Favorite fallacies-2

10. DOMINO THEORY

The disputant “disproves” the opposing position by showing that, if true, certain unacceptable consequences would follow; hence, it must be false.

As a rule, a consequentialist argument is invalid, for two reasons:
i) The disputant is often guilty of begging the question by assuming, all along, that said consequences are, in fact, unacceptable. All he has done is to apply his own standards to the question at hand. There is no necessary reason why his opponent should take that for granted. And the disputant has done nothing to justify his own standards. Indeed, his opponent may be well aware of the consequences.

For example, a universalist will argue that “since God is a God of love, hell is a false doctrine.” But a Christian will simply reverse the equation: “Since hell is for real, the universalist has a false doctrine of God.”

ii) The disputant is operating with a perfectionist philosophy of history. But given the existence of evil, we’re in no position to predict or speculate about just what consequences are unacceptable in the economy of God. Bad things happen all the time, in the furtherance of a higher end.

But there are also a couple of cases in which a consequentialist objection is valid:
i) If the disputant’s opponent would agree that said consequences undermine his own precommitments.

For example, if my opponent believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, and I show that a position of his is logically inconsistent with inerrancy, then that consequence should prompt him to reconsider his position.

ii) If said consequences undermine the truth-conditions of reason in general. For example, Alvin Plantinga has argued that evolutionary epistemology is self-refuting, for it undercuts the very basis of rationality. If evolution is true, then it’s false.

11.EQUIVOCATION

The disputant uses the same word in two (or more senses), trading on one sense in one occurrence to lend a surplus sense to the same word in another occurrence.

For example, a Catholic will transfer all the promises made to the NT “church” to the Roman Catholic Church, and then appeal to the NT to prove his doctrine of the church. But this commits a fallacy of equivocation by assuming, without benefit of argument, that whenever the NT talks about the “church,” it must be referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

12.EXTENSIONAL FALLACY

Christians who deny special redemption typically appeal to the “pantos” passages of Scripture. But this confuses extension (referent) with intension (sense). A universal quantifier has a standard intension, but a variable extension. And that follows from the nature of a quantifier, which is necessarily general and abstract rather than specific and concrete marker. That’s what makes it possible to plug in concrete content. A universal quantifier is a class quantifier. As such, it can have no fixed range of reference. In each case, that must be supplied by the concrete context and specific referent. In other words, a universal quantifier has a definite intension but indefinite extension. So its extension is relative to the level of generality of the reference-class in view. Thus, there is no presumption in favor of taking “all” or “every” as meaning everyone without exception. “All” or “every” is always relative to all of something:

13.FALSE ANALOGY

Every argument from analogy assumes an element of disanalogy. The trick is for the parallel to hold fast at the critical point of comparison.

For example, unbelievers like to lump Christians with other religious believers like Muslims, and then blame Christians for all the “religious” violence in the world today. But this is obviously a false analogy, for it operates at too high a level of abstraction. Yes, Christians and Muslims are both “religious,” but this hardly makes a Christian complicit for what a Muslim does—especially when a Muslim is motivated by a distinctive jihadist ethic direct against Christians! One might as well say that Gandhi is to blame for Stalinism since both men were statesmen.

Analogical reasoning is a fundamental feature of human reason in general, as well as religious epistemology in particular. So analogical arguments need to be judged on a case-by-case basis.

14.FALSE ANTITHESIS

A false antithesis assumes that there are only two sides to every question. And that is sometimes the case. But there is no rule of thumb in this matter.

For example, a Catholic will say that an infallible Bible without an infallible teacher is a recipe for religious uncertainty. Yet that ignores a third option, which is the providence of God. Sola Scriptura was never meant to operate in a Deistic vacuum.

15.FIGURATIVE FALLACY

It is common to see opposing positions ranged along a linear continuum, from left to right. There is nothing wrong with this.

Yet oftentimes, this schema becomes a lazy short-cut for serious discussion. The disputant will dismiss his opponent as an “extremist,” or “rightwing fanatic” who is “out of the mainstream” of public opinion.

But aside from the fact that the disputant is to the far left end of the spectrum, and therefore just as “extreme” or “out of the mainstream” as his opponent, to simply slap a figurative label on your opponent is in no way a refutation of his position.

To begin with, this linear scheme is just a metaphor. Right and wrong do not occupy compass points. They do not answer to spatial coordinates.

To merely classify your opponent by this figurative convention does not rise to the level of an argument. To refute him, you need to attach an argument to the label. Why is it wrong to be on that end of the spectrum?

16.GAMBLER’S FALLACY

The disputant assumes that the future will resemble the past. This is the basis of Hume’s probabilistic argument against the occurrence of miracles. It is especially odd in Hume’s case since he denied that natural cases were even observable, much less provable.

17.GENETIC FALLACY

This is a general case of the ad hominem attack. However, the genetic fallacy tends to focus on the history of ideas rather than the immediate origin of an individual’s ideas.

For example, a unitarian will tell a Christian that he shouldn’t believe in the Trinity because this dogma was promulgated by ecumenical councils under the arm-twisting of the Roman emperor. But even if that were true, it is irrelevant to the Biblical basis of the Trinity.

