Apologetics and Debate Class: Logic Part 3

Welcome back to Passing the Torch. I'm your host, Randy Adkins, and we are joined again today for our final class in this series with Andrew Rappaport with Striving for Eternity, and he will, as he has been, continue to teach us apologetics and debate.

How are you, brother? Are you still eating dinner? Did you bring food to class?

Is that what you did? Maybe. And you didn't bring any for the teacher. I cannot believe you.

You know, I tried to email you an apple, but it didn't work. It is bad enough that you're trying to, you know, suck up to the teacher that you took the midterm twice.

It would have been really funny if you passed the first time and failed the second twice. That would be funny, but I passed it twice.

You did. Why don't you put up for folks the, and this is only gonna be good for those who are watching live, pretty much, because put up the midterm first.

So the link for the midterm, because that is due tonight. So if you're watching this later, it's too late.

So that is the link for the midterm. May for the final, you should put like final exam colon and then the link so folks know the difference.

But the midterm is due tonight, July 1st, 2014, for whoever's watching later.

People later on could take the midterm. That's not a big deal, but you will have to get it done tonight.

If you would like to be part of, well, I mean, it'd be really hard if you fail this one to pass the class and get to join.

What we're probably going to do is have a debate review. The debate that I had with Matt Slick just dropped today.

Go to struggling .org. You can find the article we put on it with a link to the debate. And that debate is gonna be, it's from the

Utah Christian Research Center. We will do a debate review for those who pass the class.

And so that review will be private, only for those who pass the class. Pass the class means a grade above 75.

And so you're gonna want to make sure that you get that in. Now, I am toying with the idea of inviting

Matt Slick to that debate review so that we have both sides represented and we would be able to see how each of us feel the other did and which logical fallacies we think that each other did.

Which logical, looking at the arguments logically. Much different when you're reviewing the debate versus in the debate to think in that way.

So that will be good for you. Now, the final exam, if you don't mind putting that one up and we'll leave that up.

Actually, before that, why don't you put up the debate one? We should do that. Part of the class, we had a quiz.

You're looking for the debate one. You need me to send that to you again? Yes. And the final.

Okay. The final I could send you now. Let's see. I will send that to you.

Technical difficulties. I mean, I only sent it to you while you're building a deck. Yes. I was going to take a picture and then pull that up, but we don't need to do that.

All right. I will send it to you in Messenger so that you can copy and paste again.

I mean, it's already in Messenger, but I know that some people are technically challenged.

So I get it. With that stuff called technology. Yeah. So the midterm is going to be, and I have to log into Bitly to get the short version of the debate for you to put up.

So the midterm is one where, or sorry, we had 15 % of your grade was the quiz.

We then had the midterm, which was 25%, the final 25%, and 35 % for your debate.

And so I just sent you the link. So, okay. What you have up now is the final.

Yes. You could have just copied the entire thing where I said final exam. Hey, that would be a good idea.

Let me do that. Yeah. Why don't you do that? Meanwhile, you could put up the, man, oh man. Meanwhile, you could put up the link to debate, the

Bitly link for the debate. Brother John is making a comment.

He says, what is a logical fallacy? A logical fallacy is an error in reason that occurs when invalid arguments or irrelevant points are introduced without any evidence to support them.

Pretty good. We're going to be more specific. A logical fallacy is a form that you end up seeing where someone is, basically what you end up seeing with it is there's breakdowns in logic to that.

And we're going to look at a lot of different ones, but it is when people make bad logical arguments.

And so we talked about several of these over the last three weeks about whether it's sound or cogent.

And with each of those, we talked about valid or invalid versus strong and weak arguments, depending on whether it's a deductive or inductive.

And so brother John says he Googled it. Well, you shouldn't be using Google. I mean, just saying. Use DuckDuckGo or anything else because as a

Christian. Brave. Brave. I use the Brave browser. And yet, if you don't know,

Google is limiting searches to Christian sites. And so I've gotten away from them as a

Christian who might want to get Christian material. On that particular point, you can't get to AOMEN .org

through Google. Really? Yeah. At least the searches

I tried on Google. Well, Matt Slick and I did an experiment one day. We did a search for what is the

Trinity on every single search engine that we know of. We tried at least a dozen of them.

Every single one of them, CARM .org came with that question was either in place one, two, or three with an article titled,

What is the Trinity? Google, it was like page three after Wikipedia, Denmark, Wikipedia, UK, Wikipedia, Australia.

I mean, literally three pages of Wikipedia. That's crazy. Every Wikipedia there was known like for every country before they pull up CARM.

So that was an experiment. Both Matt and I were on the phone. We were testing it out and we're like, yep, having the same results.

So he didn't know if it was just him, which, you know, but anyway. So when we look at a logical fallacy, we have to recognize that, and we've said this earlier in the class, that people use the logical fallacies or really misuse them all the time.

They will accuse people of a logical fallacy that is not actually a proper fallacy.

They'll misdefine it. But it just sounds really good when you say, you know, you've done, you know, that's a fallacy of the excluded middle.

When you just say that, it makes you smarter or look smarter, I should say. It doesn't make you smarter.

It makes you smarter only if you use it properly. Brother John, actually, I use that with him and he's like,

I had to look that up and I felt bad because I didn't explain it in typing. So I just took for assumption that since he listens to Paul Jack's Live on Thursday nights that he's heard me use that so many times.

I took for granted he knew that I was wrong. So I'll publicly say, forgive me,

John. I took that for granted. Made him go look it up. That was bad.

