Informal Fallacies
A Brief Exploration of the Most Common Thinking Errors
If you have been following me for however long, you know that one of my goals is to help Christians think critically and like Jesus. And as I am finishing up Logic and the Way of Jesus by Travis Dickinson, I got to thinking about how it applies to the church as a whole. We tend to think that because we have God and the Bible on our side that nothing can hurt us intellectually. This seems to be not the case. Dickinson has a chapter on fallacies where he explains formal and informal fallacies. Fallacies are ways that our thinking and logic are flawed. Formal fallacies apply more directly to deductive arguments (premise-premise-conclusion) in where there is something formally, in the premises/conclusion, wrong with the argument. In other words, the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. Informal fallacies typically happen in the everyday thinking of people. It has less to do with the formalized, deductive argument and has more to do with non-deductive logic. Because most people do not craft formalized premises and a conclusion in their everyday decisions, the informal fallacies are the ones we are most prone to committing. Let’s spend some time looking at a few fallacies that are commonly committed by Christians.
*Before we get into the list, I wanted to take some time to make clear, and hear me on this, that I am not coming at anyone. We all make fallacious statements or form beliefs based on fallacious thinking. That does not mean you are a bad thinker or bad person. Ideas are not the same as the person who has them and in the logical sphere, we are dealing with ideas, not the character of the person who holds the idea. If you find yourself in accord with one of the examples of fallacious thinking, please know that it is not an attack on you personally but rather a nudge to re-examine your belief.*
Common Informal Fallacies Made by Christians
Ad Hominem. That note above? It was an attempt to avoid this fallacy. Ad hominem is a move made to discredit the argument by pointing out a character flaw. Literally, ad hominem means “to the man.” The ad hominem fallacy tends to get used when there is some sort of contention or debate setting. To take an example from recent events, Sam Allberry, who was a pastor at Immanuel Nashville and has written books and articles, was recently disqualified from ministry due to an inappropriate relationship. It would be ad hominem to use the reason he was disqualified from ministry as a reason someone should not take anything he says in his study through the book of James as true and good for the body of Christ. Regardless of the flaw in Sam’s character, that has no bearing on the actual content of the James study. Does it call into question when, where, and how, it should be use? Sure. But that does not mean that the ideas therein are not biblical and God honoring. Dickinson puts it nicely, “The ideas have to be critiqued on their own terms even if they are presented by flawed people.”[1] Logically, Sam’s ideas are in question, not his character (or lack thereof). The character piece is for his pastoral counsel to deal with on a personal level with him. Ideas are open to public critique.
False Dichotomy. This fallacy could be called the “either/or fallacy.” Dichotomies are real but they become false when the dichotomy presented are the only options available. To put it in other terms it could look like this: the choices you have are either A or B, there is no C option to choose from. This fallacy is one that many are fine with being guilty of for a few reasons. The most glaring one is that they really do think it is a black and white situation. That any of the other “options” out there are really just the opposite horn in disguise. Another reason could be that they are just unaware of the potential of other options. It is just a position of ignorance. That does not mean that the dichotomy they set up is not false, they just are not in a position to be so firm on it.
The false dichotomy is most seen in two different debates in the church. First, the evolution and creation debate is where it is most publicly seen. Many in the church are advocates of what is called Young Earth Creation. The position that God created everything in 7, 24-hour days and that when you do the math from the Bible, you end up with an earth that is roughly 6,000-10,000 years old. According to some, this is the only tenable position to hold as a Christian. Any other position is atheistic evolution. If you find yourself agreeing with this, that would be fallacious thinking because there are a number of other positions in Christianity that utilize God and evolution to varying extents. There are other options like: the Day-Age account, and the Gap account, the framework account. The dichotomy described above is indeed false because it fails to account for the other ways to reconcile science and the Bible without falling into atheistic evolution. It can be avoided simply by removing the specific nuances of the Young Earth account to allow for the other theistic ways to account for the origins of the universe.
