Logical Flaws & Fallacies | Ep.16

We lay out a blunt case against unfiltered democracy and argue for a basic voter competence test, then map the emotional and logical traps that warp public debate. From ad hominem to strawman, we show how to spot fallacies and keep your head when propaganda hunts your feelings.

• why equal ballots reward emotion over reason
• baseline test idea for civic literacy
• letter versus spirit of the law
• how media primes the amygdala
• dangers of missing context and rushed judgement
• picking battles without being miscast
• walkthrough of major logical fallacies
• practical cues to recognise manipulation
• closing thoughts on faith, wisdom and restraint

Christ is King, Jesus loves you, and He's coming back soon.

If you made it this far, then you're a legend, and I love you

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening & Bold Stance
• 0:20 Case Against Equal Votes
• 3:39 Voter Tests & Basic Literacy
• 4:54 Letter Versus Spirit Of The Law
• 7:21 Manipulation, Media, And Emotion
• 12:40 Context, Nuance, And Rushed Judgement
• 19:32 Arguing Without Being Miscast
• 22:43 Pick Your Battles In Public
• 26:58 Why Knowing Laws Can Backfire
• 27:45 Logical Fallacies: Purpose & Pain
• 28:27 Ad Hominem And Labels
• 31:50 Bandwagon And Bad Experts
• 35:24 Strawman And Misrepresentation
• 40:47 False Dilemmas And Context
• 45:20 Middle Ground And Equivocation
• 49:39 Slippery Slope & Fallacy Fallacy
• 51:01 Red Herring In Hot Debates
• 52:05 Texas Sharpshooter & Similarities
• 54:21 Wrap Up & Sign Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to episode 16 of the Ministry Man podcast. I'm your host, Isaac Anthony Turner. Right. Let's get down to business. This is the issue that I have. Well, this is the conclusion that I have, okay? I've given this careful, careful thought. And I can safely say that I am fully against democracy. I'm against democracy. I don't believe in it. As far as a voting system goes, there is just there's too many stupid people. It's becoming more and more obvious just how many stupid people there are that don't know how to think reasonably or logically and are only influenced by their emotions. And that is not to say that I am smart in any way. I'm not claiming that I'm some logical genius or that I'm more intelligent than anyone. But once you know the basics, like the most elementary levels of logical thinking, like and I'm talking like the entry-level stuff. So if you went on to say Khan Academy, which is just like a free online educational thing, I think high schools use it maybe sometimes for resources. It's not accredited, it's nothing looked upon as being any kind of valid learning. But if you go on something like that, the first things you're gonna learn is just simply what logic is and how to use it and how to think, like in a in a structured way that makes sense, that doesn't use emotion. It eliminates feeling and emotion out of the thinking to come to a rational decision. So that's the level that I'm at. I'm like literally the most basic, basic, basic. But the issue is when you know those basic things, it's so much easier to identify the people that don't know those basic things and when they pop up in the wild. And as it happens to be, I just keep noticing these things more and more. Like people that are irrational in their thought, that they're emotional in their decision making, and in my opinion, not fit to vote, that they shouldn't have the same vote. So I mentioned earlier in a previous podcast that I believe it was Socrates didn't believe that uh we should have uh an equal vote, that you know, that one vote shouldn't equal the same as another vote, as far as let's say someone who is educated versus someone that is uneducated having the same vote in the political space as well, so on what you're actually voting for. So my opinion now, because there's a lot of different ones, Plato he thought that it's the the the philosophers should be in charge. So his idea was almost pretty totalitarian. Um, so I don't know if I agree with Plato's uh idea of just the philosophers should be in charge, but this is the best one that I've been able to think of and come up with. And maybe there's flaws in it. I don't know, but this is where I want to start. And it's implementing just a testing system that you have to pass to be able to cast a vote. So, in the same way, we don't let people drive a car unless they've passed a test to make sure that they actually know what they're doing and that they're competent enough. Why wouldn't we do that with I don't know, voting for who's gonna run the entire country and dictate the laws that we're all under? Like it seems to me that that's the most reasonable thing to do. It doesn't have to be uh some crazy test that no one can pass, just like a base level test. Do you know what the word economy means? Do you know like the party that you're voting for? What are what are, let's say, three or maybe five of their policies? That would weed out, I would think, 90% of the voters. Or it would encourage 90% of the voters or all of the voters to actually do a bit of investigating into what it is that they're voting for. That would be, I think, but more so, I think, a structure. One of the things that could be looked at was uh Lawrence Coburg's six stages of moral development, or six stages of morality, in which the the sixth, or I suppose the highest level of morality, it looks at the spirit of a law, let's say. So this is an interesting thing, actually. A friend of mine just finished his law degree and he said that there's an interesting thing in law, in which when when they're looking at a, let's say they're in court and they're someone's broken the law, one of the things they look at is the law itself, which that you might call the letter of the law, and then another thing that they have called the spirit of the law, which looks at why it is that that law was created in the first place. So let's say, for example, if someone is, I don't know, trespasses in a particular area, you're not allowed to go in this particular place. But then, but and someone does go in that particular place, but it was because they were being chased by a murderer or something. So they're like, they would look at that and go, okay, well, yeah, they broke the law because they trespassed and they went to some other place. But the the spirit of the law is to keep people safe, let's say, for example. The reason they