Latest / The Immutable Word / EP036 When Debate Becomes Diagnosis: Beware the Label Trap

Transcript

EP036 When Debate Becomes Diagnosis: Beware the Label Trap · The Immutable Word

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When debate turns into diagnosis, we're no longer debating, we're no longer talking about ideas.
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And then, why is that important for a Christian to be challenged with this thinking?
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Prove all things. That's the challenge.
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That means God demands of the believer
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to not just argue forcefully about something, but to argue correctly.
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There's a difference if you don't know how to.
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Hello, and welcome back to The Immutable Word. We're back in the garage,
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and we have another good episode planned for you tonight.
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But before we jump into our topic, today is Veterans Day, and I'd like to wish
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those who have served a happy Veterans Day.
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And thank you to those who have served and sacrificed.
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It's easy to enjoy just another holiday and be distracted from the relevance
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of this day and its historical significance. So I thought I'd just take a moment
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in honor of our veterans just to talk about the origin of the holiday.
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Probably most people don't even know,
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The history of Veterans Day and where
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it came from, we just know that it's associated to veterans in general.
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But the historical background is that it was called Armistice Day,
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which commemorated the end of World War I, which is about 107 years ago now.
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The fighting seized on November 11, 1918 at the 11th hour, marking a significant moment in history.
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So in 1919, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day to honor those
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who served in the war, and then transitioned to Veterans Day.
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So initially it was Armistice Day focused on World War I veterans.
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However, after World War II and the Korean War, there was a push to honor all U.S.
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Veterans. In 1954, that's when President Eisenhower signed a bill changing the
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name from Armistice Day to Veterans Day.
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And from there, it expands its significance to include all military veterans.
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So now it's a federal holiday observed annually on November 11th, honoring all U.S.
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Veterans for their service and sacrifice. So again, from the immutable word,
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we appreciate those who served.
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So just going back to this episode before we
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go into it so we did episode 35 where we
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talked about a pretty interesting topic on aliens
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and ufos and put the lens of scripture on it
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so we did get some feedback a lot of people liked it some people want us to
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do more of that type of topic maybe on aliens and angels and so we've already
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been talking about doing some of those i would you know i have to tell you robert
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i was a little nervous about doing this episode it's just a brand a new topic
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that is, you know, I think it's taboo.
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And that's why I kind of felt nervous about it.
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I don't know how you felt about it, but I think, you know, going through the lens of scripture.
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From a Bible-believing Christian was a good way to approach it,
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and we're going to approach everything that way.
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But anyways, just interested in what you thought about it, and you're interested
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in maybe digging in a little bit deeper into some of those topics.
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Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, what we're trying to do is approach
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almost any subject, really, across the board, whether it's a cultural subject,
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whether it's political, whether it's theological.
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You know, I don't think any conversation necessarily is taboo unless it's inappropriate, right?
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But aliens is a significant, you know, topic and subject in our culture.
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So, so we're, you know, ghosts, phantoms, you know, Sasquatch, you name it, right?
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Cryptids, that stuff they say, well, you know, those are just for kooks and stuff.
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You know, maybe, maybe not, but I believe every topic deserves a fair examination under scripture.
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And the thing is, there's going to be a lot of... There's a huge...
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I mean, we don't have millions of listeners or anything, but once you get into
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10s, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50 different listeners, maybe 100 plus listens, then guess what?
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You're going to run across people with different backgrounds,
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different insight, different experiences, and they're going to have questions.
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And at the end of the day, I think every question, every topic should have a
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fair chance for somebody to provide a scriptural answer.
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That's at the end of the day, right? It doesn't mean that we have,
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you know, the objective all-in-one answer for it, but at least we want to say,
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look, everything deserves to be examined against Scripture.
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Everything. So, yeah, I think we can do more topics like that.
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We'll be careful. We're not trying to get into some weird, you know,
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all of a sudden, that's all we're doing is alien, UFO, you know,
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Sasquatch, paranormal cryptids.
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There's enough podcasts out there to entertain you and provide really good information
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out there You know, all we want to do is like hey It happens to be a topic we want to talk about it,
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you know, and we'll do our best to cover it And if there's a general interest
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if there's other questions that come in from our listenership.
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We'll do our best to cover it open up the word of god and see what it says You
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know, we'll give you Our at least our our most objective answer.
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Let's put it that way You know some of it, you know, do we have a personal interest
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in some of that stuff? Yeah I mean, we grew up around that.
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And so, you know, we've been around people that talk about it.
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And we do think, like we said last time, there's a spiritual world out there.
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The Bible doesn't give us all the details. It gives us some details.
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So we should be able to do a deductive study through Scripture,
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come to a conclusion about what it says, and a judgment across,
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you know, across the board about the paranormal and, you know,
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various subjects that are related to it.
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Yeah, we're not going to shy away from it because it's weird.
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As long as we're always putting the ones of scripture on it.
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That's the way we're going to approach everything.
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Actually, the one topic I think...
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That I think is going to be really, really tough to do is the lady that wrote,
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mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord or whatever.
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We'll save that for a July 4th episode. Yeah, that'll be July 4th,
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but that'll be controversial.
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That's the one I will lose a lot of friends. Yeah, no doubt.
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But yeah, I think that was a really good episode and we've received good feedback on it.
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And so we might dig into some different areas. I know we were talking about
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the angeology or the, you know, talking about giants and things like that that are in the Bible.
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Yeah, we'll cover some, I think, some adjacent topics scripturally.
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So, what we want to do, the way I think the best way to approach it is,
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let's go from a theological perspective and look at doctrines concerning the paranormal.
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And then kind of go from there. That way, we establish the biblical foundation,
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and then whatever the topic is, we can talk about it in light of the biblical
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foundation, what the scripture says doctrinally about those topics.
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So, there is a topic that's called angelology. It's the study of angels in the
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Bible. Well, those are beings that God identifies in scripture,
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you know, and those are not just mythical legends.
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They are treated in scripture as real entities that exist, you know,
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in our reality. So, the bottom line is, I think, again, just like anything else,
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they deserve a fair examination under Scripture to see what the Bible says about it.
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Let's establish what the Bible actually says and then make our judgments.
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I think that's the way we ought to approach it.
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Yeah, we might even introduce some interesting stories behind that,
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too, where we've personally heard a couple stories about, you know,
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are we entertaining angels unawares?
