The Ten Commandments of Logic

The Ten Commandments of Logic    May 17, 2020   Dr. Roger Ray, pastor

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The 10 Commandments of Logic (original source uncertain)

• Thou shalt not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad Hominin fallacy)
• Thou shalt not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw Man fallacy)
• Thou shalt not use small numbers to represent the whole. (Hasty Generalization fallacy)
• Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the Question fallacy)
• Thou shalt not claim that because something occurred before that it must be the cause. (Post Hoc/False Cause fallacy)
• Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (False Dichotomy fallacy)
• Thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance the claim must be true or false. (Ad Ignoratum fallacy)
• Thou shalt not lay the burden of proof onto the person who is questioning the claim. (Burden of Proof Reversal fallacy)
• Thou shalt not assume that “this” follows from “that” when there is no logical connection. (Non Sequitur fallacy)
• Thou shalt not claim that because a premise is popular that it must be true. (Bandwagon fallacy)

The rules of logic are not like the rules of a Monopoly game that just guide the way you play a game. The rules of logic are more like the health department’s standards for food handling for restaurants, rules so that you won’t get food poisoning from your next omelet. The rules of logic are intended to clean up our conversations and make sure that we don’t poison our minds. 

Earlier this year, I was sitting in the home of some friends and, as usually happens when I am around, the conversation turned to politics and the primary that, at that time, still included a couple of dozen candidates. This was before Michael Bloomberg had been a part of a debate, before he had given an interview or made many personal appearances, but he was pouring millions of dollars into market research and carefully crafting a media image for himself that voters would like.

My friend turned to me and said, “I’m really liking Michael Bloomberg.” And because, as you know, I am nothing if not the consummate dinner guest and absolute paragon of patience, I said, “Really?” But what was racing through my head was the fact that they knew nothing about the real Mike Bloomberg, all they knew were his elaborately concocted TV ads that contained no more truth about Bloomberg’s history and policies than my kitchen trashcan contains of the British crown jewels. 

I liked the Michael Bloomberg in the Bloomberg TV ads, who wouldn’t? It’s just the fact that they were not talking about the real Michael Bloomberg. But a month later, when Bloomberg had dropped out of the race, I saw this on TV:

Now, I don’t want to be mean about this. I make mistakes. Last week I put up a picture of Isabelle Peron and called her Eva Peron. Three years ago, I called the river running through the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands the Mississippi River rather than the Missouri River but, folks, I don’t have a staff of writers back here in my suite of offices and, besides that, Brian Williams is paid $15 million dollars a year . . . he knows something about millions of dollars, and he should know that he could not give a million dollars to 15 million people because he makes 15 million dollars a year. He could give them one dollar. And if Michael Bloomberg gave $500 million to Americans, we would each get about $1.40. And yet, Mara Gay, of the New York Times, no less, sits there shaking her head and saying, “It’s true, there’s just too much money in politics.” This is supposed to be the news channel for educated people! Can somebody revive Walter Cronkite please?

Math and logic are not the same things, but they are related, and both involve learning the rules and using them to come to sane conclusions. Our modern society was created by the age of reason and now our technology threatens to destroy the intellectual processes which make it possible. 

Things do not become true because you believe them, or because you wish them to be true. They are not even true if you think that you feel it or see it. From the singular perspective of this Trump supporter, the earth is both flat and stationary. But thought logic and critical thinking, we know that the earth is spherical and rotating. In the same way, why physicists tell me that the universe is comprised 

of 12 particles of matter held together by four forces of nature, even though I cannot see Quarks or Leptons, nor can I feel the weak force or the strong force, I know that there are well researched and reasoned explanations for how these subatomic particles and forces operate. 

There are things, men and women, which can be known, that can be proven, by reason even if we cannot see them or handle them. 

But in the universe of religion, we find people wanting us to believe, even to believe with passion unto martyrdom, in things that cannot be seen or handled and which, frankly, cannot stand up to critical analysis. Which is fine if that is what they want to do but, what I’m suggesting is that it does not make sense to try to talk about it. 

Should you venture outside of this building and try to engage a religious person in conversation about what is and what is not true, they will almost inevitably cite scripture. They will assert that the Bible is the word of God and that its authority cannot be questioned. If you ask how they know that it is the word of God and that it cannot be questioned, they will tell you that it says it is in the Bible.

This is what we call the fallacy of begging the question: Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the Question fallacy)

I have actually had people point out to me that it says on the cover that it is “holy” and either on the cover or just inside, it says that it is “authorized.” If you have never learned how to think critically, these sorts of circular arguments can be persuasive.

But more so, in the world of religious folks, the Bible is accepted by billions of Christians, the Quran by billions of Muslims, and the Torah by millions of Jews and within their own communities, it may not be cricket to question those texts but, the argument from popularity, is commonly called the “bandwagon fallacy” Thou shalt not claim that because a premise is popular that it must be true. What we in philosophy calls call an “appeal to the consensus mundi” or the “opinion of the world.” 

We recently had a fairly well known progressive writer taking issue with something Bishop Spong had said in one of the videos we have posted of him on our channel, and this fellow said, “Well Spong is wrong about this one point because very many people believe differently.” And I pointed out to him, what very many people believe is called “fashion” not fact. 

