“Faulty Logic”

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

     What kind of fallacy argument would you call it when someone says the following:

"You don't believe what I believe because what you believe is how you were taught to believe."

"It's because you never went to any other church."

"It's because you were raised in the church you go to."

Secondly, how would you convince someone that you are open-minded and unbiased when it comes to interpreting Scripture for what it says versus what you want it to say?

Sincerely,
Open-Minded

Dear Open-Minded,

A fallacy argument is any argument that isn’t based off of facts, but instead, some other persuasive and unreasonable argument.  In this case, the argument is a personal attack.  When someone says that you are wrong because you were raised in a certain church or because you haven’t seen every other church, it is the same as saying, “You’re wrong because I don’t like your parents”… whether or not you have good parents is irrelevant to the issue.

Just because you were raised in a church doesn’t mean that church is by default wrong.  People are raised in all sorts of environments, and wouldn’t it make sense that at least some of the population would be raised in good ones, AND if some people are raised properly, wouldn’t that also mean that some of those people would grow up and stay in the right church?

The way to handle this argument is to get back to the real issue – what does the Bible say a church should be?  Regardless of our backgrounds, we need to look at what the Scriptures actually say.  When you are having a religious discussion, they don’t have to trust you or your “interpretation”, they need to see the verse themselves, and then you can use the text as your standard of measure.  That is how to handle that argument; remind them that the Bible is the standard, and all you are asking for is to look at it and compare your religious beliefs to it.  No personal interpretation necessary.

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