created the law to begin with was to keep people safe. This person broke the law, but they broke it in order to keep themselves safe. So then they would look at that and go, okay, well, we're not gonna press charges against this person, kind of thing. So that's kind of like the difference. Whereas the letter of the law would say, no, you broke the law, uh, you get charged anyway. So that's kind of like the thing. So if you're a person that can't distinguish the difference between the two, that isn't able to comprehend the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, then you should fail the test and you shouldn't be able to vote. As an example, that's what I think. So the I that there's so it's just too many people that just literally just don't know how to do basic thinking and understanding. And they're just like moving off of instinct. And this is literally the reason I believe that we won't ever probably see something like a testing system to be able to vote anyway, because they don't want only the smart people to vote. They want stupid people to vote because the stupid people are the ones that can be manipulated the easiest through propaganda and through riling up emotions, because we know that emotions uh and decision making are both tied into the same part of the brain. So I've mentioned in previous podcasts about how the amygdala, which is the emotional processing part of the brain, also directly impacts your decision-making abilities. And so they know, they've known for years that if you can get to someone's emotions, well, then you can get to their behavior because that you you act upon how you feel most of the time, unless you make a conscious effort to not do that. As in maybe someone in the stoic community would do that. Even a lot of Christians probably should do that because we should be living to a higher sense of morality rather than our own feelings. We do things whether we feel like it or not, according to the word of God. But not a lot of Christians actually do that. Regardless, that's another topic. But and yeah, the point being that they want to manipulate people's emotions in order to get their votes, and so that's probably why when we're not gonna see any change. But all that to say, I'm I'm just straight up not a fan of democracy. I'm against, I can safely say I'm against it now. Um, in terms of just voting. I don't I think if you are ignorant and lazy, intellectually lazy, and you don't want to make an effort to learn about, I guess, politics or economics or whatever it is that I mean, yeah, well, whatever it is, then I don't think you should vote. I just don't think you should have that ability. And when I say stupid people, because I know that there's so many definitions of you know what a stupid person could be, the one that I've been noticing the most lately is what what I think the stupidest people are, are the ones that assume that there's nothing else that is to be known and that they have all the information and then they make their decisions very wholeheartedly. So they don't consider the fact that there could be more information that they don't have that could deter, that could change their decision, for example. They think that if they see, let's say, a 30-second clip on the internet of something happening, and they go, This is all the context I need, and now I'm just going to shout it from the rooftops about how evil one person is or the other. And they don't think for a second about, hey, that was 30 seconds of information. Maybe there's something else to it. Like we that we just don't know yet. And they go, No, no, this is all you need to know. And an example might be let's say they see there's a video online that surfaces, and it's a guy that punches a girl in the face. Or let's just say we don't even see that. We just see the girl who has got a black eye, and she goes, Yeah, this guy punched me in the face. So all of a sudden, that starts absolute mayhem. And then everyone's saying, men are evil, uh, and then this guy needs to be locked up and he's abuser. But then more information comes out, and it turns out that the girl had a knife and she'd already stabbed him twice and was trying to get him again before he did the only thing he knew what to do to try and take the girl out, punched her in the face, whatever. And so you go, oh, okay, well, there was more to the story, and she was actually like she'd stabbed this guy twice. So, okay, maybe we just didn't, maybe we were a bit too, you know, eager to jump on and just make an assumption or make a conclusion based on just one side of the story. But then it turns out that the guy broke into the house at like 2 a.m. in the morning, and then she was claiming that she was just defending herself because this guy broke in. And so there's another thing. But then it goes to court, and it turns out the guy was living there, and they were actually together, and she'd locked him out of the house, it was his house, and so you go, okay, so there's all these things that could potentially happen. This is all information that gets released after time, and like I made all that up, by the way. It's not a real story, but the point that I'm making is that there could be information, and your ability to be able to discern or recognize the fact that you just might not have all the information, that's a wise thing. So Socrates, according to Plato, was considered by the Oracle of Delphi to be the wisest of all the men because of his ability to recognize his own ignorance. Socrates had the intuition and the understanding that he doesn't know many things. And even circumstantially, he might not know everything that there is to be known in a decision. So just that simple fact alone is enough to make you wise, at least a lot wiser. That is something I think that I'm noticing a lot lately that people just don't have. They just don't have that ability, they don't have that consideration. Maybe we don't have the full story here. No, because their emotions are already driven. And so, do you know how easy it is to manipulate people like that? Like, all a news outlet has to do is just post a story saying this person did a thing, and then if and then if they get it wrong, then they write a retraction, but by then it's too late. Like your emotions are already risen, you're already up here. And so they go, Oh, okay, yeah, we were wrong about that. We'll put a little edit out, but like no one's gonna see it. Or