Anyway, now our course book that we've been using for this class is

How to Think Critically. So the three books that we had required reading was, one of them was

How to Think Clearly, A Guide to Critical Thinking. And though he has several chapters on logical fallacies, are you getting more food?

Really? You're bringing more food? I cannot, look, now you're handing, no, you don't have to hand it off.

I had to open something for my wife. Oh, yeah. Uh -huh. Uh -huh. You just show the food.

I already have food, so. Oh, man. Man, oh, man.

All right. So in Doug's book on How to Think Critically, A Guide to Critical Thinking, he lays out several fallacies, but in a very different order and not, if you've read the book, which you should have, it's a lot of detail, lots of examples in the different fallacies that he's addressing in the book.

But the reason I don't want to go through that is just because a lot of those fallacies are basically what we end up seeing is that they are, they're good fallacies.

I mean, they're describing the fallacies, but they're not always the most common ones we would deal with. So since we're giving an overview of this, we got one class to deal with fallacies.

I do not want to just, I don't want to go through, there's hundreds of fallacies. So I want to, what

I'm going to do is take really, we'll see how many we get through, but I'm at, I'm going to look at the ones from karm .org

because these are ones that Matt has put together. The ones, and when I originally looked at this, a lot of these are the ones that we deal with often.

And I'm going to start with the ones that we deal with the most as believers. And then we will look at some of the, if we have time, we'll look at some of the others because there's some that Matt will include, that Doug won't because we're dealing with Christian apologetics.

And so there's some that we see and I'll mention one of them. And so what

I want you to note is so far in this class, what we've tried to do is prep you to have the right character in debate, the right mindset that, you know, when we're doing apologetics, it's for the sake of the gospel.

We talked about how to interpret the scripture because when we're going to do Christian apologetics, we're arguing over what the scripture says.

That's our only source of authority. And then we looked at logic and we've spent the last two classes looking at deductive -inductive arguments.

We've looked at how to identify them. We have looked at what makes them a good or bad argument.

And so all of that will be in your final exam, which is, you see the link below.

So go there now. You have two weeks to do that. Even though class ends tonight,

I give two weeks for you to get the final exams in. We will do the debates and whoever gets above 75 will be invited to a private viewing of the debate with probably

Matt and I. We'll see. We'll try to, it's going to be a longer one because we'll probably go through the entire debate unless we just,

Matt and I find really good clips of each other that, you know, that we can poke fun at. But with that, one of the most common fallacies that is both used and abused is called an ad hominem.

Now I say it's the most, it's the most used and abused because a lot of people accuse people of doing an ad hominem when they don't actually make an ad hominem argument.

Now an ad hominem properly defined is when you're attacking the individual instead of attacking the argument.

So this is one where people use this, misuse this by just saying, well, if you disagree with me, it's an ad hominem.

This is when you attack the person. Okay. So this is sometimes referred to as a fallacy of attacking the person, but most often referred to as ad hominem.

So this is where you make an argument where if I say Randy is so idiotic, he cannot possibly say anything that's true.

That would be an argument that is attacking Randy's character rather than addressing the argument.

Okay. And John is googling some more, and he's just said ad hominem is a phrase from Latin, which means aimed at the man, which is true.

So you're, instead of addressing the argument someone's making, you attack the person.

This, if you want, I told Randy that I was almost tempted to just bring up the entire, you know,

Donald Trump, Joe Biden debate and just play clips of it, because there are so many arguments or fallacies that I saw in that debate.

I saw the argument of ad hominem, appeal to force, appeal to pity, appeal to popular, the excluded middle.

There were so many, you know, there were so many fallacies in that debate.

For guys that are supposedly claimed to be great debaters, they really failed.

Okay. Now this is part of the issue I have with the way we do presidential debates. I'd rather see them, but just ask each other questions and go for it, but, and actually have positions where they have to actually make a case instead of just insulting one another.

This is, an ad hominem is going to be seen when instead of addressing the argument someone makes, for example, if, just for an example, if Randy was to claim that I told him he could have dinner, bring dinner to class so that he would be in class on time.

And my response was, Randy, you've, you know, clearly, you know, you have been in the sun all day so much that you can't even think straight to make such a claim.

Now I'm attacking his person when in fact, Randy would be accurate in saying what he said, because I actually did tell him better to bring dinner to class and be on time.

But you see what I'm doing in that argument though, is instead of addressing what

Randy is saying, and you usually see an attack of the person when someone says something that's true.

Okay. An ad hominem attack is often used when the other person says something that's right.

And the person that uses the ad hominem has their, basically their pride is one where they attack the person because they, there's nothing they could say about the argument.

Now, why do I point that out? Because one of the things I do very regularly when someone uses an ad hominem with me is to point it out.

Now, what do I do? I say, well, I'll say, well, Randy, that was an ad hominem attack.

And that means you're attacking me as a person rather than addressing my argument.

Is that because you cannot counter the argument?

Is it that you recognize that the argument is true? So your pride makes you attack me. In which case they usually attack you more.

They double down, right? Okay. But that's fine. When you're doing apologetics, especially if others are watching, the reality is the others see that.

When you point out what they're doing, it's really what it is to the audience. And I do this, I do this regularly on Apologetics Live.

I will stop someone that's come in, came in to debate me. And I'll say, hold on, I just want to stop for a moment because I want to explain something to the audience.

What you're seeing he's doing is doing an ad hominem attack. And he's, he's probably doing that because he can't actually address the things

I said. He can't defend it. So instead of dealing with the actual argument

I said, since he can't defend that, he attacks me. Okay, let's get back to the discussion.

