I guarantee that you have come across some of these arguments or you have committed them yourself. I know I have. One of the best things I personally believe that Christians can do is learn about critical thinking. Not only is it fascinating to learn about, but it makes you way more coherent and thoughtful in your arguments and in your line of reasoning and thinking. I hate to say this uh but I believe it's true that there is a lack of critical thinking all throughout society whether it's in your relationships whether it's in politics or even within your own church building this is a problem so I invited my favorite resource on my channel to talk about critical thinking her name is Kathy Gibbons I brought her on and asked her to explain and give examples of some of the most common logical fallacies that we see. But I know I say this about all my guests. Um I I know I say this, okay? But Kathy Gibbons is one of the smartest, most wholesome women I know. She's not only a wealth of information, she's just downright likable. I think you're really going to enjoy the way that she delivers this information. Every time I talk to her, I learn something new. So, be sure to check out the description for all of her information and do yourself a favor and follow her. And I hope that you enjoy this interview. Hi everybody. I am so excited to have my friend Kathy Gibbons back on my channel to talk about something I've been wanting to get her on for a while to talk about, and that's just the most common logical fallacies that we see, especially online. So, Kathy, thank you so much for coming on my channel again. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Melissa. Yeah. So, um, if my audience doesn't know who you are, maybe this is their first time meeting you. Can you explain to us who you are and what you do? Yeah. So, I always say I'm just a homeschooling mom. Well, I was a homeschooling mom. I just graduated. My daughter, we have homeschooled her since she was four years old. She just graduated from high school. But I've been a homeschooled do homeschooled mom for 13 years. And when my daughter was in seventh grade, it was the year 2019 2020, which as we know was the year everything went crazy, right, with the Yeah. It was the year all It's the year that everybody lost their critical thinking. Yeah. It all went out the window. It's crazy. So, in 2020, part my daughter was in seventh grade and part of her curriculum was this book called The Fallacy Detective. And it was basically just a fun introduction to these middle schoolers for critical thinking. It introduced some logical fallacies. And I was leading her class. So, I read it and went through the book with these kids. I had never learned logical fallacies. So, this was totally new for me. But these kids loved it, right? They're at this middle school age. And what's the number one thing middle schoolers want to do? They want to argue with you, right? If you say, "What time is it?" "Oh, it's 12:01." "No, it's not. It's 12:02." Right? Okay. Yes, 12:02. Right? So, that's where their brain is at. Their brain is developing. So, these kids picked up these logical fallacies really quickly. So, we roll into this whole the pandemic and then the internet fact checkers and then we go into this election, right? That and everything that happened. And I watched these kids go through that time period and they went through it so differently than a lot of their peers just because they had a little bit a little introduction to critical thinking. Like watching a political debate with kids who are just a little bit trained in how to recognize logical fallacies is a whole different experience because they're calling them out. They'll be like, "Well, that's a red herring. That's an ad homonym." And I thought, "Oh my goodness." Cuz I started seeing them all over the place as well. I thought if we if more people had this skill, we would not be in the place that we are because it affects every area of our life. So I thought, well, I I can do this. So I started a podcast. I teach critical thinking to parents. It's really aimed at middle schoolers and high schools in short, fun episodes. It's really meant so that parents can hit play while they're in the car with their kids. they can all learn as a family, short episodes, and have a conversation about it and start recognizing it all around them. So, anyways, I love it. I just hit 300 episodes, which I can't believe like it's um there's so many ways that we can think poorly, but it's what I do and I just have really found something that I love. That's brilliant. I got to say, even our children, the best time to say anything or talk about anything or teach anything in my opinion is when you're in the car together. Where are they going to go? They're kind of stuck. Yeah. I'm saying the best conversations, we listen to stories and stuff, so that's really accessible. How smart. That's awesome. Well, I have you on today because we're going to go over some of the most common logical fallacies. Now, we're going to rapid fire. There's so, guys. There's so many. There's so many. There's so many. Um, but my hope is that in learning these, uh, we'll be able to spot them so that we can recognize a bad argument or when we're doing it. Yeah. You will be so surprised how well you even your theology gets. Oh, yes. That's a big one. Like to me I see critical thinking as foundational for apologetics for understanding is like theology because how are you going to argue against a bad argument if you can't even recognize it and how are you going to know that you're not making a bad argument? This one of the things that I say is look this is not a let's get on our soap box and be prideful because oh they're making bad argument. We all do it. Our brains like shortcuts. our brains like to put things in order and make sense of things and it happens very quickly and if we don't slow it down we can make the mistakes as well. So I feel like it's really important um yeah in a lot of different ways. You're you're so right. Yes. And just real quickly before we even get into what they are want to preface what you just said with the beauty of the Christian worldview and using our mind. Here's what's really cool is like yeah we a lot of people have the heart down and a lot of people have the mind down a little too much but it's both right and there's yeah there's a philosophical richness what I mean by that like a metaphysical philosophical richness as far as the invisible attributes of who God is. So logic is like there are laws of logic, right? There's rules to this. There are there are actual ways to think in a linear way that's not just you being smart. Like there's laws you can break. Yeah, that's actually really cool. It's like math. That's kind of the way I see it. I'm like 2 plus 2 equals 4. Well, that's an odd ad homonym for this reason. And you can philosophically, logically break down why an argument isn't sound. And it reminds me of math. So kind of think of it that way. This isn't like a way to be like, "Oh, you know, this is just a way to sound smarter." Like, no, actually there's proper ways to think and not think, and you can spot it, and when you do, you will be a better thinker and a better tactical person in conversation. So yes. Well, and I think that's really important because you know the scripture tells us