When I was in high school, leisure suits were very popular but mere popularity of those double knit polyester tragedies did not make them a fashion standard and by the time Richard Nixon was removed from office, no one would be caught dead in one and I’m not sure which one we were happier to see go . . . Nixon or the leisure suit.

Reality is not determined by popularity. Reality is determined by objective facts. Religion, when it is healthy, does not deny reality, it interprets reality. A person of faith is literally a person who courageously and prophetically interrogates society to demand that it conform to honesty and truth, not deny reality and invest itself in magical imaginary worlds that we have no reason to believe exist.

Again, traditional religion would have us to accept that our religion is true and others are false . . . Christians insist on Jesus as their savior, Muslims insist that only Allah is the true God and Jews point to Yahweh, but there is no evidence of any kind that any of them are right. Any one of them would tell you that you are mortal and have limited knowledge and that you cannot question God, … ok, but I sure can question what you say about God. Again, the rules of logic prohibit defending a claim based on ignorance. Thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance the claim must be true or false. (Ad Ignoratum fallacy)

Nor does it stand to reason to defend a truth claim by simply saying that you cannot prove it to be false, that is when we say: Thou shalt not lay the burden of proof onto the person who is questioning the claim. (Burden of Proof Reversal fallacy). And, as any freshman logic student can tell you, no one can prove a negative.

I cannot prove that angels and demons are not real but then, I cannot prove that unicorns and leprechauns are not real. What I know is that there is exactly the same evidence for angels and demons as there is for unicorns and leprechauns which is exactly none, except for the people who have claimed to have seen them and only you can decide how much credibility that those people deserve. From my vantage point, the credibility seems pretty remote but some are more charming than others. 

The popular writer, C. S. Lewis, famously insisted that Jesus either is who he says he is, the son of God, or he is a mad man. That is what we call a False Dichotomy, or, “Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities.” The larger truth there, something Lewis didn’t know because he didn’t spend a single day in a classroom learning anything about scripture or theology, is that we have no reason to believe that Jesus actually made any of those grand claims about himself, and if he had, then, yes, he was surely mad as a hatter. 

The problem for us, however, is that Jesus is buried in 2000 years of history, Muhammad in 1500 years of history, and Moses, if he existed, then he existed 3200 years ago. So, we end up with a lot of historical “in the weeds” arguments about what is and is not known about them. But religious leaders who have the misfortune of having lived in the modern era, such as the founders of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith and Bingham Young, we can fairly easily demonstrate that they were con men who tricked people into letting them start what was basically a sex cult with themselves at the center of the action. 

We can show, from the historical record, that most of the story line of Joseph Smith about the golden tablets and all of the history of the lost Tribes of Israel migrating to the Americas was plagiarized from a book published a few years earlier called the “View of the Hebrews.” DNA testing proves that there is no connection between ancient Hebrew tribes and Native Americans and that translation errors in the King James Bible are also found transferred into the Book of Mormon. 

The historical evidence that Joseph Smith was a con man is over whelming. Wait a second, wrong slide:

 Still, why are there 16 million Mormons in the world, a million and a half of them living in Mexico where many of the events described in the Book of Mormon were said to have taken place…. Where they know there is no evidence for any of it. . . how does this happen?  And yes, one of Joseph Smith’s 40 wives was 14 years old when he married her. None of this is to suggest that the nice family that lives in your neighborhood who are active Mormons believe in polygamy, or pedophilia, nor do they, I strongly suspect, actually believe that Joseph Smith found gold tablets buried in the hills of the Finger Lake region of New York that he was magically able to read through two rocks which described the history of the lost tribes of Israel living in the Americas. 

They go along with a lot of nonsense for the same reason that Catholics and Evangelicals do. . . because their families, their faith community, their social ties, are all among people who either believe or pretend to believe, or who quietly ignore, the more patently absurd aspects of their faith. And no, it is not an ad hominin fallacy if the person’s character is the initial point.

Which, by inference, is how 42% of Americans can still insist that Donald Trump has never told a lie and that he is making America great again. I am not picking on Mormons any more than I am picking on Catholics, Evangelicals, or, for that matter, a lot of our progressive friends who are progressive simply as a matter of preference and not a matter of thought, a conclusion reached by critical thinking. Because, you know, whether he is the least bit sincere in his own faith or not, that Michael Pence knows enough about Evangelical Christianity to know that Donald Trump is not one of him, that he is dishonest, corrupt, and ironically, he is a playboy who has to pay a porn star to have sex with him.  Everybody knows, surely no one is actually fooled, but there is some payoff in pretending, like pretending you believe that Mormon underwear will save you from a plane crash or a Catholic scapular will keep a demon from getting into your heart. And no, the photograph on the right has not been doctored, that is a drunken, smoking, shirtless Mel Gibson demonstrating the proper way to wear a scapular. 

I don’t want to undermine anyone’s religious freedom or their right to choose whatever faith that coincides with their beliefs. I am begging Americans, the British, Australians, South Africans, and Canadians to think critically about your ethics, your politics, and your faith. Because there is a healthier way to live.