How Do We Change Our Minds?

Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts discuss how minds actually change—through paradigm shifts, careful arguments, or accumulated experience. They explore why steel-manning opponents and engaging charitably with the strongest versions of opposing views is more persuasive than antagonistic debate. The key insight: the best positions emerge when you're willing to incorporate real strengths from other viewpoints and make warranted concessions, which requires moving beyond polarized combat toward genuine good-faith dialogue.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey, this is Ian. I'm the producer for Mere Fidelity. Here at Mere Orthodoxy, our mission is to create thoughtful media for the renewal of the church and culture. That includes this podcast, along with other podcasts, daily articles, a print journal, an online community, and more. Mere Orthodoxy and all of our projects are supported by readers and listeners just like you. 2026 is looking like it will be the most exciting year in Mere Orthodoxy's 20-year history. But we need your help to make it happen. If you enjoy this podcast, want to see it continue, and partner with us to create even more resources like this. You can make that happen by becoming a member. Go to Mere Orthodoxy.com slash member to partner with us. That's Mere Orthodoxy.com slash member. Let's renew minds and restore hope for the good of the church and the culture. Go to Mereorthodoxy.com slash member today.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

My name is Derek Rishmaui, and I'll be your host for today, and I'm joined by uh another one of our founding uh founding hosts, uh Dr. Alistair Roberts. Alistair, how are you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Um recovering from a week or so in France and a late arrival back last night, but doing well.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

We all must recover from France in many ways. Um that's good, man. You've been traveling a lot. Uh well, it's good to have you on the show today. It's going to be a two-man show. Everybody else is off doing very important, uh very important things. And so since you are you and I are the only ones who who don't do anything interesting at all, we figured we'd have a we'd have a sit-down and have a conversation. Uh what we thought we'd talk about today was actually just the subject of conversations and persuasion and really the question of how do you like how have you changed your mind? How do you change your mind? How does the how does the process of moving uh across political spectrums, theologic theological spectrums, all those sorts of things happen? Uh and I I'm kind of just curious to start uh by asking Alistair, like, what is what is one thing you can think of that you have had a significant uh change of opinion on theologically and how did it happen? When did it happen? Uh was it like a a lightning bolt singular book, an article? Uh what are my insightful comments, or like what how did that occur? So um I want to start with you and then I'll go and we'll kind of riff off that.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