to love God with our mind. Scripture has a lot to say about thinking and how we are responsible for our thoughts and for the things we think of and to take thoughts captive. Well, what does that mean and how do we do that? Right? And to me, this gives a little bit of a framework, one one avenue of how we can do that. But if you don't mind, can we start with a couple definitions because I me the floor is yours. Okay. I did not know what these words meant when I got introduced to it to it. So, it was me. So, one thing I want to say up front is critical thinking. We're going to talk about critical thinking. Critical thinking is not teaching you to be critical of other people. I have had people ask me this. Like, why would I want to teach my kid how to be a critical person? I'm like, oh, that's not what we're teaching. That's not it. Critical just means we're thinking about it, right? We're thinking carefully is what critical thinking means. And so when we talk about it, there's really two main things, at least so far, that I teach on my podcast. One is a logical fallacy. So logical just has to do with thinking and fallacy has to do with an error. So a logical fallacy is an error in thinking. It's just a way that our brain can go wrong and can make a argument poorly. And it's crazy because there's a lot of different ways that this can happen. But once you start to recognize them, then you start to be able to kind of think through them. And even if you can't remember all the names, like it's okay. I don't remember all the names always and I've been teaching this for a couple years, but you'll start to recognize something's not quite off. And once you start to kind of train your brain how to recognize whether something's off or on, you'll be able to recognize them. And then cognitive bias, that's another word that I want to define. So cognitive again just has to do with our thinking. And a bias has to do with our ability to see things objectively or not objectively. And it's so funny because we all want to think, "Oh, I'm not biased." Or we want to find unbiased sources of this and sources of that. Here's the reality. Everybody has biases. Everybody does. It's almost impossible not to because it's how our brain works. It's the way our brain sees the world. There's going to be certain things that our brain does to take shortcuts and to organize information that we almost can't help it. So the big thing that we need to do is to realize that we're going to have them so that we can learn to think properly and kind of slow our brain down a little bit. And when we can slow it down and ask questions, it does great. But if we don't slow it down, we can tend to do things. And there's also going to be biases that we have just because of who we are. Like for instance, I am a a woman. I'm a mother. I'm a Christian. There's going to be certain ways that I see the world because of those things. I'm not necessarily going to ever stop being a woman. I can't remove that from me, but I can recognize, okay, so I'm going to see it this way. Let me slow it down and maybe try to look at it from a different perspective. And when we can do that, now we're able to really think better about things that we could be really just kind of stuck in one mode of looking at. Yeah, it's really very smart to define the terms. I didn't even think about that. Like textual criticism, for example, is another word that comes up where can be misunderstood because we hear the word criticism and we're like, what does that mean? Apologetics. Same thing. It's not apologize. We're not apologizing. Yeah. It's okay. That's good. It's very, very good. Cool. All right. Now, we're gonna go ahead and jump in and get started. I'm going to give Kathy what the fallacy is. Like, I'm just going to name it and you will tell us what it is and some examples. Sound good? Yep. Sounds good. Great. Okay. Let's start with a straw man fallacy. What is this? Yeah. Yeah. So, a straw man fallacy is when somebody will change, exaggerate, or misrepresent the other person's argument in order to diminish it or to make it easier to attack. Or they'll just take one small part of it and make it seem like that one small part of their argument is the whole thing, right? And so that they can kind of make it look ridiculous and look like it's a bad argument. So, for instance, one of the I'm just diving I'm just diving in. Some of the examples that I use, I like to use very simple examples and then I like to take stuff from culture because to me if we can't apply it from culture like that's the whole point. The whole point is to learn it so that we can recognize it when we see it. So one of the things that has been a big one on the on the table on the scene recently has been in regards to immigration and into like political policy. So here's here's a meme that I saw going around. It said Jesus said unto the sick, you better have insurance. Then Jesus said unto the stranger, "Are you here legally?" Then Jesus said to the hungry, "My taxes better not be paying for these loaves and fishes." Okay, so it's kind of crazy. There's a lot of things happening here, but when we can slow it down, what somebody's doing is they're taking one argument of it could be the illegal immigration or whatever that mostly what this one is. Oh, Jesus said to the sick, "You better have insurance." Jesus said to the stranger, "Are you here legally?" So they're taking one part of the argument and making it seem like that is the whole argument. Now what they're also doing is they're smearing right on top of it Jesus. They're putting an icing Jesus on top of it to make it seem moralized. So now they're moralizing something that very well could be misrepresenting the actual argument. What you really have to do is stop and say, "Okay, what is the actual argument? What are they actually saying here? Is this really what it means? Is this really what they're saying? You can't just take a caricature because it a straw man is when you're just taking one little piece and making it seem like that's the whole thing and it makes it seem like, well, that's awful. How could you believe this, right? Yes. When that's not the whole thing and that's not everything that they necessarily believe or it's misrepresenting what the argument is. That's very what a great example and we can see this in uh personal arguments as well. Uh can you give us maybe some examples of that within relationships or friendships where we might personally uh notice and uh an argument that's a straw man argument on our part part or somebody else's part. Yeah. One of the things that comes to mind you may have heard that come well you just care about looks. Okay. Well maybe they just care about looks but maybe it's so funny we had this argument with my daughter because at her graduation uh she did not want to wear a dress. She was totally uninterested in wearing a dress. And I'm saying, "Honey, sometimes you have to dress for the occasion." Well, it's not all about looks. Okay, that's a straw man. That's not my whole argument. My argument is not just that I only care about looks. My argument is that there is a certain respect that has to come with certain, you know, situations, right? So, that was a little bit of a straw man. Oh, you just care about my looks. Nope, that's not what I'm saying. That's a really good example. See, this