Why is the discussion starting here?

One of the most important steps you can take in evaluating the issues that come up in life is to ask what assumptions are being made at the beginning of a discussion. Is the conversation starting where it ought to? Are people beginning their reasoning with some false assumptions, in terms of a false concept of what happened in a certain historical context, false priorities, or whatever else?

For example, when critics of Christianity try to cast doubt on something like the authorship of the gospels or their genre, and they object to how few sources Christians are citing in support of their position or how late the sources are, how does the critic's position compare? How many and how late are the sources supporting his position? If there's an assumption that the skeptic shouldn't be expected to show any support for his positions among the ancient sources, is that a valid assumption?

Or when there's a controversy surrounding a Marian apparition or a paranormal case of some other type, what explanatory options are people starting with? Are they taking the relevant factors into account?

Or when an advocate of baptismal regeneration begins a discussion with a large number of exceptions in mind to the rule of baptismal regeneration that he's advocating (people who lived in the Old Testament era, people who lived during Jesus' public ministry, Cornelius, martyrs who died without being baptized, catechumens who died without being baptized, etc.), should those exceptions be granted without supporting arguments? If supporting arguments are offered, are they adequate? Even if it's popular to allow the advocate of baptismal regeneration to assume a lot of exceptions to the rule without arguing for them, should you be going along with that popular practice?

It's important to think through issues like these. Be cautious about how discussions are framed and how they proceed.

Advocates Of Baptismal Regeneration Rely On Implicit Arguments

In a post last year, I discussed several implicit lines of evidence for belief in justification apart from baptism among the early extrabiblical sources. As I mentioned there, all of us rely on implicit reasoning across many contexts in life, including when making judgments about Biblical and patristic issues. You wouldn't be able to function for a single day in your life without relying on implicit reasoning at some point. I gave some examples of how advocates of baptismal regeneration use some implicit arguments to support their own position. Yet, people often reject implicit arguments because of their implicit rather than explicit nature, or they assign implicit arguments less significance than those arguments actually have. Even many opponents of baptismal regeneration seem to get taken in by that sort of bad reasoning, to the point that they won't cite any extrabiblical sources who seem to support their view in an implicit way, since the evidence isn't explicit. Whether that's due to peer pressure, confusing a preference for explicit evidence with a need for it, or whatever else, it's a mistake.

Implicit Exclusions Of Baptismal Regeneration In Early Christian Literature

As I discussed in another post, we find baptismal regeneration contradicted in a large number and variety of ways in the extrabiblical sources before the Reformation. Sometimes an exclusion of baptism as a means of justification is implicit rather than explicit.

And people will often object to the use of implicit evidence. But we all rely on it. For example, we depend on implicit evidence when deciding how to translate a word in a document, basing our conclusion on what the surrounding context seems to imply. Christians have often said, rightly, that it's unreasonable for a Muslim to ask us for a passage in the gospels in which Jesus says "I am God. Worship me." or some equivalent. A term like "Trinity" doesn't have to appear in the Bible for Trinitarianism to be Biblical. Roman Catholics often use arguments from typology that aren't explicit. And so on. Advocates of baptismal regeneration rely on implicit argumentation in the context of supporting that doctrine. The appeal to alleged references to baptism in terms like "water" in John 3:5 and "washing" in Titus 3:5 relies on implicit argumentation, so does their reasoning that baptismal regeneration has been in effect during certain circumstances and not in others (e.g., not being applicable during the Old Testament era and some portion or all of Jesus' public ministry), etc. Since proponents of baptismal regeneration rely on implicit argumentation in their reasoning about the subject, they're not in a position to object to their opponents' use of implicit argumentation. The fact that we prefer explicit evidence doesn't mean that implicit evidence has no value. Something can be less valuable, yet still have value to some extent. The nature of life is such that evidence comes in both implicit and explicit forms, with people sometimes disagreeing about whether something is implicit or explicit, and we have to take all of the evidence into account.

