The art of argument

One important aspect of our heritage is the art of good argument. I want to lay out what is the value of this art and also how we might encourage it as a character trait for ourselves and then for our children. I will attempt this over the weekend but currently I want to lay out an introduction to where I intend to go.

My daughter has recently begun to say, "See, I was right!" It would be easy to dismiss her with a kind rebuke and some training in the area of humility saying, "Sweety, Jesus thinks that we shouldn't be concerned about who's right. Now now, go and apologize to your brother."

I wonder though what this would accomplish? Is there a difference between thinking too much of one's self and being proud that one has accomplished something such as being right about a given set of facts? I think there is.

If I take this approach I will encourage one of the most annoying aspects of contemporary culture among generation X: the absolute inability to publicly and openly and honestly argue about some idea, issue, or set of facts. How often I have been given the silent treatment at the very mention of a political or religious or doctrinal issue.

I remember challenging a class about the issue of God's foreknowledge. I had come across some disturbing new discoveries. I brought these questions to a class that was ready to stone me by the end. The class missed an important opportunity to further their own knowledge about the subject and also to correct my own. More importantly, what was at stake was our very ability to consider, evaluate, and critique some given idea.

I am not sure that we would have been equipped to evaluate such things even if we had wanted to. Where does one start? Some random Bible passage? But what about interpretating that passage? Then we are left wondering what it is exactly that we accomplished and where to go from there. We have never been trained in the difference between good and bad assumptions; how to point them out; what to do with them when we point them out; how to trace the logic that uses the assumptions for a conclusion; what are the different parts of a propositional statement or how the parts of an argument work.

Thus, we are amazed that our children wonder why there is anything wrong with abortion if capitol punishment is okay. Absurd!