Apologetics & Debate 6: Logic - What is an Argument

Welcome back to Passing the Torch. I'm your host Randy Adkins and today, again, your teacher is

Andrew Rappaport with Striving for Eternity and he will continue to teach us apologetics and debate.

How are you brother? Doing better than I deserve. So let's uh and I did send you something in private chat if you could put that up as a lower third for the midterm.

We do have a midterm that is due. So for those who failed, in other words, you didn't take the quiz, that's okay.

You can still redeem yourself. There's still a probability that you can pass this class. Again, the quiz was 15 % of your grade.

We have a midterm and a final. Those would be 50 % of your grade and then the rest, the 35 % left will be in you actually having a debate.

And so that debate, it doesn't have to be public. It might just be the two people debating and myself.

You don't have to win the debate. It's not about winning but it is about examining how we handle ourselves in a debate, how we argue in the debate.

We're gonna talk a bit about that tonight. So when I was asked by HAPS to teach a class on apologetics and debate, it was because they do the show

Apologetics Live and that is a live stream Thursday nights 8 o 'clock

Eastern Time. Anyone can come in. They just go to apologeticslive .com and what unfortunately or what

I actually think is fortunate happens is people come in prepared for debate and I don't know

I'm having a debate that night. I know it's weird. I actually look forward to that because it's not a formal debate but they don't always have to be formal.

But someone comes in, they're ready, they have an argument prepared, they want to explain.

I haven't prepared so I'm having to do what? I have to ask a lot of questions. I got to find out what their argument actually is, what they're trying to say, what their points are.

I get asked often how do you prepare for a debate when you don't know it's gonna happen?

And the answer I have for that is simple. I studied two areas and this is what I told Haps. To teach a class on apologetics and debate is really two areas.

Harmoneutics, which we spent the last three classes looking at, and logic, which we'll spend the next three classes looking at.

Because if you understand how to interpret the Bible and you understand how to recognize whether a argument is sound or not, you know, we're gonna get into terms like that.

I'm gonna explain those things, whether it's whether it is a sound argument or whether it's a strong argument.

We're gonna talk these things through. So as we do that, part of the reading for this class was a book on How to Think Clearly by Doug Erlinson.

Now I'm saying that because that was an assignment but I have to give a caveat because I want to start off by playing something that he mentions in the book and well people who know me are gonna go, wait a minute, how did

Andrew know that? Because that's a pop culture reference. The answer is I got it from the book,

I went on YouTube, I looked this up, I downloaded it and said this is hysterical. Try not to laugh but it actually will make the point of what we're gonna talk about today.

What we're gonna talk about in today's class is identify what an argument is.

And I know a lot of people think, oh I know what it is, right? Randy here thinks that an argument is when

I, you know, disagree with what he says. That could be an argument. As we're gonna see, an argument is much more but I think if we play this clip,

Randy, this will give a good view of what most people think an argument is. Gotcha.

I'll bring it up. So let's play this. What do you want?

Well I was told outside. Don't give me that you snotty face you've a parrot dropping. What? Shut your festering gob you tit.

Your type makes me puke. You vacuous toffee nose man over a parrot. I came in here for an argument.

Oh, oh I'm sorry, this is abuse. Oh. That explains it. Oh no you want 12A next door.

I see. Sorry. Not at all. That's alright. Stupid git. Is this the right one for an argument?

I've told you once. No you haven't. Yes I have. Oh, just now! No you didn't.

Yes I did. Didn't! Didn't! I'm telling you I didn't! You did not! Oh sorry, is this a five minute argument or the full half hour? Oh! Oh just the five minute one.

I'm sorry. Thank you. Anyway I did. You most certainly did not. Now, let's get one thing quite clear.

I most definitely told you. You did not. Yes, I did. You did not. Yes, I did. Didn't. Yes, I did. Didn't. Yes, I did. No, this isn't an argument.

Yes, it is. No, it isn't. It's just contradiction. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. It is not. It is. You just contradicted me. I didn't.

Oh, you did. No, no, no, no, no, no. You did, just now. No, no, nonsense. Oh, look, this is futile. No, it isn't. I gave me over a good argument.

No, you didn't. You gave me over an argument. Well, an argument's not the same as contradiction. Can be. No, it can't. An argument's a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.

No, it isn't. Yes, it is. It isn't just contradiction. Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position. But it isn't just saying, no, it isn't.

Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Arguments are an intellectual process. Contradiction is just an automatic game -saying of anything the other person says.

No, it isn't. Yes, it is. Not at all. No, look, I've... Thank you. Call it. What? That's it.

Good morning. I was just getting interested. Sorry, the five minutes is up. That was never five minutes just now. I'm afraid it was.

No, it wasn't. Sorry, I'm not allowed to argue anymore. What? If you want me to go on arguing,

I'll have to pay for another five minutes. But that was never five minutes just now. Oh, come on. This is ridiculous.

I'm very sorry, but I told you I'm not allowed to argue unless you pay. Oh, all right. There you are.

Thank you. Well? Well, what? That was never five minutes just now. I told you I'm not allowed to argue unless you pay.

I just paid. No, you didn't. I did. I did. I did. Look, I don't argue about that.

