Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: fallacy

  • The Unfortunate Case of the Missing Argument

    I’m not going to link all of Paul’s posts in this – they’ve been linked ad nauseum from here, already. His blog is Patient and Persistent – I trust our readers are more than capable of finding these comments of his 🙂

    There are times when I’m engaged in an exchange with someone and I’m not sure if I’ve understood them correctly. That’s how I felt reading Chris Bolt’s stuff. It turns out that I did understand him correctly.

    Note: Paul does not here explain 1) What he understood correctly, or 2) How it is the case that he understood …

  • Consistency: It Burns!

    An atheist links to one of our intro posts, with the title; “The Stupid! It Burns! (covenantal edition)”. He quotes one section, and makes only a single comment.

    Lots more stupid in the original article.

    From a few posts prior, he says:

    …embeds a couple of paragraphs of argument in a dozen paragraphs consisting of ***ing and moaning that no one likes him, and gratuitous insults directed at the New Atheists: …

    He finally does mention an argument:

    So, isn’t that nice. The obvious consistency issue concerning the “gratuitous” insults complained about and then promptly offered himself is …

  • Mr. White, Mr. Grey, and Mr. Black IV

    In our last post, we examined the Romanist, “evangelical,” and putatively “Reformed” apologetic methods, as advanced by Jacques Maritain, Dr. Carnell and Charles Pinnock, and Dr. Sproul, and applied them to our discussion. In this section, we address Mr. Black, and begin to examine in greater detail the difference in approach that Mr. White and Mr. Grey have in their apologetic. This section comes from pgs 317-319 of Defense of the Faith.

    So also with Mr. Black. He daily changes the truth of God into a lie. He daily worships and serves the creature more than the Creator. He

    …

  • Point of Contact – Possibility

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    In this second installment of our newest podcast – Joshua Whipps, Sean Burkes, Justin McCurry and Nic Heath discuss possibility.

    Note: The audio quality is not the best, unfortunately. We’re working on steps to rectify that.

    …

  • Was Van Til A Philosopher?

    In response to a recent post on this site, our good friend Mitch from Urban Philosophy made the following comment:

    One can grant that Van Til was a philosopher, but they need not grant that he was a competent philosopher. 😉

    A few comments later, Pierre-Simon Laplace shared with us his own perspective on Van Til’s Presuppositional approach to apologetics. After sharing this, he then posted a rather interesting follow-up comment (in response to Mitch, as far as I can tell).

    “Oh, and Van Til was NOT a Philosopher.”

    At first blush, one might see this merely as a knee-jerk …

  • Open Theism and Pacifism?

    Molinism advocate and apologist Wes Widner quoted Open Theist Gregory Boyd earlier today, concerning non-violence. The quote was as follows:

    Any peace achieved by violence is a peace forever threatened by violence, thus ensuring that the bloody game will be perpetuated.

    This is cited (but not in the tweet, for obvious reasons) from Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation, pg 27. (Excerpt of the book linked here) As no context was provided by Wes, I asked him, via Twitter, the same format I saw the quote in.

    In the meantime, while waiting his reply, I performed a cursory …

  • An Objection That Does Not Count

    Non-Christians can and do engage in activities using logic, science, and morality. Christians do as well. Presuppositionalists claim that these two groups can do so only because the world is what God says it is.

    The argument advanced for this claim begins with one of the accepted activities mentioned above (logic, science, or morality) and illustrates how this activity is possible if the world is what God says it is. Then the accepted activity is shown to be inconsistent with what anyone else other than God says the world is.

    While it might be said that the non-Christian cannot and …

  • No Place To Stand Part II

    In response to my previous post Mitch has written this post.

    Unfortunately the tendency Mitch has to advance irrelevant arguments continues in this post as well. Presuppositionalism is immune to the criticisms Mitch raises against it because, among other things, the majority position in presuppositionalism which I also adhere to does not involve the claim that logic is contingent as Mitch has stated in several of his arguments but rather that logic is necessary. Thus Mitch has allegedly advanced arguments against presuppositionalism that fall prey to the Straw Man Fallacy and may be submitting an entry to a philosophical …

  • An Example of a Red Herring

    In the last post at Choosing Hats an example of the fallacy of Begging the Question was presented along with commentary that it is often helpful to have included in an apologetic arsenal a basic understanding of fallacies. Another popularly used fallacy is called a “Red Herring”. It may be summed up in simple terms as diverting attention away from the subject in question. The use of a Red Herring is a deliberate attempt to change the course of a discussion. This is often done when the individual who is guilty of the fallacy is having some difficulty with …

  • An Example of Begging the Question

    It is often helpful to have included in an apologetic arsenal a basic understanding of fallacies. One popularly used fallacy is called “Begging the Question”. It may be summed up in simple terms as merely assuming the same thing one is attempting to prove. Do not misunderstand, there is nothing wrong with an assumption or attempting to prove an assumption, but there is something wrong with setting forth a mere assumption as though it constitutes an argument; as though the assumption of the very thing someone is attempting to prove is itself the proof! An interesting illustration of this …