If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? Therefore, you can’t have any pudding
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Apologetics and Arguments
The core of apologetic studies is the consideration of arguments. I don’t mean fights, the kind that break out over lunch between siblings. I mean sets of statements one of which is the conclusion or main point. The other statements somehow support or lead to the conclusion. We use arguments all the time. We even use them when we don’t mean to. They are the warp and woof of human discourse. The crucial thing to notice about arguments is that they can be good or bad. Here is a good argument: (1) If you listened carefully to Ben, then you understand apologetics(2) You don’t understand apologetics (3) Therefore, you did…
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Abortionist Logical Consistency: A Right for the Goose Should be a Right for the Gander
Some positions are best opposed by trying to show what would follow from their view. Modus Tollens is particularly helpful in this way and takes the following form: if A, then B. Not B. Therefore, not A. They have the useful feature of providing the user with a tool for showing horrible consequences that can force someone to reject the antecedent. For example, a favored argument against abortion is to suggest that if abortion is morally justifiable, then infanticide is justifiable. The anti-abortionist relies on the consequent being plainly intolerable and should lead to the rejection of the antecedent. Those who are consistent are forced either to accept the consequent…
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HQ Awards: Fallacy of the Year
Anne: “I oppose X” George: “You only oppose X because you are a Y” A: “No, I oppose X because of reasons A, B, and C.” G: “You only think A, B, and C because you are a Y.” A: “No, I really think A, B, and C are true.” G: “You wouldn’t oppose X if you were a Z” A: “Maybe, but A, B, and C would still be true if I was a Z and so I ought to oppose X even if I didn’t” G: “But if you were a Z how would you know about A, B, and C?” A: “Someone would have to tell me about A, B, and C. This is what I am trying…
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Why We Should Argue About Worldview: A Reply to Jonathan Merritt.
Conservative Christians keep losing at culture wars. So argues Johnathan Merritt. Merritt thinks he knows why. They are obsessed with arguing about worldview. Consequently, Conservative Christians are failing to persuade people: They focus on ideology while ignoring people: When Christians talk about [x], they often frame it as a clash of worldviews or ideologies…Those who have a more progressive view… use concrete language and share specific stories. They talk about real… people with real struggles who experience real oppression. Narrative framing usually wins in public debates because it touches listeners’ hearts. Whether or not Merritt is right about convincing people is hard to tell. What I would like to quibble…
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Hasker’s Existential Argument
According to William Hasker, the existential problem of evil occurs when “theism is questioned and/or rejected on the basis of moral protest, indignation, and outrage at the evils of this world.” Hasker claims that if I am glad that I exist, then I cannot (reasonably) protest against God. The simple version of his argument is: (1) I am glad that I exist.(2) If I am glad that I exist, then I am glad that the history of the world is the way it is.(3) If I am glad that the history of the world is what it is, then I cannot reproach God for the general character or the major events of the…
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On Vagueness
Here is an old puzzle: Imagine a heap of sand. Now imagine taking one grain of sand off the top. It’s still a heap, right? Now keep going. At each removal of a grain the heap remains a heap until you get to one grain. One grain isn’t a heap so something changed. It’s just not clear when it changed. That’s vague. Here’s another puzzle I wrote about the other day (I got it from Peter van Inwagen’s book, Material Beings). Imagine yourself as a freshly fertilized egg. Call it A. The single cell then becomes two cells, A and B. Now imagine that B fails to make it and…
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Analogies and Inverse Probabilities
The classic argument from design is as follows: The universe is ordered. Unless there is a God, it is unlikely that the universe would be ordered. So, given the orderliness of the universe, God is likely to exist. The argument has intuitive force. Designed things have designers. Order is a result of design so our observation of order leads naturally to the conclusion that the universe has been designed by a designer. Here is a good criticism from inverted probability. Simply put, to invert probability is to take an argument such as the design argument and switch it around. So, A. “given the existence of God, the universe is likely…