Jim Daly and how to argue effectively

While my computer was down I read an article by Jim Daly on why gay marriage is a bad idea. Jim Daly is the President of Focus on the Family. You can read his article here. http://www.focusonlinecommunities.com/blogs/Finding_Home/2011/05/24/why-same-sex-marriage-will-fail I found his arguments to be so poor that if I wasn't already certain that gay marriage is bad I would be convinced it's a good idea. So that vein here are four general guidelines to making an effective argument.

1. Be as consistent, honest, and reasonable as you can. Inconsistency is not just a sign of hypocrisy, it's a guarantee of a bad argument. If you're not honest no one should listen to you. You can demand that someone account for every logically possible explanation for X, but this is quite unreasonable as there are a lot of highly improbable but logically possible explanations for X. If you demand that every possible explanation is ruled out (or in) than nothing can get accomplished as it is nearly impossible for anyone to meet that demand.

2. If you use any evidence, statistics, or premises that are not obvious or are controversial, make certain you cite the sources or prove the premise. You don't have to cite a mathematician if you claim that 2+2=4, as that is obvious to everyone who knows math. However if you are talking about theoretical calculus than citing a mathematician or proving the premise is necessary.

3. Make sure you use good logic and reason and don't use any logical fallacies. A lot of "common sense" is logically fallacious. The most common example is that most people do believe that correlation establishs causation. It doesn't.


4. Keep your argument as simple and easy to follow as possible. Don't start arguing for socialized health care and wind up "proving" that people are basically evil. Some problems and issues are quite complicated and it can be difficult to keep them simple. The process oil goes through from extraction to fuel for a car is logistically very complicated. If an "argument" is tracing this process it will get long and quite complicated. But even here if the process is explained well enough it will be easy to follow. Doing this will make your argument stronger and enable you to communicate with people better.

There are other guidelines that can help, but following these ones should keep you in good shape.
How do Daly's arguments shape up? Well pretty poorly. The only one of these criteria Daly meets is part of the first one. Daly is honest, but every other aspect of his argument(s) is terrible. Nothing he says is convincing because his argument(s) is fallacious, unreasonable, needlessly complicated, and he doesn't cite anything.

It's not clear if Daly is giving one argument or several because his article lacks a clear thesis (a single statement summarizing his main point) and the organization of his article is poor. He says he can argue against same sex marriage, "On the basis of logic, reason, common sense and the fact that preservation of traditional marriage is in the best interest of the common good, as evidenced by any number of factors, including reams of social science data and thousands of years of history." But then he jumps all over the map. He discusses things that seem to have no relation to gay marriage (abortion) and ends up arguing that gay marriage advocates are infringing on religious rights (Which may be true, but it in no way establishes that gay marriage is a bad idea; it establishes that proponents of the idea have behaved badly).

Daly doesn't cite a single source for any of his evidence or premises. He is arguing from social science statistics (which are vague and often misleading under the best of circumstances) but he doesn't say where he is getting his evidence. I don't think he is making them up, but without the citations I can't know that, and I can't check the evidence to make sure it is accurate (perhaps the social scientists Daly got his information from used bad methodology?).

Daly's argument(s) are fallacious because the actual arguments he gives have little or nothing to do with gay marriage. Whether previous social and cultural changes had good or bad results doesn't establish that gay marriage will have a good or bad result. Each cultural change must be judged on it's on merits (or lack there of) not the fact that other changes had bad results.

Daly doesn't even effectively argue that these other changes had negative effects. Don't misunderstand, I stand with him in affirming that things like abortion and cohabitation are morally wrong. However he's trying to argue that such things have directly lead to certain social ills, but he's using a common logical fallacy. He's assuming that correlation does establish causation, and it doesn't. The fact that cohabitation and child abuse increased at the same time doesn't establish a causation between the two. Maybe it's the other way around and child abuse caused the increase in cohabitation?

I am quite convinced that gay marriage is a bad idea and is morally wrong, but nothing Daly said in the article effectively argues that fact. Part of the reason I decided to critique Daly is that I affirm his conclusion, but the way he got there is just terrible. It is important to critique people you agree with when they use bad arguments and reasoning. One of the primary problems with most ideological and political groups in America is failure to be self critical.

So don't argue like Daly. Make every effort to keep your arguments reasonable, consistent, logical, simple, and always cite your evidence (when appropriate). Otherwise you'll be acting like a congressman or a fool.

Building a house of thought: From the middle out

This essay is my mission statement/purpose in writing things.


One of the chief difficulties in developing rational and consistent beliefs is that we all start in the middle.

The most appropriate analogy I can think of is building a house.  The best way to build a house is to plan it out on blueprints, start with the foundation, and work your way up from there.  (Yes, there is more involved in building a house than these three steps, but these three work for the analogy and arguing semantics in an analogy is like killing the patient to cure the disease).  If the house is my worldview, (a collection and construction of all my important beliefs) I walk into it not knowing if the foundation is any good, uncertain of what the original blueprints said, and only knowing a little bit about the external, visible aspects of it.  The house could have an exceptionally good foundation and be ready to stand for years, or it could have an awful foundation and be ready to collapse under its own weight.  It might be based on the best blueprints available, but the builder deviated from the plans and made a terrible house despite the good plans.  The point is that I don’t know the condition my worldview (or the house) when I get started.