18. GROUP-THINK

The disputant appeals to a consensus of opinion to prove his case. And he will often grease his appeal with a question-begging adjective: “All reputable scientists believe in evolution”; “all civilized countries ban capital punishment.”

To mention a couple of basic problems with this appeal:
i) A consensus may not reflect an independent convergence of critical thinking but, to the contrary, the result of coercive peer pressure.
ii) A consensus of opinion is a shifting thing. If a present consensus of opinion can invalidate a past consensus, then a future consensus can invalidate a present consensus. If we have no faith in the past, why have any faith in the present, which will soon be past?

19.MIRROR-READING

This is a special case of the straw man argument. The disputant imputes his own assumptions and standards to his opponent, and then accuses him of hypocrisy for failing to measure up.

20.NATURALISTIC FALLACY

The disputant makes an illicit leap from what is to what ought to be. A classic example is the way a bureaucracy defends its policies: “We’ve always done it this way!”

To defend your policy by appealing to your policy when your policy is the very thing at issue is a special case of begging the question.

21.OVERGENERALIZATION

The disputant will stereotype his opponent as belonging to a suspect class, viz., all Christians are fundamentalists, all fundamentalists are ignorant.

22.OVERSIMPLIFICATION

This is a special case of the straw man argument. A theological opponent will offer a carefully caveated version of his position. The disputant will drop all the caveats, and attack this simplistic version of the opposing position.

23.OVERSPECIFICATION

The disputant will place a more specific construction on a verse of Scripture than the Scripture will bear. For example, a Roman Catholic will treat any favorable reference to the NT church as a direct reference to the Roman Catholic Church.

A Protestant can be guilty of this too, as when he treats any reference to the Antichrist as a direct prophecy of the papacy.

24.QUOTING OUT OF CONTEXT

The disputant misrepresents his opponent’s view by lifting an isolated sentence two out of context.

At the same time, there is nothing necessarily wrong with commenting on an excerpt as long as that is representative of your opponent’s position.

Sometimes an opponent will claim that he was quoted out of context. But if you ask him to supply the context, he will quickly change the subject.

25.REGRESSIVE FALLACY

The disputant will ground his claim in an explanation which needs, in turn, to be grounded.

For example, a Catholic apologist will say we can’t be sure of what the Bible means unless we have a divine teaching office. But, if so, that only pushes the problem back a step, for the same hermeneutical difficulties will reappear in the divine teaching office.

Likewise, a Catholic apologist will say that Jesus could not be sinless unless his mother was sinless. But by that logic, Mary could not be sinless unless her parents were sinless, and their parents, and so on. Hence, the only way to exempt Mary from original sin would be to do away with the doctrine or original sin entirely.

26.SELECTIVE EVIDENCE

The disputant skews the evidence for or against his position by a selective appeal to the evidence.

A classic example is polling data, which depends on the sample group and the way in the questions are framed.

Again, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a statistical analysis of opinion. But the methodology needs to be even-handed.

27.SEMANTIC ANACHRONISM

The disputant maps dogmatic usage back onto Biblical usage, then appeals to Biblical usage, thus redefined, to disprove dogmatic usage. For example, some Arminians appeal to Mt 23:37, Lk 7:30, Acts 7:51, Gal 2:21; 5:4, 2 Cor 6:1; & Heb 12:15 to disprove “irresistible grace.”

Mt 23:37 alludes to a conditional covenant with the house of Israel (v38; cf. Jer 12:7; 22:5). This is preceptive, not decretive. If we want to find an example of God’s decretive will in Matthew, turn to 11:21-23.

Lk 7:30 has reference to the preaching of John the Baptist. In this verse, “God’s will“ stands for the baptism of repentance. This is preceptive, not decretive. Furthermore, the verb (“rejected”) could just as well take the prepositional phrase (“for themselves”) rather than the noun (“God’s will”) for its object. See the commentaries by Bock, Evans, and Meyer.

Acts 7:51 has reference, not to the internal work of the Spirit, but to the agency of the Spirit in the inspiration of the prophetic word—both in OT preaching (e.g. Num 27:14; Isa 63:10), and the charismatic kerygma of the NT Apostles and evangelists (e.g. Philip; Stephen). So this is preceptive.

In 2 Cor 6:1, I take the phrase about the “grace of God” to be a shorthand expression for “the gospel of the grace of God“ (cf. Acts 20;24), in contrast to a false gospel (2 Cor 11:4; cf. Gal 1:6ff.). This is preceptive.

Gal 2:21 & 5:4 have reference to the doctrine of grace rather than the grace of the doctrine. What people can resist is the doctrine of justification and not the experience of justification, which is a divine act. Once again, the emphasis is preceptive. Moreover, 5:4 is hortatory and hyperbolic. If Paul had believed that the Galatians were guilty of apostasy, he would hardly express confidence in their gracious perseverance (v10).

In Heb 12:15, we should resist the temptation to subjectivize the concept of grace. Throughout this letter, the author’s emphasis is on the phenomenology rather than psychology of faith. His few references to the work of the Spirit are confined to the Spirit’s agency in inspiration and the charismata or sign-gifts. The existential dimension is absent.