I've had several um changes of mind, but I think you could maybe class them in different ways. Some have been significant changes of paradigm, and I think the biggest one on that front was really getting into James Jordan's work and a very different way of approaching the Bible and reading the biblical text and understanding the process of exegesis. So that was Seeing things through new eyes. Yeah, it it's an experience of a sort of epiphany. Yeah. And at the time it's like it all opens up at once, but it's all at once, and you almost need to refract it over time and unpack what that epiphany involves. Um there have been other experiences where I've come to a realization my position on on a particular question was wrong. And those aren't necessarily the same paradigm shift. It may just be you got certain facts wrong that you misread a specific passage, and often it's a lower level of persuasion. Someone just presents you with maybe some textual detail that you'd missed that rules out your interpretation, but you'd overlook something, or maybe there's a more persuasive way of rendering a passage. That's a lower level of persuasion. I think there's also cases where I've been um shifted in my understanding on an issue through experience. Um maybe my read of a particular situation, maybe my understanding of particular sides in an argument. I've had uh issues like that, I think, over the last few years. In the past I would have been very um resistant to claims that there were significant moves, for instance, towards racism and fascism on the right. And recent years have rather disabused me of that um illusion. And so those sorts of shifts have been largely through experience. It's not necessarily something that someone's argued me into. I've just over over time come to a different understanding of the situation through experience of various um things. And so I think uh we can maybe class different forms of persuasion um under those different categories. So more paradigm shifts, shifts through experience, um, our reading of certain passages being changed through some detail being brought to our attention, an argument being proved to be fallacious, or maybe we might think about the experience of changing our mind watching a debate. Um, all of these are examples of shifts that I've had on various occasions. I've had several experiences of reading a book, and I've had some position that I've held for a period of time not really examined closely enough, and the book has argued a different position and I've been persuaded of it. Um so maybe it might be helpful to distinguish between those sorts of cases of persuasion. They're not all the same in the way that they work.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, that's helpful. I yeah, I was thinking about this subject for two reasons. One, I had a uh conversation yesterday with a student uh who wanted to ask me specifically about uh dispensationalism and infant baptism, uh, because they'd been recently attending a you know Presbyterian church and come and hear my preaching, but you know, they grew up kind of more John MacArthur. And I was like, oh, okay, well, let's let's kind of talk and and realizing, you know, you've got surface level issues, and then you've got actually under that fairly large framework issues when it comes to uh the shape of the pattern of revelation, you know, when it comes to covenant covenant theology, continuity, discontinuity, those sorts of things. And then actually he was just l listening to uh podcast episode. Um Joe Rogan was talking to Daryl Davis and then uh a guy named I think Jeff Shoop, who was the former head of the American Nazi Party or something like that. And he they're they're buddies now because um Shoop renounced and and uh is now kind of a uh de-radicalizer. But but it was just interesting because those conversations uh or two two very different kinds of positions, two very different kinds of uh paradigm shifting. But um, you know, some of it happens through I some of it happens through experience like you're talking about. Some of it happens through very clear argument forms, very some of it happens through just a pattern shift, a paradigm shift, connecting a couple of dots in a in a different way. Um and so I I've experienced all those as well, I think, over the years. Um and it's one thing that's interesting about all that is recognizing that most of those ways of coming at things are valid, right? We we often tend to think that there is that uh we we have a naive sociology of knowledge, a naive sociology and psychology of belief and and conversion, uh not talking about spiritual conversion and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, but um how people come to arrive at certain positions. We we confuse uh what might be called the logic of discovery with the logic of justification, right? So for instance, I I mean my coming to a different position on um infant baptism or whatever might have happened through clear logical argumentation. It also possibly might have happened by me seeing a whole bunch of infant baptisms and thinking and seeing them within the structure of a church, within a pattern of uh shared ecclesial life that starts to shape the the plausibility uh of that being part of a healthy uh church life, a healthy, vibrant faith community where people are authentically believing, on authentically living out their faith, and you start to see how it's received, and then you re-read the arguments uh differently. Um that's the logic of kind of discovery, but my logic of justification is somebody asks you, why do you believe in infant baptism? Well, um, there's a structure of revelation, and you've got the sign of uh circumcision, you've got the sign of the covenant. And so those two things often get collapsed, and we don't recognize that um one is you they're not reducible to each other, um, they're both legitimate and they both have their place. Like it's okay if your mind shifted on some things in light of experience and then you later reflected on it. Um I don't know. So that's uh really an argument or anything like that. But it it's it's something to to keep in mind, especially as you're having conversations with people, right, about these issues, is is realizing everybody does come at these things in different ways. And uh some people when they tell you they actually just got convinced convinced by a book, they might have, right? And some people were not. And that's actually as long as you're you're not saying, hey, my experience just trumps everything. I don't need to think about it, I don't need to have an argument or a reflective moment after the fact. Um then I think just recognizing that's just important for shifting the way we have conversations with people, uh persuasive engagements with people. Um so that's my first kind of thought on those sorts of things. I will say I I think I had, you know, it wasn't James Jordan for me, uh, but but a couple of those big paradigm shifts happened for me early. Um one was I remember, I just remember reading Van Hooster's drama of doctrine, and it actually it was my conversion uh to systematic theology uh away from kind of a pure biblical studies frame uh in a lot of ways. I had I'd come from philosophy, my undergrad was in philosophy, and then really loved biblical studies, and you know, the my my paradigm was like, well, if you know how the Bible works and you know what Greco-Roman stuff was going at the same time, and if you know like that it's it's the pure historicism that unlocks all of the all of the little nuts and bolts and whatever. And then I sat there and I I read the big orange book and