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Do we run into it? And yeah, there's plenty of, I mean, yeah,
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there's definitely, there's some, I believe there's some recent stories within
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our generation of missionaries and things like that, that have seen some,
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some things that are just inexplicable.
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But you can't deny the testimonies that they've heard and they've either experienced directly.
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Right. So anyway, we'll be a podcast when we get when we talk,
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you know, when we get to that point, we'll probably touch on those stories.
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Yeah, perfect. There's also a clarification we wanted to make on that episode.
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You know, there were some resources that we had recommended,
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some books and some authors.
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And so we heard something from one of our listeners. I don't know if you wanted
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to cover that. Yeah, so one of the books we talked about was Exo-Vaticana.
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One of the authors of that book is Tom Horn. Tom Horn, and this is what we wanted
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to say as far as kind of a disclaimer, it's not a wholesale endorsement of their
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personal theological views.
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Okay some of these guys that do write about this
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stuff who we believe bring legitimate evidence
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like in that particular case we were more focused
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on the vested interest the roman catholic church has in ufology aliens there
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and how it affects their theological interpretations we think it's it's significant
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and it plays a part in the the formation of mystery babylon and ultimately the
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the beast, the Antichrist, things like that.
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So, however, and one of our listeners, and Ron, you know who you are.
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We do appreciate the feedback.
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You know, he pointed out like, hey, that Tom Horn guy, he's a nutcase because
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he's got some weird theology, especially, you know, his eschatology is way off, right?
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He tries to date the rapture.
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He comes up some weird visions and dreams he has. So we reject that wholesale.
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If you know who we are, you know what we believe about dispensational interpretation
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of Scripture, the literal interpretation of Scripture.
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We have a very specific traditional approach to Scripture, and we'll probably
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go over a series on how to study the Bible, and I'll clarify it.
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But we also have available, upon request right now, but we're also at some point
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going to post it, but we have our own personal statement of faith.
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If you wonder what we believe and what we hold to, it's there.
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So if we cite a resource, an author, a book, a documentary, you know,
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please understand, I don't, I don't think we have to always say,
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you know, Hey, we, you know, we don't agree with this guy a hundred percent.
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Nobody agrees with anybody a hundred percent at the end of the day,
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but we, we want our listeners to know, look.
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Evaluate if, if, if a topic comes up, if, if you start reading about,
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you know, this Tom Horn guy and you start reading some wacky stuff about,
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you know, eschatology and the rapture and dating,
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or he, you know, some of the people we read don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture.
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They believe the church is going to go through, you know, tribulation.
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We have some authors that we do like some of their material,
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but they endorse the book of Enoch, for example.
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Okay. We obviously don't. We believe in a fixed canon, 66 books that we have.
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We believe that's where God stopped at those 66 books.
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We reject, you know, the non-biblical, the extra-biblical stuff that's generally
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rejected. We reject the Apocrypha, you know.
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So, anyway, we'll identify that in our statement of faith.
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But just understand that what we want to do is we want to cite these resources
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where they are pertinent to the topic that we're talking about.
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And in this case, the Exo-Vaticana book, I would recommend it.
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But listen, you know, as any book, I mean, I can recommend a book on Abraham
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Lincoln and tell you there's going to be problems with it, right?
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JFK, it doesn't matter. The history of the United States, you're going to run
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across a book where you're going to have resources, authors and stuff that are
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going to have some crazy whacked out ideas. I mean, I wouldn't recommend,
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you know, I could have recommended Tucker Carlson 10 years ago,
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but I wouldn't recommend him today.
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Candace Owens, you know, people like that. While I agree with a lot of their
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politics in a right-wing sense, I disagree wholeheartedly with their theology.
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So anyway, you know, hopefully we don't have to make a disclaimer like that all the time.
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But I do appreciate the feedback, but I do want to ensure, you know,
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and hopefully our listeners are rest assured, like, hey,
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you know, we're not just blindly endorsing every element of every personal theology
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of every author that we cite, right, or talk about on the show.
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So, in short, you know, we're just eating the meat and spitting out the bones.
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There's going to be things that we're going to recommend.
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It doesn't mean, again, by default, we agree with 100% of everything that they
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stand for theology or politics.
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There's books. If you've got truth or information in there that's useful,
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we're going to use it. Right. It's useful. Right.
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And we'll recommend books, and we'll tell you if these authors line up with
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us theologically. For example, we talked about Jeffrey Mardis.
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We talked about Joseph Dumaj.
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Dumaj or Dumaj, I can't remember how you say his name. But those guys are dispensationalists.
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They're pro-King James. They're independent Baptists.
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So they fall in line with what we believe for the most part.
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Yeah, even on the apologetic stuff, the books that were recommended by Greg
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Kukul and some of the others.
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Frank Turek, Jason Lyle, Greg Bonson. They're not KJV-only people,
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right? Yeah. You know, they're way off on theology.
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A lot of them are actually Reformed theologists, you know, theologians.
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You know, they're Calvinists in some cases.
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And some of them are old earth versus young earth creationists,
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you know. So, yeah, anyway, you know, there's an old saying,
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you know, my old Bible teacher used to say, you know, eat the meat, spit out the bones.
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At the end of the day, you've got to do that. But no Christian should ever be
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afraid to look at something and read a book.
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Of his own cognizance, right? There's a doctrine called the priesthood of the
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believer. You should be able to make the decision.
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I think the fault isn't necessarily in what we endorse.
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It's more in the individual believer's lack of discernment.
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They don't know how to read and study the Bible sometimes.
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So you'll take a weaker Christian that'll just wholeheartedly believe whatever
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comes across the plate, right?
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Whatever's preached behind the pulpit, whatever they see on the social media
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channel, whatever they see on Instagram, they're going to immediately digest it and accept it.
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And the whole point of us talking about apologetics and fallacies and things
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like that is to try to train the believer to think critically.
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Thinking critically is to question it. Is this actually true?
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Can I really trust this to be true? And at the end of the day,
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the only thing that is objectively absolutely true is the word of God.
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I mean, Acts 17, 11, the Bereans they're more noble than those in Thessalonica
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in that they search the scriptures daily to see whether those things are so
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and they were listening to Paul preach and they were stopping and saying hey Paul,
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before we just blindly accept what you're saying we're going to go look at the
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scriptures and see if it actually lines up,
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And if they could do that with Paul, we should be able to do it with any reader,
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any author, any book, any source that we cite.