And then they do what? They do a second ad hominem, right? But people in the audience then see that.

Okay. So yes, that is a debate tactic that you can use. You're, you're kind of appealing to the audience because when you're doing a debate, that's who you're trying to win over.

When you're doing Christian apologetics, you're hopefully trying to win over the person you're speaking to, but sometimes there's others who are watching and you're going to want to win them over.

Now, hopefully you're going to explain this and someone's going to later go, you know, that's right. That guy was right. I really didn't have an answer for that.

You don't know. And so that you hope for that. So this is why I think it's sometimes good to know some of these so that you can point them out.

Now, I said it for the last two classes. If you don't know all the names of the fallacies, that's okay. Know how to understand if an argument someone's making is good or bad, right?

And we spent two weeks explaining that. That's more important to know whether the argument that they make is formed properly and that all the premises are true.

Those are the two elements that you're looking for. Okay. And the reason I give you, if you just go to karm .org

and search for logical fallacies, he's going to give you a list of 20 of them. And the reason

I'm going to give you that as a resource is the fact that he basically gives it to you where you have a one line definition and a couple of examples for each one of them.

So if you want to learn the fallacies, this becomes an easy page to just go through them. Okay. So the ad hominem, it's when you attack the person rather than address the argument they made.

All right. Another popular one that's often used in Christian apologetics is called the fallacy of appeal to popularity or argumentum ob populum.

That would be the Latin. It's the argument to population. This is one where you're basically making a position that will the majority of people hold to something as if the majority must be right.

So all scientists, or they'll say, you know, most scientists believe in evolution.

So therefore evolution must be right. Well, the fact that most people believe in something, does that make it right?

We could argue. And the way to argue that is most Germans supported the Nazis in killing

Jewish people. Does that make killing Jewish people? Right? In fact, when the

Nazis were put on trial after World War II, that was exactly the argument they made.

They made an argument that there was not an absolute morality and the population supported and those that were on the council said, sorry, you should have known it was wrong.

And so when people argue for an argument from popular, they're going to say, well, you know, everyone else is doing something, therefore it's right to do.

The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn't make it right to do. In the time of 1000

BC, everyone, all the guys had multiple wives.

Does that mean having multiple rises is right in God's eyes? No, it doesn't matter what others are doing.

The appeal to popularity is an appeal to the masses, but what it does is avoid what's true.

So what you're going to have people when they say, when they do this, how do we know it's a bad argument?

Well, if we say that everyone, most scientists believe, even if you say all scientists believe in evolution, therefore evolution is true.

The reason it's a fallacy is again, back to the form. The premise does not directly connect the conclusion.

Even if the premise is true, it doesn't have the connection to the conclusion and therefore would be an invalid argument.

Not only invalid, but I would say a false one, because we could find plenty of scientists who don't believe in evolution if they say all.

Now, if they say most, so Randy, here's a question. If they say all scientists,

I want you to tell me which of the logical arguments, would that be deductive or inductive?

And if they say most, which one would that be? And why? If they say most, that would be popular, the popular argument.

No, no, no. Which? Oh, I'm sorry. Is it deductive or inductive? Inductive. Okay. So most would be inductive, which by default means that all would be deductive.

It's deductive because when you say all scientists, that can be proven, those statements are going to be true or false.

All you got to do is find one scientist that doesn't believe in evolution and you can prove that false.

Jason Lyle. Plenty of others, but hundreds of others.

He was just the first one that popped in my head because he's my favorite. And as Laura is saying rightly, inductive is with probability.

So when we say most, now what we're looking for is the probability. Is it a high probability?

If it's a high probability, it's a strong, it's going to be a strong argument, right?

So that is what you're looking at. So the appeal to popularity is going to have a premise that does not directly connect to the conclusion.

And actually that's going to be the case with fallacies. The, where these fallacies are, it's the connection of how the premises, the premise connects to the conclusion or the lack thereof, right?

So the ad hominem, you have the premise, you attack the person, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the conclusion.

The fact that Randy is an idiot has no bearing on the fact that what he says is can't be true.

So another, so we, that's the ad hominem, the appeal to popularity.

One that you're going to see more in Christian apologetics than you might in other areas is an appeal to tradition.

This is one where you're going to have people that argue based on a traditional system that they are at.

You can look at whatever, it could be the way people have always done it, therefore we should do it this way.

It could be, well, the Catholic church has, or the Mormon church put in any of them has, they have a tradition that demonstrates this doctrine, therefore this doctrine is true, you know, whatever that doctrine may be.

What they're appealing to is a tradition, something that they've, that's been held to for a long time.

And what we have to recognize is that tradition may not directly connect to the conclusion.

Sometimes it might, but the tradition by itself does not.

So you need to have the tradition, so you can have a premise that appeals to the tradition, but it can't be just that to the conclusion.

So in the appeal to tradition, rightly used, you know, to rightly use tradition, you could state the tradition as a premise, but you need to support why that leads to the conclusion.

It is not enough to say that because you have the tradition, it makes the conclusion true.

And so that's what you're looking for in that one. You're going to look for people that appeal to their tradition and say, well, that makes it, that's what makes it right.

Another common one is, and you see this a lot, is called begging the question.

Begging the question is when someone is going to assume their conclusion to be true.

So they'll argue that you first have to assume their conclusion to be able to see that their support is right.

