Posted on by confidentchristianity@gmail.com

“When you want to know the truth and want to stop being foolish, we can talk about how to become a Christian.”

Straw Man Fallacy: changing or exaggerating an opponent’s position or argument to make it easierto refute.

Straw man is an error in reasoning, because it does not address the actual argument or position of a person. It builds up another argument, called a “straw man,” that may be close to the person’s original argument, but is not the actual argument itself. Then the person attacks the straw man because it is easier to defeat. I call this the “bite-sized, mini-shredded wheat” version of the argument. It’s easy to put one of these mini-shredded wheat pieces under your foot and crush it, rather than to deal with the more comprehensive original argument.
For the Christian, the straw man is to be avoided because it does not demonstrate intellectual honesty with others. If a Christian is seeking to show the truth of God, he must be careful to extend the truth all the way out to accurately represent the view or position of the other person (to the best of their ability). Among Christians, I have heard the straw man utilized on occasion against atheist arguments. Here’s an example:
Chris, the Christian: Do you believe in God?
Aaron, the atheist: Nope.
Chris, the Christian: Oh, so you’re an atheist?
Aaron, the atheist: Yes, I am.
Chris: Why are you an atheist?
Aaron: I don’t believe in God because I cannot understand how a good God could allow so much evil and suffering in the world.
Chris: The Bible says that only the fool says in his heart there is no God. So you are a fool. When you want to know the truth and want to stop being foolish, we can talk about how to become a Christian.
Of course, this is an exaggeration of the kind of argumentation I have heard, but it isn’t too far off! The straw man isn’t the only problem with this representation, but the straw man was

committed when the Christian avoided the atheist’s actual argument and put forth a response to a different argument. The Christian focused on this issue: that the atheist did not desire to know truth. In doing so, the Christian is irresponsible in representing the atheist’s actual argument (the problem of evil), and therefore irresponsible to represent the truth. Notice that the atheist offered a reasonable objection to the existence of a good God, and the Christian did nothing to even acknowledge the atheist’s argument. This is not being a good ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the truth. Jesus did not avoid questions. He sought to engage people with a deeper understanding of the questions they asked (Matthew 22).

Also, Christians should be wary of straw men arguments utilized against their own view of God in conversations. The most frequent straw man arguments which I address are related to views of God that I do not hold. A person who is arguing against your view of God should be responsible to find out as comprehensively as possible what is your view of God before making arguments against that view. In that situation, I ask the person to describe my view of God (to show where they have made false assumptions and perhaps do not know basic Christian doctrine) and then I correct them. This isn’t an attack on them, but it is a way to get past some faulty reasoning and to get closer to the truth.

A political campaign version: In a debate between two presidential hopefuls, Candidate A argues that he will cut back on government spending if elected. Candidate B responds to this proposal by saying that Candidate A doesn’t want to fund education, or take care of the elderly, or to provide programs that help the poor. So, he concludes that you can’t vote for Candidate A if you care about children, the elderly, and the poor. Notice that Candidate B argued Candidate A doesn’t care about all these people groups or want to fund these areas. If Candidate A hasn’t expressly stated that he doesn’t care about these people or doesn’t want to fund these areas as reasoning for his cut in government spending, Candidate B has made a straw man (with some appeal to pity). Of course I wouldn’t vote for a person as described by Candidate B: that person doesn’t seem to care about other people! But has Candidate B accurately conveyed or addressed Candidate A’s argument? No.

Candidate A’s care and concern for these people is not explicitly the argument, but it is much easier to argue that Candidate A doesn’t care for people or want to help them than to argue about the specific areas to cut back spending. Candidate B could have inquired of Candidate A where he would suggest we cut back spending and how that would affect education, the elderly, and programs to help the poor. The argument should center on how Candidate A proposes to cut spending and why or why not those are areas that can or should be cut back.[1]

Pay close attention to the kind of reasoning the presidential candidates use in addressing their opponents’ positions. Straw men can be hard to detect sometimes because political issues can stir our emotions greatly. Listen to what the candidates are actually proposing and if you cannot make out a clear platform from their speeches, look at their voting records in the past.

MJ
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[1] Political issues illicit such emotional responses from people that I want to be clear that although the hypothetical candidates closely relate to current Republican and Democrat arguments, I am not endorsing either view. That is not the point of this article. I am endorsing good reasoning no matter what side of the political spectrum to which a person belongs. In an earlier article, I utilized an example involving a fallacious answer that would seem to be representative of a Republican response to a question.