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Yeah, so I think that's a good segue into what we're going to talk about today
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when it comes to thinking critically and fallacies.
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As I understand it, you had a recent interaction with somebody online and got
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into a debate with somebody who is a Calvinist.
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So I think this is probably another good exercise in real life,
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identifying some of the errors in reasoning and the position that this particular person takes.
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But we've done a brief overview.
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Well, not brief, but we did an overview of fallacies.
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We did a top 10 fairly recently. So if you haven't, anybody listening here hasn't
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listened to those, I do encourage folks to go back and listen to the introduction
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to fallacies, which will introduce us what they are.
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And then we did top 10 kind of sprinkle throughout in the last, in many episodes.
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So if you haven't listened to any of those, listen to a couple of them to get
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an idea behind what fallacies are. But here we're going to actually talk.
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Do a little bit of a dissection of that interaction, right? And break down,
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you know, your interaction, which we'll get a bit more info on.
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And there were some fallacies in there. And it's just, again,
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it's so prevalent in the way people argue.
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They'll resort to being unreasonable, even though. So this is,
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and I want to just kind of provide a little bit more clarification too,
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is so we're not going to necessarily dissect his argument.
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What we want to do is look at the behavior of individuals that stop reasoning
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and stop talking to you using logic and using critical thinking.
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And then they resort to emotionalism.
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And we've already talked about ad hominems. And so this is kind of more like,
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hey, here's a great example of ad hominem attacks and why it's fallacious.
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And to us, it's more kind of a sad commentary because the individual I talk
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to, you know, is a believer. Yeah.
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So I was going to say, I don't know much about this guy other than he's supposed to be a believer.
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And I think what strikes me most when you and I, when you're sharing your interaction
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with, that you had with them is that, you know, this guy.
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You know, it's again, identifying his, his, his Aaron reasoning,
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there's, there's consequences to that type of behavior, right?
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He might look smart. He might look intellectual.
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He might look more spiritual than others, but he uses bullying tactics,
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as you're going to explain in a bit more detail today.
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But also, when it comes to his testimony, as a believer, what does that convey to others?
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Does it create a stumbling block to other Christians? Does it encourage them?
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Is that edifying in any way when they resort to that type of behavior?
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Anyways, I figured I could give you the reins and you can give us a little bit
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of background on that interaction.
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So, let me do this, you know, just so, you know, I don't want to hopefully bore
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our listeners and think, oh, we're going to go through some back and forth with
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the guy that you debated with.
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Here's the overall goal of today's episode. As a result of the interaction with
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this guy, I thought of a principle and it kind of like popped in my head is
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where when a debate turns into a diagnosis.
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A psychoanalysis of an individual, where all of a sudden you stop debating the
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merits or demerits of an argument and then start labeling and attacking a person.
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So one of the things and I kind of created a meme from the whole interaction and on the meme,
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you know, I said label, you know, when you resort to labels,
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you're revealing a weak character, weak reasons, weak logic and weak evidence
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because I can no longer provide those things.
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I can't give you good reasons why I reject your position, so I'm just going to label you racist.
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I'm going to label you Arminian.
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I'm going to label you Calvinist. I'm going to label you ignorant or foolish or brainwashed.
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So this is where and then the
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reason why i got to thinking about this and i thought it'd be
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a good episode one to illustrate the ad
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hominem fallacy but to also kind of
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provide a commentary on today's generation the
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bible talks about says ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge
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of the truth there's a lot of knowledge out there i mean you can you can pick
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up your phone you can pick up you know you can go to google you can go to ai
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now you can go and you can you literally have thousands upon thousands upon
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thousands of pieces of data at your fingertips, right?
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But that does not mean you understand what you're reading.
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That doesn't mean that you have critically thought through the ideas and the
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information that's come across your screen.
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Some people literally because it sounds good, it sounds inviting,
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or it sounds plausible that they'll just immediately accept it without question.
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So that's what I wanted to kind of illustrate from this interaction.
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The topic we're talking about today is when debate turns into diagnosis.
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We're no longer debating.
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We're no longer talking about ideas. And then why is that important for a Christian
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to be challenged with this thinking,
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right? This principle. Why is it important to even talk about this?
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You know, and here's the bottom line. Here's the goal for all of us Christians.
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You know, we use it. You know, it's kind of become a theme verse for us.
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But 1 Thessalonians 5.21.
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Prove all things, hold fast at, which is true, right?
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Prove all things. That's the challenge. That means God demands of the believer
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to not just argue forcefully about something, but to argue correctly. There's a difference.
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We can get into an argument, and that could be a shouting match,
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or we can get into an argument. It's a debate. There's a difference between the two.
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Job 6, 25 and 26, you know, Job is being attacked by his friends.
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It's a brilliant analysis. Maybe one day we can go through a verse-by-verse
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exposition. but here's what he says, essentially.
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I believe it's in verse 25. He says, how forceful are right words,
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what doth your arguing reprove?
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And of course, up to this point, Job is being attacked by his friends.
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They're committing a straw man. They're misrepresenting him.
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They're building their attack on him based off of false syllogism.
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God punishes evil. Job is being punished, therefore Job is evil.
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And so there, and of course, God brings his commentary at the end of the book
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of Job and says, what you've said about my servant Job is wrong.
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So God identifies that they're misrepresenting him. But in that statement,
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what Job says, he goes, how forcible are right words.
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That means there's force and weight behind good words that you argue.
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And he says, what does your arguing reprove?
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He's asking a rhetorical question because he identifies the purpose of arguing
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is reproving or proving something.
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You see what I mean? An argument is offering proof.
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Okay. So that's what's really important.
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Here, but in what happens, you know, we back up for a second.
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The job of the Christian is the pursuit of truth. At the end of the day,
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that's all that matters.
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It is not me forcing you to believe what I believe.
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That's not our job. Our job is not to go out there and convert the entire world
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to what we believe theologically. That's not our job.
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Our job is to present the truth as objectively and as factually as possible.
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We are supposed to provide good reasons for the reason of the hope that we have,
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right? We're supposed to be able to answer every man.
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That's the idea. That means if you do not know how to argue for the faith,
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and I'm not saying, and again, don't misunderstand, don't equivocate the word
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argument here. We're not talking about a shouting match.
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We're talking about logical argumentation. If you don't know how to bring a good, legal,
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unreasonable, and evidenced case for what you believe, then you as a Christian
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need to learn how to do that because our job is the pursuit of truth.