It's a circular argument. I saw this in a debate that I moderated on charismatic gifts, where the person who is saying that the gifts continue argued that you cannot understand the

Bible rightly until you first accept that the charismatic gifts continue. So what he's saying is that his opponent is not interpreting the

Bible correctly because he doesn't understand, he doesn't believe in the gifts. And therefore, the fact that he believes in the gifts, he rightly interprets the scripture.

To which at the end of the debate, I explained to him what that logical fallacy was. Right. So his, his fallacy is,

I know the debate that you're talking about. Yes. And I did, I had two questions

I wavered between asking of my own. And so I probably should have switched them just for fun, but the, what he ends up, what he was doing was starting with his conclusion.

The conclusion was you have to believe in the gifts to be able to interpret the Bible. Therefore, if you don't accept the gifts, you can't properly interpret the

Bible. Now that I don't think he lost the debate on that purpose, but that was his core argument.

And he kept going back to that. And in that argument, when you have that, the whole argument was based upon a fallacy.

He never actually was addressing the issues. And so what people do when they do this is they're going to argue for their conclusion.

So they make, they, they usually will state the conclusion as, as if it's an undeniable fact.

And then, you know, say that, you know, you have to accept that fact to be able to understand that fact.

So a way of looking at this is someone might say, God does not exist.

And you can't understand the science that proves it unless you start realizing that God does not exist.

Okay. So their conclusion, God doesn't exist, but they're begging the question in their premise is that you first have to start with God not existing to be able to argue, to be able to understand that he doesn't exist.

Okay. So that is something you see a lot with people because what, what, and with each of these fallacies, what

I'm trying to do is explain how people use it and the why, why do people use the begging the question fallacy most often because they have not thought through the issues they are discussing.

They will, they will make arguments that where they make conclusions.

And when my position is, when someone makes a claim, I ask a question. Therefore, I don't have to argue for their, for their bad thinking.

But what a lot of people will do is they get into debating back and forth and an argument.

And what ends up happening is they don't recognize why the person is doing it because they're not thinking through.

So asking a question forces them to think an example. I had a person on the street that told me that God does not exist because there's evil in the world.

Now that's a logical fallacy because there is, there's evil in the world.

That's the premise. There's evil in the world conclusion. Therefore, God does not exist. But can you, can you explain

God's existence without evil? Well, yes, you can. Okay. Now you could, you could argue, some people might try to argue this is a begging the question fallacy.

It's not. We'll get to the fallacy it is later. But it, the, the fact of evil has nothing to do with God's existence or not.

In fact, I, well, I would say it does actually, but not the way he thought. Mike, what I did was I just turned to him and said, how can you have evil without God?

Now see, he never had to think about that to the point where he kept asking me what evil is. And I told him it, I didn't say it exists.

He did. He should have a definition of it. Right. See, but because of the way he argues, he never had to provide answers.

And you'll see this with a begging the question fallacy as well. So when he finally asked me to define it,

I said, evil is the absence of good. Good is defined by the nature of God. Therefore, how can you have, how can you have evil without God?

Now, what did I do? I, I said, I define what evil is by the absence of good.

That's what it is. I define good by the nature of God, because that's what it is. Those are two things we can test to know if they're true.

And according to God, they are. And so I can appeal to those.

Therefore, you can't have evil without God. Could I have applied a different logic? Sure. I could have made a different statement for that to say the idea of evil is immaterial.

If we have an immaterial part of us, there must be an immaterial source of that because material things can't produce the immaterial.

Therefore, there must be an immaterial God that provided the immaterial evil.

Right? So I could argue different ways, but when you have someone that's doing the begging the question fallacy, what they're, what they're often doing is they're avoiding the, the support.

They don't want to think about supporting their arguments. Okay. So I want to give one that is an example.

He says, and this is an argument that that's made against Christians all the time.

God exists because the Bible says so. Well, he's playing the, the

Bible is inspired. Therefore, we know God exists. Now that is the argument that people say

Christians make. Now, why is that circular? The argument here is that you, you first assume the

Bible's inspired. The Bible says God exists. And that's, that's the only way. So you have to first assume that the

Bible's inspired. I would not argue that way. That would be circular. But if I argue the

Bible says God exists, God wrote the

Bible. God cannot lie. Therefore we know God exists.

That's different. That's different because it's not based on the Bible saying, see, it's not that circular argument.

It's based on the nature of God. Okay. Now they will still argue that that's circular.

Okay. Ultimately, a lot of, almost all arguments become circular.

It's a question whether they're viciously circular or not. And so the, the issue is, is that there in any circular argument, it comes down to that.

There's got to be an axiom, some truth, some ultimate truth that you, you have to stop to.

Let me give an example. Descartes used to argue that he was trying to get to, to prove, this is the thing atheists don't understand.

He was looking to prove whether God exists or not. And in that he figured if he kept questioning, questioning, questioning, questioning, getting out of the vicious circular arguments, could he prove that God exists?

And he eventually realized, I think, therefore I am.

Now, where atheists try to use that to say that he's proving God does not exist, if they actually read

Descartes and read where he says this and what he's arguing, they'd realize he actually was arguing that the fact that he thinks is the proof that there's immaterial part of him, therefore he exists.

And if he exists, there has to be a God because there has to be some immaterial creator.

So it's always fun when I debate atheists and they bring up Descartes, because then I quickly pull that up and go, you know,

I actually had a debate, an atheist on, on the show that Matt and I did previously to Apologetics Live.