I'm very sorry. But you don't pay. Aha. Well, if I didn't pay, why are you arguing? Gotcha. There you are. Is that? If you're arguing,

I'll have to pay. Not necessarily. I'll be arguing in my spare time. I've had enough of this.

No, you haven't. Oh, shut up. All right. Oh, my goodness.

That is what most people think of an argument. That was Monty Python. That was hysterical.

It goes on longer where he gets into different rooms that get him into mother trouble. But he tried to make a complaint.

But as we talk about what an argument is, a lot of people think arguments are a bad thing.

But we make arguments all the time and don't recognize them as arguments.

No, we don't. What were you going to say? I said, no, we don't. I'm just kidding. Are you contradicting me?

Sorry. I can't do the British accent as well. Are you contradicting me?

So here's the thing. When we think about what an argument is, I want to give some definitional things.

And this is going to be a very basic introduction to what an argument is because and how to recognize whether an argument is sound or cogent.

Because these are the terms we're going to end up using. We want to be able to recognize them because when you are having a discussion with someone and they're making an argument, not necessarily a bad thing, you need to be able to recognize if they're making an argument, is it sound or not?

Because if it's not sound, well, then it's illogical. Now, when we talk about logic, what most people do is start studying all the logical fallacies.

And in two classes, we will look at that. And I will give you some ways of examining fallacies and things like this and give you some of those.

But that's what most people think of when they talk logic. And most people do apologetics, just look for these.

Oh, that's an ad hominem. The ad hominem, by the way, is one of the ones that is most abused because people refer to an ad hominem, you disagreed with me.

That's an ad hominem. No, actually, that's not what an ad hominem is. It's when you attack the person to discredit the argument.

So, you know, Randy makes an argument, I respond. And my response to Randy is, that is the stupidest thing you could have ever said.

It must be the reason that you were adopted. I'm not sure if he was adopted. That is attacking the person, right?

I'm making something personal to avoid having to actually address the argument.

That's an ad hominem. Disagreement's not. So we'll look at those, but that's what most people think of. So what

I'd like to do is start off with, and this was part of your reading, so if you've gotten to read

How to Think Clearly by Doug Edelson, you'll have read through this. This is pretty much chapter two of his book.

We'll cover a lot of this, but we want to start off with what is a statement. A statement is a sentence that's going to provide information.

This is going to be important because this is going to be part of what an argument is. But the base part of it is going to have a statement.

There's a lot of different types of statements we're going to look at. There's going to be statements that we're going to refer to as premises and conclusions and supporting.

But the thing is that a statement, the purpose of a statement is to convey information.

So you can have things like questions or requests, commands, things like this, but those things lack a truth value.

A statement is going to be something that's either true or false. This is what we want in logic.

We want to be able to recognize whether something is true or if it's false. Because when people make arguments, they're often not thinking through the question.

They might truly believe what they're saying is true. The question is, is it true? By the way, this could be of us as well.

The statements we're saying, are they true? It's not whether we think they're true.

So we can have people who can make an argument that they think is true.

That's not. Now, an argument is going to consist of several statements. I've already given you what some of them are.

You're going to have a premise or several premises, and you're going to have a conclusion. And we're going to look at different types of arguments that you can have.

There's going to be deductive and inductive.

And so those are going to be handled differently. So let's start by looking at, if we have a statement that's going to give us some information, we want to validate to see whether that information they're giving is true.

And so as we're going to do that, there's things that we could use to evaluate whether things are true or not.

But every argument is going to be made up of several statements. Now, there's going to have at least one premise and a conclusion.

That's going to be important. Now, I said at the very beginning, when we first started this class, that the important thing to be able to recognize is the premise of an argument.

Because a lot of people, what you're going to see is they jump to conclusions, but their premise does not lead to the conclusion.

And so you have to know what the premise of the argument actually is. For example, an argument

I get very often on the streets is that the Bible can't be trusted. It can't be trusted because it was edited.

But most often they say, the Bible can't be trusted because it was written by men. Now, let's think about that.

What they say is, the Bible cannot be true.

It's got to be full of errors because it's written by men. At the premise of the argument is trustworthiness.

That men can't be trusted. Now, can you get into a whole discussion of the fact that God wrote it, and therefore men didn't write it?

Yes, men physically wrote it, but it was God who worked through them. You could get into explaining all that theology.

Is that going to do anything with an unbeliever? Not very much. Why? Because they don't understand the doctrine of superintending and inspiration, and you have to go through all of that.

And because they're not listening, they're looking to attack you, you end up in a difficult position because you're going to use theological terms that they're not going to either not know or not care about.

So what do you do? Well, address the premise. So how do I do that? I will usually ask them, so are you telling me that we cannot trust anything written by men?

Yes. So if a man writes something, we can't trust it. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Do you believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution?

To which they say, yes. And I usually, I used to carry a copy of his book in my preaching bag.

I'd pull it out, I'd look at it, I'd go, that's funny. It was written by a man, and you told us we can't trust anything written by men.

You see, everything we learn is from men. Okay? So when we look at that, and by the way, if you're joining late, that link down here is the link to the midterm.

So that is the form to do for the midterm. So if you see that on screen. So with that, what we end up seeing is that you want to be able to recognize the premise of their argument because the premise, a lot of times, just if you look at the premise, don't look at the conclusion.