stuff happens in everyday life and we're all guilty of it. All right, let's move on to the next one. This one's huge. We see this a lot on social media, but the ad homonym fallacy. Tell us what this is. Yes. So, ad homonym is a Latin phrase that just means to the man. So, an ad hom fallacy or sometimes you'll hear it as an ad hom attack is when you attack someone's character or their personal traits or their motives for believing or doing something in order to undermine their argument rather than actually disproving their argument. Okay, so we see this. Here's another political one. And I love pointing out political ones because both sides do it. It's not just one side. We always think, "Oh, it's just the other side. It's just them." Oh, no. Stop. We both do it. Let's be honest about this. So for instance, it's people calling Trump Cheeto, right? Or orange man, right? And on the other side, it's people calling President Biden Mr. Potato Head. Huge. So it's just name calling. It's nothing other than glorified name calling. It's like, come on, try try a little better. We we don't have to be in the first grade here. If you have an argument to make, make your argument, but don't just call names. Here's another one. Another example of an ad homonym. Um I I read this one. Christians who are against immigration, another immigration one, are totally unloving and forget that Jesus said to love their neighbor. Okay, so just because somebody is against immigration, does that mean they're totally unloving or are you just calling them a name so that you can discount where they're coming from? Or could there be more to again the whole immigration policy? And this is the problem with social media is it's so easy to say short little sound bites. It's so easy to create a little meme with one sentence on it that misrepresents the totality of an argument and put it out there to make your point or to try to make your side seem better. And it works because social media moves so fast that people do not have or take the time to actually stop and ask a question because this the feed rolls. The feed just keeps rolling. They're on to the next one. And what happens is we slowly hear these little voices. We start to hear these messages that make us tend to believe something and we don't even actually stop to ask, is this true? Yes. Is that really what they believe? Is that really where they're coming from? Or, oh, they're just actually calling names. So, the ad homonym is a really big one. And a lot of times we just have to slow down and say, okay, they're really just calling names here. They're not actually making an argument. Yeah. I have a follow-up about these first, too. uh because there's something that they both kind of have in common and it's actually taking the time to understand somebody's argument. Now, that I call that insight, right? Like being able to take yourself out of your position and putting yourself in somebody else's and seeing it for what it's worth. And we both are into apologetics and you used to be in a cult basically. So, and you have the group think, you have um the mind control, you have all kinds of reasons to not critically think. But I want to ask you, what do you think is the motivation? Like what are the reasons why Well, let me rephrase that. Like what prevents someone understanding somebody else's argument? What What do you think the reasons are for that? I I think there's two big reasons in culture today. Number one is emotionalism. We are so controlled by our emotions in society today that most people don't have any recognition of it. And so they see something and it triggers an emotion. And science like science has shown brain study shows that the more emotional we are the less logical we're able to be in that moment. Right? And so it kind of has to come back into balance a little bit. So, if somebody, and this is one of the ones that we're going to talk about, if somebody can get you emotional, it is very easy for your logical and critical thinking to go offline and now you're all just wrapped up in your emotion. And people who are emotion emotional are very easy to control. And so, this is a huge one because you it's very difficult to think well. Most people don't have that skill or the ability or they weren't taught to step back and say okay well that made me a little angry but let me ask some questions and right and start going down the road of asking some questions. The other thing is relativism. We are living in the age of relativism and so when we believe that anything that I want to be true therefore must be true. Well that totally erases the need or the onus to ask questions. Why should I ask questions if it's just a given that whatever you say must be true because that's your truth. There are no questions allowed with that. And so that is one of the problems with the whole relativist. It's actually it's a fallacy, the relativistic fallacy to say that I want it to be true, so therefore it is true. Well, no, not necessarily, right? I might want to have a swimming pool in my bedroom, but that doesn't mean there's a swimming pool in my bedroom. So just because you believe something or want it to be true doesn't mean it's true. But if I think that everything is because somebody thinks it is, why should I question it? So, we've got these weird societal things that are going on. Some of it's just kind of our brains and uh some of it is society. I think that keeps us from asking those questions. Yeah. The tribalism is is pretty big. And we see this in religious groups, too. Okay. Yeah. So, all right. Oh, yeah. My group thinks this. My group believes that. And so, therefore, it must be right. And we see this. It happens in religious groups, in political groups. It can happen in ideological groups that well I'm part of this group and this is what we think and what we believe. Okay. Well, but is it right? That doesn't necessarily mean it's right. Doesn't mean it's true. And you know, and here's the big thing. I I heard an argument once, and then we can get back on to the fallacies here. I heard somebody say one time that you should always go into a conversation or an argument willing to be convinced. Yeah. And it made me stop and think. At first, I didn't like this. I was like, there's things that I'm not willing to be convinced about. There's things that I believe to be true and I'm not willing to be convinced. Like, what? Like, I'm going to go into a conversation with somebody of a totally different religion and be like, "Oh, yes, this could be true. Tell me." Right? And here's where it brought me back to. He said, "Look, here's the thing. Whenever there's a question and you're questioning truth, never be afraid to press in because when you can understand that the goal of pressing in, and those of you who, if you're just listening, you're not seeing, I'm pushing my fingers together, kind of back and forth. The whole goal is to buckle toward truth. And that's the thing. There's a lot of people, atheists out there, love critical thinking because they've taken God out of the picture and they kind of worship their mind and they worship their brain, but they don't have the goal of buckling toward truth. Whereas Christians, that should be our goal. So what I came to realize is I should never be willing or unwilling or be afraid to question and dig in for truth