a couple others around there, and you start to see, oh, there's there's these hermeneutical issues uh that are involved, and trying to figure out continuity and trying to see the way, actually, is there a pattern that Jesus Himself taught for uh rendering these things and and and and the the the the necessity of next level reflection and all that sort of thing. Um that actually it didn't I didn't feel like it took me away from the text, but it was a moment where it opened me up to realizing that there were issues in play here that I had just never considered and that had to be and that couldn't be avoided. Actually, and actually were were were pretty fun, right? Um similarly with Reformed theology, union with Christ, all those sorts of things. I think I I became a Calvinist really, you know, um against my will, kicking and screaming, and very slowly my almost every other part of Reformed theology made sense to me before um soteriology, right? It was slowly seeing, okay, here's how the atonement works, slowly looking at the doctrine of providence. And even that doctrine of providence, right? I I didn't really embrace uh more reformed doctrine of providence until I was in my mid-20s and I had this health crisis where like my took my knees out. And uh and I was having all these long-term health issues, and I I also happened to be reading a book on the Heidelberg Catechism, happened to be reading the institutes and and just realizing, oh gosh, God's fatherly providence, I kind of need that right now. Otherwise, um and I actually think the verses read that way, but I'd be lying to you if I if I I said m my physical incapacities at the time didn't soften mu the clay on my on on the metaphysical framework that I had. Um but it it's it's one of those things where I can clearly see books, experiences, particular devastating arguments and questions I'd never encountered before. Um all of that in not in some clear logical logical flow that, okay, this follows this, this follows that. It's it it was kind of haphazard in a lot of ways. So uh all that to say, yes, I've I've experienced that same range, but differently. Let me ask you, Alistair, when you go about trying to have conversations with people, with that in mind, um, I think we've both in our jobs and in our in our in our roles, uh, we have tried to be folks who persuade. Um how have you found your own experiences of of being persuaded shaping your attempts at persuasion and and how ought it to do so?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yes, uh I think there are a number of ways I've found my mind being changed in ways that have helped me to approach the task of persuasion with others. Um my experience has often been that there are lots of questions and little niggles and cognitive dissonance that builds up bit by bit, and then there's a sort of move towards uh a larger paradigm shift. And so it happens bit by bit, and then all at once, people begin to see a particular way of framing an issue, let's say a particular theology. Um it the problems build up, and then they're exposed to some other way of framing the issues, and they begin to see well, that offers a plausible response to these sorts of questions that I have. I see that there are trade-offs at this point. It raises questions elsewhere that I didn't have with my initial theological framework. Maybe the jury's still out on this issue. And then maybe those questions get answered and there's a shift in the balance of plausibility, and then the things that have been building up bit by bit will lead to a sudden shift in the paradigm that people are working with in. And then that leads to a reframing of all the questions. That has been my experience on a few issues, and that has also been one of the ways that has informed one of the ways I've been informed in trying to persuade others. So, on the one hand, I want to develop all of those questions for them. I want to raise the niggling issues, and I don't want to push it too far. I want them to deal with those questions, and sometimes that requires raising the questions for them and then stepping back. Because often what you find is that if you raise the questions and you are there, the questions are can be avoided with you as the foil. People will argue against you and deflect from the questions that are troubling them. And so stepping back and leaving them to wrestle with the questions in their own mind can be very helpful. And it may take quite a bit of time. There are often personal issues. This might require that I change the position that I hold, and that may damage certain relationships. It may make things a bit more complicated in my membership of my church. It may make things a bit fraught in my relationship with people in my friendship group who hold different politics, whatever it is. There are often relational issues that are at play. So you need to give people time and you need to give people space, not being a foil for them in a way that allows them to deflect from the questions. Also, you need to just present ways of answering the sort of questions that people might have. And so without being confrontational, without pushing them, just lay out your way of understanding things. You don't need to argue for it necessarily. You just need to present it as a coherent and persuasive and plausible framework. And it's not necessarily an argument that you're making, you're just laying out the position as you see it. And then the plausibility can often be increased by that process. The other thing I've found is that when we're thinking about theology and many other questions, there are certain underlying root commitments that should inform and direct all of our studies. And so in the past, I've found there have been certain positions that have been very persuasive to me when I've been caught into a sort of tunnel vision upon a particular issue, a particular set of questions that have been presented with me to me with a certain degree of force. And I've been pressed on those questions and not been able to find a convincing answer. Answers have been presented from me to me from a quarter that seemed initially persuasive and maybe troubling in certain respects, but what often is important is stepping back and touching grass on the fundamental commitments. And so, for instance, bring these uh debates back to the character of Christ and his teaching, or return to the fundamental duty of Christian love. These sorts of things can often serve to weed out some positions that seem persuasive at first. And in my experience, it's often helpful to make that sort of move with people, to help them to recognize that whatever positions may seem persuasive to them on the surface, they have to square that with some of these some of these basic Christian commitments. And so presenting them with those those core commitments as touchstones and grounding realities, that's also been a part of my process of persuading people. Beyond that, I think it's important to build strong, healthy relationships. Um, often that will be a matter of a larger period of time than having um friendships and discussing ideas in contexts that are non-confrontational. Because when people feel confronted and opposed, they dig in their heels. But if you have a context which is friendly and non-combative, they can often feel uh open to the idea. So one of the problems with arguing with people in contexts that are more public, is very, very rare that you'll persuade someone in public debate. The person that you're arguing against, you may actually persuade many of the people who are watching.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