Most people will argue whether you can trust the Bible, and they get into all the, maybe they know textual criticism, they start discussing that and all that.

And the real issue is their premise is faulty. Their premise is a false statement.

Right? A statement is either going to be true or false. Well, the fact that you can't trust anything written by men is false.

So why bother arguing with the conclusion when the whole premise is false? So what I like to do is expose that.

That is why we want to look at what the premise of an argument is. So every argument is going to be a bunch of statements that are going to be made up of at least one premise and then a conclusion.

There may be supporting arguments within there to bring you from the premise to the conclusion.

Okay? But you have to remember that it's going to have a single conclusion.

Right? You may have multiple premises, only one conclusion. That's a good argument.

Now, I mentioned that we're going to divide these up into two categories. They're deductive and inductive arguments.

Deductive is much easier to deal with, so we'll start there. When we look at a deductive argument, this is an argument where a person is going to make a claim where the conclusion immediately follows from the premise.

So the premise or premises, if you have more than one, is going to directly tie you to the conclusion.

So there's nothing to be inferred. Okay? Where with an inductive argument, you're going to have a little bit more gray area because the claim that you're going to make, the conclusion of it, is going to be based on the degree of probability of the information.

In other words, you have to infer things. So with the deductive arguments, we'll start there because those are ones that are going to be more certain.

They're easier to work with. And unfortunately, these are not the ones that most people actually do.

They don't usually deal with these more direct deductive type of arguments.

But it's good to lead people to them because the reality is that if you can get into a deductive type of argument, then it becomes easier to figure out whether it's sound or not.

I just gave you an example of one with the case of, you know, the

Bible can't be trusted because it's written by men. The premise is false.

Therefore, the argument is not sound. And I'm going to explain what sound means in a moment, but so we'll get there.

So as we look at this, we have to recognize that we have these deductive type of arguments.

Now, the way we would talk about it in logic would be if A, then B. A, therefore

B. So in other words, what this is saying is, if you have something, let's give one of the classic examples.

If it rains, the ground is wet. So go outside, the ground is wet, it rained.

Now, this might get you to go, well, that's a fallacy. And some of you are already figuring out which fallacy. I get it.

The question is, we look at this and say, is this something where it is a good argument?

Now, in this case, we'd answer no. Why? Because are there multiple ways for the ground to get wet?

Yes. You could have a sprinkler system. There could be a lot of reasons.

You could have had a pool party. And water got splashed over. So in that case, that would be saying, if A, then

B, B, therefore A. So the ground being wet doesn't necessitate that when you say, okay, because it's wet, it can only be from rain.

There's other things. So what you want to see in this is that there is something that's provable.

That's true or false. Is the ground wet? Yes. Right here, the ground is wet.

Does the ground get wet when it rains? Yes. The ground gets wet when it rains.

Is that the only reason the ground gets wet? Nope. You see, and that's where we have to recognize, what is the premise and what is the conclusion?

And do they actually support one another? So if I say, all humans are mammals, okay,

Andrew is human, therefore Andrew is a mammal. That is a properly constructed argument.

That is the if A, then B, A, therefore B. All humans are mammals.

Andrew is human, therefore he's a mammal. Because all humans are mammals. Is that true?

Yes. Is it true that I'm a human? Yes. Therefore, that is a properly constructed argument.

That is where all of the premises and conclusions are true. We'll see what that ends up meaning in a moment.

But that's what we're looking to get when we construct an argument. Where our premises and our conclusion, if we're going to make a deductive argument, that they're all true.

And so when someone is making an argument to us and we're evaluating it, when I'm on Apologetics Live and someone's making a claim that's not dealing with how to interpret the

Bible, because they're not going to do the hermeneutics, but here we're dealing with logic, they make a claim, what am

I going to do? I'm going to break down what they're saying and look at what it is they're arguing for.

What's their premise? What's their conclusion? Are each of these things right? Is each of these individual statements, are they true?

Because if any statement is not true, then I already know the argument is not valid.

It's not properly formed. And so we want to make sure when we're making arguments that we think through this.

Think through each statement. Not whether we think it's true, by the way. It's whether it is true.

Big difference. Right? Randy and I can have an argument.

Let's take an easy one. Randy, I think you're on Mill, right? Post Mill.

Post Mill. It was one or the other. I knew. Okay. He's going to make an argument on Post Mill. In which case,

I'm going to think he's wrong because I'm thoroughly convinced that Pre -Mill is right.

Where he's going to think I'm wrong because he's thoroughly convinced Post Mill is right. And I can guarantee that on the other side of heaven, we'll both agree that Pre -Mill is right.

But you see, in that case, both of us would believe that our arguments are true.

Okay? Now, is that one that we can prove? Actually, hold on to that because that is actually an example of an argument that is inductive.

Okay? But we both believe that what we think is true.

Okay? We will find out one day. And then at the other side of heaven, this same inductive argument suddenly becomes a deductive argument because we can measure it whether it's true or not.

Right. Right? But we're going to have things that we think are true. Let's do a different one.

You were working on a roof, right? A second story deck.