And the guy came in, used Descartes, and I stated this, and he was quick to go to Google to show me how wrong

I am. And as he's reading it, literally, he is reading it, like, they're waiting.

And he goes, oh, oh, you're right. Thank you.

So, so the begging the question fallacy, when people use that, what you want to do is you want to start asking questions immediately.

You want to ask questions of their conclusion and their premises. Because what that shows you is that they do not understand the argument.

Okay? So, another common one that we have is, well,

Matt in his calls it the false dilemma or false dichotomy. But this is the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Okay? This is where someone is given only two choices as if they're the only two possible choices when there could be a third.

So, for example, we used this last week. But if I tell

Randy that tennis balls can only be yellow or black, or yellow or blue,

I think I said in last class, yellow, white or black, and then we know when

I use this fallacy, I think I said yellow and yellow and blue, and then referred to a black one. So, we use yellow.

That's right. That's right. So, one of us paid more attention in class. It was the teacher.

Yes, well, he better have paid more attention, I guess. So, if I say tennis balls can only be yellow or blue, and you produce a black tennis ball, that is a third option.

And so, this is one where the way to recognize it is someone will give you an either or, and this is how we talked about it, the either or, they give two things as if those are the only two options when you don't have a, you know, where it's not a true dichotomy, where there's a second, you know, there's a third, fourth, maybe fifth option.

The common one that I hear when we talk about ethics, people will say, okay, you're, this is the biggest argument for situational ethics.

People say, well, you have the Nazis come to your house and ask you, are you hiding

Jews? Do you say yes or no? Now, the way that's worded, it is as if there's only a yes or no to that.

That's a fallacy of the excluded middle whenever I'm asked that. Why? Because I don't have to answer, period.

I don't have to say anything, do I? Nope. In fact, I could do something completely different.

I can get angry and yell at them and ask them why they think I have Jews in the house.

I could do, well, you know, I could do what I did in New York when someone tried to mug me. Oh, you're going to love this one,

Randy. I probably never told you this story. You'll love this. So, I was in New York, and someone walked up and asked for the time, and I looked at my watch and gave him the time, and he pulled out a knife and said, give me your wallet.

Now, I don't know what possessed me, but I thought of the account with King David where he started drooling in his beard and acting crazy.

So, that's exactly what I did. I started to have an argument with myself whether I had a wallet or not.

Then I argued with myself that he had a knife and I should do what he says, and I argued against myself that it wasn't a real knife.

It's something that was used, a rubber knife used in Hollywood, and I just had an argument with myself over and over and over until that guy thought

I was just nuts and walked away. There are other options, and this is why in ethics

I would be what is referred to. You have a different view of ethics.

We talked about situational ethics, which use that. Laura's going, that's the greatest story ever.

I love it. Hey, I kept my money. Some would say

I never had my sanity to keep it. But when it comes to ethics,

I am what would be referred to as a non -conforming absolutist.

So, what that means is I think that lying is always wrong. There is never a case where you should lie.

Lying would be a sin. Now, there's a difference in when we get into ethics, war ethics, there's going to be differences.

But even when I had a job where part of my job was to tell lies, part of my job was to have cover stories.

And so, what is a cover story? It's a lie. I had different cover stories for different scenarios to tell people.

If people say, what work do you do? Well, I never did that. I would not lie, but there were things

I said that were true that I explained. So, it was the advantage of being in ministry.

I got to say hello to brother Steve Michael. What's happening, brother?

All right. Are you done now? Yes. Yes. Okay. Poor Steve Michael.

I mean, because he loves brother Randy. At least, I guess that's what the heart is. I mean, obviously,

Michael is not a man of great intelligence because he loves brother

Randy. And what fallacy did I just do? An ad hominem.

An ad hominem. And Steve should rightly say, that's an ad hominem. Take that back.

Right. All right. So, the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Now, I love the example that Matt puts in here for this, because it is a case where that's quite interesting.

It is, Randy, do you still beat your wife? That's never happened.

You see, the argument of this is the fact that this is one that could be a begging the question because it assumes the conclusion.

So, it could fit in there. But it's the excluded middle because the thought is the answer is only yes or no when you just gave a third option.

It never happened. So, at least I hope it never happened. Otherwise, I have to come over there and beat you.

That's right. And I would welcome it. I would be happy to do that. Not a problem if you ever need a good beating.

But the argument of the excluded middle I see used quite often.

And it's one that's a little harder for people to spot. And it puts you in a position where you feel like you have to give an answer that's one or the other.

One that was popular with the professing atheist for a while, someone came on the show and asked me this thinking that he it's a guy.

It was like, you know, these are usually gotcha type questions. And so, the way it was worded is, okay, you believe that a baby, you know, that every fetus is a baby and living, right?

And I said, yes. So, you go into a clinic and they have thousands of fetuses frozen in their refrigerators.

And you have your daughter with you. And there's a fire. Who do you save?

Your one daughter or the thousands of babies? Now, the argument there is if there is only one of two choices to save my one child versus saving thousands of children.

Okay? And I probably thought this was going to work flawlessly for him. And I turned to him and said, who do

I have a responsibility to care for? And he just looked at me, what do you mean?

I said, well, do I work at that clinic or do I not? He says, no, you're just visiting. I said, I'm visiting. So, my responsibility is to my child.

And then doctors and nurses at that facility have a responsibility for the other children, don't they?

And all of a sudden it was like his whole argument just broke down because he could not think that there was a possible third option.

And the third option was that I wasn't the only person in the clinic. To which he said, well, say you're the only one in the clinic.