because if what I really believe is true, I'll come right back there again. Yeah. And if it's not, don't I want to know, right? Don't I want to know whether that really is or not? And so that was just one of those mindblow moments that we should not ever be afraid to, okay, what do I believe on this? Why? Well, you tell me what you think. Let's have a conversation with the whole goal being to go toward truth. Yes. Very well said. That all buckles together and links together beautifully. Love it. All right. Now, I have a feeling we'll go over that more. Like the appeal to emotion is coming up. Um we'll get there. Um but there are more that we're going to go over. Yeah. Uh the next one is the false dilemma or false dichotomy. What is this? Okay. So, a false dilemma. You've heard it. False dichotomy. It's even called the either or fallacy. So, there's a lot of different names that this one goes by. But this happens happens when someone makes it seem like we have to choose between two things and two things only. But what it's actually doing is setting up a false dilemma between these two choices. And what it does is it usually makes one of them seem so absurd or so unthinkable that we're forced to choose the other one. So, it's an oversimplification. It oversimplifies the subject by reducing it to only two sides or two choices. So, let me give you a few examples. Um, if you don't support gun control, you automatically support school shootings. Okay. Is that really true? Are those the only two choices in this argument? What about the hunters? What about Right. There's a whole lot of other places that somebody could land in this. Um, little kids do this. If you don't go through the McDonald's drive-thru, I'm going to drive die from hunger. Okay. Are those really the only two oy choices here? McDonald's or death from hunger? How about the crockpot of food I have cooking at home or the granola bar from the bottom of my purse? Right? There's a lot of different options, a lot of different options here. This is one of the things that we see in the critical race theory where it's broken down into two groups of people. You are the victim or you are the abuser. Yes. Right. It is an it's a false dichotomy. that is not true representation of society where people are in one of these two um one of these two categories. So, it's a really interesting way of framing an argument by making it seem like there's only two choices and this one choice is so horrible that you clearly should go with this other one when really no. There's probably a whole spectrum of different ways that we could look about look at this. Yeah, that's very well said. Very good. Okay, the next one, I might have a follow-up question on this one. Uh because it's hard to tell right away if that's what's happening, but the slippery slope fallacy. Go ahead and tell us about this one. Yeah. So, the slippery slope fallacy says if we take this first step down a certain path, there's nothing that's going to stop us from taking all the next steps as well. And it's saying if we allow this one thing to happen, it's going to set off a chain reaction that will end in catastrophe. And so it's a way of kind of catastrophizing a certain outcome that they're sure this outcome is going to happen if we do this next one step. So let me give kind of a silly simple example that kind of helps it make sense. So textbooks are made from paper. Paper is made from trees and we need trees for oxygen. So therefore skill is school is killing us, right? Okay. So, it's a silly one. It's a silly one, but you could kind of see, okay, because textbooks make paper and if we kill all the trees, you know, we're going to use all the trees and school's killing us. So, you could kind of see how this can go. Um, so it's basically saying if if we let this one thing happen, catastrophe is going to ensue. So, therefore, we should not let this one thing happen. where we really have to slow it down and say, "Okay, is that really the only inevitable outcome?" Right? Is this the only inevitable outcome? If my son doesn't go to college, he's going to wind up living in my basement by the time he's 40 years old. Okay, maybe not. Maybe your son actually uh wants to go to a trade school. Maybe your son want son wants to start a business. Like there's doesn't mean he either goes to college right out of high school or he winds up um living in your basement by the time he's 40. So, there's a lot of different things that can happen on a journey rather than just one terrible outcome. Okay. Yeah. So, this one I actually have some follow-up questions on because sometimes we can see a decision being made and we're like, "Oh, that's a bad idea." Yep. And then they give reasons why. How do we know? Actually, let me give you an example. Um, I remember when gay marriage was being legalized. So, I remember thinking at that point like, why are they making the argument that this will happen if this happens? Like, hey, if we legalize marriage, there's going to be this there's going to be no distinction between uh what it means to be married to a man and a woman, like why this is good for society. To me, it's just their argument fell flat. Now, okay, fast forward. Here we are. Okay, fast forward to here we here we are today and all of a sudden nobody wants to define what a woman is. Um the LGBTQ keeps growing, right? Like all it's it's there has been a lot of moral and ethical things that have happened because of this this domino effect, right? And I'm right now I'm generalizing, okay? But I'm saying that looking back now th those arguments they made looking forward weren't wrong. Like there were a lot of reasons why they had an issue with that that I now see. But it took like 10 plus years for it to happen. And everybody kept saying and I didn't recognize the word this is a slippery slope fallacy. Uh you can't say that you know for the reasons that you gave forth is this one little thing. You guys are exaggerating. You are making a big deal out of nothing. You're being bigots. you're being close-minded. That's just one example. We could do this with a lot of different things. But what is the difference between making an educated, oh, this is a bad idea. Here's why. Versus an actual slippery slope fallacy. It's almost like you need time to go by to tell whether you committed it. Yeah. And sometimes you do, right? Because what is the difference between a slippery slope and just consequences? Exactly. Yeah. Cuz Yeah. I mean, the kid who doesn't go to college could wind up living in the basement when he's 40, but does that mean it's a direct cause of that thing? So, what you have to do is you have to go back and you have to look at, okay, what are the principles behind this? Okay, so with the example that you gave, are there principles behind this, right, that you could look at from the beginning that are guiding this decision that could inform us as to where this could go? Also, is there any do we have anywhere in history that we could look back on and see what has happened before? Yeah. And for both of those, the answer is yes. So, there are things that we could look back to and say, okay, well, we've done this before or there's a principle here before where we can see where this has gone. And that's the way to do it because and some of these get tricky. And this is why it's so hard is