by William Trollinger (with Susan Trollinger)
“They are concerned about a virus that doesn’t kill very many people at all.” – Georgia Purdom, Answers in Genesis (AiG)
“They are trying to manipulate me into getting a vaccine that I don’t believe in and don’t see any need for.” – Heidi St. John, The Busy Mom
AiG’s token female, Georgia Purdom, recently joined Heidi St. John (a big AiG fan) on the latter’s fundamentalist podcast to discuss the “Christian Statement on Science for Pandemic Times,” a statement put out by the evangelical science organization, BioLogos (whose founder, Francis Collins, received in May the Templeton Prize for Science “for his commitment to challenging the idea that science and religion are at odds”). In their statement BioLogos – which in good evangelical fashion uses biblical passages to reinforce their argument — argues that Christians, as Christians, should respond to COVID by wearing a mask, getting vaccinated when a safe vaccine is developed, and working for social justice.
In contrast to the reasoned and empathetic document put out by BioLogos, the level of vitriol from Purdom and St. John is really quite astonishing. They bombard listeners with a series of ad hominem attacks (which, of course, is the Christian Right’s favorite tactic, notwithstanding that it is a logical fallacy). To give a few examples:
- The folks at BioLogos are emotionally and spiritually manipulative.
- The folks at BioLogos are hypocrites of this highest order.
- The folks at BioLogos are deceptive, very sly, and “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
St. John refers to the BioLogos statement as “Christian drivel” and “sloppy agape” (she apparently is quite fond of the latter rhyme, as she uses it repeatedly). She asserts that, in using biblical passages to reinforce the argument that Christians should wear masks and get vaccines, BioLogos is engaging in a gross misuse, a “twisting,” of Scriptures. In fact, their use of the Bible is “heretical.” And people fall for it because they don’t know their Bible, which has absolutely nothing to say about wearing masks or getting vaccines.
(This is an argument? Really? “Love your neighbor” is confined to specific practices mentioned in the Bible? And how is that the biblical authors could have possibly come up with masks and vaccines?)
According to St. John, people fall for this “drivel” – i.e., getting a vaccine to protect yourself and others is in keeping with Jesus’ admonition to love one another — because they are being swayed by the propaganda put out by Fauci and the National Institutes of Health (propaganda that is apparently driven by the desire to make big bucks on vaccines). BioLogos is part of this propaganda machine, engaging in emotional and spiritual manipulation in an effort “to manipulate me [and others] into getting a vaccine that I don’t believe in and don’t see any need for.”
One of the subtexts of this podcast is that the BioLogos statement is prima facie evidence that Christianity in America is in serious decline. For both St. John and Purdom, it is appalling that so many professors from Christian colleges and seminaries signed this statement. While St. John suggests that they did not know what they were signing, Purdom argues that these are evolutionist academics who reject biblical inerrancy and authority, and who knew exactly what they were signing.
Purdom goes on to attack BioLogos for telling people that “Christians should listen to scientists and doctors . . . That’s a logical fallacy, that’s an appeal to authority.”
Three comments here:
- Really? The message is that Christians should not listen to scientists and doctors?
- Purdom does not seem to understand logical fallacies. (Perhaps if she did, she would not so readily launch into ad hominem attacks). The argument from authority is quite common and quite reasonable. For as long as human beings have been deliberating about things, they have constructed arguments that say something like this: I believe this is so or this is good or this is what we should to; but don’t just take my word for it; consider the wisdom of so-and-so who has expertise in the matter (whether through experience or educational training). In other words, the person making the argument is borrowing the credibility or authority of the source to support their argument. As one would learn in any college-level course on argumentation, this is not a logical fallacy.
- But there is something particularly hilarious here. Just a few minutes before she makes this statement, Purdom attacks evangelical academics for rejecting biblical authority! This is an appeal to authority, and, in fact, the vast majority of arguments put forth by AiG involve appeals to authority. (In fact, appeals to authority are all they have.) Now, what Purdom and Ham and others would say is that they have the right authority and non-fundamentalists have the wrong authority . . . ok, but they are still appealing to authority, which Purdom claims is a logical fallacy.
Purdom also attacks BioLogos for engaging in a stealth campaign, using the pandemic to get their evolutionary ideas into Christian churches and Christian schools and Christian homeschooling organizations. They “are very, very sly,” they “are sheep in wolves’ clothing.”
More than this, the folks at BioLogos are hypocrites: “they are concerned about a virus that doesn’t kill very many people at all,” but they say nothing about abortion.
A comment and a question:
- I have suspected that AiG is rife with folks who see the notion of a COVID pandemic as a hoax, and Purdom’s comment that it “doesn’t kill many people at all” tells me that I am right.
- And here’s my question. AiG has constructed a tourist attraction that commemorates (celebrates?) the drowning of up to 20 billion human beings in Noah’s Flood. And it is estimated that at any point in time 2% of the female population on Earth is pregnant. So if there were 10 billion women on the planet at the time of Noah’s Flood, then 200,000,000 women were pregnant. 200,000,000 unborn killed in just a few days. So divine genocidal abortion is ok? That is to say, how does the biblical story they tell fit with their professed concern for the killing of unborn innocents?