Again, do I have the responsibility? What happened to the doctor? Because when you get hypotheticals, they just keep going hypothetical.

But do I have the responsibility to care for them? Would I even have access to them?

Would I have time to get to them? Where I know that if the door's right there and my daughter's with me and we're the only two people in the building,

I get her out. But what stops me from getting her out and then trying to go back in and getting those?

Or knowing that if she's got a free run to the door, she runs out the door and I go and get the others.

And the reality is if they're frozen, the problem with the argument is do

I have a way after I get them out to keep them frozen? You see all these different answers to this argument that for a while atheists were saying that was the unanswerable question to Christians, to pro -life people.

And I went, man, that's kind of pretty easy to answer. Yeah, it is. Right? So another one that you're going to see very often is the straw man argument.

And this one is so often misrepresented. People actually straw man the straw man argument.

So the straw man argument is when you provide a false definition of something that's very easy to knock over so that you can prove that you're right.

Okay. I'll use the example, excuse me, use the example that Matt has here.

We know that evolution is false because we did not evolve from monkeys. Well, the idea of evolution is not based on it being from us evolving from monkeys.

Actually, they would now say that the evolution is from some form of chimpanzee.

Okay. And so it would be a false argument because you have to have the right definition.

So this is one where you have the definition, you're giving a false definition in order to knock it down.

So you're saying something that knowingly or unknowingly, you're giving a definition that's not true in order to debunk it.

So here would be an argument that I heard recently. The doctrine of election means that God forces people to do everything that God determines everything for them and therefore they have no free will.

I have a will, therefore election is wrong. Now, what was the problem with that argument?

It was in their definition of election because the definition of election does not teach that God determines and forces everything.

The doctrine of election does not work outside or against human volition.

You can believe that people have choices and the doctrine of election. They're not mutually exclusive, but in that definition, it's very easy to knock it over.

Why? Because we know we make choices. We know we have a volition. Therefore, I can knock that one over.

Right. Another one that you often see is the argument of a red herring.

Now, a red herring is when someone brings up a different topic to avoid the subject at hand.

I just had this with my neighbor. He claims to be a

Republican and he's a staunch anti -Trumper. He votes for Biden.

He thinks Biden is the best. And he is often, when

I sit and talk, he'll make statements and I will then answer those statements. And in providing the answer, he constantly is doing a red herring.

He's constantly switching topics to something that's not the subject at hand to avoid the issue.

And I came back, I was there at his place for a few hours this weekend on Saturday.

We're talking, I came back and told my wife. Yeah. I mean, like probably about two or three dozen red herrings.

He would make a statement. I would provide support against his statement. He would just change topic.

And that's what a red herring is. So let me tell you why people do a red herring. They often do the red herring because you said something that they didn't have an answer to.

And rather than very much like as we said above, right? When we talked about, well, you have it with the ad hominem, right?

They do that because they want to avoid. So this is a very similar thing.

They're just moved to a different topic. So what you do in cases like that is, is be, you want to be like, you know, a lion that just tossed red meat.

Okay. You want to just attack the very thing that they're avoiding. Just go after it, go after it hard, keep on that.

And you, if you watch the way that I do debates, you will see that I will often after the, about the second or third time that I, that they want to go to some other topic.

I returned to the topic. I said, look, I've already asked you this. I'll ask you again. I'll ask you a third time.

I'll ask you a fourth time. I don't, I just don't I've once got up to 21 times and I literally count each one.

This is the 17th time I'm asking you this. And I asked the same question the 18th time I'm asking you this and I asked him, I don't let up again.

It exposes to the, if there's an audience or to the person that they are not answering the question.

Okay. Now it doesn't usually happen in debates, but one of the things I do have in my debates, I have a,

I, when I do debates, I usually will ask that in the cross -examination that there's a time limit.

So people can't flood, you know, just filibuster my time. They have, I have one minute to ask a question. They have two minutes to answer.

I can follow up, but I usually put in there that if either person does not answer the question, the time can be stopped until the person answers.

And I have done that in a debate. If you go and look at my debate with RA Fuentes, I asked him three times,

I appealed to the moderator to stop the clock because he's not answering the question.

He's providing a red Herring. Moderator stopped the clock, which says, we're not starting the clock until you, you start up again.

Like, so you're not going to avoid this answering the question. I wish political ones we could do that with.

Right. It would be fun. It would be. So we have some others.

I'm going to, I'm going to go over quickly ones that you'll see often poisoning the well. Poisoning the well is where I start by,

I'm going to start by saying something that is some negative information about the person or the argument to discredit either the person or the argument before they make their statement.

Okay. If I was to say, you know, Randy has an IQ that, you know, is less than my shoe size.

I mean, therefore any argument he makes, you, you shouldn't put any weight into my IQ has went up.

Then it did. I didn't say what my shoe size was. Well, it is single digits though.

The point being is this is something where what they're trying to do and they, they will do this, this one people do when there is an audience.

And the purpose of the poisoning, the well is to get everybody listening to, you know, just assume that anything you say is, is not going to be right because the goal of it is to get people to not listen to anything you say.

All right. You'll see that one used very often. I'm looking at the time.

Let me just give some of the, the others that I think you see often the fallacy of special pleading.

This is what we would refer to as a double standard. You know, there's a, you know, a standard for one that not for the other.

So for example, my neighbor argues that, you know, Trump is so happy because the, you know, the

Supreme court, you know, with the picks that he gave, you know, let him off by, by, you know, so he doesn't have to face, you know, punishment for what he did wrong.

