Illogical apologetics.

It’s much easier to argue in favor of Christ when you’re actually composing both sides of the debate.

I was listening to Chuck Colson’s “BreakPoint” show this morning and he was plugging a book, written by Art Lindsley, called C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christ. In it, Lindsley discusses Lewis’s viewpoint about Jesus. How he does it is by making up a fictitious book club, and the members of the club represent all sorts of non-Christian individuals with different viewpoints. The club leader, John, then responds to those viewpoints like C.S. Lewis would. And the non-Christians all respond to Lewis in positive ways.

That’s how you know it’s fiction.

In logic, we call this “the fallacy of the straw man”: When you want to prove your point, you don’t debate a real human being. Real human beings aren’t logical.

Seldom do we have opinions because we’ve thought things through, and come to a rational conclusion. We have them because our opinions appeal to our emotions. We want to believe they’re true.

• Rich people want to believe the poor are inferior; this makes them feel better about not doing anything for them.
• Stoners want to believe using drugs is a victimless crime; that way they can justify their selfish behavior.
• Christians want to believe God loves us; God would suck otherwise.

Whatever logic we might use to back up our arguments comes secondary to that original desire. No debater starts with the logic; they start with the proposition they like, then find any logical arguments available to prove the proposition.

So when you’re dealing with non-Christians, you’re largely dealing with people who want to believe

• Christ is a hoax;
• his followers are either suckers or con artists or total hypocrites;
• Christ’s teachings might be good but are ultimately impractical;
• Christ’s commands aren’t realistic, and there are other, easier paths to God or enlightenment;

and so forth. You aren’t dealing with purely rational humans. There is no such animal. (And not even God is purely rational: He regularly allows his love to supersede his sense of justice.)

Now, apologists—people who like to use logic to prove the truth of Christianity—are regularly quick to point out when a non-Christian isn’t being logical. So I think it’s only fair to point out when Christians are doing likewise. I figured I’d email Colson’s show and make that point.

By creating fictional characters whose questions are countered and rebutted by “John’s” referrals to Lewis, isn’t this book simply a variation of the “straw man argument”?

We Christians get on non-Christians’ cases all the time about how their arguments only appear to hold up because their hypothetical opponents are not real human beings who, in all fairness, would phrase their questions in different and unexpected ways. However realistically a fictional character might be written, the fact is that they exist simply to be set up and knocked down by the apologist.

It seems to me that if it’s not right for the non-Christians to argue in this manner, it shouldn’t be right for us Christians to do likewise—even if it’s in the support of truth.

Colson doesn’t write his own commentaries; no one with his busy schedule could. It’s written by ghostwriters, and he just reads it for the radio. So it’s somewhat appropriate that one of the ghostwriters responded to my email.

There is a resource available that puts this scenario into a framework where real individuals with different worldviews meet for nine different discussions on many of life’s greatest questions. The story is set behind the back drop of the lives of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. The title of this resource is call The Question of God. It can be ordered on VHS or DVD at the link below. Thank you and God bless.

Yeah, I watched The Question of God off the PBS website. It’s interesting; and the discussion groups that are part of the show are real reactions to Lewis’s views, not just some artificial made-up versions as Lindsley put together. I’d recommend the video over the book.

The response, however, still doesn’t deal with the fact that a book-length straw man argument isn’t appropriate. But here’s where the logic comes in. If the ghostwriter disagreed with me, her job would make her free to say so. If, however, she agreed with me, her job doesn’t make her free to say so—you have to stay loyal to the boss, you know. Therefore she said nothing in defense of the book, and instead provided me with a resource that fulfilled my requirements.

Logic can be fun.