Yeah. So you're doing some framing work? Yes. Yeah. So he's going to make the argument that it was really, really hot today.

It was. That's what he claims. But see, that's a relative thing. I mean, hot compared to what?

Because, you know, hot at the equator would be a little bit more than just the, you know, whoa, you're in like 90 degrees and complaining.

You're probably in 70 degrees and complaining. Yeah. No, actually, I was raised in Louisiana.

So it's a little bit cooler up here. See, so you know that it wasn't hot. Right? In comparison to Louisiana.

No. It wasn't nearly as humid either. But if we were to have a discussion and you were saying that, well,

I was putting this deck together and I was using a bunch of two by fours and I get super literal with you and explain that, well, you know, that's invalid because they're not actually exactly two inches by four inches.

Yep. That makes sense. Three and a half. Yeah. So, right.

We call it a two by four, but if someone makes the claim that, you know,

I put four beams down lengthwise or width wise, therefore it's eight inches across.

Okay. Now they might think that's true because it's called a two by four and they think four plus four equals eight.

Randy, would that be true though? No. No. Right. So that takes an argument.

And even though someone believes it to be true. Okay. That's that, that statement is testable, right?

And so this is when we're dealing with deductive, we can test each statement, whether it's true or false.

This is going to be how, you know, whether it's deductive or inductive, right? If we get into the debate of end times, is that deductive, not this side of heaven or, well, actually not until it happens, then it becomes deductive for us because then we can test it.

Can we test whether pre -mill, post -mill, on -mill are right this side of heaven?

No, we can't test it for true or false. We look at that at probability and that's what makes it inductive.

So there's a gray area. So we'll look at that in a moment and look at what we talk about high probability versus weak probability, right?

If it's, you know, strong or weak. So what we end up seeing is when we look at a deductive argument, we want to look at whether each of the statements in the argument are true or false.

Okay. Not how convincing the person is. And that's going to be a big thing because many people who make arguments are very convincing in the way they present the arguments.

And it's the emotion that can sway somebody. And so what we want to do is take the step back to say, okay, you're stating this statement, this statement, this statement is each of these statements true or any of them false, right?

We want to see if any of them are false. And one of the things we also have to recognize is that most people do not lay out their argument in a very nice way.

They don't say, here's my premise. Here's another premise. Here's a, here's some support for that to bring us to the conclusion.

Actually, most people typically start with their conclusion, which makes it hard, right?

Premill is right. Here's why, right? It's, it's that, that, that gap is eight inches because I put two two by fours down length width wise, right?

They start with the conclusion. So you have to be able to recognize what is the conclusion and what is the premise.

The conclusion is the thing that you're, that the argument is directing toward to say, this is what's true.

Your premise is, is the series of statements you're going to make to lead to support.

If you have multiple one by one to get you to the conclusion. And so you have to be able to recognize that sometimes the conclusion could be at the beginning.

Sometimes the conclusion could be in the middle. I mean, people don't usually speak in such a way when they're making arguments that where it's like,

Hey, I'm going to start with the premise and end on the conclusion. It would be nice if everyone did that. So you have to do the work of figuring out what is the conclusion in this argument.

Again, an argument is not a bad thing. It's you trying to either convey information or convince someone of something.

Okay. Um, my wife might tell me that we were driving on the road and she might start with a conclusion.

That's a red light. That means you have to stop. We stop at red lights, right?

Or really what it is is it's a yellow light. Yellow means slow down. I guess

I always was raised believing that yellow meant speed up. I don't know where I got that from, but what is she doing there?

She's giving me the conclusion. She's giving me the premise. They're both true.

They're statements that convey information. That is an argument. Now that's not a bad thing.

So I don't, I want to get people to get away from thinking arguments are bad. We make them all the time.

Okay. Randy has been working hard all day in the heat. The heat can make us tired.

Therefore, Randy is yawning because he is tired, right? That wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

It's just a true statement. It's true.

So we have to recognize that sometimes people weave the conclusion in and out. And so you got to be able to recognize what are the premises and what is the conclusion?

All right. Now there is a key to know in an argument. There's a keyword that you could look for that helps us with knowing a conclusion.

And I actually used it in the statement. Therefore, I know it's corny, but it is true and helpful when you have pastors preaching through the

Bible and you come to the word, therefore Randy put it just me on screen.

Cause he wanted to yawn. I think that's what it was. Right. He's right.

That's okay. I understand. This is why all the students want to watch in the background and not me.

I get it. I love it. So you have to be able to, the pastors will always say when you come to a word, therefore what's the, therefore

Randy, therefore, what is it there for, right?

Right. It is a conclusion, a concluding statement. So you want, if you hear the word, therefore, that is a key indicator.

Okay. This might be the conclusion. Now we say that, but you have some people that just don't know

English and they say, therefore, but we don't know what it was there for, you know?

So, you know, it's like, you know, not everyone has good English skills. We have a president right now who can't put sentences together, but.

Oh goodness. That is definitely true. It is elder abuse. I mean, it's, it really is. His wife should just stop abusing him and let him retire.

Oh, so I don't think that's who's controlling him, but anyway, I think so.

Oh, I think there's others, but yeah. Right. So, so the thing is that we want to recognize in when we're going to analyze an argument, right?