Second, we see the false dichotomy in the Calvinism v. Arminianism debate in theology. Typically, the dichotomy is set up as either Calvinism or Arminianism. No other theological positions are available for the Christian to adhere. Without doubt, Calvinism and Arminianism are the dominant positions in the western church but they are not the only ones. There is a middle option called Molinism that is often overlooked either because some see it as Calvinism-light and is therefore just lumped in with Calvinism or they just do not know the position exists. Molinism is indeed its own position with its own perspectives on the biblical data. Either way, the debate set up as Calvinism v. Arminianism and only those two, is a false dichotomy.
Genetic Fallacy. This has absolutely nothing to do with the genes of a person so rest easy knowing that there is no hard biochemistry involved. What is involved with a genetic fallacy is the origin of the claim. Essentially, a view is discredited because of where or who it comes from. This is faulty thinking because all truth is from God because God does not reveal false things.[2]
This can look differently in different circumstances but the concept remains. From an historic orthodox Christianity, this would be like rejecting all that Dale Tuggy, a unitarian, teaches simply because he rejects the trinity. Another way to see it is when traveling and you need a pick me up and you see a gas station and a Starbucks. Out of the two, you choose the gas station over Starbucks, a coffee company, because you do not like coffee. Starbucks is rejected because it is a coffee company not because there is nothing on the menu that you would not enjoy.
C.S. Lewis takes the genetic fallacy in a different direction. Lewis calls this different direction “chronological snobbery”. Chronological snobbery is the idea that because we are further along in the timeline, we have a better understanding of the truth and those that came before us are discredited as true. This abrogation is what we see in the modern day “internet” claims in the likes of, “God was just invented by those in the non-scientific ages to make sense of the world around them. They didn’t have science so they needed an explanation for what they saw in the world.” This is a way to discredit the earlier generations of humans simply because they weren’t as scientifically advanced as us. The simple fact is that the more we uncover about the workings of the universe, the more it seems to point to a creator.[3]
No True Scotsman. “You’re not a Christian! If you were, you would be a 1689 Reformed Baptist!” “All true metal heads despise Ghost.” Have you heard something like this before? We are all part of some group that we are so passionate about that we sometimes apply the idiosyncrasies of our group to the whole. The distinguishing mark of the group you are a part of is that the group you are a part of thinks they are the standard for the larger group.
Take the first quip, “You’re not a Christian! If you were, you would be a 1689 Reformed Baptist.” This truly is a group within Protestant Christianity. They hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, produced in the year, you guessed it, 1689. It is a vein of Calvinism, which is characterized by the Reformation that began with Martin Luther in the 1500s. The issue is not that they adhere to this confession or that they are Calvinistic in their theology. The issue is that some, not all, use the 1689 to be the standard of Christianity. There is no true Christian unless you are a 1689 type of Christian. They are the true Christianity. Or so they would claim.[4] To say that would be to say that all of the 1689 has direct links to antiquity, the councils, and the creeds produced by the councils. Unfortunately only certain statements, the essential statements of Christianity, are in common between the creeds and the 1689. Everything else would be unique to the 1689 and common to all of Christianity and therefore not applicable to the whole church.[5]
It is easy to see how then the second quip about the band Ghost is fallacious. There are metal heads who enjoy Ghost (though I am not one of them). It is just a matter of fact. The question is, for whatever large group and smaller sub-groups you may be a part of, where do the sub-groups overlap and are you applying sub-group specifics to the large group?
We will continue to explore these common fallacies in the next article. In the meantime, ask yourself how you may be guilty of these thinking errors. What about your church leadership? As Christians we need to be sure we are not believing things based upon faulty reasoning because when we do we are not imitating Jesus, God incarnate, the fountain head of logic and our ordered universe.
[1] Dickinson, Travis. Logic and the Way of Jesus: Thinking Critically and Christianly. B&H Academic, 2022. 258.
[2] This is typically attributed to Augustine of Hippo. See Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1958), 2.18.28.
[3] For a full treatment of this, see Meyer, Stephen C. Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. HarperOne, 2023.
[4] I wanted to reiterate that I am by no means condemning any Reformed Baptists for adhering to the 1689. Many of my good friends adhere to this confession. The use of the Reformed Baptists was merely for example only. There are examples of the no true Scotsman in pretty much every sub-group of Christianity.
[5] Substantial work would have to be done to show this strong of a connection. I highly doubt that would be historically provable however deeply the belief is held.