Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Today we’ll be wrapping up the miniseries on how to argue & debate and do it well. Has this little series been helpful to you? I hope so. Speaking of debate, I have to share a funny story. I direct my daughter’s class of 10th graders…our homeschool group meets once a week in class together and one of the things they’re working on is a type of debate called Lincoln-Douglas. Well, I had them practicing short, impromptu mini-debates as a way of practicing some of the skills they’ll be using next week when they actually do their debates. At the end, my students said that I should debate Ms Lori, one of the other parents who was there. Lol. We were like, Ok! Let’s do this! So we had 1 minute to prepare opposite sides of a debate about whether it’s right to kill a dragon for his treasure (taken from the Hobbit) and it was super fun. It was a challenge, for sure! Debating isn’t an easy skill, I’ll tell you that! And my students are getting lots of practice at it b/c they do several debates over the course of the year, but this was the first time I’ve ever debated. It was pretty ratchet, as my daughter would say, but we had fun with it! All that to say this: I get it…these debate skills aren’t necessarily easy, but hopefully this miniseries has been helpful to help you do it well!
Before we dive into Part 7 of the series, let’s do a quick review of a fallacy we covered earlier this season, The Appeal to Ridicule. As you know, there are a bunch of other “Appeal” fallacies…several of which we’ve covered here on the podcast already. You can go back and check those out. So the Appeal to Ridicule happens when someone substitutes ridicule or mockery for evidence when they’re making an argument. Basically, they just mock a claim or an idea or an argument rather than giving a real reason why the argument isn’t valid rather than actually explaining why the argument isn’t valid.
If you think you’re facing an Appeal to Ridicule, the question to ask yourself is this: “Does the fact that they’re being ridiculed make them wrong?”
If you want to learn about or review the Appeal to Ridicule, go back and check out Episode 75.
Alright, before I give you part 7 in the how to argue & debate well series, let’s do a quick review of the first 6: 1) you have to study both sides of the issue; 2) you should have evidence, and it should be credible; and 3) it’s ok to argue values, but it doesn’t work to argue feelings. 4) You can’t argue well if you don’t listen well. 5) You have to actually be winsome & confident in your delivery. And 6) Resorting to strawman fallacies, ad hominem attacks and mockery are sure signs that you no longer have any credible arguments left.
Ok, so number 7 is this: Check your motives. Check your motives. Why are you choosing to enter the argument or the debate at all? This may seem simple, but it really matters. There are a lot of different reasons people get into arguments & debate; some of them may be good reasons and some of them not so much.
Here’s a few examples: Are you angry & want to show someone how wrong they are about something? Or Are you angry because you want to right an injustice? Can you see the difference between the two? Do you just like being right? Do you like to argue just for the sake of arguing? Are you trying to prevent wrong or bad ideas from being spread to others? Are you arguing to manipulate someone into doing what you want them to do? Are you arguing because you think it’s fun? Lol
There are a lot of different reasons people argue & debate and the reason we need to be aware of our motivation for doing so is because our motives will affect HOW we argue. Think about it, if someone is arguing for truth, justice or goodness that will be a very different argument & presentation than someone who is arguing because they’re angry at the other person!
And, hear me well: the way you argue & debate is just as important as the content of your debate. If our goal is to be winsome & to encourage others to want to seek truth, we can’t come into the debate angry & belittling the other person - that’ll just make them angry and turn them off to what we’re trying to say. We want to have the least amount of barriers to the other person hearing our message as we can. Now, we won’t be able to control everything, of course, for instance, we can’t control the other person’s biases or their motivation for entering into the argument. We can’t control their willingness to listen to an opposing viewpoint. But Scripture tells us that our speech should be ‘full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone’ That phrase, seasoned with salt is interesting, and salt has a lot of interesting uses, but one of the things salt does is it makes food taste better! When food is seasoned properly, it makes it appealing & you want to eat it! That’s how our words, our arguments should be.
And an important way to do that is to look at your motives for entering into the debate in the first place.
Ok, y’all, that wraps up this little miniseries on how to argue & debate and do it well. I hope it’s been helpful for you! I have a friend who is considering doing a training on how to debate well on social media & he’s offered to do a training for my membership, Crazy Thinkers. How cool would that be? I’ll be sure to let y’all know when the doors to Crazy Thinkers are open again so you can get in before he does this training. That’s it for today…
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
