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.

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've been really funny if you failed, 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 gonna do is have a debate review.

The debate that I had with Matt Slick just dropped today.

Go to strugglingwithstudying .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 wanna 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.

Oh, that?

Okay.

The final I could send you now.

Let's see if I will send that to you.

Technical difficulties.

I mean, I only sent it to you while you were building a deck.

Yes, yes.

So I just -.

I was gonna take a picture and then like 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 -.

Huh?

Brave.

Brave, I use the Brave browser.

And yeah, 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.

Yeah.

On that particular point, you can't get to AOMEN .org through Google.

Really?

Yeah, from 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'd pull up CARM.

So that was an experiment.

Both Matt and I were on the phone, we were testing it out, and we were 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 looks 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 Apologetics 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, and that was bad.

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

is How to Think Critically.

So there are 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 got more, 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, there's, 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 wanna 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 wanna just, I don't wanna go through, there's hundreds of fallacies.

So I wanna, what I'm gonna do is take really,.

We'll see how many we get through,.

But I'm at, I'm gonna 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 gonna 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 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 gonna 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.

It's gonna 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 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 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 instead of addressing the argument someone's making, you attack the person.

If you want, I told Randy that I was almost tempted to just bring up the

entire 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 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

and actually have positions where they have to actually make a case instead of just

insulting one another.

An ad hominem is gonna 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 bring dinner to class so that he

would be in class on time.

And my response was, Randy, clearly,

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 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 regularly on Apologetics Live.

I will stop someone that came in to debate me and I'll say, hold on, I just wanna stop for a moment because I wanna

explain something to the audience.

What you're seeing he's doing is doing an ad hominem attack and 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 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 gonna wanna win them over.

Now, hopefully you're gonna explain this and someone's gonna 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 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 gonna give you a list of 20 of them.

And the reason I'm gonna 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 of 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, 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 it.

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 gonna say, well, 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 wives 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 gonna 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 it 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 populum

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 gonna be true or false.

All you gotta 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.

This is 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 gonna 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 gonna be the case with fallacies.

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 can't be true, right?

It's true.

It's true.

Right?

Another, so that's the ad hominem, the appeal to popularity.

One that you're gonna see more in Christian apologetics than you might in other

areas is an appeal to tradition.

This is one where you're gonna 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,

they have a tradition that demonstrates this doctrine, therefore

this doctrine is true, whatever that doctrine may be.

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

And what we have to recognize is that tradition

that 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, 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 gonna look for people that appeal to their tradition and say, well, that's what makes it right.

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

question.

A begging the question is when someone is gonna 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 fallacy is -.

I know the debate that you're talking about.

Yes.

And I had two questions I wavered between asking of my own.

And so I probably should have switched them just for fun, but 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, 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 gonna argue

for their conclusion.

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

and then say that 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,

and with each of these fallacies, what I'm trying to do is explain how people use it and the why.

So why do people use the begging the question fallacy?

Most often because they have not thought through the issues they are discussing.

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 bad thinking.

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

And what ends up happening is they don't recognize

why the person's 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's

evil in the world, that's the premise, there's evil in the world, conclusion, therefore, God does not exist.

But can you explain God's existence without evil?

Well, yes, you can, okay?

Now, 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 the fact of evil has nothing to do with God's existence or not.

In fact, 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 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 evil without God?

Now, what did I do?

I said, I defined what evil is by the absence of good.

That's what it is.

I defined 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 that 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.

So I could argue different ways, but when you have someone that's doing the begging the question

fallacy, what they're often doing is they're avoiding the support.

They don't wanna think about supporting their arguments.

So I wanna give one that Matt gives as an example.

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

God exists because the Bible says so.

Well, he's saying 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 first assume the Bible's inspired.

The Bible says God exists and 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 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 issue is that in any circular argument, it comes down to that

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

Let me give an example.

Descartes used to argue that he was trying to get 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 an 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 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, I'm just sitting there waiting.

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

Thank you.

