Audio only:
In this episode Trent breaks down a logical fallacy that reeks of smugness, especially when Christians engage in it.
Should Christians “Trust the Science”?
Bill Nye on Abortion and Sex (REBUTTED)
What Neil deGrasse Tyson Gets Wrong About God (and Atheism)
Transcription
Trent:
There are many fallacies that can turn your argument into an illogical mess, but there’s one that carries more smugness and condescension than any other, and that is the faulty appeal to authority. But before we talk about that fallacy, including when Christians commit it, you should know that four out of five dentists recommend subscribing to the Council of Trent and they say, if you really want fresh breath, support our channel@trenthornpodcast.com. Now, a fallacy is just bad reasoning and the appeal to authority becomes bad reasoning when you say X is true simply because an authority says it’s true, especially if it’s an invalid authority. For example, when I discuss Catholicism with former Catholics, a lot of times their objections are to a misunderstanding about church teaching rather than what the church actually teaches. Venerable Fulton Sheen put it this way, there are not 100 people in the United States who hate the Catholic church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic church to be.
I’ve heard people tell me that the church teaches that a person could be stuck in purgatory forever or that the Catholic Church doesn’t bury stillborn children because they never took a first breath, both of which are not true. When I ask the person how he knows this, they say, well, I went to Catholic school for 12 years. If I had a nickel, for every time I’ve heard this particular authority claim, I would never be stressed out about paying for my children’s Catholic schooling. But even alleged theologians will make ridiculous claims about what the church teaches. They then puff up their claim with their doctorate that they got at some liberal university that practices Catholic cosplay. In either case, you can nullify those authority claims by asking the person to show you the specific magisterial or church documents, especially the catechism of the Catholic church that says the church teaches their ridiculous statement.
This is also a good strategy when Susan from the Parish Council wants to defend some horrible liturgical abuse as being part of the spirit of Vatican. Two. Ask her specifically where this is taught in the documents of Vatican two, especially the Constitution on the sacred liturgy, sacro sanctum concilium for a good book. On this subject, I recommend Father Blake Britain’s reclaiming Vatican ii, what it really said, what it means and how it calls us to renew the church. Of course, 12 years of Catholic schooling in this context just means you have a high school diploma and most people don’t think a high school diploma makes you an expert in anything. It’s always amusing to see people push their so-called Catholic credentials to argue for the most anti-Catholic positions. Here’s what Nancy Pelosi said about abortion. When she was on Meet the Press in 2008, she said, I would say that as an ardent practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time and what I know is over the centuries the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition, and Senator St. Augustine said at three months, we don’t know. The point is is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose for more on debating the issue of insolvement and how this has absolutely nothing to with the church’s 2000 year long history of opposing abortion. See my episodes linked below, although props to former CNN host Chris Cuomo for putting his Catholic schooling to good use in this clip where Matt Gaetz misunderstands the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
CLIP:
What do you think happened with the Immaculate Conception?
The Immaculate conception? It’s obviously a religious doctrine that deals with the Christian faith.
I know, but I’m saying where is the analogy? That’s what I don’t understand. What do you think happened with the Immaculate conception?
Look, did you really bring me on to discuss my religious views, Chris? No, I’m saying you made the analogy Jesus was born. I don’t understand.
The immaculate conception is not how Jesus was born.
It was the conception.
That’s the nature of the immaculate. It was Mary’s conception, it was the mother’s conception without original sin, it was not the conception of Jesus.
Trent:
I’m not surprised Cuomo got this right because he went to the Immaculate Conception Catholic School in Queens, New York. The big problem with discussing the fallacy of appeal to authority is that it’s an informal fallacy. It isn’t always wrong to ground knowledge in the authority of people making knowledge claims because nobody can prove the truth of everything for himself. Distrusting all authorities just makes you look silly and paranoid. Consider this claim from Candace Owens about science.
CLIP:
If there’s a bunch of people that believe something, I now want to know what it is that they believe, and of course he pushed me on this and he was talking about the earth curvature and science and I said to him, listen, I’m not a flat earth. I’m not a round earth. Actually, what I am is I am somebody who has left the cult of science.