at least you can be sure a lot of people won't see it. The amount of times that happens where the thing that goes viral is the crazy thing, but the correction of the thing never goes viral, or or at least rarely goes viral when they put a retraction out, or it takes a long time. And some people just, yeah, maybe if it does go viral, maybe it's different people that see it. And so by that point, anyway, though, people have already, their emotions have already been engaged and they're already in action mode, they've already made their decision because it's a lot harder. This is what Mark Twain said, it's a lot harder to convince someone that they've been fooled than it is to just fool them to begin with. So no one wants to believe that they've been fooled or lied to. Like everyone, everyone wants to think of themselves or already does think of themselves as having really good discernment, and I can spot a fraud and I'm a really good judge of character. But the issue is that literally everyone thinks that. Like there isn't anyone, like there might be some people, but the vast majority of people that you speak to would be like, yeah, no, I'm a I'm a really good judge of character. I can usually I can always smell a rat, I can always smell when when someone's not you know authentic. But but everyone perceives themselves to be like that, and so but it's just not true. It's the same, it's the same thing as like 75% of people think that they're above average driving skill, which is hilarious because that's impossible for 75% of people. Dude, I said that. I uh so I said that to a bunch, a group of people, and none of them understood what I meant by that. Like they're just like, yeah, okay, yeah. Oh, that's interesting. 75% of people are above average. They just did not understand how that duh, that only 50% of people can be above the average, the average. Oh man. Oh life, man. So anyway, so that's one thing. The other thing that really stupid people do is when you highlight a logical flaw or an inconsistency in any subject, people think that you are defending whatever the situation is that it's happening. So oh, it really, really frustrates me, man. There was this reality TV show that was on once, and I remember I was with a group of friends, and something happened. Like, it was one of those dating shows. It was like a bachelor thing, but it was like, it wasn't the bachelor, but it was like had the bachelor people on it. Whatever, doesn't matter. There was a guy on there who was just this like womanizer kind of guy, as those shows kind of attract. And his ex- partner was on the show. The girl got with the guy's friend, and uh the guy got really angry at his friend. He was like, How could you go for my ex? Like that's um that's a dog move, basically. And then, but then he but he got with the with his ex's friend. So he got with the girl's friend, and the girl got angry at him. And then and then when I was talking to the group of people that I was talking to, they were saying, Oh, that guy's got a double standard because he he got angry, you know, when she did it, but then now he's getting angry at her for her doing it, or something like that. So I I pointed out that there was a there was a small logical flaw there because he didn't get angry at her for getting with his friend. He got angry at his friend with getting with her ex. She got angry not at a friend, she got angry at him. And so I said it's not a not a double standard because he's not angry. If he was angry at her and then said that she can't be angry at him for doing the same thing, well, then it's a double standard because you if you you can't get angry at someone for doing the same thing that you did to them. He was saying just to his own friend that like a good friend wouldn't do that. So in doing this, they thought that I was defending the guy, even though I didn't even like the guy, and that I thought that he was still like a womanizer or that he was not behaving appropriately or ethically, whatever. But they couldn't wrap their head around the fact that I was just saying it's just not a double standard. Like all I'm saying is that you you said it was a double standard, I'm saying it's not a double standard. I didn't say it was right though, but they just literally could not wrap their head around the fact that I wasn't defending the guy. So another thing that happened was like there was this video that I saw of a kid being really rude to this famous person asking for a photo. And the guy kept saying no, no, and he was clearly in a rush, he was clearly really busy, like this famous person. But the kid like was following him around and not letting him like just live his life. It was really uncomfortable to watch. And one of the comments was saying, I can't believe people are still not teaching young men that no means no, and just made it a gender issue. It was like, this isn't obviously there's not a gender issue, this is like a kid that uh seemed like he might have even been like just a little bit socially weird as well. Like he obviously wasn't understanding, he couldn't detect the anger in the guy, so he was probably on the spectrum for one, but for two, or the point that I'm making is that I just said like this isn't a gender issue. This is just a kid that just hasn't been raised. Like, it's got nothing to do with men, it's nothing to do with like, oh, we're still not teaching men that no means no. This is just a kid, and this is a it's just a person. It's like anyone can do that, it's not a gender thing. And then all like I'm talking hundreds, not maybe not hundreds, maybe there was like 40 comments, but all like hundreds of likes, saying that uh thinking that I was defending abuse and saying that like they're going, um, no means no, and and like and I'm saying it's not a gender problem. They go, it's not a gender problem, really, when this percentage of um assault on or domestic violence is from men, it's like this isn't a domestic violence video. What are you talking about? It's just a rude kid, and so like the but they couldn't understand it. It was they were completely incapable of understanding the fact that I'm like, hey, this is just that to go from kid being rude to a guy to men don't understand no means no as a gender. Like, that's just too big of a leap. That isn't that doesn't logically follow. That's not a consistent logical conclusion that you just made a really big jump there and you've just linked