because anybody can make something sound like yes, this is true and yes, this is real and yes, this is happening and we have to slow it down. And in this instance, we would have to say, okay, are there actual consequences that could come from this? Is there a precedent? Has this happened before? Is there a principle at play that we need to take that we need to pay attention to? Scriptur is very scriptures clear about our decisions have consequences. We know this. Does that mean it's a slippery slope fallacy? No, not necessarily. But if we come up with something where there is no basis for it and we're just in conjecture and we're just trying to make somebody feel afraid because we don't want them to do this one thing, then that's where we have to stop and say, "Okay, there could be a fallacy happening here." Very good. Yeah. I want Christians to kind of be aware of that cuz somebody you're going to be accused sometimes like Melissa, that's a slippery slope fallacy. How? here's this reason, this reason, that reason, this reason, right? Um, knowing how to argue well against even being accused of committing one of these fallacies is important. Yeah. Just be just because somebody says you're committing a fallacy doesn't mean you're committing a fallacy. And you have to know why you're not. Yeah. Maybe you are, maybe you aren't, right? And yeah, it is. But it takes work. This is one of the other things why people won't do this is it takes work. Like we're just intellectually lazy. We're used to having everything just fed to us. We don't even have to think anymore. We can just Google something and look it up. We don't have to remember anybody's phone number. So, it takes work to stop and think and to ask these, "Okay, what's the difference between a slippery slope fallacy and natural consequences?" Well, oh my goodness, that's a conversation right there. And it's a good one. So, yeah, it takes work. All right. Now, the next one on our list, uh, I've been accused of this fallacy, and I want you to tell us what it is, um, and break it down. It's the no true Scotsman fallacy. Go ahead and tell us what this is. Yeah, this is a fun one and I can't wait to hear your example of what you've been accused of this is. But I'll tell you where it comes from because knowing the name kind of helps to understand it. So the the no true Scotsman's fallacy goes like this. Well, no true Scotsman would ever drink milk in their tea. Well, I'm a Scotsman. I drink milk in my tea. Well, then you're not a real Scotsman. Okay, so we had a really good example of this. Uh I think it was back in the 2020 election where President Biden infamously said, "If you don't vote for me, you're not black." Okay. Okay. Well, that's a no true Scotsman because he's saying you're not a real black person, whatever that's supposed to mean, if you don't vote for me. If you don't do this one thing, that's a fallacy. So, I'd love to hear how have you heard this one? How's somebody use this on you? All right. So, you guys maybe you've watched a few of my videos where I lovingly use a vegan, right, to explain what a vegan is or Christianity versus, you know, people say that they're Christian. So, it's like, oh, I'm a vegan who loves meat. Well, I'm a Christian who, you know, denies the Trinity kind of thing, right? And so, it's somebody who calls themselves a Christian, right? They have that name, but they don't adhere to biblical historic Christian doctrine. And so, my argument is, well, then why are you calling yourself a Christian? It's like, this is my argument to progressives. Yeah. I'm like, why even keep the name at all? I mean, they're trying to they're trying to progress Christianity. of course they're trying to improve upon it, but then it's not Christianity. And I remember somebody saying, "Well, that's the no true true Scotsman fallacy." And I'm like, "You're an atheist, aren't you?" Well, I'm an atheist who worships Jesus. Well, that's not true atheism, right? Well, that's a no true Scotsman fallacy, you know? Like, you can't do that, you know? And so, um, that's where it c comes from because I'm making the argument that there is a solid definition to what makes a Christian a Christian. Not from my own interpretation. I'm not the one coming up with this, but from the scriptures, the scriptures that define what Christianity is. And so, I would actually love to get your comments on this because people will be like, "Oh, well, people interpret the Bible differently and you have all these different denominations." And I'm like, "Yeah." And a lot of them either add to the Bible or they have a prophet who says, "That's wrong. God told me something else." That eliminates so many of these different denominations from being um a part of what the scriptures say. So, let me know your commentary on that. What do you think about that? Yeah. So, I would say that that they're getting more into equivocation. We haven't talked about equivocation yet. That's one of the next months. Yeah. Yeah. Equip. And I'll just start it now because this will come into this part of the conversation. So equivocation happens when somebody changes the definition or the meaning of a word. Yes. In the middle of a conversation or to make an argument or something like that. So for instance, if somebody says, "Oh, I can be a Christian and deny that a god exists." Okay. Well, that's no you. No, you can't. And it's not saying a no true Scotsman because that is the definition of a Christian unless somebody's trying to just change the definition. Oh, no. I want a Christian to mean anybody who has ever set foot in a church before. Okay. Well, that's a different thing, right? That means something very different than what Christianity means. So, I would say this is sometimes where you have to go back to a definition and realize we have a very different definitional understanding of what this word actually means. Because there are some times when no a thing is what it is. Like if I say, "I have a tree out here." And you say, "No, my car is a tree." And I say, "Well, no, real trees don't have four wheels and a steering wheel." Well, that's a no true Scotsman fallacy. No, it's not. You've changed the definition of a tree, right? Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So, you've got to be able to recognize what the thinking is and why they're saying it and realize that's actually not what that is at all. Yes. So, well, is see how these all kind of come together. Um, yeah. There was something else you said too with the equ Oh, uh, with I I make this argument. There's so many so many I could go here, but like for example, Christ in new thought, they have a different definition than what the Bible says. It's they're equivocating. So, you might find yourself agreeing with them and not realizing it. And I remember Sandra Tanner, she's one of the she's a former Mormon and her whole ministry is, you know, reaching Mormons and and what teaching Christians like what they believe. And I remember she said, you know, if you ever find yourself agreeing Christian with a Mormon, then somebody hasn't defined their terms. And so, yeah, there's a lot there. And just remember, I I think that I would have been guilty of the no true Scotsman fallacy. And I think Christians are guilty on some level of this because their list is so long of what makes a true Christian. Well, a