Seing what a great success my last thread in this series was, http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/206501/1/The-Cargo-Cult-arguments-and-how-to-deal-with-them, i couldnt help doing another :-).
Imagine Alice and Bob both each has a sack of potatoes, but they cant agree which is the heavier, and are having and argument about it.
Suddenly Alice get an idea. She produce the content of her bag, 3 irregularily medium-sized potatoes, and say to Bob: "I know how we can solve this once and for all!"
She reach into Bobs bag and produce a potato, roughly equal in size to one of hers. "Can we agree this potato is smaller than the 3 of mine combined?". Bob, not being an unreasonable person, nod in agreement. So Alice put Bobs potato away and produce a NEW from his bag: "And this one? Is it smaller than the sum of the 3 potatos i have?".
Again Bob nod in agreement. In this manner Alice goes through the content of Bobs bag, producing 20 potatos of all sizes, and in each instant Bob and Alice agree they are indeed smaller than the 3 potatos alice had to begin with. By the end of the proces Alice triumphantly says: "You see? MY bag was the heavier!". Bob look somewhat confused at his large pile of potatoes: "But.. you know.. I could have sworn..".
Ofcourse noone is that stupid, unless that someone is a homo sapiens in an argument.
In that interpretation Alice and Bob both argue about some proposition, Alice argue for, and Bob argue against. The potatoes are arguments for (Alices bag) and against (Bobs bag), and while we know from applied math how we should do in principle (weight each potato and compare the sum, or as i would say, add a bunch of logarithms, see first comment below) it is often hard to in practice.
Alices might want to convince us jesus returned invisible in 1914 and her 3 potatos might have been:
- It seem that a certain interpretation of Daniels book and jeremiah indicate something significant occured in 1914, this interpretation is supported by people i respect
- World War 1 began that year.
- later events, such as our ability to organize, indicate this is Gods organization.
And when Bob (for example) says:
- But consider that Rutherford only arrived at that conclusion years later!
Alice might think: Yes thats true.. but World War 1 occured in 1914, and intelligent people i respect interpret the bible to support the idea and we got those conventions, so i am not convinced.
and bob might (for example) say:
- but other scholars disagree with your interpretation of jeremiah and daniel, see here
and alice might use the same set of arguments again. and so on and on.
There is also a lesson to Bob: Even though he think Alice is wrong, and each of her potatoes are small due to some argument, he shouldnt attempt to argue that her potatoes have no weight at all. I hope i dont fall into the fallacy i attribute to Alice, but i know i have a tendency to make this later error.