What place does logic have in the world of faith?

This is a question that is leveled at Christianity, and is meant to put us at odds with reason; it is meant to deceive and mislead believers.

The truth is that seeing logic in the world implies order, and order is antithetical to a world without something of authority to set and keep that order. The very idea of the rules of logic actually implies God, and so it is far from being at odds with our faith. Our faith, in fact, confirms the ability to reason!

Not only does our faith confirm it, but by it we can learn about God. He has revealed Himself and His plan for the world through His word. From that inspired word, we are told to learn diligently so that we can present ourselves as to God as a workman without shame because we rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15). As workman, we are to make disciples who fear and love the lord and grow into workman themselves, and we are to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have in Christ.

The question of whether we should, as people of faith, use reason is an ignorant, deceptive question. Of course we should and do. What this article is going to examine are many of the fallacies that one can fall into, or have used against them.

These are very important to know for personal accountability, either rightly presenting an argument to someone else, or rightly identifying when an invalid argument is being presented to you. As defenders of the faith, we felt the need to make sure you, our readers, were at least familiar with these classic logical fallacies.

What is a fallacy?

Let’s look at a definition taken from Wikipedia, as it provides a good understanding:

A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves" in the construction of an argument.  A fallacious argument may be deceptive by appearing to be better than it really is. Some fallacies are committed intentionally to manipulate or persuade by deception, while others are committed unintentionally due to carelessness or ignorance, as even lawyers admit that the extent to which an argument is sound or unsound depends on the context in which the argument is made.

Basically a fallacy is a way to use faulty logic or reasoning to prove your conclusion is true. It should be noted that your conclusion might very well be correct, but an invalid argument, one committing a fallacy, will not prove anything. We all experience these being used every day.

The first fallacy we will examine is, in my estimation, the most used fallacy.

Appeal to Authority

The fallacy argumentum ad auctoritatem, or commonly known as “Appeal to Authority”, is defined as:

Appealing to an authority for evidence when they are not a true authority, or that a claim is true simply because someone else (who is considered an authority) believes it.

Anyone that has been a Christian for some time has seen this fallacy used quite often, and possibly used it themselves unintentionally. Some examples include:

• The early church fathers, like Irenaeus, believed this…
  
• The Protestant Reformers, like John Calvin, Martin Luther, and John Wycliffe believed this…
  
• My pastor believes this…
  

Recently I saw this fallacy used in this way:

After praying, the Lord directed me to a website "Grace to You" with commentary on this subject by Dr. John MacArthur. Here is his biography: John MacArthur is the pastor-teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, as well as an author, conference speaker, president of The Master’s College and Seminary, and featured teacher with the Grace to You media ministry. His credentials are solid and he surely is way smarter than I so I will defer to his commentary on the subject.

This person is using the Appeal to Authority fallacy in a very classic way. You cite the ‘expert’ and then provide a list of their credentials in order to establish their credibility. Then, you cite something they believe and claim that it must be the truth because of the credibility you just established.  

Just because a supposed or actual expert believes something, doesn’t make it true (though the testimony of an actual expert should be held in higher regard). This is why I always caution people regarding using Biblical commentary, because you can find a commentary to defend any belief.

For example, the Roman Catholic Church has their Catechism (a giant book of commentary), where they ‘use’ the scripture to defend their unbiblical doctrine. Likewise, Calvinists and Arminians both have well educated theologians that come to completely different points of view using the scripture. This doesn’t mean the truth cannot be found; it means it takes an open heart, a willing spirit, patience and the Word of God to find the answer.

What we are called to always do is test everything via the scripture. It’s the most fundamental precept that every student of the Bible must adhere to: Sola Scriptura; by scripture alone. The Bible, because it is the inspired word of God, is the supreme authority on all matters.

Teachers

What about teachers? Aren’t they authority figures that we should listen to?

There are specially gifted teachers of God that He has called and gifted through the Holy Spirit in order to equip and build up the body of Christ in the knowledge and grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Similarly, we are all to build and strengthen our faith, and be equipped for the works of ministry, and God uses teachers to help us with that. There is a great deal we can learn from our brothers and sisters in Christ.

However, it is our personal responsibility to search for the truth, because we will be held personally accoutable. I encourage believers to find a teacher they can trust, but never put them on a pedestal, and never start using their teachings as infallible. A trustworthy teacher is one that has consistently used the word of God properly and to the glory of God. Search the scriptures daily, to find out if what they say is true.

^{Acts 17:11}

Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Luke points out that the Bereans were nobler for testing the teachings of Paul against scripture. If testing the words of an apostle is noble, how much more ought we to test teachers today?

Different forms: Appeal to Special Revelation

A form of Appealing to Authority that is especially prevalent in all religions, Christianity included unfortunately, is Appealing to Special Revelation. This is when someone uses their personal ‘spiritual experience’ or ‘spiritual revelation’ in order to provide more ‘proof’ that their position is correct. This type of argument is actually worse than your usual appeal to authority because the message from the authority figure is unverifiable. Recall above that the person started their argument with:

After praying, the Lord directed me to a website "Grace to You" with commentary on this subject

This makes it appear as if this person was in deep communion with God, and received some special direction or revelation from God that led them to MacArthur’s website. There is no way to validate that this person received any direction from God. This sort of statement becomes deceptive and misleading, whether intentional or not. We cannot validate the personal experience of anyone, which is why we always go back to Sola Scriptura.