This is what we want to do when we're in a debate or doing apologetics. We want to be able to tell whether the argument they made is a good one or a bad one.

And we don't really use the words good or bad. We use different words. I'm going to start with the deductive because they're different between a deductive and an inductive.

When we have a deductive argument, we use terms like valid and invalid.

So with the statements that, that I made about Randy being tired, that is a deductive argument that I made.

We looked at each of the individual premises and conclusion and each of them were true.

Okay. So a valid argument, a valid deductive argument is going to be one where the conclusion follows with certainty from the information that's given from the premises.

Okay. So when I gave the argument of that, this is eight inches because there's two, two by fours width wise.

Okay. Is that argument valid?

Randy, what do you think? No. Yes. Because validity doesn't matter whether it's true or false.

I know it was a trick question that I put you on the spot, but it's good because I wore it again because I want, because most people probably said yes as well.

And that's why, that's why I started with the previous statement where all the statements are true.

Cause I wanted to trick you. Right. And you're not alone. Everyone in the audience got the same failed the same

I'm sure because when we join me and doing the facepalm. Yeah. So we want to recognize that a valid argument doesn't have to do with truth or not validity in a, in a deductive argument has to do with the premises and conclusion, whether they directly lead from premise to conclusion.

So does the premise directly lead? Well, if, if the two by fours were, were literally four inches each, then not only would it directly lead to it, but it would be, well, we'll get to that word, but it'll be sound.

Okay. So a sound argument is going to be an argument where it is both valid and each of the premises and conclusion are true.

Now, Randy, if I asked you whether that argument with the two by fours was sound, is it a sound argument?

Go ahead. Answer. No. I were you paying attention?

Yes. Yes. Oh, no, no. Sorry. I was thinking of the other one. You got me.

So no, I was wrong. No, it's not. It's not sound, but now

I thought I asked you about the other one. So, sorry. So with, with the example of you being tired, is that sound?

Yes. Yes. And that one is sound because not only is the conclusion, the premises directly lead to the conclusion, but all of the premises and the conclusion are true.

Right. The two by four example is not sound because they're not actually two, four inches, two inches by four inches.

Okay. So it's going to be more closer to seven inches. And actually a two by fours

I have found they're not always perfectly three and a half by one. No, they're not a factor.

Okay. So they're roughly two inches by four inches. And so when we're looking at one, we're going to refer to what is a sound argument.

So what are we looking for? In a deductive argument, we're looking to see that every argument or every statement is true.

Remember a statement is something that is going to convey information that is true or false.

So every statement has to be true. And for it to be valid, the premise has to directly lead to the conclusion.

So if you have, you can have a valid argument. That's wrong. The two by four example.

So we want to make sound arguments. So in sound arguments, not do we have to not just make sure that our premise directly leads to the conclusion, but we have to make sure it's true.

Let me give an example that I had in a debate slash discussion, if you want to say, but we had a guy come into Apologetics Live and he wanted to argue that the

Bible is okay with homosexuality, not the, not the abuse of it, but, but just okay with like, his argument is that he can sleep with his boyfriend.

And as long as they don't actually have sexual relations, not being married, then they're okay.

So what was my argument? My argument is that the Bible, Jesus states that if you lust after someone you've committed in your heart already.

And so my question to him was, do you lust after your boyfriend to which he didn't want to address the issue of lust?

Why? Because my question got to the root of the issue.

He agrees with what Jesus says, that if you look with someone with lust, that that is adultery of the heart, but he lusts after someone he's not married to.

And see, it doesn't matter whether you're homosexual or heterosexual. What do I do? I take the whole issue of homosexuality out of it because they want to, he wanted to argue over, you know,

Greek words. What do I do? My premise is back to what

Jesus said is the issue of lusting to someone that you're not married to. Now, how do they justify homosexuality?

Well, I lust after someone of the same sex. That's what makes homosexuality right. So that is why

I address the lust. That is my premise. And my conclusion is going to be that we cannot have sex with anyone we want just because we lust after them.

That's directly related. Okay? The premise directly leads to the conclusion based on scripture.

And both of those are true. By the way, that gentleman did want to have a formal debate with me on Apologetics Live under the condition we do not talk about lusting.

We cannot discuss the word lust. Correct. Because that throws out his argument, right?

And so as long as you, as long as you allow me to just stand on conclusions and not have to build a premise that leads to the conclusion,

I want to debate you. You see, this is what you often have. People want to debate this way when you're doing apologetics.

They just want to be able to make claims and you have to be able to recognize that. Have to be able to recognize the difference between a claim.

A claim is just a conclusion without any support sometimes. Okay. But a claim is if you just make a conclusion, premillennialism is right.

That's a conclusion. Did I support that in any way? No. No. Okay.

So is that a, with that, is that an argument?

No. No. Why? Put you on the spot. There's no premise.

That's exactly right. There's no premise. Therefore, if, if we look at this, it is an invalid argument.

Why? Because it doesn't have the premise. And you'll find that this is what people often do.

They just make statements. And so one example

I have is I was on the street in New York city and someone told me there, there is no God because there's evil in the world.

Now that's actually a pre a conclusion. Now you might think that the conclusion is there is no

God. And the premise is there's evil in the world. And that might be, but he kind of shows it together as one.