The Best Arguments For The Enfield Poltergeist

In a post last year, I made some recommendations about how to begin studying the Enfield case. What I want to do in this post is make some suggestions about how to argue for the case's authenticity.

Because the evidence for it is so multifaceted and so strong in so many contexts, and because there's some variability in which arguments will persuade which people, there are many approaches you can take that would have some merit. I'm not suggesting that the approach I'll outline below is the only one that should be taken. You can make whatever adjustments you think are appropriate to my recommendations, but I'll discuss a few of the arguments I would include. I'll start with a couple that I think would be the easiest to use, then mention some that are harder to articulate, but have a lot of value.

Which Resurrection Evidence To Focus On

I've written elsewhere about the large number and variety of evidences we have for Jesus' resurrection. But it's often useful to narrow our focus, to present a more concise argument or to single out some lines of evidence to emphasize more than others.

A couple of areas I would recommend focusing on:

- Testimony from sources hostile to early Christianity. That can take two forms. You can cite individuals who were initially opposed to Christianity, but later became Christians. James and Paul are the two best ones to focus on, and the posts linked to their names explain some of the reasons why. Or you can cite sources who remained opposed to Christianity, yet corroborated one or more lines of evidence for the resurrection. See here regarding Jewish corroboration of the empty tomb and here concerning pagan corroboration, for example.

- Claims made by the early Christians that were difficult for them in some way. There's a lot that can be cited here. You'll have to choose which examples you want to focus on. Why did the early Christians claim that a resurrection had occurred, given how unexpected that was in ancient Jewish thought and given the alternatives available (a resuscitation, an apparition, a vision, etc.)? Why is the risen Jesus portrayed as having such an ordinary body, contrary to ancient Jewish expectation? Why are the early accounts so restrained? Why is the resurrected Jesus portrayed as retaining his crucifixion wounds? Why have a group of women discover the empty tomb while Jesus' male disciples are in a state of unbelief and fear? Why are female witnesses so prominent in Luke's gospel, yet so lacking in prominence in Acts? Etc.

In the long run we're all dead

This is generally good advice:

http://fakenous.net/?p=46

http://fakenous.net/?p=54

http://fakenous.net/?p=77

That said, I don't think the fundamental problem is lack of skill at the art of argumentation. Mind you, many people would benefit from a course in informal logic, standards of evidence, &c.

The main problem is that many people want certain results, want a particular outcome, and they don't care about the quality of the argumentation. They just want the results. The outcome is what's important, not the means. On that view, a persuasive bad argument is better than an unpersuasive good argument. It's not about true, reason, and evidence. Rather, argumentation in political discourse has a purely instrumental value, to further or secular the objective. The only value is the desired outcome. How you get there is secondary. 

Trained philosophers sometimes resort to atrocious arguments. It's not due to lack of skill. If they're sufficiently invested in an issue, a philosopher may reason just a badly as someone with no training in logic or probability theory. It's too idealistic to think this is just about honing one's skills in the art of argumentation.

If people think this life is all there is, then they are liable to be impatient about the finer points of argumentation. Time is running out to get things done. Lost opportunities can't be redeemed. There are no eschatological compensations. As John Maynard Keynes, put it, "In the long run we're all dead!" So it's now or never. 

If that's their perspective, then the priority is to achieve the goal by any means necessary, as expeditiously as possible. On that view, a convincing lie is more efficient than a complex argument. It comes down to the utility of political discourse to further the agenda. 

Responding To Horrible Arguments

All of us use bad arguments at times. Nobody will be right about everything all of the time. But some arguments are especially bad. You look at the argument again. And again. And again. It still doesn't make any sense. You keep trying to untangle it to get at the reasoning behind it. Is the argument really as awful as it seems? But why would somebody use such a bad argument? Surely he didn't mean that. But what's the alternative?