Trent:
Check out my previous episode link below where I talk about the issue of trusting the science unquote and how some scientific claims have more evidence for them than others, but that in general science gets most facts about the natural world correct. Science works when it stays in its own lane and doesn’t follow the lead of Bill Nye the mechanical engineer. I mean self-proclaimed Bill Nye, the science guy who says, science proves there are more than two genders. Check out my previous episode where I bust bill’s arguments wide open that’s linked below. When a legitimate body of experts agree about something within that field of study, there should at least be a hefty presumption. The experts are correct unless stronger evidence says otherwise, but in most other cases, the authorities are referencing objective evidence anybody can examine that doesn’t merely rely on someone else’s testimony. For example, in my book Persuasive Pro-Life, I quote Steve Jacobs research which shows 96% of biologists agree the life of an individual human being begins a fertilization.
This is strong evidence for the humanity of the unborn because these are experts within the field being discussed or biology, many of whom are even pro-choice, and they still agree that the unborn are human beings and also there is objective evidence that backs up their claim. When an appeal is made to competent authorities, it’s just a weaker argument, not necessarily a bad argument. Remember, we judge most claims to be true because we trust an authority figure who said the claim is true. Appeals to authority become fallacies or bad reasoning when they involve just a few or even a single authority who isn’t really an authority on the subject in question. This happens with people who are really smart about one thing, who then believe that their intelligence makes them smart on many other unrelated subjects. Neil Degrass Tyson may know a lot about astrophysics, but he often gets subjects outside of his area of expertise wrong, like when he said helicopters that lose power fall to the earth like rocks and an actual helicopter pilot show, this isn’t true, so when Tyson makes arguments against God or religion, he is well out of his depth because he’s a scientist, not a philosopher.
For more on that, see my episode on Tyson link below. The same is true of Richard Dawkins who is a decent biologist and Sam Harris who’s a decent neuroscientist. Professional philosophers, including atheistic ones, have harshly critiqued their philosophical arguments against God. Being smart in one area doesn’t mean you’re going to be smart in other areas. As is evident in Harris’s claim that it would be a good thing if the media engaged in a conspiracy to keep Donald Trump from being elected. The faulty appeal to authority often goes hand in hand with the Dunning Kruger effect, which shows that people who have less knowledge in a certain field tend to overestimate their knowledge of that subject, whereas very skilled people in that field tend to underestimate their knowledge. This becomes a problem for highly intelligent people like scientists who may know more about philosophy than the average lay person, but still know much less than a professional philosopher and so they can end up making blunders when they try to opine on philosophical concepts.
You see this smugness in people like the late astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking who once said, what is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy is not kept up with modern developments in science, especially physics scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. The arrogance in this quote is astounding because philosophy is the discipline that helps us distinguish science from pseudoscience. Philosophy also grounds assumptions like the uniformity of the laws of nature or the reliability of our senses that make science even possible. Something similar happens in ethics when people say that homosexual conduct is moral because the American Psychological Association no longer says it’s a disorder, but psychologists are not experts in morality as can be seen in some of the terrible moral advice that some of them give people.
However, Christians also have to be careful about utilizing faulty appeals to authority. A few months ago I saw a series of posts from a Christian named Young Ho Kim who several news articles described as the smartest person in the world with an IQ of 276. Kim’s Post got attention because he would say stuff like this that got millions of views as the world’s highest IQ record holder. I believe the Bible is the perfect eternal and final word of God. Therefore, the Bible doesn’t need to be updated. The world needs to catch up. Kim seems to be saying that people should believe the Bible is the perfect word of God because he believes that and he allegedly has the highest IQ in the world. Now, there is some doubt about this because of his personal connections to the organizations allegedly certifying his iq, but suppose it were true, that title only proves you’re good at taking IQ tests.
Kim may have a really good memory as can be seen in this clip where he memorizes 45 random numbers on a South Korean TV show, but any computer could beat him at that task. Intelligence is more complicated than simple recall or iq, and even if IQ is a part of intelligence, there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom. A wise person, for example, would know that even if they have a high iq, there’s a lot that they don’t know and could be mistaken about. For example, Kim’s Post has bad theology because it says the Bible is eternal but only God is eternal. The Bible came into existence in time when God inspired its human authors. The Bible is also not the final word of God that humanity will hear because God will speak to any of us who are alive at the second coming of Christ. Kim has gone on to say all kinds of bonkers stuff like that. Jesus is the Holy Spirit and that God gave him a prophecy about the second coming of Christ.