But even if that, if you want to separate that, I see, I say that that's one, just a statement, but if you break it up, if he, you know, he says there is no

God, that would be invalid. That wouldn't be sound. If you want to say that his premises, if that the conclusion comes first and he's saying there isn't, there is no

God. And the premise is there's evil in the world. Is that true?

Well, there is evil in the world, but is there other ways to explain evil in the world other than the absence of God?

Yes. The presence of God. In fact, as I explained to him, the presence of God is what's required for there to be evil because you can't have evil without God because evil is the absence of good.

And good is defined by the nature of God. So you can't have evil without God. Right?

So this is how I break these down. Logically people will make claims.

They just make statements. And when they do that, what you want to learn to do, and this is where if you read the other book that was required reading for this course,

Greg, Coco's tactics, he will teach you how to ask good questions.

And if you remember this, this is an important thing to learn in apologetics. When they make a claim, you ask a question.

See, if they're not giving you the premise, God doesn't exist. How do you know that to be true?

What are you asking for? You're asking for their premise. Make the argument.

Most people don't want to make an argument because to make an argument means they got to think through it.

They haven't done that. So they'd rather just throw out a conclusion. Okay.

This is how this can help you when you are in debate and debate doesn't, again, doesn't have to be a bad thing, right?

It's, it's two people having and presenting arguments that may or may not be contradictory as we saw in the monthly

Python clip. Okay. But the thing is that as we look at it, we don't want to be making invalid arguments.

We also don't want to make sound arguments. So what we want is good arguments.

How do we have a good argument? Well, a good argument is going to be one that is sound. Therefore not only does the premise directly lead to the conclusion, but all of the premises and conclusion are true.

Okay. And this might be a little bit where if you, if you have

Doug Erdelsen's book and you've already read it, I kind of disagree with him a bit because he defines a sound argument as being valid plus all true premises.

I would say it's all true premises plus the conclusion. Why? Well, let me give you that example I just looked at.

Is there evil in the world? Yes, that's true. But the conclusion there is no

God is not true. Right. Now you can also point that this is not valid because the fact that there's evil world is not, does not directly point to the conclusion, but the guy who said it believes it does.

So again, it doesn't matter whether someone believes that it's valid or believes that it's true.

Okay. Because invalid arguments are going to be those where they could be, where all of the premises are true.

They're just not sound, right? They, they could be, they could be, they not valid, but all the premises are true.

These are, these are people that say things that are half truths. They just leave out certain things. And you can, you could say certain things in a way where everything you say, all the premises are true, but maybe you switched up the timeline.

I'll give an example. A friend of mine, Matt Slick did a, went on the daily show and they really were discussing homosexuality and they wanted a specific answer.

They had a question ready and they wanted an answer and they could not get him to answer the specific question the way they wanted.

So what they ended up doing is later in the discussion, they asked another question, which he provided an answer that was the answer they wanted for the other one.

Now was the question they asked true? Yes. Was Matt's answer true? Yes. The problem was they switched the order, the answer for one question and gave it as if it was the answer to another.

So he totally misrepresented him. Okay. People will do that.

So you have to be able to recognize, yes, this is true. But that's not valid.

Right? So if it's not valid or the premises are not true, it is not sound.

It is not a good argument. Okay. Let's get into the, the inductive.

We're going to move a little quicker with it, but I think that I laid the groundwork, the foundation where we can now see how these work.

Inductive, as I said, are going to be a little bit more of a gray area. We don't talk here about valid or invalid here.

What we're going to talk about when we talk about whether the argument is, is going to be, we're going to look at is basically, is it strong or weak?

Because again, I said earlier, this is talking about probabilities. So we would look at pre -mill versus post -mill, and we're each going to look at our, our arguments and looking at the arguments.

I'm going to look at certain scriptures and I'm going to say, looking at these scriptures, pre -millennialism is a higher, is a high probability.

Okay. Randy here is going to look at other passages, not the ones

I look at, and he's going to go, we'll see, looking at these passages, it's a high probability for post -mill.

And then I'm going to make him watch CNN and go, where is the good? No, I'm kidding. I don't, you don't get news.

I know he was waiting for that because that's what pre -mills are always accused of. I get it. I'm just saying post -mill had its rise just before world war one and world war two.

I guess that means world war three is coming. We'll see.

I would disagree on that. So, and again, if you came in late, the link that is on the bottom there is the link for the midterm.

So we're leaving it up so you could type that in and take the midterm and get your credit for the class.

I believe that it, Randy, is it true that if someone gets an A in the class, you're buying them a pizza?

Is that? No, I said I would find them a pizza. I don't know where I'll find it.

You know, dumpster side of the road, back of somebody's refrigerator, but I'll find them a pizza.

And they can go get it. Right. In the dumpster or somewhere. You find it. It's over there.

All right. So when we talk inductive statements, we want to talk about whether it's a strong argument and a strong argument is going to be one where the conclusion is going to have a high degree of probability that the information from its premises are, are, are good, right?

A weak one is where you're going to have a high probability that the premises of the argument are don't really lead to it.

You know, you, so, so when we look at this, the conclusion here is going to follow the degree of probability from the statements that are made.