That's the thing I was going to say with with those, if you're doing public debate or public conversation, you're you are unless unless you know that this person is is coming in a good faith manner to ask you like a legitimate question. Like I do Q ⁇ A after all my sermons, and you know, most of the students who are asking me things are legitimately just curious and and they're they're listening in a trust in a fairly trusting fashion. But if you're doing it in in one of those kinds of public debate fashion, you're not doing it for you you're you're not doing it to persuade the other person. You're doing it to persuade all the onlookers.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

And that's been my experience in my persuasion from seeing other people debate issues. What you want to do is have the debate that you have with other people, whether that's on social media, whether it's a public formal debate, you want that to be mediated by the um fair-minded, um informed viewer. And so your intent is not to argue directly with your opponent in a way that might mirror their antagonism, but to focus upon the person who's listening, present your view over against this other view in a way that is um clear, that lays out the issues as you see them, that points out some of the flaws in their position and some of the ways in which your position can answer their challenges. And then at that point, often you'll find that it starts to move people on the side. Um the other thing is the example you gave of Daryl Davison, his work. Often it's when you're dealing with a sense of hostility and anti. Antagonism and people need to be won over from that. You just need to build bridges of friendship and have a context that is humanizing for you and for others, and help people to see, feel that they are seen, listen to their positions, allow them to lay them out completely, and then ask them questions, true open questions. You're not forcing them into a corner, you're actually giving them the opportunity to lay out their position, but you're also eliciting some of the problems that you see, so that they actually have to present their own thinking, and you begin to pull at some of the problems in a way that start to bring out the knots within their own understanding. And then at that point, um they're dealing with these issues in their mind, not so much against you, but they're having to wrestle through these issues within the logic of their own position. And so I found all of those approaches helpful in my approach to persuading others.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Aaron Powell Getting out of the performance mode is very significant in terms of actual one-on-one uh conversation. Um I returning to one point you made earlier. Um one thing I've found is this is intuitive, but uh confidently, not anxiously, um just narrating what it's like to hold the position internally uh in the world in a way that makes sense out of the data, makes sense out of your experience, makes sense oftentimes, so for instance, uh you know, I'll be talking to somebody on campus, somebody who's not a Christian, not a believer, or whatever it is, and we'll be talking about something else, and they find out what I do. And there's there is some of that like, oh wait, but you seem smart. Uh or oh wait, you seem kind. And it's like, well, yeah, I mean kind ish. Uh but but the the the just being normal to a degree, being normal to a degree, having those conversations, and then also uh and yeah, I also I think Jesus got up from the dead, and I think there's a God who's gonna judge and punish sin and all those are actually part of my coherent view of the world that we share, uh which you've actually experienced me talking about in coherent ways in ways uh in areas outside of of that. Um that that actually does a lot um to just open up the plausibility because you you crack the you crack the the shell that they have of of assuming that people who believe that kind of stuff um are just they have just completely alien psychologies and completely alien experiences of reality. Same thing can be true when it comes to reading the scripture and doing theology and and understanding the world. Um just starting to show people I I totally understand why you read it that way, but here's how I'm here's how I put those verses together, here's how we do that. And I I'm I get why you see that that way, but um, here's the kind of data I think it's making sense out of that your paradigm, which I used to hold, uh I don't think it makes sense out of work. Can you explain how you so I'm I'm restating a lot of what you're saying, but I I actually think we underestimate how much apologetics, how much persuasion is um actually just the restatement of your own views in a calm, clear, coherent manner in ways that have often not been been encountered uh for the average person. Now, obviously, if you're dealing with a specialist who is uh like they're trained to just argue with your position all the time, that's a little different. Um and I say a specialist, uh that's a little different. But even there, um oftentimes even the specialist has these paradigms in place, psychologically and spiritually, about the kind of person who holds that other position uh and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