two things together. So, but like there was just no point. Like, there no, not a single person in the comment section could wrap their head around the fact that I was not defending the kid. It was like the kid was obviously being rude. They're like, I can't believe you're defending this guy. Like, it's these things where I'm just like, you just you can't speak to these people. They're they don't, I don't know what it is, but their brain doesn't work. Like you tell them, you you explain the thing, and it doesn't register. It's kind of like when when someone's like praising someone that you like. So let's say that there's a person you like and you think that they're funny, and you go, Oh man, that guy is the funniest guy ever. Like, like he has got to be the funniest person I've ever come across in my life. And you're like, okay, well, he's not that funny. I mean, like, he's funny, but he's not that funny. And you end up like kind of being on the opposite side of the thing, or if or if someone like doesn't like someone, you go, that and you're like, you don't like them either. And they're like, that person is literally the devil. And you go, well, I mean, they're not that bad, and you end up defending the person that you don't even like anyway, because they're just going too far. And then you're like, you're like in this camp of, well, hang on, no, like I'm just saying you like you want to see them dead. I'm just, I just don't like them, regularly don't like them. And then they're like, What? You're defending this person. Like, no, I'm not defending. Defending them like that, like you just like you just you think they're literally Satan. And I'm just saying, okay, well, they're just like maybe a bad person, or just like maybe they're a bit rude sometimes. They're not literally the the epitome of evil as you're making them out to be. So it's this weird thing, man, where like oh, yeah, you gotta be careful too, as well. Like you can't just go around defending or like this is one thing that I'm learning because you point out these logical flaws, right? You point out these fallacies. But the issue is you're always at the behest of the intelligence of the person that you're speaking to. So no matter what, whatever you try to explain, you're limited by the comprehension skills of the person that you're explaining the thing to. And if they don't understand, there's nothing you can do about that. They're just going to think what they think. And the issue is most people are probably like that. There's probably, I don't know what it is, but as far as the logical thinking side of things, like if a lot of people just don't seem to grasp it. And so you have to be careful. You have to like know your enemy almost and just be like, okay, I need to pick my battles. And even though everything they're saying here just makes complete is just complete nonsense, I can't step in. Because if I do, they're gonna lump me in with it, and then they're just gonna think that I'm just a bad person or that I have got got poor character, or that I'm defending bad people, or praising bad people, whatever. Like it happens when it happens when um, like when you try to defend things like let's say the the law or certain definitions of things that people get wrong, if you start trying to like correct people on it or defend it, then they're gonna think you're defending the actual thing itself. So like there's a word. So apparently the word for petto like only applies to a particular age bracket that's really young. There's another word, there's like maybe there's like two or three different words for like as ages go, but they're all the same thing, essentially. But if you're the type of person that goes, so Nick Fuentes made comments about the Epstein Files, or maybe Jeffrey Epstein or something, to the degree of they weren't this young age, they were they were this other age. They were both underage, though. And he was saying it in a way that was like, dude, why are you saying this? Why are you making this distinction? You just don't want to do that. Like, what are you gonna gain from that? Uh, but anyway, like if you're the type of person that knows what those words are for the different age category, well, they're not technically a pedo, they're actually this, a stenner file or whatever the I don't know what the actual words are, but um, and I'm not and I'm not googling it either. That's even a thing that I'm like, there is no way I'm gonna look up definitions for these things, but uh you can do that in your own time. But you just you don't want to be that person. Like if you're the person that goes around correcting people about that, like you that is not a a battle you want to engage in. You just want to stay as far away from those things as possible. Even like there's a there's a law, or maybe it's like you're allowed to marry your legally you can marry either your first cousins or second cousins or something. What there's a law that's like that's not illegal. I can't remember which one it is, but if you if you heard that that happened, right? If you hear two people they marry, they were cousins or second cousins, whatever it is, you're not gonna be like, well, technically it's not illegal, actually. Like you're not gonna be the like if you're the person that comes into that conversation with giving the actual law, you're just gonna look like you're supporting the thing. So you don't want to like, you don't want to just jump in on like everything just to correct people on absolutely everything. Like you gotta, you gotta understand how the dynamics of social interactions work. And when you understand that people just they don't really care that much a lot of the time about logic and reasoning, and they don't understand that that's what you're doing, they're just gonna look at it as being like, oh yeah, this person just sounds like you're just defending cousin marriage, dude. So yeah, so you want to pick your battles, you definitely want to pick your battles in the logical realm. Um, so all that to bring me to it's like it's the longest intro into the what I actually wanted to talk about today, which is logical fallacies. Bro, if you even knowing the law, like I don't even know what it is. Thank god I don't know what it is. I actually think that's a good thing that I don't know if it's first or second. As far as I'm aware, I mean they could both be legal, but I don't I genuinely don't know the law. But if you