Analyzing the Logic on the Bag of Rainbow Goldfish Crackers
I cringed as I read it, but I was grateful when a friend linked to this excellent article by Alastair Roberts:
Rob Bell and Don Draper — The Ad Man’s Gospel
I cringed because it was true and thus, it made me sad:
“If the theologian of the 16th century was a lawyer, the theologian of the 21st century is an ad man.”
“The ad man doesn’t persuade his customer by making a carefully reasoned and developed argument, but by subtly deflecting objections, evoking feelings and impressions, and directing those feelings and harnessing those impressions in a way that serves his interests. Where the lawyer argues, the ad man massages.”
I was grateful because it spurred me on to keep trying to improve in my thinking, reasoning, discussing, and writing—and to help the people in my sphere of influence to do the same.
Primarily for me, right now, that means children. Oh! How I enjoy teaching introductory logic and rhetoric to children.
- In our family, we start with lots and lots of puzzles, logic games, and “Lollipop Logic”/”Mind Benders” books as soon as possible, usually around age 2 or 3. This is sort of the pre-logic phase.
- Then, just in conversations around the house / as we drive around town and see posters / read flyers from auto sales and “new churches” and politicians, we talk about communication in general. Words mean things! Definitions matter. Persuasion is an art. Thinking is a discipline. Is this an appeal to emotion that is completely devoid of any factual statements at all? Have we learned even just one thing about this (person running for governmental office / “church” / car dealer)? Or is their entire “argument” simply this: “Stick with me/buy me and you’ll feel better / be happier!”
- And then, around 4th/5th/6th grade, I have the joy of helping the children to wrestle through hard questions like: Do truth and falsehood exist? What do consistency, validity, and soundness mean? And why does any of it matter? There are SO many excellent books and training materials out for this stage—most are geared towards older students, but I am not convinced that high school is the best time to introduce logic and reasoning to children. It seems to me that children will transition more wisely to adulthood if they are helped to learn how to think, reason, discuss, listen, rebut, reject, and affirm before they are in the super-busy time of high school. In my current (5th/6th grade) class, we are all loving the poster: Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies. We also greatly enjoy An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments because it brings some great visuals into an area of study that is heavy in the ol’ wording department.
But all of this is for naught if it is merely an intellectual exercise. Yes, I hope to encourage scholarly analysis and (fallacy-free) dispassionate discourse. But for what purpose? Ah! For the purpose of growing up even more into Christ Who is our Head. To know not merely what we believe and why, but to know Him—the one true God. And then to be able to discern the things that are worth dying for, dividing over, and agreeing-to-disagree about. And yes, more readily concluding when a “conversation” is really not a conversation at all—that we cannot even come to a rational meeting of the minds on defining our terms, so further “discussion” is truly a waste of time.
Still. No matter where we fall on the above-listed continuum, we who are Christians can still always give testimony to the fact that once we were blind, but now we see. Once we were children of the devil, but by God’s grace, we have been born again to new life, justified, and adopted as beloved children of the Triune God. We were dead in our transgressions and God made us alive in Christ. Once we were without hope in this world, but now we have hope, regardless of our circumstances. And this new life in Christ is what we deeply, prayerfully long for in your life too. So, please. If you are willing. Let me tell you about Jesus …
This was basically the lead in that Dr. Paul Jensen asked me to give when we (valiantly?) tilted at windmills during our law school days and hosted a discussion lunch on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
Sure, the majority of that discussion time was spent examining the historical evidence that even the most stalwart anti-Christian person would admit to be true. Then we discussed potential implications. This seemed to us to be our best “in” for an audience that consisted exclusively of law students and professors. And it was a great debate! Dr. Jensen is a humble genius. One of my modern-day heroes. There were premises and conclusions and rational thought and rational statements. You know. For us lawyers, the fun stuff!
But there was also a testimony about and a call to a personal relationship with a Personal God who is knowable. Even in an academic setting, there is nothing wrong with giving our testimony and I was honored to get to do so. In fact, for almost twenty years now, I have thought to myself that maybe one of those classmates who rejected “the arguments” we discussed might one day be facing a fatal diagnosis or other grievous suffering and will think, “Maybe there is more to life than just random dust particles. Didn’t that Tara-religious-slightly-crazy-chick talk about this back when we were 1L’s? Maybe I’ll try to find her and give her a call to learn more about the hope that she has.” Oh! That would make me so happy and so grateful.
Still. In addition to a personal testimony, I also want to stand ready (and help others to stand ready) to humbly and graciously, but cogently, give an answer for why we believe what we believe. Can you do this? Can your children? Or are you taking toddlers into elementary school into junior and high school and primarily helping them to memorize and regurgitate facts? Memory work is great. Facts are great. But if we are not equipping them to think and to reason (and to clearly identify when people are not thinking and reasoning, but are merely making appeals to emotion and other logical fallacies), then we should not be surprised when they are knocked over by the first few winds of anti-Christian / anti-religion / anti-anything that doesn’t fit the rational naturalistic worldview of current higher education, media, government, and all-too-often, “religion.”
If we are not careful and intentional, our children could go all the way through even graduate school and never learn how to identify and then directly engage or confront an actual argument. And if those are the kinds of (non-thinking) “thinkers” we are developing in the next generation, we should not be surprised when they never really commit to a worldview or to God Himself; when they fail to submit their attitudes, actions, and words to something beyond their feelings; when they have no commitment or accountability because they have no authority beyond their “inspired” and placated self.
I will close with a funny illustration of everything I am trying to say in this blog post …
Last week, I hosted six children for ten hours to give their mother some quiet time at home and also to spend time with the children because I love and enjoy them so much.
One of our treat (i.e., non-healthy) snacks was a bag of Rainbow Goldfish Crackers, the packaging of which looked like this:
Ohhhhh. It made me SO happy when these little ten and eleven year-old girls began to discuss the logic of the argument on the bag of Goldfish Crackers:
“Life is sweet.
Vanilla cupcakes are sweet.
Therefore, life is a vanilla cupcake!”
I heard words like truth, validity, and soundness. I heard lots of laughter as they tried to alter the wording to make it valid, but still unsound.
But what made me the most happiest was that they saw it as an argument at all. Premise, premise, conclusion. And then, that they knew how to think about it and discuss it, rather than just blowing past it as the funny marketing it was intended to be.
May God help us all to be more like those 5th graders!
For His glory and our good,
Tara B.