Okay. So you're going to look at these premises and say, Hmm, are these strong or not?

How are you going to know whether they're strong? Well, now you're going to look at the deductive argument. Okay. Because each of the premises are, can then be deductive to say, okay, each individual premises, are they true?

And so you're going to examine each of the individual premises to, to, to, to look for the truth.

Are they, are they, you know, cause they're going to build a, a conclusion, right? So they're going to lead up to that.

So you're looking at those and saying, are, do we have good strong deductive arguments here?

Right. Now this is different than deductive arguments that are very straightforward, right?

It's either it's a valid or it's invalid here. We kind of have this matter of grayness, right?

We're talking strong or weak. And what may be strong to me is weak to Randy and vice versa.

This is where much of the debate that you end up having is in. So what I would encourage you when it comes to apologetics is recognize whether it's deductive or inductive, try to stay in the area of deductive arguments because those are, are easier to deal with.

Okay. If you can take from an inductive and try to help someone break it down into a deductive argument, you're going to be in a much better way of arguing.

Okay. So just like we're going to do in, in a deductive argument, we're looking for is this valid or invalid, right?

We do that by looking at the premises and the conclusion, whether there's a direct link, the same is going to be true with inductive.

It's going to be the thing of how the degree of probability that this is true versus the, the, whether like in deductive word is true.

Okay. So the fact of the premise doesn't matter, doesn't it could be true.

And it, but it in, because it's about the probability, it doesn't matter if each of them are true.

It matters the probability of them leading to a conclusion. All right.

And what we would talk to here is just like we talked about soundness in the deductive here, we want to talk about cogent.

Okay. So a good inductive argument is going to be cogent. What that means is cogent is it's got a strong probability.

So in other words, the premise to conclusion has a high probability of being true and all the premises and conclusion are true.

Okay. So what we're looking for, for a good argument is either it's going to be sound if deductive cogent, if it is inductive.

So if it's deductive, say again, I was like, so post -meal. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. In your mind and in my mind.

Right. And so what, what do we try to do? So if we were going to have the discussion, so, so this, this

Saturday, I'll be out in Utah. Matt Slick is going to come down. We're going to do debate on charismatic gifts.

Nice. What is going to be some of the arguments? Well, Matt's probably, because he's done this in several other debates with me on this issue, he may argue first Corinthians one seven.

He's going to say that the church, it States in there, that there's, that the church is not lacking any charisma where we get the word charismatic gift from until the end times.

Now he's going to argue that therefore the fact that it's not lacking, it means that that gifts continue until the second coming.

Okay. My way of arguing that. And I've done this before with him in debate is to define what lack means lack the word lack, whether in English or the

Greek word both requires a need. So if the church doesn't need those gifts, it's not lacking those gifts you see.

So when I, when I argue this, I'm going to take that argument from where some would put it in a inductive and I want to move it to deductive.

How do I do that? By defining the word lack, because if the word lack requires a need, now we ask the question, does the church need these gifts today?

If the answer is no, then that passage is still true.

Right. You see, so now Matt is going to make it the other argument and say, no, that, that lack doesn't require a need.

And therefore the church, the church has it today to which

I usually ask, does every church have these gifts being practiced? And if they don't, does that mean they're not a church to which he'll say it's the universal church to which

I point out that it was written to the local church, right? So, so this is how debates occur or concur.

And so what ends up happening is as you watch the debate, what are you looking for? Well, much of it what you're looking for at the high level is are these arguments, each of these individual deductive arguments, you start to put them together into one overall argument because the overall thing that we are trying to answer in the debate is, do the charismatic gifts continue to today, right?

That's the main, the main premise. And he's going to argue, yes, I'm going to argue no.

So there we have the premise and the conclusion or a premise and a conclusion, but there's a whole lot of other premises that have to be made in between to get us from that premise to the conclusion.

Those all those supporting arguments have to be made. And in those at the higher level, what we're looking at is an inductive argument.

In other words, people look at it and say, did Matt or Andrew make the higher probability argument?

And we go, okay, that is the probability is greater that the gifts do not continue or they do continue.

And therefore we come to that conclusion. And we would then say, based on what you're looking at, that it's cogent, it's a strong argument.

Okay. And all the premises are true. Now, if either of us can show that a premise is not true, that's what winning the debate is.

Okay. So in a, in the case of the inductive argument, we have, we can have the weak arguments where, where you have all the premises could be true, but it's still not strong and that's going to make it a weak argument.

Okay. It's not cogent. So deductive, we're going to talk valid invalid here.

We're going to in inductive, we're going to talk strong or weak. All right. And so that is basically how we, we take a look at these arguments, right?

I tried to make this as simple as I could. Those who are taking the class for credit, you can,

I encourage you to read through carefully chapter two of how to think clearly by Doug Eggerson.

Okay. That it's going to go through all of this to explain what an argument is. And that's going to be necessary for this.

All right. Now, what we want to deal with, we're going to try to deal with next week is looking at these arguments, how to, how to recognize whether something is valid, invalid.

How do we go about that in the following week? We'll take a look at the logical fallacies.

People love that when we talk about it, but you do, I don't want you guys to look just at, you know, oh, this is a, a logical fallacy.