Another example is where Arminians treat the mere occurrence of words like “repentance” (Heb 6:2,6), “bought” (2 Pet 2:1), and “sanctify” (Heb 10:29), as if these were technical terms which carried the same specialized meaning as dogmatic usage, and then appeal to these verses to disprove perseverance or special redemption.

But Peter is not using the verb “to buy” as a synonym for penal substitution, which is a theological construct (cf. Isa 53; Rom 5; 2 Cor 5:18,21; Gal 3:13; Col 2:14; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18). Rather, his usage is allusive of false OT prophets like Balaam (2:15; cf. Jude 11), as well as the Exodus generation (cf. Deut 32:6; 2 Sam 7:23)

The author of Hebrews is not using “repentance” in the rotund sense of the Westminster Confession: “repentance unto life is an evangelical grace…” (WCF 15).

Likewise, he is not using “sanctify” in the later dogmatic sense, but in the cultic sense of ritual purity (9:13,20; cf. Exod 29:21; Lev 16:19, LXX)). Notice that the apostate is “sanctified” by the blood of Christ, not the Spirit of God. This is a status, not a process. More generally, the author’s usage in Heb 6 and 12 goes back to the archetypal rebellion at Kadesh, recorded in Num 14 and expounded in Ps 95.

28.SEMANTIC INCEST

This is where a disputant uses one Bible writer’s usage to interpret another Bible writer’s usage. For example, James’ use of “justification” is employed to reinterpret Paul’s usage—and thereby disprove sola fide.

Or Paul’s use of “sanctification” is employed to interpret the sense of the word in Heb 10:29—and thereby disprove perseverance or special redemption.

But this is a fallacious procedure unless the disputant can show, independent of the comparison, that both writers are using the same word the same way.

29.SEMANTIC INFLATION

The disputant will equate the mere occurrence of a word with a whole doctrine associated with the word.

For example, a Catholic will compare and contrast Paul’s doctrine of justification with James’ doctrine of justification. But the mere fact that James uses the word “justification” doesn’t mean that he even has a doctrine of justification. That would depend, not on the occurrence of the word, in isolation, but on a larger argument. Words and concepts are two different things.

30.SPECIAL PLEADING

Special pleading can take two or three forms:

i) The disputant doesn’t play by his own rules. He demands a special exemption from his own criteria when he gets in a bind.

For example, a Catholic apologist will urge you to convert to Catholicism because the RCC offers a degree of certainty not found in Evangelicalism. But when you bring up counterexamples, he will defend the bold claims of his church by retreating into uncertainty. Eventually, you end up with a tautology: the church is certain—except when it isn’t, and you can’t be certain of when the church is certain.

ii) The disputant introduces a makeshift harmonization that has no independent credibility except to salvage his original claim.

For example, the Watchtower will redefine the terms of fulfillment when one of its predictions goes awry.

iii) The disputant will build so many escape clauses into his theory that it is consistent with the absence of evidence or contrary lines of evidence. Examples include Darwinism, Marxism, ufology, and Freudian psychology.

31.STRAW MAN ARGUMENT

The disputant imputes to his opponent a view which his opponent doesn’t hold, or else the worst possible version of a view he does hold, and then proceeds to rebut it.

For example, the liberal media habitually debunk the Christian faith by debunking a fallen Televangelist, instead of judging the case for the faith by its most astute spokesmen.

Likewise, Karl Keating, in his book “Catholicism and Fundamentalism,” takes aim at popular spokesmen like Swaggart and Boettner. Now, up to a point, there is nothing wrong with that inasmuch as a popularizer may be an influential voice. Still, that is no way to judge a belief-system. That is not the standard by which Keating would like his own church to be judged.

32.TESTIMONIAL

This is the flip-side of the ad hominem attack. The disputant appeals to all the good men and women who share his belief. In Catholicism, this is an appeal to the saints.

Yet a testimonial rarely has any bearing on doctrinal truths. One reason Christianity is a revealed religion is because many of its truths lie outside the realm of ordinary experience. They are either transcendent truths, or truths about unrepeatable events.

33.THROWAWAY ARGUMENT

The disputant offers some trivial concession which has no bearing on his primary position in order to make himself look magnanimous and make his opponenet look petty if he doesn’t reciprocate.

34.TRICK QUESTION

The disputant poses a leading or loaded question. This is designed to shift the burden of proof or prejudice the answer.

35.TRUTH BY DEFINITION

The disputant will stipulate what counts as evidence. This takes different forms.

For example, in the creation/evolution debate, the Darwinist will insist that any evidence or implication of a supernatural agent (God) is out of court since, by definition, science only deals with natural phenomena.

Notice how this prejudges, in advance of empirical investigation, what science is allowed to discover. It prejudges what the world is like before it ever looks out the window.

Along the same lines is the claim that no reputable scientist disputes evolution. This arbitrarily redefines any dissident as disreputable, regardless of his credentials or arguments.

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For further reading:

D. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (Baker 1996).

J. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (P&R 1987).

P. Geach, Logic Matters (Blackwell 1972).

_____Reason & Argument (U of California 1977).