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So what does that mean? When we say the pursuit of truth, what should that preclude?
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That should preclude emotionalism. That should that should eliminate and that
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means that you should avoid name calling people.
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That's not the job. If you get into like, if you're trying to,
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let's just say you, you knock on the door.
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And, you know, like, hey, I would like to present Jesus Christ as the answer
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for life. Like, hey, Jesus Christ died in your place.
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Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins according to the scriptures.
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It was buried third day, rose again.
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This is the gospel. This is what we want to present to you. You are making a
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propositional statement. You are making a claim.
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Now, guess what you have to do? You have to back it up with proof.
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Let me show you what the scriptures say about Jesus.
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Because the Bible says he died for our sins according to the scriptures.
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Which means I should be able to use the scriptures to show you and prove you that's true, right?
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And let's just say the person is really obstinate and, you know, they start getting,
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you know, frustrated at the door and, you know, you're trying to,
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you're sitting there trying to be, you know, you're trying to be persuasive,
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you know, you're trying to get the truth across to them and they're just like
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laughing at you and mocking you and sneering.
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And then you say, you know what,
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you're just an idiot. I can't believe you can't understand the truth.
24:49
It's as plain as the nose on your face, you're going to bust hell wide open
24:52
and sizzle and burn like a piece of bacon.
24:56
At that point, I have completely,
25:00
totally invalidated my opportunity to present the truth because I've just turned
25:06
an opportunity to provide reasonable evidence and good arguments for why I believe
25:12
what I believe to be true.
25:13
And I've just thrown it completely out the window by throwing labels at that person.
25:18
And I'm, instead of realizing, look, this person's a lost sinner,
25:22
they don't discern good from evil, of course they don't have spiritual discernment.
25:26
What I'm talking about is something that, unless they're indwelt by the Holy
25:30
Spirit, they may not understand.
25:33
Instead of dealing with it that way, I start diagnosing it.
25:36
So you're just an idiot and you're just ignorant and all you want to do is watch
25:39
movies and TV and you don't even care about your, how do I know what they care
25:43
about? Right? How do I know?
25:46
So the problem is, is I've gone from debating and again, don't misunderstand everybody.
25:53
Those words are trigger words, argument and debating, right?
25:55
Because you think, oh, you're arguing and debating somebody.
25:58
I don't want to debate with you.
25:59
No, no, no. we're talking about when you present a good argument for why you
26:02
believe what you believe, that's a debate.
26:05
When you're talking to somebody that disagrees with you philosophically, that's a debate.
26:09
If you say, I mean, you know, you know, you were, I were talking earlier,
26:13
but if I said, look, man, Wendy's hamburgers are better than,
26:16
you know, Burger King, I'm making a proposition. So guess what I have to do?
26:19
I have to make, I have to bring arguments to prove that that's true.
26:23
And what you're going to do is like, no, I kind of prefer Burger King.
26:26
Well guess what you're going to do you're going to present your arguments and
26:30
so a dialogue or a debate should be i
26:33
examine your claims you examine my claims we
26:36
see who brings the best evidence right who's the most consistent because at
26:40
the end of the day the way you evaluate every argument is whether it's valid
26:45
and it's sound valid just means that it's true sound means it's consistent from
26:50
start to finish that's it that's it that's all you're going to do And so anyway,
26:55
with that being said, you know, that's kind of the background behind this is
26:59
our job is to present truth and we have invalidate ourselves.
27:05
We lose that opportunity. We throw that opportunity away when we start calling people names.
27:10
Instead of debating the merits or demerits of a position, we start labeling people.
27:16
And like I said, when you label people, that just means that you have no good
27:20
evidence, no good logic, no good reasons anymore.
27:23
You basically have lost your position. As you said, a form of ad hominem.
27:27
But in the end, you're just distracting from the real issue.
27:30
Except it's your fault. That's right. As a Christian who's witnessing.
27:33
I agree with everything you said. I think the only challenge that I have is on the hamburgers.
27:38
It's Whataburger. Whataburger, right? Nothing beats it. Or P.
27:41
Terry's. Yeah. I have no proof, but I'm just telling you.
27:44
But but you know you know but you know the point
27:47
of that right the reason why i did the hamburgers thing is because i
27:50
don't think people realize everybody makes propositions everybody
27:53
does you know oh i'd rather go to this restaurant than
27:56
that restaurant oh you know i really like going down i-35 versus taking the
28:00
back way you know what i mean whatever the case is i i prefer this car i like
28:04
that car you're making a proposition what people don't realize is now that you
28:08
made a proposition you're now obligated to back it up i've been reading if you had to Right.
28:14
And I've been reading a book recently and I told you the quote from a book.
28:17
I thought it was a great quote. He said, no, none of us have a right to our opinion.
28:23
All of us are required to provide evidence for our propositions,
28:27
right? At the end of the day, that's what it is. And it's even more critical if you're a believer.
28:32
So understanding the importance of that, and of course the critical failure
28:36
of an argument is once you start to resort to labels.
28:39
This is why this interaction with this guy bothered me so much because it was it was kind of,
28:48
illustrative of the breakdown of of
28:51
our christian our christian heritage you know you know we haven't gone a full-blown
28:56
episode or lessons or series on apologetics necessarily and we did talk about
29:02
a little bit when we did the intro to fallacies but there is a necessity for
29:06
christians to exercise good intellectual behavior.
29:10
It doesn't mean that you are better than others because you have more knowledge and understanding.
29:15
It doesn't mean that you're superior because of the knowledge,
29:19
because the Bible says, knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifies, right?
29:22
So when we're saying that, that's not what we're saying. We're saying that you
29:26
should have a good, clear thinking mind as a Christian.
29:30
You should have good reasons for what you believe, why you believe it.
29:34
Otherwise, you're a robot, right?
29:37
And so, and this whole, the shift in the conversation from debating to diagnosing,
29:43
and what we mean by diagnosing, it's simple.
29:46
It's like, and I call it a logical fallacy, but it's a logical error where the
29:51
person you're talking to, they abandon completely the platform of reasoning.
29:56
That means that they abandon premises, evidence, conclusions in an argument,
30:01
right? They no longer talk about any of that, and then they turn,
30:05
they shit the entire conversation to speculation.
30:08
They do a psychological analysis, right? They look at your beliefs, your motives.