The reason is that we acquire our foundational beliefs before we are mature enough and thoughtful enough to assess them.  We acquire these beliefs from a large variety of sources like family, culture, and social conditioning.  Since we acquire them before we were able to examine them rationally, these beliefs may or may not be good and rational; we have to look at them and see.  This is why we must question our foundational beliefs (Question does not mean blindly reject.  It means to examine the reasons and evidence for the beliefs and see if they work and match up with the reality of the world.  Most of the beliefs that most people have are correct and good because they are beliefs like “A chair is something people sit in.”)

In the house analogy, the wisest thing to do is to examine the house as completely as possible and determine what parts of it are good and what parts are bad.  The problem is that if this house is my worldview, I must live in it while I am evaluating it.  I have to determine if the sink works while I am using the sink.  Alternatively, for the worldview, I have to question my beliefs about the value of human life (until I find a good base for them) while using those questionable beliefs to interact with the other humans around me.  This is why we start in the middle.

A rational and consistent belief is a belief that is built off the foundation of other beliefs that are either certain (I exist) or so likely to be certain that to question them is irrational (my senses allow me to perceive reality).  For example, the belief that murder is evil is built off foundational beliefs like human life having value and the existence of morals.  In order for the belief that murder is evil to be good and rational the foundational beliefs it is built on must be reasonably certain (Very few things are absolutely certain but a lot of things are so reasonably certain that only fools question them).

But we still have to live in the world, and our interactions with the world require us to use our beliefs in a practical way.  So we must use the beliefs we have built on uncertain foundations while simultaneously questioning and evaluating those beliefs and their foundations.  In effect we all must start in the middle and push in both directions (At least until we have acquired some certain or fairly certain foundational beliefs).

As we start pushing in both directions, we will find that some of our beliefs do not match up with our foundational beliefs or vice versa.  Everyone has some inconsistent beliefs so if we start examining our beliefs we will notice these inconsistencies. In the house analogy, it would be like finding an addition without a foundation, or a foundation without anything built on it.

Two easy examples of inconsistent beliefs come from American political views on abortion.  A lot of people on the political left support abortion rights because they believe people have a right to privacy in medical issues and since abortion is a medical issue it should be kept private.  (The official legal justification for the right to abortions appeals to the Constitution’s “Right to Privacy”)  Conversely, the political right believes abortion is evil because it is the taking of innocent life.

The inconsistency on the political left is that many of the same people and groups who use the right to privacy to justify abortion also claim that the government should mandate/control health-care (Obviously, this is not true of all politically left groups).  If medical issues should be private than the government should have no business mandating or controlling it (as this makes medicine public).  The political left has a belief (government ran health-care) which conflicts with a foundational belief (right to privacy in health-care) of another of its beliefs (right to abortion).  If there is a right to privacy in health-care the political left is being inconsistent in its belief in government ran health-care.  Conversely, if that belief is abandoned, than the primary justification for the right to an abortion disappears.  Obviously, the Left is wrong in at least one of these beliefs.  (Of course, it is possible to find other foundational beliefs that support abortion or government ran health-care.)


The Right's inconsistency is that it does not apply the same standards of justification to abortion that it does to other acts of killing.  The political right believes abortion is wrong because they believe it is murder. Murder is the intentional taking of human life where there is little or no context and reason that could justify it. (If I kill someone because I drove my car too fast and crashed into him, I am responsible for his death, but I’m not a murder because I didn’t intend to kill him.  If I kill a man who broke into my house and is trying to kill me, again I am responsible, but I’m not a murderer because there is context that can justify the killing).

The Right also believes that at least some of the killing in war is justifiable and so not murder.  The Right reasons that the context and extreme nature of the situation(s) in and around war make certain acts of killing justifiable. The underlying belief is that the overall value of human life and dignity can be better adhered to by killing certain people in certain situations (Sometimes it is better to shoot the serial killer or rapist in the head to protect other people from them).  So the Right believes that context and circumstance can make killing justifiable (although they also say it often is not).

The inconsistency is in saying that context and circumstance cannot justify killing in the case of abortion, but it can elsewhere.  The only substantial difference between a born and unborn human is location (In most of the Right’s beliefs and mine). So if it is possible to justify any act that would otherwise be murder, than logically it must be possible to justify at least some abortions due to extreme or highly unusual situations. It’s about human life regardless of location.  The Right has to be wrong about at least one of those beliefs.

In these two examples, having inconsistent beliefs clearly does matter, but some inconsistent beliefs do not matter.  It is inconsistent to believe I am allergic to tomatoes if I eat and enjoy ketchup, but it doesn’t cause me or anyone else harm (other than the damage to my reputation because people will think I’m a moron).  One sign of maturity in thought is being able to distinguish between the inconsistent beliefs that matter and those that don’t.

None of us will ever be completely consistent in all our beliefs, but with mature thought and work, we can work through our inconsistent beliefs until they are all insignificant.  It’s possible to live in a house with rain gutters that clash with the paint color, but a house without a foundation will not last through any storms or rough times.  Likewise it’s possible to live in a worldview with insignificant inconsistencies (Like hating Xbox games while loving Playstation games), but a worldview that has important inconsistencies (like telling people language is inherently ambiguous) will not survive any serious life issues or introspection.

In order to live better lives we all need to push out of, find, and correct our inconsistencies.  Starting in the middle does make this difficult, but it is more than possible (I used to hold the Right’s inconsistent belief about abortion and war).  It is possible to live in a house that is falling apart for a little while, but it will be quite painful (if not fatal) when it collapses.  Likewise, it is possible to survive with inconsistent beliefs for a while, but when the inconsistencies collide, it will be quite painful (if not fatal).  To avoid this pain (or maybe death) strive to have consistent beliefs (and of course play both Xbox and Playstation games).  That is the purpose of good philosophy and what I am trying to do.