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. Uh 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 will be 50 of your grade and then the rest, the 35 left will be in you actually having a debate.

And so that debate 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 going to 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, eight 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 to, 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 what's going to 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 going to get into terms like that and I'm going to explain those things, whether it's, whether it is a sound argument or whether it's a strong argument, we're going to talk these things through.

So as we do that, part of this, 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 going to 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 going to talk about today. What we're going to 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 disagree with what he says. That could be an argument. As we're going to 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.

I'd like to have an argument, please. Sir, have you been here before? No, this is my first time.

I see.

Do you want to have the full argument or were you thinking of taking a course? Well, what would be the cost? Well, yes, it's one pound for a five minute argument, but only eight pounds for a course of 10.

Well, I think it's probably best if I start with the one and see how it goes from there,.

Okay? Fine.

I'll see who's free at the moment. Mr. Dubake is free, but he's a little bit conciliatory. Yes, sir. Try Mr. Barnard, room 12.

Thank you.

Well, I'll see who's free at the moment. Oh, I'm sorry.

This is abuse.

Oh, I see. That explains it. Oh, no, you want 12A next door.

I see.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Not at all.

No, that's all right.

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.

You didn't. You didn't.

I'm telling you, I didn't. You did not.

I'm sorry.

Is this a five minute argument or the full half hour? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, just the five minute one.

Fine.

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. No, I didn't. Oh, you did. No, no, no, no, no, no. You did just now.

No, nonsense.

Oh, look, this is futile. No, it isn't. I gave me up a good argument. No, you didn't. You gave me up 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. Thank you. 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.

Thank you.

Well, what? That was never five minutes just now. I was not allowed to argue. I just paid. I just paid. No, you didn't. I did.

I did.

I didn't argue about that. I'm very sorry.

You didn'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. Oh, shut up.

All right.

Oh, my goodness.

That is what most people think of an argument. That was Monty Python. So that was hysterical. It goes on longer where he gets into different rooms that get him into mother trouble, but he tries 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.

I'm just kidding.

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 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 and, 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, 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 even 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 don't, you're not trying to, you may have multiple premises, only one conclusion. That's a good argument. Now, when we're, 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 their, 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 these are, 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,.

Can you, you know,.

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 the ground, 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,.

You know,.

So,.

And water got splashed over.

Right?

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,.

The,.

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,.

Right?

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.

If A,.

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

If A,.

If A then B,.

A,.

Therefore B,.

Right?

All humans are mammals. Andrew is human. Therefore, he's a mammal,.

Right?

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, 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 some, a claim that's not dealing with how to interpret the Bible, because then I'm 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 they each of these things,.

Right?

Or is this, is the things that each of these individual statements, are they true? Because if any statement is not true, then I already know the argument is not valid,.

Right?

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 are what we, what we think is true.

Okay.

We will find out one day. And then that 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,.

Let's do a different one. You were working on a roof,.

Right?

You're doing some framing work.

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 that the equator would be a little bit more than just the,.

You know,.

Well,.

You're in like 90 degrees and complaining, probably. You're probably in 70 degrees and complaining.

Yeah. No,.

I actually, I was, 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 you were, if we were to have a discussion and you were saying that,.

Well,.

I was,.

I was putting this deck together and I was using a bunch of two by fours and I get super literal with you and, and explain that,.

Well,.

You know,.

That's invalid because they're not actually two, exactly two inches by four inches.

Yep. That makes 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, 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?

Well,.

Actually not until it happens,.

Then,.

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 this.

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?

Premil 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 lengthwise,.

Widthwise,.

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.

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. 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.

That's right.

That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just a true statement.

It's true.

It's true.

We have to recognize that sometimes people weave the conclusion in and out. You got to be able to recognize what are the premises and what is the conclusion.