So the begging the question fallacy, when people use that, what you want to do is you want to

start asking questions immediately.

You wanna 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 or blue.

You said white or black, and then you added blue.

Well, no, when I used this fallacy, I think I said yellow and blue, and then referred to a black one.

We used yellow and blue.

Yeah, 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, maybe fifth option.

The common one that I hear when we talk about ethics, people will say,

okay, you're, and 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 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 gonna 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 in, 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.

And so you see, 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.

So now there's a difference in, when we get into ethics, war ethics, there's gonna 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 gotta say hello to brother Steve, Michael.

What's happening, brother?

Are you done now?

Yes, yes.

Oh, okay.

Poor Steve, Michael.

I mean, cause he loves brother Randy.

Or at least I guess that's what the heart is.

I mean, you know, obviously Michael is not a man of

great intelligence because he loves brother Randy.

And what fallacy did I just do, Randy?

An ad hominem.

An ad hominem.

Yeah.

So, and Steve should rightly say, that's an ad hominem.

Take that back.

All right.

So the fallacy of the excluded middle.

Now I love the one that 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.

Right.

Right.

So at least I hope it never happened.

Otherwise I have to come over there and beat you.

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 atheists 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 was only one of two choices to save my one

child versus saving thousands of children, okay?

And I probably thought this was gonna 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?

Yeah.

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, hypothetical.

But do I have the responsibility to care for them?

Would I even have access to them?

Right.

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.

Right.

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?

Exactly.

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 gonna 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 false, 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

bunk 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.

Hmm.

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 with 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, when we talked

about, well, you have it with the ad hominem, right?

They do that because they wanna 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 be, you wanna be

like a lion that's just tossed red meat, okay?

You wanna just attack the very thing that they're avoiding.

Just go after it.

Go after it hard.

Keep on that.

And if you watch the way that I do debates, you will see that I will often,

after about the second or third time that they wanna go to some other topic, I return to the

topic.

I say, 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 leave it.

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 ask the same question.

The 18th time I'm asking you this.

I don't let up.

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

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

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

time limit so people can't just filibuster my time.

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 R .A. 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 start up again.

So you're not gonna avoid 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 gonna go over quickly, ones that you'll see often.

Poisoning the well.

Poisoning the well is where I start by, I'm gonna 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.

If I was to say, Randy has an IQ that is less than my

shoe size.

I mean, therefore, any argument he makes, 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.

That's right.

Yeah.

The point being is, this is something where what they're trying to do, and 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 just assume that anything you say is not gonna 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.

Looking at the time, let me just give some of the others that I think you see often.

The fallacy of special pleading.

This is what we would refer to as a double standard.

There's a standard for one that not for the other.

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

the Supreme Court, with the picks that he gave, let him off

so he doesn't have to face punishment for what he did wrong.

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

Yes.

Should it be charged with things 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 put on trial, he goes, no, that's different.

Yeah.

Why?

Because they knew the outcome of it, and so therefore they just knew, no one was

gonna vote Biden guilty.

Oh, so if they know the outcome, that's not putting someone above the law, so 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 something like that.

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 Methodist, therefore that person has bad theology.

Not all Methodists might 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 believing in Roman

Catholic doctrine,.

But apart from it, right?

They wouldn't believe it.

They can't believe Roman Catholic doctrine, or Mormon doctrine, and be saved.

But they could be in those churches.

So that's how you end up seeing that guilt by association fallacy.

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 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 1 Corinthians 13 and not use it the way it's used

elsewhere to describe what 1 Corinthians 13 is talking about, right?

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, again, I say it's a fallacy 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 don't think he ever once got a right rule of

interpretation.

He abused 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

gonna have fun and see how he was going to handle it, because what he does is everything

has to point back to Jesus within his way.

So I took out a Leviticus and asked him about the house.

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

leprosy is a disease.

And so you can have a disease in the house of God.

Well, see, he uses the word house, which 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 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,

no Scotsman would eat hangus.

And I guess 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 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 stopped pretending.