Here's why people do that. But you know what happens? People sometimes go, ah, that's a logical fallacy, but I don't know which one.

So I can't say where if you understand what we did this week, then you don't have to worry about logical fallacies.

Do I know all the fallacies? No. A lot of them I don't remember. I don't need to.

What I do have to know is whether I can make the point of that the argument is sound or unsound, cogent, uncogent.

Sound, I'm going to be looking for whether it is valid or invalid and all true or not.

Then with the inductive, I'm going to look for if it's cogent or not based on whether it's a high, a strong probability of, of the premise leading to the conclusion and everything true or not.

Okay. Cause if you, if you understand that, I know we spent like an hour on this and I took it down slowly because this is what

I do. I don't sit there and try to memorize all the logical fallacies. Can it help?

Sure. It helps if you can identify the fallacy. Most people that I see that do apologetics and debate, they don't actually know the fallacies, but they use it anyway.

They abuse the fallacies. They'll call it. Yeah, it's a straw man. What have

I defined wrong? Disagreeing with you is not a straw man argument.

A straw man argument is when you set up a false definition that is easily to knock down.

So when someone says that's a straw man, what they must be saying is that I'm providing a false definition.

So whenever someone tells me I'm giving a straw man, I asked them what's the proper definition to which they're like, what?

Because they didn't know what a straw man argument was. Unless I actually did give a wrong definition, they provide it.

Now we could disagree on the definition because nowadays we have people that are well, just making up definitions for everything and they change regularly.

So, but you have to be able to recognize when we're going to have an honest, now

I'm going to use a new word, an honest debate, right? A debate is going to be where, where two sides present different arguments.

An honest debate is going to be one where we are going to use the same definitions. Okay? So not only do we try to make a sound or cogent arguments, but we are also going to use same definitions.

That's another problem in debate and apologetics. We have different definitions.

And so, you know, well, the Mormon says, well, I believe in the Trinity. Yes, but you define the

Trinity as three gods, right? We define the Trinity as one

God. It's not the same definition. The Muslim says, well, the Trinity is false because you know, you believe in three gods.

No, that's not the proper definition. We believe in one God, right? Matt Slick and I both did a debate against guys that were,

I guess they're supposed to be one this Pentecostal, but there are Markian, Monarchians. And it was a new term for us, but...

Manichaeans? Huh? Was it Manichaeans? No, no, no. They believe that there's one

Monarch and that is one being, one person. So it's kind of a oneness

Pentecostalism offshoot. Gotcha. Monarchianism. Yeah. Yeah.

So the debate was over when I asked them in the cross -examination, do you understand that Matt and I believe in one

God? And he said, well, you say that, but that's not what you believe. And in my conclusion,

I said, at that point, the debate was over because they're not debating the proper definition.

Right. Debate over. You know, so I hope this is helpful.

I hope I broke this down simple enough. I want you to really get this and understand this because it will be essential to not only your help in doing apologetics and debate, but in what we're going to look at next week, because you really need to have that foundation to be able to spot how to identify valid, invalid, you know, strong and weak arguments, which are going to be necessary to lead to the logical fallacies.

All right. So that is tonight's class. You have the link that we're showing there on the thing.

If you're if you're not on the Facebook, if you're not on Facebook in the

Passing the Torch group, that's where the chat is. And those in the chat have gotten this form and should be filling it out.

I know that they got it because one person already at least at least one person filled it out. I should check to see if that one

I should see if Randy filled it out yet. I don't know. Let's see. How many any of them,

Randy? Where's individuals? Nope. Randy didn't do his yet.

I did not. Naughty, naughty boy. I failed there. And no pressure,

Randy. But so far, unlike the first quiz, the quiz where I made it harder than the midterm, but we got someone that got 100.

So, you know, no one did it on the quiz, but these were all multiple choice.

So. Right. We'll see how you do. I will get on that.

Yeah. So, but we do encourage you guys to check this out for, you know, take the quiz.

It will be good for you to see how well you're doing in just how much you're, you're obtaining from the course.

And so next week we'll, we'll be back and just trying to look,

I should be barring me having flight delays. I'll put it that way.

We will be on because I will be flying back from Utah.

And so the plan is to still have class next week, and then we will wrap up July 1st.

All right. Nice. We'll hand it back over to Randy for any closing comments. All right.

Well, y 'all heard it. Do the midterm. Midterm. If you're in the class for credit, like I'm going to do.

Get on it, man. After he gets some coffee, because we know he's tired because he was yawning because it was hot out because he was working hard.

Yeah. Yeah. I get up early too. Oh, I know. You know,

I am Brewster started off a conference. He and I did. And he said, anyone who woke up earlier than me has the right to fall asleep while I speak here was up before 430.

And I laughed because that probably works everywhere else. But he was in a farming community.

Yeah. I see some hands go up. He goes, okay. He spotted one. There were like three people that raised their hands, but I think he only spotted one.

He goes, okay, you're able to sleep. None of the rest of you can. Oh my goodness. That's funny.

All right. Well, this has been a blessing, brother. I appreciate you. I appreciate the time that you spend on it.

And with that, I hope everybody has a blessed week. Get on the midterms, myself included and have a blessed week.