Okay. And I said, okay, so, so should presidents be charged with, you know, things they do as president?

Yes. Should it be charged with things they, they, they don't do as president? Yes, they should. No one's above the law.

Should Biden be charged with since the DOJ said that he broke the law, but he's too senile to be to, to put on trial.

He goes, they know that's different. Yeah. Why? Because, because they knew the outcome of it.

And so therefore they, they just knew it, you know, no one was going to, you know, vote Biden guilty.

Oh, so if they know the outcome that that's not putting someone above the law. So don't, don't try them. Right. So you have the special pleading where you have double standards.

You have the fallacy of guilt by association. This is where you reject an argument because the person is either of a particular group that you don't like, or, or, or something like that.

The, the, the, the common example that we have for that, this usually see is Hitler likes dogs.

Therefore dogs are bad just because Hitler likes dogs does not make dogs bad. Okay. You will see this in Christian apologetics.

That person is, is Methodist. Therefore that, that, you know, that person has bad theology, but not all

Methodists might be bad, have bad theology. That person goes to a Roman Catholic church. Therefore they can't be saved.

Well, actually someone could be saved in a Roman Catholic church, not, not believing in, in, in Roman Catholic doctrine, but apart from it, right.

They wouldn't believe it. They would, they can't, they can't believe Roman Catholic doctrine, Mormon doctrine and be saved, but they could be in those churches.

So, so that's how you, you end up seeing that guilt by association fallacy. The, the, the last one

I need to bring up would be the fallacy of equivocation, because we see this one very often.

And this is where you have a word that is used and people use it differently.

In other words, one of the, the things that came up in the debate with Matt was the word prophecy.

And I accused him of a fallacy of equivocation because he was using that word two different ways, right?

So you have to use the word the way it's used in first Corinthians 13 and not use it the way it's used elsewhere to describe what chapter first Corinthians 13 is talking about, right?

He will argue, he argued for face -to -face and he'll look at other passages of face -to -face and say that here you have a case of, you know, again,

I say it's a fallacy of the exclude, of, of equivocation because he's using face -to -face to mean a personal encounter.

When I provide it out of Proverbs, where we see face -to -face referring to reflection in water, which

I think when you're comparing a dim mirror versus a person face -to -face in clarity, it's the reflection.

It's not a personal encounter. That's fitting with the context. But so I look at those and see fallacies of the excluded middle.

Someone will say, if you want a great example of fallacy of excluded middle, there's a guy that used to be on the radio,

Harold Camping, and Harold Camping knew not how to interpret the Bible. In fact, when

I used to teach hermeneutics, I used Harold Camping always as the way not to do it because I know,

I don't think he ever once got a right rule of interpretation. He abused the hermeneutics more than any person

I know. And though I still think he probably was a Christian, but I have no reason to doubt that, but the issue is what

I called up his show once, just because I was going to have fun and see how he was going to handle it.

But he, because what he does is he, everything has to point back to Jesus within his way.

So I took out a Leviticus and asked him about the house that was, that had leprosy.

Because I knew what he would do, because he always does it, is he does a fallacy of the excluded middle. He says, well, you know, we have to know what a house is and we have the house of God and you know, leprosy is a disease.

And so you can have a disease in the house of God. We'll see, he uses the word house, which in Leviticus is talking about a physical house and then uses the

New Testament referring to the church as the house of God and saying, this is the same thing when they're two totally separate things.

And you'll see that very often done. So that is the fallacy of the excluded, of equivocation.

Someone is here asking about, Melissa is asking about what about no true Scotsman fallacy? I think that's a logical fallacy.

So let me address that quickly. The no true Scotsman fallacy is a fallacy when you say, the argument of it was, you know, no, no, no

Scotsman would eat hangus. And I guess there's, there's, you know,

Bert and he's a Scotsman, he has hangus. Well, no true Scotsman would have hangus, right?

So the way of doing it is it's a fallacy because what it appeals to is to say, you're putting everyone in a camp and saying, well, they're not, they're not authentic.

Now we as Christians are accused of this all the time when someone says, I used to be a Christian and we say, no, according to the

Bible, you were a hypocrite. That's not pretending. First John two 19. The way

I do it as they said, so you were a Christian, you believed everything the Bible said. Yes. That was your authority.

Yes. So you believed for your first John two 19, that says you went out from us because you were never of us.

You went out to expose. You were not of us. You believed that because that says you were never a

Christian. You were a hypocrite that stopped pretending. Did you believe that? And people were, Oh, well back then

I did. But then back then you knew you were a hypocrite that stopped pretending.

Exactly. And why? Because there is a true definition to a Scotsman and there's a true definition to a, to a, uh, you know, to a

Christian. Okay. By, by the true definition of Scotland, I am a

Scottish Lord because I own land in Scotland. And by the definition of Scottish law,

I am a Lord in Scotland. And my wife is a of Scotland because we own land.

That is the definition. Now they haven't changed the definition after hundreds and thousands of years, but Hey, by that definition, okay.

I may own a very small piece of land in Scotland, but it's enough that I'm a Lord. I was wondering if it was what

I was thinking about. Yes. There you go. My proclamation that I am a

Lord, Andrew Rappaport and lady. There you go.

Is it how, how large of a piece of land is it? You know, no, no.

Uh, I own a whopping, let me see. Uh, one, one by 10, uh, inch plot,

I think is what it is. It's enough for a tree, I think. Right. Is that what's on it?