real Christian wouldn't wear pants to church, right? Yeah. Um, a real Christian uh wouldn't speak in tongues. A real Christian this and that and that. I'm like, "Yep." I mean, you're talking No real Christian would vote this way. No real Christian would vote that way. Right. It's tough. Okay. It's tough. Okay. We want to make that list very long, but thank God it's short. Okay. You're talking about the core essentials of the faith, which I have a whole video on. Um, and even that short list some people have an issue with. So um I was an error for years believing in things. You can be an error and be saved. The sanctification process is a thing. Um but yeah, so so just letting you know that we can we can be guilty of that. But in this case, you know, I I I think defining it will help us know. So well, and and again, there's a lot of grace. We all are guilty of it. We all have done this, right? And some of it is because we just have these human brains and it happens and we don't know and we're not taught and we don't recognize it. And this is why I feel like let's learn it. Like this can be fun and it's going to be such a helpful skill as well. So it's not like there's any shame for people that we have done this and we have been like all of us have done these. I my daughter still catches me with making logical fallacies. Like teach your kid this and I promise they're going to call you out. They're going to have great fun in calling you out. And parents, we need to let them because this is them exercising their critical thinking abilities and we want them to do that ultimately. Amen. Very good. I'm going to mix up the order here and we're going to go to uh appeal to emotion. This one's huge. Tell us about the appeal to emotion fallacy. Yep. So, an appeal to emotion is when someone is trying to get you to believe, think, or act in a certain way, but they're doing it just by making you feel a certain way. So, typically there's no real substance behind their claim or behind their appeal, or that's not even what they're leading with. They're just trying to make you feel something. So for instance um we saw this during the pandemic uh when people were called co kill I mean let me start over. You can add that up. Sure. We saw this during the pandemic when people were called grandma killers because they didn't make certain choices. Right. Okay. So you're a grandma killer. That's just making somebody feel guilty. Making somebody feel afraid. It's not actually making a good argument for why you're advocating for them to take certain actions or not take certain actions. Another huge one that we see is in advertising. Oh my gosh. Teach your kids manipulative advertising marketing. They're going to marketing. Oh, marketing is like almost not 100%. It's there's so much that's an appeal to emotion. They're going to try to make you feel afraid for missing out. They're going to appeal to your feeling of wanting to look a certain way. They're going to appeal to whatever the emotion is. Or you may have seen um the the dogs that are in the shelters and the arms of the angels is paying in the back playing in the background and right send in you know $5 a month to help the dog that that's all an appeal like everything about that commercial the music the tone the coloring every the sad pictures on the dogs that they show everything behind that is an appeal to guilt. And so they're trying to get you to act a certain way by making you feel something, not necessarily making the argument there. These are ubiquitous in society again because emotionalism, right? This is one of the things that a society is fueled on right now. Yeah. And if and people are very easily emotionally manipulated because they're not aware of it. And if we don't know how to think, we can get caught up in it. So fear. Oh my goodness. it. I I mean, if I can make you afraid of something, I can control you very easily. And almost anybody can do it. And it takes a mind that's able to step back and say, "Okay, what are they actually saying here? Is that actually true? What is the truth? Or what's the real argument behind what they're saying?" And now you can remove yourself from that. And you don't have to get you don't have to get caught up in that. It's kind of It's very freeing. Yeah. Oh my I cannot I can't believe I never noticed that fallacy in those kinds of commercials. That's such a good point that you brought that up cuz I'm I can hear it in the background and the dogs are looking up and Yes. Yeah, you're exactly right. We the marketing there is very interesting. What would you say to somebody making the argument that Christians commit this fallacy because we teach about hell and because we're afraid of going to hell is why we are believing whatever you say and in that way they are being controlled. I think sometimes Christians can commit this fallacy 100%. If that is all you're leading with, I have been in situations and in circumstances where the reason that you should get saved, accept Jesus as your savior, is so you don't go to hell because you're going to burn forever. And they it this works really well. Works with kids. They do a lot with kids because it's a I don't want to I don't want to go to hell. Okay, whatever. Okay, that might be part of it, but there's so much more to salvation and to what is offered than just being afraid. like making somebody do something because they're afraid. Do they have any real understanding? Like where's where's the rest of it? So yeah, I do think Christians can absolutely fall into this and we need to understand what truly okay, if this is going to be a salvation message, what is the real message? Is that the main part of the message or is that what we need to be like leading with? Where's the rest of it? Is it balanced? Right? There's just a lot to it. And I Christians are not exempt from committing this fallacy either. Yeah, that's a phenomenal answer. It's funny because it leads into another fallacy because I always thought that question was a hasty generalization. Um because you're saying all Christians do this. Um so hasty generalization, that's a fallacy. Tell us what this is. So a hasty general generalization happens when you make an assumption about a group of things or about a group of people that's based on too small of a sample size. M so it's when somebody comes to a conclusion about a group of things or group of people but doesn't have enough evidence to truly back it up or doesn't take into account the entire group of people. So it's saying well this one group of people they all act like this because I met this one guy one time and this is what he did. So it's like saying I come from the homeschool world right? I met a homeschooler once and they were so weird. I would never want my kid to turn out weird. I'm not going to homeschool them. It's the weird homeschool argument. And I always think, okay, I was in homeschool and guess what? There were weird kids in my class in school, too. So, um, you know, it's just, but that's the kind of thing that we do is we tend to categorize people. Well, all of this group are like this and they all say this and they all believe it and or or they'll characterize this one group by this one example and they'll take this one crazy example and say, "Well, they're all like this, right? We can do this. We can take one unh like it would be