Bandwagon Fallacy

The argumentum ad populum is another popular fallacy and is directly translated as “appeal to people”, but is more commonly called the Bandwagon Fallacy. It can be roughly defined as:

The belief that a conclusion is true because it is widely held by others.

This is simultaneously one of the most used fallacies while also one of the earliest to be refuted in a person’s life. Have you ever heard the phrase, “If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” That was your parent or smarter friend telling you that just because everybody says something is fun or good doesn’t necessarily mean it is.

How is this used within and against our faith? I have heard it used in defense of heretical teachers like Joel Osteen. “They must be doing something right, just look at the size of their church! That many people can’t be wrong!” Sadly, they can and are wrong for believing what he, and many others, falsely teaches.

A more sweeping use of this fallacy is employed by the RCC when they support any particular doctrine with tradition. Really, tradition just means that an authority figure within the RCC believed something, convinced others to believe it, and eventually made that belief dogma for them. It is a Bandwagon Fallacy predicated by an Appeal to Authority.

We also see this fallacy thrown at the church on a regular basis when a secularist says something like,  “The majority of scientists agree…” or even more broadly, “Science tells us that…” Anybody who tries to justify their belief beginning with one of those statements is really admitting that they haven’t done enough studying themselves to properly explain their conclusion, but they really want you to believe it anyway.

Does that mean their conclusion is wrong? No. Does that mean you should approach their beliefs skeptically? Yep.

As Christians, we are to study the word so that we can discern what is good and what is not. We are to grow in the wisdom of the Lord so that when we are faced with a threat to our faith, we can properly defend ourselves, especially teachers and overseers. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t mean it is true, and probably the best example of this is the Protestant Reformation. What Martin Luther started was widely opposed, but despite his minority opinion, he was right.

Ad Hominem

The ad hominem fallacy is a very basic, emotional reaction to having your position challenged. It is extremely prideful and usually is the last resort in defense of an ignorant position. Basically, an ad hominem attack is:

Attacking the person directly instead of the argument they are making.

 Let’s say you are attending a Bible study with a group of friends, and somebody says something you are certain isn’t scriptural. During class, or afterwards in private, you confront this person about what they said, and lovingly, patiently try to explain why they are wrong.

You can tell the person is emotionally reacting to what you are saying, and while they may offer some opposition, by the end they are mad and tell you that you are wrong because you are a gunky head (feel free to insert your own insult there).

They really don’t care that you just laid out exactly why they were wrong and why they should believe the proper conclusion you presented because of pride. You just attacked their comfortable (lazy) position, and they are going to lash out like a cornered animal.

If you are extremely honest with yourself, I imagine you would have to admit you have been that cornered animal at one point or another. I would wager that everyone has been. Some position we held was attacked, and we happen to take pride in that position, and so we lashed out.

Galatians 5 is famous for listing the fruit of the Spirit, but just before that it also lists the works of the flesh. Some of those works of the flesh are enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries and dissensions. To be sure, an ad hominem attack is not a Christian response, it is a sinful one.

Then again, I could just be a gunky head…

Genetic Fallacy

I did a little searching, and I couldn’t find a Latin form of this one, however it is also sometimes referred to as the Fallacy of Origins. I think that name actually will clue you in more to the meaning of the fallacy, but Genetic Fallacy is the more common name, so I am sticking with it. It is:

            An attempt to disqualify or contradict a conclusion based on where that conclusion originated.

For example, Protestants and the RCC have different Bibles. Most of the canon is the same, but the RCC include the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical books. These books and their exclusion from the Bible are a topic unto themselves, and much has been written on the topic.

The argument that has been thrown at me is that the Protestant Bible only looks the way it does because Luther decided to leave some of the Apocrypha out. If he hadn’t made that decision, Protestants and Roman Catholics would all have the same Bible.

The reality is, that argument doesn’t even address the reasons for the Apocrypha being left out of the Protestant Bible, it just attempts to undermine Protestants based on one person’s opinion. If they want to prove the Apocrypha should be included, they will actually have to develop an argument with that conclusion.

Allow me to give you the Texas version of the argument, just in case that last one wasn’t clear:

Ole’ what’s-his-face believed it, and y'all all know he was a gunky head, so it can’t be true.

The truthfulness of a conclusion or the validity of the argument in NO WAY depends on the character of the person that holds that conclusion or makes that argument. Genocide isn’t wrong because Hitler did it, and nobody likes that guy. Genocide is wrong because it is hateful, disgusting mass murder that is completely opposed to the command and nature of God.

Straw Man

The Straw Man argument is when you summarize a weak version of your opponent’s argument, and then refute it to prove your point is correct.

This is, quite honestly, a very easy fallacy to commit. Consider the Calvinism articles I have been putting up. I have tried to be careful to present their view clearly, because it would not be helpful to anyone if I misrepresented their position, threw out my own argument, and declared myself the winner.