30:15
Instead of looking at why the person holds their position, or actually the why,
30:21
instead of looking at what the position is that you hold, they start diagnosing why you hold it.
30:28
Well, you just hold that because you're ignorant. You just believe that because you're brainwashed.
30:33
You just believe that because of how you grew up Well at
30:36
that point you're no longer debating you're diagnosing And
30:40
you'd start and then of course that eventually turns into To me the the logical
30:45
absurdity is now you start labeling people So instead of discussing whether
30:50
why something's true or not true and then examining it through the evidence
30:53
And holding the examination under a lens and and being critical about it.
30:59
You just start labeling them That's intellectual laziness at the end of the day.
31:03
So we talked about diagnosing fallacy and really defining what that is.
31:07
It is a form of ad hominem because you are labeling somebody. Right.
31:12
Remember, ad hominem is attacking the person. Not the argument.
31:16
Not the ideas, right? You attack the person. So somehow, if you can attack a
31:22
character flaw or a weakness in a person, somehow that that's supposed to prove
31:26
that their argument is incorrect. Right.
31:29
That's why it's a fallacy. That's bad logic. Because how a person behaves or
31:35
what a person does, whatever character flaws they have, doesn't do anything
31:40
to prove whether or not their argument is true or false.
31:43
And so that's why it's ad hominem. Abuse of ad hominem is where you start to
31:47
name call people and label it and you start to become really aggressive with
31:52
your labeling and stuff like that, the attack on their character.
31:55
And and that's really what it comes down to uh one
31:59
of the forms that we see it is like the isms oh
32:02
kjv only ism creation ism
32:06
right they add ism as a as a derogatory term ruckman ism right and so when you
32:13
attach that ism especially in a derogatory manner just because you dislike the
32:18
person you dislike the group or whatever that's an abusive ad hominem.
32:23
And it's also kind of a form of what we call a fallacy of composition.
32:28
And the reason why is obviously that, you know, we just, you know,
32:30
just like we just said, the abuse of ad hominem directly attacking the person's
32:34
character rather than addressing the substance of their argument,
32:38
you're basically shifting the entire conversation from,
32:42
hey, let me examine the merits of your argument. What's the substance of why
32:45
you believe what you believe?
32:46
Let's look at your premises and your conclusion.
32:49
Is it valid? Is it sound? Is it logical? Blah, blah, blah. No,
32:53
I just don't like you as a person. You're an ism, right?
32:56
Oh, I don't want to look at the evidence of the doctrine of divine preservation.
33:02
I'm just going to call you a King James onlyist. I'm going to call you a Ruckmanite, right?
33:07
Well, you know, those derogatory terms are not logical arguments.
33:12
It's an, it's an, it's an ad hominem. You're attacking the person or the characteristic of a person.
33:16
The fallacy of composition is where you're saying if there's one element of
33:21
that, that particular group you don't like, you, you label it every member on
33:26
every member of that group. So you're a Ruckmanite because I don't like Dr. Ruckman.
33:31
You're a King James only ist because you believe in some translation being superior
33:37
to the original or whatever.
33:39
So what they'll do is they'll attack you by as a whole for taking one part that
33:46
might may or may not be true, but that's called fallacy of composition.
33:49
You're applying to the whole something that might be true of the part.
33:52
So the bottom line is, again, this ism labeling is just another form of diagnosing or labeling.
34:02
Once you remove yourself from the conversation and you attack the person directly
34:08
calling them names, labeling, whatever, then boom.
34:11
To me, your entire argument falls apart. You've invalidated yourself.
34:15
You've just proven that you're intellectually lazy and you really don't have
34:20
good reasons to argue. So the easiest route is just attack the person.
34:25
I've heard the, this is the first time I really heard about the fallacy of composition.
34:30
And I was just kind of thinking, is it kind of like related to the sweeping generalization?
34:36
Maybe not. Maybe I'm thinking. No, sweeping generalization is where you're overgeneralizing
34:41
something versus something that might be true in part.
34:44
So let's just say fallacy of composition might be where, let's just say the
34:49
individual parts of something must be true for the whole.
34:53
So let's just say there's a perceived negative trait or a stereotype,
34:58
right, of a person, and then you apply it universally to every member.
35:02
It's not an overgeneralization. And overgeneralization is you're taking something
35:06
that could be false and you're applying it to everybody, or you're taking something
35:11
and blowing it up bigger than it really is.
35:13
But let's just say that, let's just say Dr. Ruckman, he's very argumentative, right? He may name call.
35:20
So you're taking something that may be true of him, and then because you hold
35:25
a very similar position to him, it automatically applies to everybody that's
35:30
associated with Ruckman.
35:31
That's fallacy of composition. That's not overgeneralization.
35:34
Overgeneralization is completely different. It's a completely different fallacy.
35:38
Okay. I was way off on that then, so disregard.
35:40
But no, I'm not familiar with the fallacy composition. Yeah,
35:44
there's a better way to explain it. And it's more like...
35:48
I'm trying to remember how it is. It's like, you know, beaches have sand,
35:52
sand gets wet, therefore all sand is wet type of thing.
35:56
I don't remember how it's worded, but off the top of my head.
36:00
But anyway, fallacy, it's like it may be true of part and you assume that it's
36:05
true of the whole is the way composition.
36:08
You know, it's the way it's comprised of whatever the composition of something is.
36:14
Gotcha. Versus overgeneralization is like, I met a guy, you know,
36:19
and this guy is a Christian, therefore all Christians.
36:22
That's not, that's overgeneralization. That may not be true of the whole, if I say, you know.
36:27
That one person doesn't represent Christians. Yeah, man, it's just,
36:31
it's right off the top of my head and I can't explain it now.
36:34
Okay, maybe we can circle back on that one. It seems like it's a pretty interesting
36:38
fallacy. Well, yeah, it is. I mean, there is a lot of fallacies. And here's the thing.
36:43
Not every fallacy has to be an informal fallacy that's documented and put in
36:48
a dictionary somewhere.
36:49
There are fallacies that you can create on the fly because all a fallacy is errors in logic.
36:58
It doesn't have to have a title or a name. That, you know, this, for example,
37:02
I call labeling a fallacy because once you label something instead of deal with
37:07
the argument and you just place a nomenclature or you call somebody something,
37:13
to me, that's a fallacious error because you're not dealing with the argument.