do, it's even funnier if you do genuinely know the law to some of these things, like and you break it out in conversation. Oh man, yeah, spend your time memorizing other laws, all right? Because who cares, man? It's crazy. All right, so I want to talk about logical fallacies because, first of all, understanding these is gonna do two things. Number one, you're gonna be able to identify these logical fallacies and you're gonna be able to call people out on them. Number two, you're gonna have a more like frustrating life because you're gonna see these logical fallacies everywhere that people use, and you're gonna get frustrated about it when you call them out on it and they don't understand what it is that you're saying. Because usually the people that are using these don't even understand why they're wrong. So, anyway, I'm gonna power through a few of them and then end the episode. But the first one is what's called an ad hominem. So this is just attacking the person instead of the argument that they're making. So if I said to you, let's say, for example, uh, I don't like democracy and I think democracy is bad, and I give you all these reasons about democracy being bad, and then someone goes, Oh, isn't that the guy that let's say I was a, you know, got I was a convicted felon or something for stealing. You know, isn't that the thief? Isn't that the guy that steals? And go, oh yeah, I'm not gonna listen to him. And so you're like, okay, but what's that got to do with the argument? The argument is separate from the person's character. So what a lot of people will do is they attack the person's character and they go, yeah, oh yeah, we're not gonna listen to that person, rather than the actual arguments that they're putting forth. So this is what this is why name calling doesn't really work anymore. So people have stopped kind of being scared of being called racist or being called homophobic or a Nazi, like or a fascist, like whatever the word of the day is. People are caring less and less about being called those titles because you know, someone might say something, they give some information, and then someone goes, that's racist, and they go, Yeah, okay. And then they go, Well, you're a racist. And they go, Okay, sure. Well, like now, I said what I said though, so address that. Like, now what? Because what used to happen, like the left would do this a lot, is that they would someone would say something and they go, That's racist. That means you're a racist. And then the person goes, No, I'm not. That's not racist. I'm not a racist. I have, you know, black friends or whatever, you know, that would say whatever the thing is that says that, and they go, No, you are a racist. And then so the conversation ends up being whether or not the person is a racist or not, and not on the topic that they brought up to begin with. So they change the whole conversation. Someone says something and they go, Oh, that means you're homophobic. And they go, No, I'm not homophobic. And then they go back and forth talking about whether or not they're homophobic, not even addressing the thing that they said to begin with. So they they completely just change the whole topic and conversation with just name calling. So that's similar to an ad hominem, but the the idea is that you're not actually addressing the argument itself, you're addressing the person and their character or the the whatever the thing is that you're attacking just isn't the actual argument or the information that they've presented. They're just attacking the source or the person, whatever it is. So, uh, and the one of the reasons why I think the right uh and maybe more conservative rhetoric or maybe neoconservatism is more popular now is because if you accept the terms and they're saying, yeah, I am racist, or yeah, I am whatever the thing, whatever they're being labeled as, then you can't use that to shut them down anymore. They go, yeah, now what? Now look at my argument. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm all the things that you're telling me that I am, and now what? So that's kind of like why they're winning is because of I think that they've identified that. Um okay, the next one is called the bandwagon fallacy. Now, this is a pretty simple one. It's just if everyone believes it, it must be true. And so the idea is that like not everyone could be wrong. Look at all the majority of people all think this. And people use it as an appeal. So they'll say, someone goes, I think this for this reason, and someone goes, no, that's false. Everyone else believes this, this other thing. And they go, okay, well, so what? Like everyone else could be wrong. The simple fact of many people believing a thing doesn't make it true. I mean, one of the best ones that I always like to use now is like the whole flat earth thing, because at one stage everyone believed it was flat that was in existence. Then at another stage, everyone believes it's round, and now we're at another stage where a bunch of people believe that it's flat again. And so whenever I use this one, I'm like, well, one group is wrong. So at one stage, guaranteed, everyone that's been living on the earth has been wrong, regardless of what it is. I'm hearing that the flat earth theory is getting old now, people are more moving on to the hollow earth or the donut earth. So you can look into that. Um, that's a joke, obviously. So, okay, but yeah, I mean, dude, the bandwagon fallacy is so dumb as well. It's just like as if a bunch of people believing something just makes it true. Well, not everyone could be wrong. There's also a little bit of the, you know, people feel safe in that as well. They're like, if I'm going down, we're all going down. And so they they feel a little bit safer to just go with the herd, which is just a weak mindset anyway. I don't I don't rate it. Yeah. I mean, even like the history of science, if you just if you know anything about the history of science, it has a history of being mostly wrong about most things most of the time. Like we're constantly recorrecting and rediscovering and reinterpreting. And this piece changes everything we thought. We thought this, and then we actually discovered this. And that has just literally been the story of humanity is us just getting things wrong and then correcting it later, and then that's also wrong, and then correcting it later again, and then just like infinitely doing that just forever. So a bandwagon is a