Um, so, uh, so there's true definition, right? A true definition of a Christian is one who puts his ultimate faith and trust in God and his word.

So if, if you're convinced that God's word is not true or God doesn't exist, then you didn't put, then he wasn't your ultimate faith.

You were right. So when you recognize people will make the accusation, we have to know what the true definition is.

We had that. If you go back to apologetics live, my debate with, uh, uh, Benzion, the

Orthodox rabbi, he tried to argue that. And I had to point out, but there is a true definition.

Uh, so there's some others that you could see. Um, genetic fallacy is attempting to endorse or disqualify a claim because of its origin, uh, as irrelevant to history.

We see that one a lot. Um, you know, the nuts in Matt's example, the

Nazi regime developed the Volkswagen. Therefore you should not buy a Volkswagen Beetle because you know, of who started it.

You get that against Christianity all the time, uh, in China. Well, the Bible teaches slavery, uh, that slavery is wrong.

Therefore the Bible has got to be wrong. Okay. A genetic fallacy. We see that all the time.

So, uh, with that, I know we went five minutes longer, uh, but I wanted to just get some of those in.

I hope it's helpful. Uh, by the way, on the final exam, no logical fallacies are needed because that is not as important as understanding how to identify logical arguments.

Okay. So again, the final exam is down there on the screen. Uh, my encouragement to you will be to take that exam, make sure you take the midterm.

Uh, and if you pass the course, uh, we will have a, uh, and you also have to sign up for your debate.

Can you put the debate one up just briefly? Uh, it's the bitly one.

Oh, okay. I made that one simpler. That's just a bit dot

L Y slash class underscore debate bit dot

L Y slash class underscore debate, all lowercase. Uh, and that will, that gets you to the debate page so that you can, uh, and with, with that link, you should be able to get to the debate without a, uh, and, and sign up so that you would be able to, uh, to do that.

Oh, Hey, look, another person responded while we were doing the show. I hope it's not

Randy for a third time. Uh, nope, it wasn't.

So that's good. Randy did not, uh, do it fourth time. If you, if you did it a fourth time, Randy and failed, that would have been bad.

I'm just saying. So, uh, so with that, uh, we, we end up looking at this.

I want, you know, do the midterm sign up for the debate. The, what that will do is get you, um, you know, and if you just want to put your name, you know, the top topic of debate and your name, uh, we'll, we'll look for someone to be against you.

Uh, I've, I've elected that, uh, Randy here will be debating anyone who doesn't have a debate partner.

So you could pick any topic, uh, whichever side you want, and Randy will have to debate the opposing side regardless of what it is.

So why should it be Daniel arguing for a Baptist, uh, covenant theology and me having to argue for Presbyterian covenant theology?

I think that's good. No, no, no, no.

I've, I could debate Presbyterian, you know, I could argue Presbyterian baptism.

Why can't you? Well, I could, I just don't want to. I, for, for the debate that I had with Matt Slick, I was very close just before we went, uh, when he got there,

I was going to say, Hey, how about we switch sides? How about I argue for the continuation of guests and you argue against them?

Okay. I would have been fun. Um, and so let's see.

So, uh, Laura, I think Laura would like to, you know, debate on women pastors.

Ha ha. Good luck, Randy. So would someone like to argue against the position of women pastors so that he would have to argue for them?

I will argue against them. Somebody else can, can argue. Well, I think you should be able to argue for them.

Let's, let's see. And, but I don't believe it at all.

Well, it doesn't, you don't have to believe it to argue. Well, I know. I just don't like it. Oh my.

All right. Well, with that, um, I think that ends our, our class.

We did eight sessions. We obviously could have gone into much more depth. I hope you guys take the,

I hope that you found it helpful for first and foremost. I hope that you take what you learned, start applying it.

And I'm just going to say, you know, yeah, the exams are easy to take as you know, most of it's multiple choice, but I'm, I am going to say,

Ooh, I love it. Someone's already in the, in the debate, uh, thing so that they can, uh, they can sign up good.

Uh, but the purpose of the debate is not to win.

I'm going to tell you that doing the debate will be the best thing you could do to really challenge yourself and see how the, how it works by doing the debate, by debating someone else.

Even if it's a position you don't hold to, it forces you to have to, uh, think how you're arguing and, and having, even if it's just me as the, as the, you know, as the teacher evaluating it, the, the reality is, is that, uh,

I'm there to instruct you to, to notice things that you might've done that you can improve or show you the things you did that were really well.

So, uh, I hope this is helpful. I hope that you enjoyed it. And with that,

I hand it back over to you, Randy, to end out our final class. Yeah, that sounds really good.

And, uh, yeah, so there's eight of them now you can go back and listen to them. Uh, and how long do they have to actually take those if they're not doing it for credit just indefinitely?

Oh, yeah. I mean, those are up forever and I'll, I'll, you know, they can always, they can always email me to let me know if I, if I don't release them.

Uh, I, I, the, you know, so that they, they can get, I could release the, the things just go to info at striving for eternity .org

info at striving for eternity .org. Um, or actually no, it's, sorry, that's .com

for that one. But, uh, if they go to info, uh, info at striving for training .com, that will get to me.

So, um, and that way I will be able to respond to it and I'll just go and release them as people.

If someone's watching this three years from now, uh, I will, you know, you may have to let me know, Hey, go, go release my, my grade.

Right. All right. That sounds good. Well, I, uh, I know this is a blessing.

Uh, it's a blessing to me and I hope it's a blessing for everybody else. And with that, God bless.