37:18
You just departed from the main issue. Again, fallacy is just an error in logic.
37:21
Yeah. You can commit all kinds of fallacies.
37:23
You know, there's the neutrality fallacy, right?
37:26
What's the neutrality fallacy? that everybody's neutral until we're presented with the truth.
37:31
No, when you talk to an atheist, they are actively engaged negatively against the truth.
37:37
They are actively negatively against the gospel.
37:40
They're actively negatively against the word of God. There is no neutrality.
37:45
Oh, I'm neutral. You're neutral. Let's present our evidence.
37:48
Nobody does that. That's called the neutrality fallacy. See what I'm saying? Yeah.
37:53
Anyway. It's a good way to put it. It's a good way to approach fallacies in
37:57
general. They don't all have tags. It's just simply an error in thinking. Yep.
38:01
I would highly recommend a book called Clear Thinking in a Messy World because they identify that.
38:06
They have a whole section where they say, look, you don't have to have a specific
38:10
label or claim on fallacies. You can literally come across an error in thinking,
38:15
and it becomes a fallacy because it's a logical error.
38:19
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good book. I haven't read the whole thing yet,
38:21
but for those interested, the authors, Kenneth Samples and Mark Perez. Yeah.
38:26
So if you're going to look that up, that's who I said. Yeah,
38:28
it's put out by the—it's called the Word Generations or Generations.
38:33
It's just like a ministry, and that's actually a very, very good book.
38:38
If you want to learn about logic, arguments, fallacies, things like that,
38:42
they do an excellent, excellent job.
38:44
Cool. So let's talk about the recent interaction that you had with this Calvinist,
38:50
some specific examples around it.
38:52
I figure you can maybe run us through. Yeah, I mean, so this thought about the
38:57
debate versus diagnosing and labeling, it was born out of a conversation I had.
39:02
I started having with this guy. His name's Will Kinney.
39:05
He's a popular online person. presence, especially in the King James circle. He's pro-King James.
39:12
I've used his material. I've actually worked with him a little bit,
39:16
you know, in debating people that are anti-King James.
39:19
But he also happens to be a dyed-in-the-wool, you know, 5.2 Calvinist.
39:26
He is a hardcore Calvinist.
39:28
And recently, and I would say within the last few months, he's just heavily,
39:34
heavily been engaged in Calvinistic arguments and debates. So...
39:40
Attacking Bible believers, attacking people in general, basically pressuring them into answering.
39:47
He's got these templated questions, and if you don't answer within his parameters,
39:53
he will overload like a dump truck.
39:56
He's got articles where they're like, I mean, none of his articles are less
40:01
than, you know, 1,500-word articles.
40:03
I mean, these things are just treatises on his particular theology.
40:09
And so what he'll do is if you don't answer the question the way he expects
40:14
you to answer it, he starts to overload you, overwhelm you.
40:18
And when you start to push back, he starts to label you. And that's really what happened.
40:23
So he posed the question, and it was a false dichotomy about what he calls the origin of faith.
40:29
Where does faith come from? For example, his question was, if you're one of the elect or the chosen.
40:36
It's real simple. How did this happen? So he offers, he says,
40:39
was it something you did to become a Christian?
40:43
Meaning that you of your own voluntary will outside of God's sovereign will
40:47
chose to be saved, meaning that it was works. It's basically an element of works.
40:53
Or if so, was it, or he goes, what was it? Or did God make the choice and you
40:59
had nothing to do with it? You had no input.
41:01
So that's, that's a unconditional election.
41:03
Okay. So that's what he was offering. He goes, how are you a believer?
41:08
Was it option A works or option B God chose for you?
41:12
That's a false dichotomy because the answer, and this is what I told him.
41:16
I said, well, the answer is that a believer is elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
41:21
I'm elect because God knew ahead of time that I would choose Christ.
41:26
So I was showing him verses for that.
41:29
And eventually we were kind of going back and forth and eventually,
41:32
you know, the entire debate just completely, totally eroded.
41:36
And Mr. Kinney started calling me a war minion. He likes to call,
41:40
if you're not a Calvinist, you're automatically an Arminiast.
41:42
Arminiasts believe you can lose your salvation. There's some theological problems
41:46
with Arminians, but primarily they believe in free will, that you have the choice
41:51
to choose whatever God offers.
41:54
What we believe as Bible believers, and I kept telling them I'm a biblicist,
41:58
I'm a dispensational biblicist, I'm not an Armenian, but of course he just kept calling me.
42:02
Well, you know, that's, that's what a typical Armenian would call yourself.
42:05
And of course, he would, the way he would attack is like, he would start throwing
42:09
out, you know, you know, he started kept on labeling me an Armenian.
42:12
He wouldn't, it doesn't matter what I would bring up and how I'd refute it.
42:16
And of course, examining evidence, he would completely start making comments
42:20
like, you know, it's because, you know, it's a pathetic, it's how you twist
42:24
scriptures or, or, you know, once again, you show your utter ignorance and denial of biblical truth.
42:29
So instead of actually, whenever I started giving him verses to refute his position,
42:33
Instead of dealing with those verses, he would just say that I'm ignorant,
42:37
I'm privately interpreting them, I'm twisting them.
42:40
But then he would take verses like, for God so loved the world,
42:43
and I would ask him, well, what does the world mean?
42:45
He goes, well, that obviously means the elect. I said, but it doesn't say the elect.
42:48
Yeah. Right. And just to kind of reiterate, he never did address the evidence that you presented.
42:54
No. He just resorted you to calling you names. What he would do is he'd send
42:57
me a link to a 1,500-word article. Oh, steamrolling you, right? Yeah.
43:01
So he would never respond to it. And then, of course, he would just say,
43:05
well, I was, he goes, I was where you were, and I stopped being ignorant.
43:09
I started accepting the truth type of stuff. So instead of, again,
43:12
dealing with it, and I was trying to be objective.
43:15
I was trying to break down his arguments. I was just trying to show him by comparing
43:19
scripture and showing the plain literal reading of scripture.
43:23
It's not saying what he was saying.
43:25
He was equivocating. And I kept showing him that. And, of course,
43:27
he just, it's just completely tarted. you know, you're, you know,
43:31
you're a war minion and you're this and you're that.
43:33
And when I was talking- What's a war? Sorry. What's a war minion?
43:36
So a war minion, his definition of a war minion is where you're an Arminian,
43:41
which is the opposite of a Calvinist.
