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Video transcript:
Let’s talk about the top 10 flawed arguments or logical fallacies I see being used against Latter-day Saints. I want you to get familiar with them for 2 reasons: 1, so you can respectfully call ‘em out when you see them (if you feel so inclined), and 2, so you can be careful not to use them, yourself, whether you are a Latter-day Saint or not.
Coming in at number 10, we’ve got Poisoning the Well. This fallacy occurs when someone uses emotionally charged words in order to bias or prime an audience against something before even discussing the actual issues. For example, lots of people like to claim that the Church of Jesus Christ is a cult. Culturally, this is an ugly term that generally evokes pretty ugly feelings. Nobody wants to be associated with cults. But throwing this term around is a great way to poison the well. When Christianity was a minority religion, Pagans poisoned the well by claiming that Christians were cannibals—a rather dramatic misrepresentation of the sacramental bread and wine that represented the flesh and blood of Christ. It’s also a straw man fallacy, but we’ll get to that later in the video.
Number 9: The Bandwagon Fallacy, or Appeal to Popularity: According to this fallacy, because a certain viewpoint is popular, it must therefore be true. For example: “Biblical Christianity is Billions and Mormons are 10M. I’ll take the Billions for a ticket to Heaven.” By this same faulty logic, you could claim that Christianity must be false because most people throughout the world are not Christian. But thankfully, truth is not determined by popularity.
Number 8: the Gish Gallop. Gish Gallops are very easy to spot. They can occur in both verbal and written debates, but the goal of this technique is simply to overwhelm your opponent with a rapid series of arguments or claims. Many of the arguments may be weak, misleading, or even false, but the sheer volume of them makes them seem convincing. The Gish Gallop creates the illusion of having a strong case because making claims is much easier than refuting claims. It’s easier to throw 100 eggs than it is to clean up 100 eggs.
I see gish gallops all the time in comments sections. Here’s a DM I got recently — it’s a shorter gish gallop, but it’s just a list of claims intended to overwhelm. I think they’ve all got great responses, but it would take a very long time to respond to each point, and if I were to try, he’d probably just respond with a new list of claims. The idea with a Gish Gallop is to throw as many darts at the wall as you can and hope that something sticks. But just because you can come up with lots of arguments doesn’t mean you’re right.
Number 7: The Hasty Conclusion fallacy, or the smoke-fire fallacy. This one sometimes comes as a direct result of someone running into a gish gallop. It goes something like this: “Just the sheer fact there is ‘smoke’ … surrounding the BofM tells me there is fire somewhere. It is fraud.” This comment concludes that the Book of Mormon is fraudulent simply because (at least for some people) there is controversy surrounding it. It’s a logical fallacy because the presence of controversy doesn’t necessarily mean that something is true or not. By the same faulty logic, a Muslim could look at Protestant Christianity and say, Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Christianity must be false. But determining whether or not something is true is not nearly that easy.
Number 6: The False Dichotomy fallacy. This one is fairly straightforward. It’s when someone presents two options and says you have to pick between one or the other when in reality, there are more than two valid options. For example: “You can’t follow the Bible and the Book of Mormon; they teach something completely different.” Latter-day Saints beg to differ. We have no problem using both the Bible and the Book of Mormon side by side.
Number 5: The Definist fallacy: This fallacy occurs when someone defines a term in such a way as to make their position easier to defend. For example, most dictionary definitions say that a Christian is someone who believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ. This commenter, however, claims that “The definition of a Christian is someone who believes in the Holy Trinity. Mormons don’t believe in that and are, therefore, not Christians. Hope this helps.” This is not a universally accepted definition and one that Latter-day Saints wouldn’t feel the need to accept. It is also a great example of…
Number 4: Begging the Question: This fallacy is a form of circular reasoning that occurs when a conclusion is based on a premise that is just assumed to be true but has yet to be proved. For example: “You worship a false Christ and preach a false gospel, therefore you cannot possibly be Christian.” The conclusion (that we’re not Christian) is based on the premise that we have a false Christ and gospel. But the commenter offers no evidence to back that premise up. It begs the question, why should I agree with that premise in the first place? I don’t agree with the premise, so the conclusion carries no weight.
Number 3: The Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. This fallacy occurs when someone only focuses on the similarities in the data in order to support their argument while simultaneously ignoring any differences or evidence that might challenge their conclusion. For example: “Joseph Smith didn’t translate anything. He just rewrote View of the Hebrews and slapped his name on it. Same Lost Tribes, same buried records, same destruction for wickedness.” Actually, it’s not the same lost tribes, and the buried records are quite different. If you zoom out enough, there are some similarities, but when you also account for the massive differences between the two books, I think this argument just falls apart.
Number 2: The Straw Man fallacy: A straw man occurs when you misrepresent your opponent’s viewpoint and then attack that misrepresentation instead of what their actual views are. For example, someone recently commented: “Members use the assertion that the BoM is true because of the lack of archaeological evidence claiming otherwise.”
The only problem is that, as far as I am aware, members do not actually claim that a lack of evidence is evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon. It certainly leaves room for plausibility, but a lack of evidence is not positive evidence. This commenter misrepresents our argument and then attacks that misrepresentation — claiming victory over a scarecrow of his own design.
Now, before we get to number 1, I want to emphasize that this video is not intended to belittle or make fun of critics of our faith. Everyone is prone to using logical fallacies. Non-members use them, former members use them, and active members use them, myself included. And just because you use them doesn’t mean your position is inherently wrong — that would be the fallacy fallacy. Fallacies are just evidence that, correct or not, your argument isn’t sound, and we can all be guilty of it.
But I specifically wanted to create this video because when Latter-day Saints see someone straw-manning a doctrine we hold so dear, or we see attempts to poison the well, it can be tempting to get angry or respond emotionally. My hope with this video is that if we can name it, we can tame it. I want to help members be able to identify some of these fallacies when they see them, so we can do better at responding with a level head, if we feel a need to respond at all. And that is especially relevant when it comes to…
Number 1 on our list: The Appeal to Ridicule fallacy. This one is really simple. The goal is to discredit your opponent’s argument by making their position seem ridiculous or stupid. For example: “Christians have logic, reason, evidence. Mormons have a case of indigestion that tells them they’re right.” This one is actually a straw man and an appeal to ridicule, and probably also poisoning the well, but you get the picture. The fact of the matter is that insulting your opponent doesn’t make you right and, unfortunately, runs the risk of just making you look like a jerk when in all reality, you’re probably a great person.
Earlier, when we were talking about the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy, I brought up the claim that Joseph Smith ripped off the Book of Mormon from a book called View of the Hebrews. We only scratched the surface of that theory, so if you really want to dig into that one, I highly encourage you to go check out this episode, which will hopefully be the last video you’ll ever need to see on that topic. Have a great day!