bad source of authority. The other uh, the next one, which is kind of similar in a sense, is the appeal to authority, which is if someone is just in a high position of authority, people just go, Well, that person believes it, and so it must be true. Like if this scientist believes it, then it's true. Because I'm you and I are not a scientist. If you're like in a debate with someone and they go, they just they pull the card of the experts think this. Well, let me tell you something about the experts, okay? Let me tell you about the doctors that were given cigarettes out to patients for stress. Yeah, have this cancer-causing cigarette that'll that'll chill you out. That's good. Hey, let's give everyone margarine, let's give everyone trans fats. It's like one of the worst things imaginable. Yeah, it's way better for you than butter. The natural thing. We've made this other insane thing that we're gonna give to everyone that gets taken down almost immediately because it's one of the worst possible things a human being can have. And let's not even get me started on COVID, bro. Trust the experts, they said, dude. Oh my gosh. Like, I'm not gonna have enough time to go over all the things that were wrong with that because that was just the most insane thing. Like, they're fully like AstraZeneca gone, completely pulled off the shelves. Pfizer's got like the black box, it's it's just like a hella warning, like just mad warnings all over it. And when I tell you, I have never been gaslit so hard as to when we're in the middle of COVID, even throughout all time through during COVID, I never got it. I never got it. And everyone goes, they go, Yeah, you do, bro. You definitely got it. And they told me that I was that that I would have gotten it, and I just would have been asymptomatic. They said that because I said, Well, I didn't get sick, I didn't have any of the symptoms.

SPEAKER_00: 36:42

They go, Yeah, bro, well not having any of the symptoms, that's that's actually one of the symptoms.

SPEAKER_01: 36:54

What okay maybe, just maybe I had a good immune system. Just maybe I spent a lot of time in the sun and eating healthy food and exercising and just didn't get it. No, no, no, no, no, no, bro. No, it comes through everyone, mate. You you got it. You just didn't know you had it. What you're talking about the the life-threatening thing that's wiped out half the the world, and that's why we had to shut down the entire world. More more lockdown than the world has ever been in, by the way. Yep. Trust the experts, mate. Trust them to wear a mask, even though prior to that they said masks don't do anything. Trust them when they said don't take ivermectin, even though ivermectin had won awards for how good and effective it was. Oh no, take that off the shelves. That's all your misinformation. You just you just get all your information off of Facebook. And you're like, okay, well, it was a doctor that said it on Facebook, but okay, whatever. Doesn't really matter. Oh, I need to move on. Because I could probably do a full episode on how dumb that whole thing was. And and I probably will, just for the fun of it. No, I probably won't, to be honest, because it's not really that fun. Next one, straw man. Strawman is like probably by far the most annoying because this is like when people either intentionally or unintentionally create a fake argument. Like they create a straw man and they attack that instead. So you put something forth and they go, So you're saying this. So I made a video the other day. Um, I put a little clip up on my YouTube, and I just said, How do you know whether you love God? Well, Jesus says, Those that love me obey my commands. So if you're obeying his commands, you know, for you you you know you can introspect, you can look at yourself and your own behaviors and go, hmm, the life that I'm living, if I look at it, am I obeying the Lord's commands? No? Well then maybe I don't love Jesus. If I am, then maybe I do love Jesus. You know, it's one of those things. Someone looks at that and goes, So you're saying we've got to be completely perfect and never sin ever in our entire lives, otherwise we're gonna burn in hell. I'm like, No. No, that's not what I'm saying. And then so they built up this thing and then they attack it because then they they build up the thing and they go, so this is what you're saying, and this is why you're wrong and you've got a religious spirit and you're teaching a false doctrine and it's lies and you need to repent and you need to read your Bible more and all this sort of stuff. It's like, dude, I said literally none of what you just said then. So you've just set up a straw, man, and you're attacking it. And like, what's the point? Because neither of us believe it. I don't and you don't. So what are we doing here? I don't know if people do it intentionally or unintentionally, but it's just it's the most annoying one because it's just such a waste of time. And then you spent all you just end up spending all this time clarifying. This is what I meant, this is what I said. The worst is when people don't listen to you when you're explaining what you meant. There was a clip of this guy from the podcast Trigonometry, Constantine. He was talking to this woman about immigration or something, and he said that the invaders of Australia versus so maybe the English that invaded Australia to begin with, they were more advanced. That like the reason they were able to uh colonize Australia was because they were tech technologically more advanced. And she goes, Wait a second, are you saying that they're more superior, like as in a value, that like that the indigenous people were beneath the English? And he's going, No, it's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that they were just technologically more advanced, that's why they were able to do it. And she goes, it really sounds like you're saying this. It doesn't matter what it's he's explaining it to you. He sat there in front of you saying, No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this other thing. And like, she's like, Well, it really sounds like to me that you're saying it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what it really sounds like I mean, I'm I'm sat here in front of you with the information to say what you're hearing isn't what I'm intending, and now I'm correcting that in real time to say, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this. But people just