There's nothing new under the sun. Anybody who's been involved in apologetics for long should resonate with the experience Basil of Caesarea described more than 1500 years ago:

"The very obviousness of the absurdity makes it difficult for us to find arguments to confute their unreasonableness; so that really their folly looks like an advantage to them; just as soft and yielding bodies offer no resistance, and therefore cannot be struck a stout blow. It is impossible to bring a vigorous confutation to bear on a palpable absurdity. The only course open to us is to pass by their abominable impiety in silence. Yet our love for the brethren and the importunity of our opponents makes silence impossible." (On The Holy Spirit, 17:41)

Extreme examples

How your opponent reacts to an extreme example is usually a good litmus test of whether your opponent is rational or irrational. Many folks don't understand the nature of argument, of the function of extreme examples.

Suppose a supporter of Trayvon Martin says "It's always tragic when someone dies young." That's a blanket claim.

The danger of making blanket claims is that these are apt to be overgeneralizations. They overlook exceptions.

The way to challenge a blanket claim is to cite a counterexample. If there are exceptions to the claim, then it can't be said as a matter of principle that dying young is always tragic. 

Suppose I counter the claim by asking, "If Pol Pot had died at 17, would that be tragic?" 

Suppose my opponent exclaims, "How dare you equate Trayvon Martin with Pol Pot!" 

Of course, that misses the point of the analogy. I'm not equating the two. I'm not comparing them at the level of character. I'm not suggesting that Martin would grow up to be the next Pol Pot.

Opponents who react that way don't grasp the function of extreme examples. The value of an extreme example lies in the fact that, being extreme, that's something both sides should be able to agree on. A reasonable person ought to agree that Pot Pot dying at 17 would not be tragic. 

So you begin with an extreme example to establish common ground, and work back from there. The purpose of the extreme example is not to compare Trayvon Martin with Pol Pot, but to establish a principle. Namely: dying young is not inherently tragic. It depends on what the decedent would have done with the rest of his life, given a normal lifespan. It may also depend on what would have been done to him, had he lived longer. And it may also depend on the long-range consequences, which may outlive us. 

Cogent Arguments

Annoyed Pinoy said...

"Paul, how would you define "cogency" exactly"?

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/05/death-of-christian-apologetics.html#8876832514310712989

I would define cogency briefly as: A sound argument that is recognized by your audience to be so due to the presentation of its parts (form and content).

For example, here's a sound argument:

[1] God exists or December first is Christmas day.

[2] December first is not Christmas day.

[3] Therefore, God exists.

This argument is sound, not cogent.

If your apologetic argument is one that no one will recognize as sound, it's basically useless as an apologetic argument. Patting yourself on the back for merely announcing "the truth" to non-believer, and consoling yourself that "he'll be judged all the more for rejecting it", isn't doing apologetics.

Take the above argument again and let's draw another conclusion:

[1*] God does not exist or December first is Christmas day.

[2*] December first is not Christmas day.

[3*] Therefore, God does not exist.

An atheist will believe all the premises of this argument are true and so believe he's presented us with a sound argument for the non-existence of God. The problem is, like with the first argument, the atheological argument is not cogent.

However, it is the case that one of these arguments is in fact sound (as a Christian, I believe it's the first). The problem is that its soundness is hidden from us. The only way an audience would recognize the alleged soundness of the one over the other is because they already believe that God exists or that he does not.

But for both sides, there is nothing in their respective argument that rationally compels us to accept the premises.

So (one of) the apologist's job is to try to figure out how to make his arguments cogent. To get the audience to accept what you believe (know!) is true. You can do this by arguing, expanding, elaborating, for and/or on one or more of the premises.

There are many ways to do this, and a future post may be helpful in fleshing some of this out, but we can mention one thing not to do. Thwacking unbelievers on the head with your Bible and telling them that they have a reason to believe that God exists because the Bible says God exists, and the Bible is the word of God and so cannot be wrong, ergo God exists, isn't the way to go.