they'll be called an unhinged liberal yelling and they'll put this on TV on on a real and paint it look like that's all of them. Yes. Okay. It's not nor is the one crazy right-wing person representative all of them. Right. So we have to be very careful. Again both sides can do this. And okay maybe that person is a little unhinged but then does that mean everybody? Like no it doesn't mean everybody. Yes. That's a really good example. I'm glad that you brought that. If if people haven't noticed, a lot of this is in politics. Yes. Yes. Man, we fall for this, especially with the division that we see. It's hard to it's hard to kind of go out of that echo chamber with politics in particular. Um because it's like what you just said. It's it's the anger that comes from that. uh you you you take this psychotic version like the worst version of of what the left would look like and then you you put a a spotlight on it. This is why humanizing people is very important. Um yeah, there's a lot to go off with with that. All right, so that's hygeneneralization. The next one we're going to go over is confirmation bias. This is another huge one that goes along with appeal to emotion. Tell us about the confirmation bias. Yeah. So again, a bias is just our way of seeing the world, right? It's how we see things. And again, we all tend to have bias. We all do have biases. So the confirmation bias is our brain's tendency to notice, to believe, or to remember information that supports what you already believe or that you already want to be true. and it will pay attention to that and it'll kind of see that everywhere where it'll ignore or dismiss anything that disagrees with what you already think or want to be true. Right? So, and the bad thing and the hard thing about this is that the our social media algorithm totally feeds this bias because once your algorithm knows the things you like to see, guess what it does? it shows you more and more and more and it'll tend to get to the point where it's mostly showing you just this one viewpoint or this one. And so what tends to happen is our brain is like, well, this must be true. It's all I'm seeing. Everybody sees this. Everybody must think this. And man, did we ever see this in this, again, not to go political, but this is one of the big ones that stood out to me is in this last election, there were so many people that were emotionally distraught and truly shocked at what the outcome was. And so now I because I love watching both sides, right? So now I see the one side that won and they're all happy and cheering and the other side that won, how could this happen? There's no they're just devastated. And the one side's like, "H how could they how could they have missed it? How could they think this way? How could they think they were going to win? How could they this this?" And I thought, "Yep." That you know why? Because if I had seen all the things that they were seeing this whole time, if I had gotten the messages they had gotten, if I had gotten if I had been seeing what they'd seen, I would probably think the same thing, too. They were not seeing the same things I was seeing. And we have to realize our confirmation bias was in high gear. Their confirmation was in high gear because we all just have it. This is the reason why a lot of times if you get a new blue minivan, you're going to see blue minivans everywhere, right? We like our brains just tend to do it. It looks for more of what we already believe, of what we already know, and of what we already see. And um this makes it hard to be objective about things. You're you're cracking the code. you are you are spilling everything of what how and why things are functioning the way they are. It's the lack of critical thinking. It's so good. Um now I have a follow-up question on this because um we are Christians of course and sometimes one of the things that I run into are Christians who are always or people even even like with uh you know different spiritualities are looking for signs. Signs from God. God tell me give me a sign. uh what do you think confirmation plays uh what part do you think confirmation bias plays in something like that? Yeah, there's confirmation bias, there's belief bias again that's very similar about the things that we believe and I think it can definitely play a part and I think we have to be really careful on this. Yeah. Um because I mean yes, we know that God gives us discernment. We know that God will lead us in the step and in the direction that we can go. But I think it's also very dangerous to just look for um oh well this happened so this clearly must mean this right maybe it does or maybe it just means it happened right maybe you were just looking for something anything and I think it's very easy for our human brains to make things mean things that they don't necessarily mean because we're wanting something to confirm what we want to be confirmed. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm talking a little bit circularly, but I think this can very much happen and h the big question is how do we know? Well, I don't know that I can answer that question very easily and simply for every situation that's out there because I think there are sometimes that God gives us what I call little chocolate chip cookies in the road of life where he's like, "Yeah, let's go in this direction, right? He, you know, he tells us he's going to, his word is a light to our path, but it doesn't mean that the random thing that I saw as I was walking to my car out of Target is the light to my path. Yeah. Does that make sense? So, I, you know, we have got to be careful that our brain can find meaning in things that don't necessarily mean anything at all. And we just have to be very aware that that can happen. Yeah. And there's there's it goes both ways, right? Um, like I know somebody who's adamantly opposed to any sort of supernatural anything uh where maybe uh something would happen that would be from God. Nope. Can't be from God, right? And so I think that both of these happen uh where one is an over people over think that it's overspiritualized and the other is under spiritualized and it brings us back into this reality. the the way that I go about it, this is my perspective on it, is hey God, if you want to get my attention, I'm here. I I don't go looking for it, though. And I'm like, if you if you want to get my attention or if there's something like that, I sure uh but you're God, and I know that that you will somehow communicate that to me. If that's something like a person, um I I just I'm very very content. I don't go looking for it and I don't deny it. And there's a piece in that. Yeah. And and I want to this brings me to a conversation I've had with my daughter recently, right? She just graduated and so she's in this phase of well, what should I do? Like what's next? What's my next life? And I I think that there has sometimes been um a teaching in Christianity that's like God has a plan A for you. He's got this one path. Yes. One path for you to do. And if you screw that up, well, too bad for you. Now you're going to have to live with plan B. And it's going to be a disappointment to you and to God and to everybody else. Yeah. Like he's chosen your spouse. He's chosen your job. Yes. Everything. Everything. And I I told my daughter, I said, "Sometimes, yes, I absolutely