43:43
So you're either Calvin, Arminian was, there was a guy by the name of Jacobus, Arminian, Arminius.
43:50
And during the time of John Calvin, they were both theologically opposed to each other.
43:55
There were some similarities, but they started debating on the sovereignty of
44:00
God, the unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace,
44:04
perseverance of the saints.
44:06
James Arminius or Jacobus Arminius was arguing and debating him.
44:11
The problem with Arminian theology has developed after Arminius died,
44:18
but they started introducing things like you have to live a perfect life,
44:21
like a lot of Methodists believe.
44:23
You can lose your salvation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
44:25
It's an unbiblical theology for the most part, but to the Calvinist,
44:31
if you're not a Calvinist, you're an Arminian.
44:33
Period. There's no middle ground. It's a false dichotomy.
44:37
You understand? So there's no, when he says war minion,
44:41
what he's saying is I was aggressively against him because I was,
44:45
I was, he in turn was attacking me and giving me and overloading me with his
44:51
articles, his 1500 word articles.
44:53
And I was turning around and writing whole papers, Google docs in response to
44:57
him and dissecting his arguments.
44:59
And I would send that to him because I was doing that.
45:02
He's, he wasn't used to it. So he started calling me a war minion. It's a derogatory term.
45:07
Oh, you're an Armenian, but you're aggressively wrong. So it's a cop out from actually addressing.
45:13
It's a label. It just comes down to what we're talking about. It's a label.
45:16
So rather than address my arguments systematically, rather than take the verses
45:21
and prove that I was twisting him, he just simply said I was twisting him.
45:26
So it's question begging, right? So it's the problem him again is the entire
45:31
conversation where here's a, and this guy is in his 60s.
45:36
He's been saved as far as I know, my understanding, he's been saved since like
45:41
the early 70s or mid 70s, late early 80s, I think. So he's been saved for a long time.
45:48
He comes off on trying to present all this evidence, but the problem is he steamrolls
45:53
the evidence and he doesn't listen to what you say.
45:56
He overrides it. He dumps information on you.
45:59
And rather than dissect the arguments, and that's not the purpose of today's
46:03
episode, we're not trying to argue anti-Calvin, that's not the point.
46:08
My point is, is when another guy that calls himself a brother in Christ literally
46:15
stops having a conversation with you.
46:19
It's no longer a dialogue and it turns into a monologue where all he cares about
46:25
is you explicitly responding to the way his questions are posed,
46:31
which they're loaded questions, by the way.
46:33
They're asked in a way that you either have an A or B answer.
46:38
And if you don't answer it that way, he attacks you.
46:41
But if you answer it A or B, then he will either side with you or he'll systematically
46:47
break down the B theology. It's a straw man argument.
46:51
I'm going to create a caricature of what you believe.
46:54
And then as soon as you acknowledge any part of that caricature,
46:59
I've got 5,000 words worth of articles just to rip you apart online.
47:05
And that's what his job is. His job is to name call you. His job is to call pathetic.
47:10
His job is to show your poor ability to interpret the scriptures.
47:15
That's all his job is. And he calls himself a Bible believer. That's my problem.
47:21
That's my problem. My problem is, here is supposed to be a mature Christian
47:26
that's supposed to exercise grace, that's supposed to have his speech seasoned with salt,
47:34
and showing grace. Instead, he attacks and verbalizes you and openly tries to
47:40
embarrass you on social media.
47:42
That's why I call him out. I don't care. I want Will Kenny to listen to this.
47:45
I want him to know that I disrespect him as a Christian because he is taking
47:50
literally the worst case scenario and he's trampling on the objective responsibility
47:59
of a Christian to present the truth.
48:02
He's not presenting the truth. What he's doing is he's steamrolling you with all his information.
48:07
He's dumping all this data, but he's not being very charitable with it.
48:13
He's not interested in your questions and your analysis.
48:18
It's just as soon as he identifies the fact or he flags the idea that,
48:24
oh, this guy doesn't agree with me, I'm going to attack him now.
48:27
And that's exactly what he is.
48:28
And what he, he, to me, what he represents is he represents those guys that are online.
48:34
That's just looking to argue, looking to try to make a platform for himself.
48:38
And, and I started, I changed my tactic with him eventually.
48:42
And this is where he's, he's, he's finally blocked me on social media.
48:46
But the reason why is I said, you know what, this is all a red herring.
48:50
And I said, I suspect the problem. And I started giving him his own medicine.
48:54
And diagnosing. And so I gave him a little bit of that. And I said,
48:57
I suspect that you're ashamed of the fact that you don't win anybody to the
49:02
Lord and you don't witness to anybody.
49:04
I said, how about this? Before I answer any more of your staged questions,
49:08
I said, why don't you tell me the last person you witnessed to?
49:11
Tell me the last set of tracks that you passed out.
49:14
Tell me the last time you took the gospel outside the four walls of your office
49:19
and stepped away from your keyboard and actually tried to win somebody to the Lord.
49:23
At that point, he stopped talking to me and he completely blocked me.
49:28
I don't know if it did, but maybe it hit a nerve. I hope it did. I really did.
49:32
I hope it hit a nerve because, you know, that guy would rather waste time instead of redeeming the time.
49:39
For somebody like that, they have to compensate and become that type of person
49:44
and that behavior that they exhibit, which, you know, as a Bible believers who
49:47
were saved in the 70s, they're supposed to uphold a high standard of truth.
49:52
Instead, they steamroll and they use their intellectualism or their so-called
49:56
intellectualism to berate even other brethren.
50:00
And there's your testimony. Exactly. And really, without having to try to belabor
50:05
the point, the whole purpose of this episode was really to show that the conversation
50:11
starts to erode and it's no longer edifying.
50:14
And that's what I told him. I said this conversation is no longer edifying
50:17
The only reason I engaged him and i'll be honest with
50:20
you only reason I engaged him is because I I Because there
50:23
were so many bible believers That were looking at his comments And there was
50:27
a lot of guys that didn't know how to respond to him because he would steamroll
50:30
So what I want to do is actually engage him and challenge him at the scriptural
50:35
level And show other believers like hey not everything this guy is saying is
50:40
true. He's just intimidating you.
50:43
That's all he's doing. But I wanted to give people another alternative.
50:47
Like, hey, there are good biblical reasons to reject both Arminianism and Calvinism.