want to attack the straw man because that's the much easier thing. They don't want to actually address the proper issue. So you can tell when someone's attacking a straw man or building a straw man, they often don't know what they're talking about. They want to go for an easier target, and so they're gonna purposely, sometimes people will do this, they'll they'll purposely misunderstand someone because they've created an enemy. If it's an argument, you're not gonna ever admit defeat. You just have to keep trying to find different ways to win. That's why, that's why I don't like debates. That's why I feel like debates are really pointless because they're often set out to win, not to find truth. So, anyway, that's a straw, man. The next one is a common one, it's it's a false dilemma. It's when people go, answer this question, yes or no. Or they go, you're either with me or you're against me. So they're giving you these options. You're like, no, there's actually more options than that. Um, I might not be with you, but I'm definitely not against you. Like that could be an option as well. But they go, no, you're either with me or against me. It's either you're you're this or you're that. It's like, no, you've just you've just set up these terms that I don't agree to. This is a a false dilemma that you're putting me in here, and I reject it. That's what I would say to these things. So, in terms of like people talking about, like, whenever someone gives me go yes or no, I'm not playing that game. I will use as many words as I want to to express what I'm thinking and feeling. I'm not going to allow you to just say it's a simple yes or no. Well, no, because it's not a simple yes or no answer. Maybe there's context involved. Maybe there's a story behind it. Maybe I don't even know and I'm not committed to saying yes or no. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. You're not gonna like shoehorn me or like funnel me into this one particular yes or no question and force me to answer it. You're setting up rules and expecting me to obey, but I'm not gonna play your game and you can't force me to play it. So That's uh that's another fallacy. There's there could always be another alternative answer. With that false dilemma, it gets like uh I don't mind it, I don't mind necessarily yes or no questions on its face. Sometimes yes or no questions are really good, and that there isn't going to be like if so if someone goes to you, if someone says to me, Are you a Christian? I can just say yes. Like if like if you were to say, I mean, you can maybe ask clarification questions, what do you mean by Christian or something? So there was a you can say to someone, are you a uh a racist? And you go, No. But then someone else might go, Well, what do you mean by that though? Because you're asking it in the say in the context of immigration, which is a really hot topic right now, someone could be asking that uh and and uh wanting a particular answer, maybe. They're wanting to get something out of you. So if someone refuses to answer, you're like, well, why are you refusing to answer? Like, why are you when when it's something that's as simple as that, are you racist, for example, and you are going, no, you're not gonna put me in this yes or no, then it's kind of a bit weird because you're like, well, why? It kind of, yeah, I don't know. It doesn't really fit in the same sense to say that yeah, I don't know. I'm more thinking of situations where someone might say, let's say the example of someone running into a restricted area to save their life, like going back to the spirit of the law, letter of the law thing I was talking about before. If someone's running into the uh unauthorized area and they go, Did you go into the unauthorized area, yes or no? And they they want to say, Well, I did, but I was running because someone was trying to kill me. That's why I ran in there. And they're going, No, no, no, did you go in, yes or no? And they're just wanting you to say, Yes, right, gotcha. You know, like that kind of thing, that's what I'm talking about. You're giving a false thing, like that needs more context because the context changes the whole thing, it changes everything. So, anyway, middle ground is another one. There's a middle ground fallacy where it's like, where people might be like, Well, the truth is is probably somewhere, you're probably both right in in one way. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Um, no, it's not. No, it's not. People use this for religion all the time. It's like, no, no, Jesus is the only way, actually. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to the Father is to go through him. So it's true. Uh, that's not an argument for Christianity, by the way. That's just what I believe. But to say, well, the answer is just, you know, it's a little bit of this, and you know, the truth is somewhere in a conglomerate of all these things. No. No, they're false doctrines, they're lies. No, there's only one truth, actually. There's no middle ground in that. Um, but you can you can apply it to anything. Like some, it's just something that some people say a lot of the time with religion, but people use that fallacy for a lot of different things. Um, the equivocation fallacy. Now, this one is an interesting one. So where people use different meanings for the same word to try and prove a point. Like, dummies do this all the time, man. This is like, yeah, you really need to be switched on when you're talking to people that are using these. So, an example might be if someone was talking about a bat, and you know, there's the the marsupial bat, or I don't even know if it is a marsupial actually, whatever the bat is, the flying mammal, and then there's like a baseball bat or something. So people can I don't know, give information about bats uh to say, you know, bats are mammals, therefore baseball bats are mammals, or something like that. You know, it's stupid. So this is actually this is what Calvinists use. If you know much about reformed theology and Christianity, Calvinists like to say this. They they say, you you can't choose God, God has to unlock you in order to say, like, you can't come to Christ without God doing that for you first. So you don't have a choice in the matter, basically. There's no they don't believe in free will in the sense that you can't choose God because they say that everyone's dead to begin with, and how can the dead choose? How can