Um that front, I think it's I I think of, for instance, the approach of Tim Keller. Many people go out to attack him on his third-way stuff. And I think they often miss what's going on in that sort of argument. When you think about people's beliefs on any idea and even our own, often there is our belief and then the foil against which we're developing our thinking. And so our beliefs about people who hold opposing beliefs. And those beliefs about people who hold opposing beliefs are an important part of the plausibility structure for our beliefs. We have this idea of people who have monstrous reasons for holding certain beliefs, and so we hold the opposite. And often the sort of third-way stuff is making a maneuver of trying to remove the foil, of trying to um deactivate that foil to show actually that foil is not what we hold. Many people see that as a move to attack the certain wrong kind of Christian and don't think that's really what's going on. What's going on is attacking a foil that is in the imagination, that is a defense mechanism against actually dealing with that view in a more persuasive and stronger form, in a way that might actually take on board a lot of the person's own convictions on various matters. And so defusing that foil and presenting them with there is an alternative way of framing this that takes on board a number of your your own convictions, but does not straightforwardly follow you to what you see as the logical conclusion, because it's not in fact logical. You can hold your convictions on this, that, and the other, and actually if you follow them more consistently, it leads to this. Now, I find that an important move to make in many in many situations. And that foil is not actual is not an actual position. It's an imagination within the mind of the person who has set up their position against some perceived opponent. And so, in the same way as you might argue with someone, um, if you were arguing um against certain extreme positions on um the political right, you just have to defuse certain fears that they have that you're just doing so on the basis of a support for some extreme left position. And often that's just the way that you argue. There's a sort of maneuver of defusing the foil and then presenting a third option. The other thing along those lines is just the importance of choice of context. And it's one of the reasons so many of our debates are intractable online, because they're so fraught and socially situated that we don't have the time and the space and the emotional distance and the distance from the crowd in order to be able to change our minds. And so we have this situation where everyone's digging in their heels, each side is um becoming more extreme as a base as a result of the most extreme positions of the opposing side that have been put to the surface. And so the dynamic of the so-called scissor, where people have some some story comes to the surface, and it's a story which provokes alternative responses. So some people are absolutely appalled by um some aspect of this story, whereas other people are appalled in a completely different way. And then they each start to become appalled by the other's reactions to it, and then their reactions to each other's reactions, and it spirals from there. We can think about the sort of dynamic of a what colour was the dress um division, where people accept it's a news story or it's some other issue of the kind. And it seems to me that the way beyond that is to actually create context where we're a bit more protected from the um the winds of social media where we're actually given the space to think for ourselves in a less fraught environment. And so one of the questions that I think we do need to wrestle with is how do we give ourselves the context and how do we make it possible for us to change our minds? Because we often find ourselves in situations where we're it's costly to step back. It's costly to stand, to climb down from our position. And it's very difficult to change our mind, particularly if we've maybe associated our name with it in a way that might damage our reputation. What does it mean to actually create contexts within which we can change our minds on issues that maybe we need to change up change upon?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

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SPEAKER_02 34:26

Uh we can maybe think also about the discourses of persuasion and the dynamics of persuasion that change in different contexts. If you think about the um discourses of persuasion that many people grew up with, it was advertising. Advertising and the way that it presents the merits of a particular product in a way that attracts you to that, without necessarily presenting you with an argument, but in a way that um creates certain feelings around that product, that um shapes the way that you perceive it, whatever it is. It's a form of discourse that can't really be argued with, but it's shaping perception. You might also think about the way that social media can be incredibly persuasive. It's persuasive in part because of the dynamics of peer pressure, it's persuasive in part because of self-consistency and the constant push to develop an identity in public and the way in which we're pushed into alignment with one side or other. We react against the extremes of some other side, and there's this constant dynamic of a reinforcement through an algorithm that feeds us what we want to be fed, in a way that um gives us a sense of um consistency, but also its reinforcement, constant reinforcement of our convictions. Now, in that sort of context, persuasion is taking place, but it's not persuasion in the way that we might think about it in an ideal form. Ideally, persuasion requires quite a bit of mental reflection and thinking through issues. It can't just be a matter of um shifting one's perceptions through the power of social dynamics and memes. It requires something bit a bit more of a wrestling with the various sides of an issue. And a wrestling in a sympathetic and imaginatively engaged fashion with different ways of viewing things, that we are able to see the persuasive force of the opposing viewpoint and see the merit within it while also disagreeing. Ideally, that's the sort of persuasion we should be going for. But on occasions we will have something less than that. When we grow up within a particular belief system, that's often something that only happens later. Only later are we able to engage with other ways of seeing the world in sympathetic and imaginatively fruitful ways. We tend to see it as an outside way of viewing the world that is completely threatening or opposed to the way that we see it, and we don't necessarily have the ability to engage with it at a deeper imaginative and intellectual level. And so that's fine as a starting point. But often I think our forms of persuasion within a society built around advertising, around algorithms and the constant reinforcement of social media and the peer pressure and social dynamics within it, it's just going to lead to low levels of persuasion. And lots of people change their minds on issues or become radicalized on various questions. In part because they're being fed the same triggers constantly. They're constantly being presented with stories that reinforce a particular perspective upon the world, and they're not seeing alternative stories that might challenge that. Now it seems to me what we need is something that creates contexts and forms of engagement that are not merely antagonistic, that don't merely provoke uh reactive hostility, but enable us to engage with opposing viewpoints in a friendly and more exploratory manner, while still having the ch a challenging interaction. And that requires, I think, broad contexts that are friendly, but at least governed by the public norms of um civility, and within those contexts having candid discourse. And that may also be something that's experienced in personal friendship. But we've had countless conversations on this podcast over the years that have pushed on particular issues of disagreement, and we've been able to have fruitful conversations because we have a large um there's a lot of relational capital between us that we can work with, and so we can push each other's positions without having any sort of hostility involved. And it seems to me we need context that are conducive to that sort of discourse, but they are increasingly few and far between.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