50:53
That's what I wanted to present.
50:55
So that's the only reason. But it got to a point where the entire interaction
50:59
just completely, totally turned unfruitful.
51:02
And I realized, you know what, it's not worth it anymore. So what I started
51:05
doing is actually what I would, I would screenshot the conversations and his accusations to me.
51:11
I would post them on my own page and I would present an analysis of what was going on.
51:17
I started showing the labeling versus the argumentation. I would show the ad
51:21
hominem attacks versus dealing with the arguments systematically.
51:25
And I felt that that was more edifying to believers than just our back and forth interaction. Yeah.
51:32
You know, it's a lesson. And I think it would help others that don't know how
51:36
to deal with that kind of, those kind of interactions, especially when you get
51:39
steamrolled, it becomes intimidating.
51:41
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, there is a time, you know, I think in any debate
51:45
or dialogue or discussion like that where you just got to say,
51:48
you know what, this isn't worth it anymore.
51:50
And, but this is what the takeaway is. And this is really the challenge to our listeners.
51:55
You know, I don't want to, I'm not trying to air out and attack another brother
51:58
in Christ on our episode. I name him because I think it's important to name him.
52:04
I think it is because he's in a public arena.
52:06
He openly attacks people, both believers and non-believers alike,
52:11
both Bible believers and non-Bible believers.
52:14
He does it openly because of his Calvinistic theology. At the end of the day,
52:19
that's all he's known for is his aggressiveness and his assertiveness in shoving
52:24
his theology down your throat.
52:25
Now, you know, I say that metaphorically, but at the end of the day,
52:29
you know what he is? He is the perfect example of what a Christian ought not to be.
52:34
And that's the whole point of this episode is just to highlight,
52:37
look, when you start to engage in that kind of fallacious reasoning and behavior,
52:42
when you start to do that, you are literally violating scriptural mandates.
52:47
The Bible says, 1 Thessalonians 5, 21, prove all things, hold fast that which is true.
52:55
2 Timothy 2, 15, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth
52:59
not be ashamed, rightly divided in the word of truth, so forth and so on.
53:03
And the Bible says that our speech should always be with grace,
53:07
seasoned with salt, so that we may know how to answer every man.
53:11
And the point is, is the Bible says, be ready always to give an answer to every
53:15
man that asketh you the reason, the hope within you with meekness, meekness, meekness.
53:20
So humility has to be part of our apologetics.
53:25
And we cannot go into an argument or debate that.
53:29
You know, and resort to labeling and calling people names.
53:33
At that point, as far as I'm concerned, not only have you invalidated your argument entirely,
53:38
but you've literally cast shame and you've basically put shame on the name of
53:46
God as a Christian because you have violated your God-given ordination to present
53:55
the gospel in a good, reasonable fashion.
53:59
When Paul, you look at Acts 17, when Paul was sitting there going into the synagogues,
54:03
when he was dealing with the Stoics and he was dealing with the philosophers
54:07
of his day, the Epicureans, and he was going into Athens and preaching about the unknown God,
54:13
he wasn't berating them. He wasn't calling them names.
54:16
He was presenting evidence.
54:18
The Bible says he reasoned out of the scriptures.
54:22
Paul wasn't going in there and trying to steamroll people.
54:25
He wasn't trying to give them 15,000 word
54:29
treatises to shove it down your throat And he
54:32
would argue and debate with those people and reason with
54:35
them And he even like whenever he went before agrippa And some of those people
54:40
he says i'm happy I can answer myself rather than be misrepresented I am I prize
54:47
the fact that I have an opportunity to answer my case To present it So you know what?
54:54
As believers, we ought to be able to let the other person present their case.
54:58
Because once you start misrepresenting that person, one, not only have you discredited
55:05
them as a human being, you've given them every reason not to listen to one word of your argument.
55:13
So at the end of the day, people like Will Kinney, though I appreciate his position
55:19
on the King James, I've used his material and I'll still use his material.
55:23
But at the end of the day, when it comes down to his tactics and his Calvinist
55:27
theology, the only reason he believes it is because he's convinced himself of
55:31
it. because there is no biblical truth in it.
55:33
And he has no ability to convince anybody because of his brash approach,
55:40
his unbiblical approach, his refusal to treat people like human beings and show
55:47
any grace or edification.
55:49
So once he started labeling me and started attacking me by name,
55:52
and here's the thing, it's not just me.
55:55
I'm not saying this because he did it to me. He's He's done it to almost everybody
55:59
that I've seen, both non-King James Bible believers and non-Calvinists.
56:04
He's done it to everybody.
56:05
It's his modus operandi, right? That's how he operates. And it's just sad.
56:11
I just think as Bible believers, we're called to a higher calling.
56:14
It's the pursuit of truth.
56:17
Yeah, true faith is not afraid of rigorous proof. It requires it.
56:21
And we have a responsibility to hold a high standard and to behave accordingly.
56:26
So right on Before we wrap up Any call to actions?
56:31
And I know you've alluded to that No, I would just say that You know,
56:35
at the end of the day Listen, if you If you have the truth,
56:40
There's no reason to resort to labels And name calling There's no reason to
56:46
resort to emotionalism Let the strength of your argument And the strength of
56:52
your premises And the evidence that you want to present let it stand for itself.
56:57
If you don't agree with me, if you don't agree with my theology,
57:01
if you don't agree with my position as a Bible believer, that's fine,
57:06
right? I don't need to attack you.
57:09
That doesn't make my case any stronger, right? As soon as I start labeling you
57:13
and attacking you and name-calling you and resorting to ad hominems and abusive
57:17
ad hominems, all I've done is shown you that I can't go beyond my evidence.
57:22
I basically have to attack you personally.
57:24
And to me, as soon as you do that, you've already proven to me that your argument's
57:29
not even worth listening to.
57:31
I mean, the Bible says, let your speech always be with grace,
57:33
seasoned with salt, right?
57:34
In Colossians 4, 6, demonstrating that a way a Christian communicates is as
57:38
important as the truth they proclaim.
57:41
And what's the last half of that verse? You know, let your speech always be
57:46
with grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer
57:50
every man. Yeah, there you go.
57:53
All right. Right on. I think we'll close up here. If anybody,
57:57
as usual, has any questions, please reach out.
58:00
Let us know. Let us know if you had any similar interactions.
58:04
You're not quite sure how to respond to them.