CLIP:
Jesus Christ will return in our generation. This is a truth revealed to me by God, the Father and the Holy Spirit. I have received grace not only through faith but through the gift of the world’s highest IQ score and record.
Trent:
In Michael Schirmer’s book, why People Believe Weird Things, there is a chapter on why smart people can end up believing weird things. For example, many people who join cults have very high IQs or are skilled professionals like doctors and lawyers. Schirmer says, this happens because smart people are good at rationalizing decisions that they came to for not smart reasons. Sin and our fallen human nature can lead us not just to moral error but also to cognitive error. Our ancestors who like us didn’t have time to assess every issue, often went along with the tribal leader’s position on an issue who got that leadership role because he had traits like confident dominance. As a result, we have a bad tendency of following confident people as a shortcut to determine truth. You can see this in people who watch debates and say, the more confident person won, but can’t tell you what was so good about his arguments or so bad about his opponents.
As I said, there’s knowledge and then there’s wisdom, and it’s better to be a wise person who only knows a few things than a foolish human being who tries to imitate grok or a chat GBT and doesn’t really know anything at all. A wise person would also want to grow their EQ or emotional intelligence and see that this kind of behavior of lording your IQ over others is really off-putting. It’s no better than the new atheists who like to Lord their high IQs over everybody else. Consider this passage from one of Sam Harris’ articles he writes, most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God, yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking, less congenial to religious faith than sciences or this post from Ricky DVAs.
If all the atheists and agnostics left America, they’d lose 93% of the National Academy of Sciences and less than 1% of the prison population. Even if scientists tended to be atheists, that wouldn’t prove atheism is true. Elaine Lin’s book Science versus Religion, what Scientists really Think shows science doesn’t inherently turn people into atheists. Atheists are just more likely to become scientists. The National Academy of Sciences only has about 2000 members. While there are more than 2 million scientists employed in the United States as a whole, this means that the NAS represents only about one 10th of 1% of all scientists in the us so it’s not a representative sample. Instead, this 2009 Pew research survey shows that 51% of scientists believe in God or a higher power, and the largest group of scientists who believe in God are those under the age of 35 and given recent trends in the religiosity of Gen Z, this number is probably even higher today, and we should remember that some of the brightest minds in scientific history were religious, including people like Georges LaMere, the Catholic, who helped formulate the Big Bang theory.
So let’s tie all this together. St. Thomas Aquinas once said, the proof from authority is the weakest form of proof. In other translations, he says, according to Boethius, proofs derived from authority are the weakest, which would be an ironic statement. However, we can’t directly verify everything in life for ourselves. We have to rely on some kinds of authorities in order to make all the judgements we have to make in life. When people make arguments from authority against the faith, we need to point out if they are actually faulty authorities. Some things we know like God being a trinity, come from the surest kind of appeal to authority, God’s authority. That’s why Aquinas says, although the argument from authority based on human reason is the weakest, yet the argument from authority based on divine revelation is the strongest. But when it comes to human beings, just because you went to Catholic school doesn’t mean you were an authority.
When it comes to Catholicism, or just because you are a really smart scientist doesn’t mean you have a good philosophical or historical argument against the faith. The consensus of legitimate experts can be helpful, but ultimately human beings all stand on an equal footing of needing to provide evidence for what we believe that means Christians should not misuse faulty authority arguments for their own benefit. We want to ground our faith on the solid rock of objective evidence, not the comfortable sand of celebrity endorsements, even if the celebrity in question is very intelligent. It’s great if people with high IQs share their faith in Christ, but their testimony should be like the stained glass windows of a cathedral, the way God used their intelligence lights up the whole church, but their IQ isn’t what is holding up the church. What holds up the church is the solid bulwark of philosophical, scientific, and historical evidence for the faith, and really smart people are good at helping people see that, but they also need to remember what John the Baptist said, I must decrease so he can increase. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.