the dead choose anything? So they're using what's called an equivocation fallacy because the Bible talks about being dead and alive in the spirit, but the decisions that we make in terms of choosing God isn't out of that dead. So I'm alive right now. I'm all I was also alive before I was a Christian, I was also dead spiritually before I was a Christian, and now I'm alive spiritually as a Christian. So there's different meanings and definitions for life and death within Christianity, is they use an equivocation and they use the spiritual death to say we can't make physical decisions, or that like you know, no one would be able to understand it. So it's it's just a yeah, it's a silly, it's a silly thing. The slippery slope fallacy, this one, I actually like this one. I'm not that I'm not that like it's it is a logical fallacy, but I actually am not that uh against it. It's basically like, oh, we can't let this happen because it's a slippery slope to this other thing. So, yes, technically it doesn't necessarily mean that, but you know, a lot of the time that people make that fallacy or that logical fallacy is because of something in history, for example, which is another thing. It's like just because it happened in history doesn't mean it's gonna happen again in the future. But like we make predictions and we see patterns. And so I'm not too fussed on the slippery slope one. Um, I actually, yeah, I don't mind it at all. Which is another thing as well. There's another one called the fallacy fallacy, which means just because it falls in the category of being a logical fallacy doesn't just automatically dismiss it and make it false. If some like just because someone might happen to be defending an idea fallaciously doesn't mean you can just dismiss the whole idea altogether. That's kind of like another one. Okay, I'll finish off with maybe the red herring. The red herring fallacy is it's where you take like one minor thing, like an outlier from an argument and use that to distract the whole conversation. So this is most commonly used in cases that when people are arguing for abortion or against abortion. Um, in that debate, they'll say, abortion's wrong. And then the red herring is they go, well, what about forced, unconsented pregnancies in those scenarios? They go, would you expect that person to carry the baby? So they're kind of using this thing that's like less than 1% of all abortions that take place are from this thing. And so they use that as a red herring because it's 99% that take place is just for whatever reasons they feel like it. Maybe they just don't want it, maybe they just aren't ready. It's going to be an inconvenience to them, whatever it is. It's it's not like the worst case scenario. So uh, but more often than not, the red herring is just something that someone pulls away from the main argument. And so it ends up focusing on this tiny little distraction almost from the real topic. So, anyway, the last one I'll I'll give is actually called the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy. This is the first logical fallacy I ever came across, actually. So imagine for a moment you you have a Texan and this big farm shed, and he's got a gun, and he just starts firing away at the at the side wall of the barn. And as he walks up a bit closer to the barn, he can see a cluster of bullets that have all gone. There's there's bullets everywhere, all over the place, but there's a little cluster there. And what he does is he goes and he draws a target over the over the cluster. And so it looks like all of these things are now related, but he's sort of come in after the fact, put the target there, and is now ignoring all of the misses. So this is what happens when someone looks at all the things that link something together and dismisses the vast amount of things that don't link in together. And an example of that might be we I would use this in things like evolution, for example. So, or maybe, maybe, yeah, yeah. So saying that we evolved from monkeys, one of the things that they they say is that we share 98% of our DNA with chimps. And then they go, oh wow, that's a massive thing. And there's like other things that they they might link together between, you know, similarities between humans and apes. But they don't look at all the differences. So for example, they they ignore 18% of the chimps' DNA and 26% of the human's DNA in that assessment. They take that out altogether. So it's kind of like uh like this, for example. They chop the ends off and they look at just this part and they go, 98% of that is is the same. Um, even though we share somewhere around 90% of the same DNA with cats, it's something like 92% we share with dogs. Like so we're high 90s in a lot of different animals, or at least in the 90s with a lot of different animals. Monkeys just happen to be the highest one. But what they ignore is let's say, for example, you might be looking at two essays written side by side. One of them has a paragraph, and the other one, it has the paragraph, but it has it twice. And so what they do is they go, Oh, well, that's different. So we're gonna we're gonna take that out altogether from our analysis. You might have another thing where it's got two paragraphs, and on the other side, they've got the same two, but they're back to front. They're like in the opposite way. And so they go, okay, well, we'll remove those out because there's like a little discrepancy there. So we'll take those out. So there's little things like that that they remove. And so you're not really looking at all the differences, you're just looking at all the similarities, and you go, well, that that's all the same. So let's let's go with that. Um, even though the differences is in the differences, the biggest thing that may that changes it from that changes everything is the differences. It's not the similarities. And so, anyway, there's a lot to be said about that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to wrap it up because I've spoken more words than intended. So just remember this Christ is King. Okay? He's King. And Jesus loves you, and He's coming back soon. And um, yeah, so thanks for listening. If you made it this far, then you're a legend, and I love you. And you should say it back, even if I don't know, because that is your character showing. I won't know, you will know. You've got to live with that. So you you better be prepared if you don't say it. Anyway, alright, bye.