In Kentucky, two state representatives have proposed a bill that would make it illegal for any state agency or entity to require immunizations. One of these representatives, Savannah Maddox, is from Grant County, where Ark Encounter is located. And she is quite the Ken Ham supporter, as seen in one of these photos. (Note that in the photo below, Maddox is with a racist supporter flashing the “white power” gesture).
No surprise. Anti-vaccination, anti-mask regulations, climate change denial – so it is at Answers in Genesis.
And all this fits with the frightening reality that many evangelicals are caught up in the QAnon conspiracy.
And here is a link to the Purdom/St. John podcast.
A few things here. I don’t think there were 20 billion people alive at the time of the supposed Flood. We only have about 7 billion or so on Earth now. I think the author meant 20 million. But the point about killing unborn children still stands. AIG will just come up with the ad hoc response that God made sure no women were pregnant at the time. You know, because that is in the Bible (not). And the argument from authority, while not a logical fallacy, is a deceptive argument. That is because the veracity or lack thereof of an assertion doesn’t rest on the personal credibility or prestige of the person or source cited as the authority, but on the quality of the information itself. We don’t accept Einstein’s theory of relativity because he was the great and powerful Einstein, but because the predictions of his explanation have been repeatedly tested and verified.
Scott, it makes all the sense in the world that you think I meant to say 20 million people on the Earth at the time of Noah’s Flood instead of 20 billion. But as crazy as it is, at the Ark Encounter it is claimed that 20 billion may have been on the Earth at the time. Words fail me, except to ask what sort of God are these folks worshipping.
Yes, thanks for your comment, Scott. And it provides an opportunity to clarify our point about arguments from authority.
Arguments from authority belong to a category of inductive arguments that reason either from some evidence or a premise to some sort of claim. Some arguments from authority are much better than others, of course! But as a category of argument, they are no more deceptive than any of the other common arguments that human beings make (like arguments from generalization, classification, analogy, sign, and so forth).
Our task is to figure out which arguments from authority are worthy of our assent and which ones are not. And that depends on the nature of the expertise that the source has (is it relevant to the claim being made) and the faithfulness with which the testimony mobilized in the argument is used (is the quote or paraphrase accurate, for instance).
You are absolutely right that if someone were to make the argument that we should believe Einstein’s theory of relativity because he was a great scientist, that would be a very weak argument, especially since arguments from authority don’t argue that you should believe X because someone, who is a genius, said so.
But, if I were to say that the period of Reconstruction in the United States offered real opportunities for racial reconciliation that were dashed for a number of reasons, including the failures of Andrew Johnson as president, I would support that claim with a relevant quote from Eric Foner, arguably the foremost historian of Reconstruction. I would be basically saying—this is what I think is true, but I’m not just making this up. I’ve done my homework such that my claim is grounded in excellent expert testimony.
I hope that clarifies what we were trying to say. Again, thanks Scott, for reading our blog and taking the time to comment!
I respectfully disagree that arguments from authority proceed from evidence and, perhaps, instead of asserting that they are inherently deceptive, I should say that they are inherently invalid. Such arguments can be deceptive and often are. They can include evidence but they often don’t. Neither is necessary to make such an argument. As per the original comment, they rest on the attempt to borrow the credibility of the authority in lieu of any evidence. They become deceptive when they misrepresent either the actual evidence or the position of their cited authority on that evidence or because of the tacit suggestion that merely associating the claim with the authority supports the claim. Going back to the Einstein example, we can say that Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us X or Y and we can accept that because subsequent experiments and/or observations have verified it. We have mentioned Einstein but our assertion doesn’t rest on him or his personal credibility or reputation. It rests on the results of the experiments and observations. If, on the other hand, I say X or Y is true and Einstein agrees with me, I have presented no evidence, but merely invoked Einstein’s name to try and lend authority to what I am claiming. It is deceptive as well because Einstein’s name and reputation are not evidence supporting the claim. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong, but it does mean I haven’t actually supported my claim.
Again, Scott, we appreciate your contribution to this ongoing conversation. You are quite right that an argument that merely names Einstein would lack evidence. That said, an argument that included testimony (one of the three classic forms of evidence–goes all the way back to Aristotle) from Einstein would have evidence. That wouldn’t necessarily mean that we should give our assent to the claim of the argument. But it would be an argument.
If you are interested, Stephen Toulmin’s Uses of Argument explains all this. He was a British philosopher whose work focused on practical argumentation (rather than formal logic) and moral reasoning. We highly recommend it! All the best!
It’s so sad to me, to read how science is pitted against faith, once again, during a time when so many lives are at stake.
Science can embolden our faith, as it allows for us an even deeper appreciation of God’s magnificent creation. Science speaks for itself and needs not be shoved into paradigms that are illogical and unsuitable.
I just added my signature to BioLogos’s “A Christian Statement on Science in Pandemic Times.” In regards to the use of various logical fallacies, perhaps the AiG crew neglected to read the entire statement (it contains multiple paragraphs…).
https://statement.biologos.org/
Yes, yes, yes, Rachael — and thank you!
AiG girls on the right side of history by trusting God.