That's helpful. That's helpful. Well I mean, I guess a lot of this comes comes back to the the element of touchgrass and be be around people and uh just the importance of of communal discussion, of of having these having these conversations in non-abstracted, non-algorithm, you know, speedrun ways. I mean just talking to people, finding people that you know think differently on this on a particular issue that you're wrestling with, and seeking them out. And y part of the challenge is having places where you can have those kinds of conversations uh openly. Uh part you know, one of the things I always tell students at RUF is I hope what you find here is uh is a hospitable place, place where you get loved and cared for, fed lots of free food, but then also a place where you're both challenged and then given space to ask questions and challenged back. Um I have the flexibility and freedom of that because it's a campus ministry, not necessarily a local church uh Bible study or or something like that. But even there, within the local church, if you're gonna be creating contexts of evangelism, creating contexts of like slow persuasion and not just um not not emotional kind of like emotional emotionally manipulative um brain hacks, as it were, uh you you need you need slow, slow spaces, uh slow spaces to talk, slow spaces to be loved, slow spaces to engage, slow spaces to create the can those kinds of conditions. And I I that's why I do think that you know the embodied local church, the embodied local Bible study, the embodied uh one-to-one conversation across a cup of coffee, uh going through a book, um, those things are still necessary for for deep persuasion, um, deep persuasion that is is more than just a kind of a surface level surface level radicalization. You know, if you can if you can if you can speed run an algorithm uh in one direction, you can speedrun it in the other pretty quick, right? As opposed to like a deeply settled conviction that is shifted and slowly uh shaped over time. Um so I uh all that coming around, coming around as we always do, um sounds like persuasion needs the church. Sounds like persuasion needs patience, it sounds like persuasion needs personal engagement. Um and even a even uh even a a form of charity and love. Definitely a form of charity and love.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

