitable for life? It's not God. It's because if it were not suitable for life, we wouldn't be here to observe it.

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That is a fallacy of irrelevant thesis. It's proving something. It proves the point that we are here.

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And we are here to experience the world. But it doesn't prove the point that should be made, which is that it's not

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God. It doesn't actually ever prove that point. Nothing in the argument refutes the idea that God created things.

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So, he makes it look like he's making a valid argument, but he's not making the argument he should be making to actually prove what he wants to prove.

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Okay. It sounds a little like the straw man. There are similarities between some of these.

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The straw man is creating an idea of something that is not accurate in order to knock it down. The fallacy of irrelevant thesis is proving something that is not actually at issue.

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So, you're actually saying something that is true, an irrelevant thesis, but from the premises that you're giving, it doesn't follow.

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You don't start with the premise that God doesn't exist, therefore we're here and we can intelligibly look at the world. It doesn't follow.

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But what you're saying is true here. But what your foundation is not true. That's the difference. So, someone is on a plane crash.

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They get off. They're all cutting up. And you ask them, how did you survive the crash? Because if I didn't survive the crash,

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I wouldn't be here to tell you about the crash. And you're like, I know. That's why I'm asking you about how you survived the crash.

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That is a fallacy. That is the same fallacy, fallacy of the irrelevant thesis. His point that he's proving is that he's alive and everything, but he is, it's not the point at issue.

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It's not what you actually asked him about. Should we just end it? You think so? One more?

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Okay. The appeal to force or fear. Might makes right. That's all that is. It's wrong to protect a

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Jew because the Nazi government says it is wrong to protect a Jew. And they will send you to jail if you don't.

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Yeah. Or you're going to hell. It is. You're right. That is the same thing. Yeah. I didn't think of that.

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You're right. And it is true that you will go to hell, but the thing is, that's not our only reason for why you should receive

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Christ. Paying your income tax is, it can't be unconstitutional because if you don't pay it, you'll be sent to jail.

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So you can't even question it. Or my favorite would be, secession is wrong.

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A state can't secede because they were basically forced back by an army. Well, just because an army does something or because someone forces you to do something, it has no relevance on the actual statement at hand.

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All right. So we don't have any more time. There are a couple more fallacies if you want to read about them. And the formal fallacies, I don't have time to explain, but you can definitely

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Google these. They're online. For more information and materials related to this lecture, go to roarnomore .com.