I encountered an ex catholic today that was eager to disprove me. There are several logical fallacies used to "win" debates, without ever winning. Some of the tactic he used to do so were done the following ways:
Either-or, black and white, complex question fallacy:
Evolutionfalse: Are you going to purgatory when you die?
BerhaneSelassie: I do not know.
Evolutionfalse: Its a yes or no question.
BerhaneSelassie: How can I give you a yes or no if I do not know???
Note: There are three possibilities that will happen when someone dies
1)Go straight to heaven with no purgatory
2)Go to heaven after going to purgatory
3)Go straight to hell, with no purgatory
In 2 of the 3 possibilities purgatory is not involved. Since I am not a prophet, nor was I give foreknowledge that I will be among the elect that will preserver to see the Beatific vision, its absurd to demand of me a certain answer. It's even more absurd to demand a "yes or no" answer, after your opponent states they do not know. Furthermore, this debater is making the issue personal, rather than keeping it on topics.
Asking 1000 questions before your opponent can finish answering 1:
This is perhaps the favorite of Protestants I have encountered, its a violation of Jesus' principle of treat others as you would want to be treated!
Ex.
Protestant: Saying following an organization is necessary is cultic! Why do you do this?
Catholic: The New Testament church called itself the Way and required....[Protestant interjects]
Protestant: The NT church was not organized!
Catholic: Yes, it was according to Acts 15 they have apostles and ...
Protestant: Where did they call priests father?, where did they pray to Mary?, where did they say Mass? Where did they pray to saint? Where did they make statutes?.......etc......
The Protestant will continued asking questions in rapid fire, often times off topic. But this will look impressive to his fellow Protestants who will perceive the poor ignorant, Catholic heathen is incapable of answering.
Red herrings fallacy:
Protestants love changing the topics, especially when they see they cannot respond to your rebuttal, and just like above.
Protestant: Where was the NT church organized??
Catholic: The NT church was organized, it has priests, bishops, and had a council of them that made binding decisions on its members like in Acts 15!
Protestant: Where did they address men as "father"? Where did they pray to Mary? Where was Peter pope? When did they celebrate mass?
The Protestant asks an irrelevant question about calling men father, since there are SEVERAL organized religions that do not call their leaders fathers like the Jehovah witnesses, or most any Protestant sect, yet they are still organized. So whether or not they call a man father is irrelevant. However, often times the rest of the questions will be even more off topic. The topic was about whether the NT was ORGANIZED.
Appeal to
Heaven fallacy:
This is another favorite untrained people use. They appeal to God to say the person is wrong, even if they do not present an argument. For example the man I argued with said:
Evolutionfalse: A lot of Catholics will be shocked on judgment day!
Such a statement does nothing in debates, its not evidence, it does not persuade ANYONE. So why is it said? My guess it because of emotions and desire to be seen as winning.
Strawman:
Many Protestants like to make elaborate arguments from bad information, therefore they refute a position no one believes:
Protestant: Catholics pray to statutes, the bible says not to do that, therefore the Catholic Church is false!!
The problem is Catholics do not ray to statues, they pray to the people the statues represent. Furthermore, the accusation anyone believes an inanimate object is a blatant insult. Rather than find out from Catholic what they are doing praying in front of a statues, a Protestant may ASSUME what they are doing.
Double Standard of evidence:
In the debate with Evolutionfalse he asked me to provide an explicit scripture for praying to saints, I said none exists. Typically, Protestants see this as victory. I often point out you cannot prove Jesus received Divine worship EVER in the NT since the Greek word Latreu is never applied to him! Likewise, there is no explicit mention of people pray TO the Holy Spirit! We can conclude these things from LOGIC, which some Protestants called a "whore." We can see the saints will go to heaven, the "partial will pass away" according to 1 Corinthians 13, and that according to the bible each part of the body feels the other, the bible requires you to pray for each other, there is only one body of Christ, not 2, the saints and angels are cognizant of when a sinner repents, they know if they have been given vengeance or not, they still have the desire to help the rest of the body since they are still saints! From this it would make sense that there is no problem to pray to saints, pray meaning to "ask" and in this case, ask them to pray to God WITH us. Likewise, from logic, we can conclude its acceptable to worship Jesus because He has the same nature as His Father who was worshipped!
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