First John 2 .19.

The way I do it is I said, so you were a Christian, you believed everything the Bible said.

Yes, that was your authority, yes.

So you believed, you know, First John 2 .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, you know, to a Christian, okay?

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 lady 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.

You have it right here.

Yes.

There you go.

My proclamation that I am a Lord Andrew Rappaport and lady.

There you go.

That is cool.

Is it, how large of a piece of land is it?

You know, acres?

No, no.

I own a whopping, let me see.

One by 10 inch plot, I think is what it is.

It's enough for a tree, I think.

Because that's what's on it.

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 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 Ben Zion, the

Orthodox rabbi, he tried to argue that.

And I had to point out, but there is a true definition.

So there's some others that you could see.

Genetic fallacy is attempting to endorse or disqualify a claim because of its origin

as irrelevant to history.

We see that one a lot.

You know, Matt's example, the Nazi regime developed the Volkswagen, therefore you should not buy a

Volkswagen Beetle because of who started it.

You get that against Christianity all the time.

Well, the Bible teaches that slavery is wrong, therefore the Bible's gotta be wrong.

Okay, a genetic fallacy.

We see that all the time.

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

I hope it's helpful.

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.

My encouragement to you will be to take that exam.

Make sure you take the midterm.

And if you pass the course, we will have a, and you

also have to sign up for your debate.

Can you put the debate one up just briefly?

It's the Bitly one.

The Bitly one, oh, okay.

I made that one simpler.

That's just bit .ly slash class underscore debate.

Bit, B -I -T dot L -Y slash class underscore debate, all lowercase.

And that gets you to the debate page so that you can, and with that

link, you should be able to get to the debate without, and sign up

so that you would be able to do that.

Ooh, hey, look, another person responded while we were doing the show.

I hope it's not Randy, for a third time.

Nope, it wasn't, so that's good.

Randy did not do it a fourth time.

If you did it a fourth time, Randy, and failed, that would've been bad.

I'm just saying.

So with that, we end up looking at this.

I want, do the midterm, sign up for the debate.

What that will do is get you, and if you just wanna put your name,

topic of debate and your name, we'll look for someone to be against you.

I've elected that Randy here will be debating anyone who

doesn't have a debate partner.

So you could pick any topic, 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 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 the debate that I had with Matt Slick, I was very close just before we went,

when he got there, I was gonna say, hey, how about we switch sides?

How about I argue for the continuation of gifts and you argue against them?

Okay, that would have been fun.

And so let's see.

So 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 argue for them.

Well, I think you should be able to argue for them.

Let's see that argument.

I can, 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.

Okay, all right.

Well, with that, I think that ends 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 find it helpful first and foremost.

I hope that you take what you learned, start applying it.

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

I am gonna say, ooh, I love it.

Someone's already in the debate thing so that they can

sign up, good.

But the purpose of the debate is not to win.

I'm gonna tell you that doing the debate will be the best thing you could do to really challenge

yourself and see 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 think how you're arguing.

And having, even if it's just me as the, you know, as the teacher

evaluating it, the reality is that I'm there to instruct you to

notice things that you might've done that you can improve or show you the things you did that were really well.

So 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 yeah, so there's eight of them now.

You can go back and listen to them.

And how long do they have to actually take those if they're not doing it for credit, just indefinitely?

Oh, well, yeah, I mean, those are up forever.

And I'll, you know, they can always email me to let me know if I don't release them.

So that they can get, I can release the things.

Just go to info at strivingforeternity .org.

Info at strivingforeternity .org.

Or actually, no, it's, sorry, that's .com for that one.

But if they go to info at strivingforeternity .com, that will get to me.

So, and that way I will be able to respond to it.

And I'll just go and release them.

You know, people, if someone's watching this three years from now, I will, you may have to let me know,

hey, go release my grade.

Right.

All right, that sounds good.

Well, I know this is a blessing.

It's a blessing to me.

And I hope it's a blessing for everybody else.

And with that, God bless.