think that that can be true." And God will give you very clear direction. And you'll know that you'll know that you'll know. But I don't think that happens most of the time. Like God has very clearly created us with good will. And he says, "You know what? I'm with you. And there's things I want you to do. I want you to act justly. I want you to love mercy. I want you to walk humbly with me. And you get to choose." and I'm with you and we're to live a life for God, but it's not this necessarily, oh, well, you should have gone to Target before you went to Kroger's and you screwed that up. So, basically, you're way off course. You're out of God's will now. No, no, that's not what that means, right? So we we have to just be very careful I think about getting into this overspiritualizing things just like you're talking about and realizing okay like God's got us and um it's not all these things that are outside of us necessarily that is what it means to walk with God. Yeah. I'll add one more thing to this then we'll get to our last fallacy. But uh it's interesting to me the irony is that sometimes uh out of a fear of legalism like becoming too legalistic this is like a soft form of legalism where you set these rules right like you put these this pressure on yourself um as not to underspiritualize things but in overspiritualizing and and always looking for a sign or always like God what should I do God what should I do I can't make a choice you know it's it's that's out of fear in my opinion Um and I think that it's a form of soft legalism that we put on ourselves. Like it's a different kind of chain. Uh that's a whole other conversation. Very interesting. Okay. So the last fallacy that I want to ask you about maybe potentially depending on how much time we have left is uh the post hawk fallacy. What is this? Yeah. So the post talk you've sometimes also heard it called the false cause. It's basically saying that since X happened before Y, therefore X had to have caused Y. Okay. So, we see this in superstition a lot, right? Baseball players or sports people. Well, I put my right sock on before my left sock and we won the game. So, now I've got to put my right sock on before my left sock every game or else we're for sure going to lose. Right? So, for instance, those are whatever fun type of things where they think that this thing caused that simply because it happened before it. Now, could that be true? Yeah. I have to put the water onto the stove and turn the heat on in order for the water to boil. So, that did have to happen before that, but does that always mean that because something came first that it caused it? Let me give you another example. So, okay, I was just going to ask. I hope I don't um make a whole lot of people mad right now, but okay. I saw a meme recently that came across my feed. was on the whole flat earth thing and there was this picture of an old Bible that had a picture of the flat earth or what they call biblical cosmology in a Bible, right? It was showing that this is what the ancient Hebrews believed. But the caption was why did they take this picture of the flat earth out of Bibles after NASA was created? Okay, so it's a post talk. So first we have to ask a couple picture couple questions. Number one, is that true? Did they really start removing this picture out? Was it in Bibles? Did they start removing it after NASA? Um, is that why they started removing it? Right? There's a whole lot of questions that you have to ask to determine whether this little meme is even true. But most people won't do it by just by asking this one question. They make it seem like, oh, it used to be in all the Bibles. Everybody believed it, but then NASA came along and now they took it out. that must mean something. Maybe it does, right? And maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. But this is a post talk. So this is an example of saying because this happened and then this, therefore it caused this. And so this can be where some of the conspiracies can come from. Yeah. And and again, maybe it's true, but maybe it's not. And this is where we have to stop and think and ask questions and take some time and say, okay, well, what really happened? Did this really happen? Number one, are there other causes? Are there other things that came into play? Right? There's so many questions that have to be asked. We've seen this before even in another sports analogy. Um I've seen it before where they say, "Well, this team kneelled during the national an anthem and that's why they got destroyed in the Super Bowl." Yeah. Okay. Really? Like like this was some big punishment on them because they kneel during the national anthem. Is that really what caused that? or maybe the other team was just better. Yeah. Maybe they just didn't play well that game. Right. So, these are the kinds of things that we have to really look at and say, "Well, just because it happened first doesn't necessarily mean it caused it. It could, but it doesn't necessarily." Yeah, that's a really good example. Actually, I just uh interviewed Lindsay Medwalt about the flat earth. Uh video is not out yet, but or maybe it will be by the time this comes out. I don't know of any Bibles that had the flat earth flat earth in them, but keep a lookout for that. And then also what this reminds me of is the accusations people made with Nabil Kareshi that is Nabil Keshi was a Muslim who became a Christian and he was he has just the coolest story that I think everybody should check out. He was really good friends with David Wood. David Wood is still on uh the internet. Apologetics Road Show is his channel. David's got a really cool story, too. But, uh, he died of cancer, of stomach cancer, and the accusation was, well, it's because he left Islam. It's because he left the true religion that Allah punished him. And I'm like, that's not right. I mean, does that mean that all the other Christians who who live are, you know, being blessed by Allah? You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, no. No other Muslims get stomach cancer. Exactly. I'm like, what does that say about the other Muslims? And so, yeah, it's like the job argument is just because, you know, something bad is happening to you. Um, that that's that doesn't necessarily equate to other things. So, this has been fun. My word. Um, I I love this kind of stuff. Guys, be sure to check out Kathy um and and her stuff. Kathy, is there anything you want to add to uh to this conversation before we sign off? No, thanks for thanks for having me on. Um, I love it. I just want to say I do have a free quiz that both parents and teens, middle schoolers, high schoolers can take it. It's uh my podcast is called Filter It Through a Brain Cell. You can find it anywhere. If you go to filteritthrough.com/quiz, you can take the quiz. I think I've got I love teaching through memes. This is how I do it. Memes, headlines, articles, because this is the stuff that we see that our kids are going to see, and I want them to think about it. So, I have 10 memes on there that you can take and your kids can take. It's a fun quiz and it'll kind of just give you a little introduction to logical fallacies. Perfect. All of that will be in the description for everybody to check out. And Kathy, thanks so much for coming on my channel today. Thanks for having me, Melissa. It's always fun.