A form of charity and love. One thing that is helpful that I find is picking out certain people from different contexts from me who are people of goodwill, people who are intelligent and really sharp, who disagree with me on some key issue. And so I treat those as a sort of canary in the coal mine. And when I'm having um conversations on some issue about which I dis disagree with them, I will cultivate friendship and conversation with them and try and pursue the most charitable understanding of their position. And that's best by engaging with those thoughtful, intelligent, good-faith dialogue partners. Because there are so many people who are trolls that you can pick out their views and show that there's all sorts of faults, they're not thinking very clearly, they're um people of bad faith, and it's very easy to dismiss their position on that account. But you can have an approach that is that looks for the strong man and looks for the steel man. So we can think about the straw man, which is taking an opposing position and distorting it and caricaturing it in a way that would not be recognized by any of its advocates. It is important when you're presenting an opposing position to be able to do so in a way that they would recognize and affirm. And sometimes they will just be hostile to you and they will not affirm anything that you say about them. But ideally, you want to be able to present an opposing position in a way that is Recognizable to those holding it. You also want to be able to present it in its best and strongest possible form. Now that's not necessarily something that you'll want to do in public argument, but it can be important to recognize okay, you can see fallacious arguments within this particular exemplar of the position. You can see the way that the logic isn't clear in this one. But there are ways in which you could fix those problems. You could actually think about their position in a way that took on board many of your concerns and came back with a stronger perspective. Now I'll often try and internally present that steel man to myself. What it how would I respond to this opposing position? Were it to make these concessions and be stronger for those concessions? Were it to take on board this particular position, or maybe argue in this way that I haven't really engaged with in some manner before? It's a stronger argument. Often you won't find a particular advocate of the position that presents that argument themselves, but you can present it in your own mind. And so I'll look for strong man figures, the figures who will present it in its strongest possible form, stronger than any of the figures that you can point out that are easily dismissed. They're not serious intellectual figures presenting this position. They're the most in you're looking for the most intelligent people of good faith who are presenting that position. You're also looking for ways that you can strengthen the position within your own understanding, even if that's not a way that it's presented by any of its actual advocates. And when you do that, I find it's a lot easier to think sympathetically about that position, to recognize what makes it persuasive to people, maybe take into account what are the options that people are working with. In their context, they may not be exposed to the same range of positions that you are within yours. What are some of the options that are open to them? And within those range of options, it may be that the position that they actually hold is the best of a few bad options. And so I make those sorts of moves and focus very much upon maintaining good faith dialogue with the strong men examples, making sure that across a range of different positions, I'm talking with people of good faith and serious intellectual engagement. And when I do that, I find my position is stronger for it too.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

That's all good. I wish we could keep going. I'd love to explore some of the other communal dimensions to this. And we've still never answered the question of you know, what was the best thing that I changed your mind on and improved your life.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

But um sometimes you learn lessons, I think, from just seeing how badly other people mess up. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. The mistakes that they make. And it's a cautionary.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

It is. I will I will say that. Um a serious note, I've I've I've backed myself into positions um just seeing bad arguments against them and just being frustrated. I I I think like uh since seminary, I that's part of why I became sympathetic to reform theology, it was just not being persuaded of the arguments that I was looking for to uh defend my non-reformed position. These these are not that good. Um so so I I take that um that you know you sometimes the cautionary tales are just as instructive. So Alistair, if I'm if I can serve that for you.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

I should also add that my thought is very much conversational. Um I don't find myself um persuaded for the most part by the strongest positions, the most um strongest opposing positions that you encounter within the context of a debate. Most of the time I don't find that a very fruitful context for really deep thought. What I usually find more persuasive are those positions that have worked with charitable conversation with opposing viewpoints and have taken on board those considerations. And so it's positions that are more tempered and moderated, and often this is one of my frustrations with the positions that I've put forward on various issues that have been taken by other people and presented in their most antagonistic forms against some opposing viewpoint. People often have done that with my positions, and the positions are weaker for it. The positions at their strongest need to take into account the strength of the opposing viewpoints, the real strength, and to incorporate that into them. And often the stronger position is the one that's been moderated by charitable and debate, by imaginative engagement with other viewpoints, and which has made concessions, which is counterbalanced by other considerations, and that is not a straight down-the-line position straightforward down-the-line opposition to some other vantage point. And that, it seems to me, is one of the frustrations in a context where so many of our so much of our thought is developed in antagonistic, in combative and hostile and polarized frameworks. Ideally, we want to have other contexts within which we can integrate the strengths of other viewpoints. And that requires different contexts of discourse and different dialogue partners. Contexts where we're not actually foregrounding the most antagonistic people, but those who are most imaginatively engaged with our perspectives while being on the other side of certain discussions.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Yeah. This is part of why I enjoy the fact that our podcast is typically conversational-based. I mean, sometimes you get to the fissures of things better. I think of actually our conversation with Brad a couple weeks ago on penal substitution. Sometimes when it's not a structured formal debate, it's and it's a conversational unfolding. You can kind of go deeper, uh, clarify more. And sometimes those have been more persuasive to me, changing my mind than actual just straight-out, um straight out uh kinds of oppositional takes. Uh on that on that note, though, we do have to close this conversation. And um, so Alistair, thanks for joining today. And if you have listened this far, uh thanks for listening on. Um appreciate your time, appreciate your support. Uh, if you have found this conversation or other conversations we do uh valuable, please go rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, uh any other place, any other platform uh which you are hearing this. Uh but for now, this has been another episode of Mere Fidelity.