Adventures in Missing the Point

I enjoy watching debates and listening to opposing parties mix it up on news programs. Unfortunately, it can be quite frustrating to watch sometimes, especially if the guy on my side of the issue doesn't think of that perfect response that would be raised "if I were him." The most aggravating thing is when my man allows himself to get bogged down in an argument raised against him (or her), but doesn't even notice that it is entirely beside the main point of the discussion or that it is based upon a flawed assumption. This is such a common thing in the world of debate and advocacy that examples abound. Perhaps discussing a few might give the reader a better sense of what I mean in addition to becoming better equipped to spot this polemical pothole in the future.

Anti-War Rhetoric

Without getting into the politics of whether or not I support the military presence in Iraq, let me just mention a common tactic I see in defense of the idea that we should pull our troops out. Images, stories, and statistics of the dead and injured are regularly employed to show us the horror of this thing. How awful; why would we do something that would cause such misery for ourselves and the civilians of another country? Worse, the occasional moral atrocities of our own people are indiscriminately publicized, as if to suggest that this is what we are all about and what such an occupation amounts to.
But this is not really an argument against this war. If casualties and regrettable abuses were a valid defeater for the idea of going to war, then we should not have joined battle against Nazi Germany, where such things happened in vastly greater numbers. Yet few are so shortsighted as to suggest that the losses were not justified in that conflict. The point is not to lament over the terrible effects of military action; the point is whether or not we should engage in this particular offensive. All outrage over the victims simply assumes that we should not and misses the real point of focus for the discussion.

Pro-Choice Tactics

"Every child should be a wanted child." "It's a private decision between me and my doctor." "It's a matter of conscience between me and my God." "Stop oppressing women." "Don't like abortion, then don't have one."

These are the kinds of statements that are often tossed out by "pro-choice" advocates. Some allow themselves to get caught up in a discussion provoked by such bumper sticker defenses, but they are really nothing so much as chaff from a fighter jet to distract from the real target. The primary point in this debate is whether or not the unborn is a valuable human person who should not be killed over matters of choice and convenience.

One of the ways to drive the point home is to substitute a toddler in place of the fetus. For example, we could revise and expand some of the statements as follows. "Every child should be a wanted child, so I should be free to dispose of my unwanted toddlers." Or, "Don't like killing toddlers, then don't kill yours." Or how about, "It's a private matter between me, my doctor, and my God. If we're okay with killing my toddler, then who are you to get involved?"

If this kind of thinking evokes horror in the mind of the "choice" advocate, then it is clear that he or she does not believe that the unborn is a human person. If the fetus is, then none of these kinds of slogans are justification for murder. But if the fetus is not a valuable human person, then no justification is necessary. The point of focus in this issue, then, is the nature of the unborn.

Gay Advocacy

The topic of same-sex marriage came up on a radio show the other day, and by way of support for it the host shared this observation: "I never even thought about it till my two friends got married. And then I thought, 'Wow, they seem so happy together. I should stay out of the way there.'"

The problem is that there are plenty of things that make people happy of which even most liberal thinkers disapprove. If you haven't already thought of some yourself, here are a few examples I could offer: smoking, alcohol abuse, drug use, dog fighting, pedophilia, rape, and (for our green friends) driving a gas guzzling SUV. The mere fact that someone might like to do these things does not in itself justify them. Support for the behavior must stand upon other grounds.

This roundabout defense is one in a series that includes appeals to consent, human rights, and genetics. But if a behavior turns out to be unacceptable, then no amount of consent is relevant, there are no rights to it, and even genetic predisposition does not apply. Simply replace same-sex relations with pedophilia to see the failure of each of these ploys. It doesn't matter how much happiness, consent, and biological predisposition is involved, it still won't fly (at least not at the time of this writing). There is something deeper at issue that is the point of concern with things like pedophilia and same-sex marriage that washes out the mere subjective defenses.

Christian Skepticism

This summer I had a conversation with a family friend who fancies himself a well-informed atheist. His objections were all of a kind, which included complaints about the crusades, questioning Constantine's motives, and psychoanalyzing believers. While these are all interesting topics that can be exhaustively explored they really miss the important point of whether or not the God of the Bible is real. Constantine could be a scoundrel, Christians could behave miserably in war, and people could be spiritually needy, yet the biblical authors could still have recorded actual events.

And somewhat related, I recently listened to a radio show caller ask the host how to handle a friend of his who refused to recognize his definition of the word "faith." It seems the Christian wanted to define it as trust in what you have good reason to believe, while his skeptical friend wanted to define it as belief in what you have no evidence for. Unfortunately, their bickering over definitions only reflected the really important point of difference between them. The problem is that the skeptic does not believe that there really is any good evidence for Christianity, and so faith must necessarily be blind. Even if this fellow could accept the Christian understanding of faith, for the sake of argument, the conversation would only be stuck on the "good reason to believe" part of the definition.

Intelligent Design Debate

I'm currently listening through an audio book on Intelligent Design (ID), which features various scholars on both sides of the debate. As one of the introductory questions, the host asked each evolution supporter what he thought about Intelligent Design. The answers were remarkable in their consistency, and included such comments as the following: Evolution is well established and silly to argue with. ID is just creationism with a pseudo-scientific façade. ID is not science. ID rejects natural explanations. ID is a religious movement.

But whether or not these charges are accurate is not really the point. So what if it were true that every ID advocate is a fundamentalist Christian? So what if ID ran afoul of the current definition of "science?" The really important question is, Are certain things in the biological world the product of Intelligent Design?

What I did not hear was any kind of substantive response to this bottom-line point, only fussing with semantics, motivations, and implications. No one responded by saying that complex protein systems do not actually resemble existing machinery of human design. No one responded that we actually know the chemical pathways to any molecular machinery. No one responded that mutational statistics have been applied to the problem of gene evolution and found to be within reasonable probabilities.

Conclusion

The point is the point. Learn to identify the crux of the matter and the hinge upon which any given issue turns. Be vigilant for the presuppositions and worldview assumptions underlying someone's arguments. And don't be diverted by non-productive and non-essential side issues. There are a million peripheral concerns to debate, but if the distractions are winnowed you may just be surprised at the fundamental simplicity of many issues. It may not get you any closer to agreement, but you'll at least be riding the point without swirling aimlessly in the wake of the debate.