There is a fuzzy line between giving enough information to properly explain your opponents view and diving off into the arguments they themselves would try to use to support their position. It is always necessary to sufficiently explain the argument of the other side, but it is not always necessary to run through their entire train of thought if you can refute one of their foundational points.

An example of this would be Christianity, quite frankly. And this isn’t really my example, it is the Apostle Paul’s. The totality of Christian doctrine is complex and interconnected, and people have attacked it for nearly 2,000 years now. According to Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19, if Christ hasn’t actually been raised from the dead, then Christianity is false, and Christians should be the most pitied people in the world.

If someone had summarized to Paul the gospel, and then presented irrefutable proof that Christ’s body had been found, that person wouldn’t have to explain every point of every doctrine. It would have been sufficient for them to simply explain the basics and then kick the legs out from under the gospel by proving Christ hadn’t risen.

That would be a hypothetical was in which a summarization of an argument is acceptable. Thank God Christ has risen though!

A way in which a summarization of your opponent’s view is unacceptable and a Straw Man is a video that has made the rounds for several years now called Zeitgeist. In the first twenty minutes or so, it presents a completely false view of the birth of Christ, and then sets out to prove that Christians stole the story of Christ’s birth from other religions.

The fact is that the makers of the video had absolutely no integrity, and what they presented was a mess of false assumptions and claims.

If we believers in Christ are slow to speak, slow to anger and quick to listen, we will be far more likely to rightly understand any opposition to our beliefs and respectfully refute them. Using a Straw Man is at best lazy, and at worst downright dishonest.

Circular Reasoning

Circular Reasoning, circulus en probando (circle in proving), is sometimes also called Paradoxical Thinking or Begging the Question.

Circular Reasoning is an argument in which the conclusion that is being proven is an assumed fact within the argument itself.

For instance, if someone tells you something silly like, “Science is true because scientists used science to prove it,” then they are assuming the truth of the scientific process to prove it. If that makes your head hurt a little, welcome to the club. It took me a good ten minutes to come up with that example because people don’t normally think this way on purpose.

That said, it can be a sneaky fallacy that you fall into by mistake. Another example would be when the RCC claims they are the authoritative church on earth because the RCC decided they were the authority. Sorry, but that is not even close to a valid argument. The RCC can’t declare themselves the rightful church just like I can’t declare myself President of the United States, and trust me, that is tempting to try considering the shape of the 2016 campaigns so far.

Post hoc

The full name of this fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc, and it means “after this, therefore because of this”. Really the name of the fallacy is enough to define it, so I will jump right into an example that is leveled at Christians all the time. An atheist might say to a Christian:

“Just because you pray, and what you prayed for happens doesn’t mean it was your prayer that caused it.”

Are they right?

Logically, it is a fallacious argument. Just because I pray for rain, and then it rains, doesn’t mean my prayer was the instigating cause of the rain. On the other hand, just because it is a post hoc fallacy doesn’t mean it WASN’T my prayer. God could absolutely have heard my prayer for rain and granted it.

Consider this fallacy a safeguard against assuming. Just because one event happened after another doesn’t necessarily mean the first caused the second.

This leads me to the last fallacy I want to cover, and it is one that I think everyone comes to understand after practicing discernment of these flawed arguments.

Argument from Fallacy

To be honest, I only learned about this after a friend and I spent an entire evening debating Roman Catholicism, and we realized we were both committing this fallacy whose name we didn’t know.

The Argument from Fallacy is the argument that someone’s position is wrong because they use a fallacy to support it.

I have mentioned this throughout this article, and I wanted to dedicate this last section to solidifying my point. Just because I was able to listen and pick apart some of my friend’s arguments did not mean he was wrong. Likewise, when I made an argument that he found a fallacy in, it did not make me wrong. What we both realized was that we both needed to go back and examine what we believed and be more diligent in connecting the logical dots.

A word of encouragement…

I will wrap up with this word of encouragement. Hold strong in your faith. God has witnessed to you in many ways, and just because you may not be able to counter someone’s attack against your faith doesn’t mean that you are wrong. It is absolutely okay to tell someone you don’t know, but you still believe. Likewise, if you are attacked from “within the church”, and don’t know how to respond, turn to scripture. If you trust your pastor, go to him for wisdom (if you don’t find a new pastor…). If Billy and I have earned your trust, email us.

As a Christian, you have every tool available to you in order to understand the scripture. If you seek Him and His word for answers, He will provide you the answers (Matt.7:7). Through scripture, we see that it’s God’s general tendency not to use the wise, the experts, and the intelligent, in order to teach the truth of God. Instead He gives the truth to those who humble themselves and seek Him through His word.

I would urge you to read the follow short articles on studying the Word of God.

^{2 Timothy 2:15}

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

Foundations: Ensuring your foundational doctrines are scripturally sound.

Challenge your Truths: How we must challenge everything we hear and 'know' against the Bible.
Depths of Understanding: Ensuring what you know fits with the entire context of the Bible.
Supporting your positions: A short study on properly interpreting scripture.