Skip to main content

chapter 14


Argumentation in religion is very complicated because of all of the different interpretations of the religious texts. It seems that because of the numerous ways that people interpret the texts, there can only be speculation on how it should be interpreted. We can only study the texts and reach our own conclusion since no one from the creation of the texts exists today. There are many more questions that answers when it comes to argumentation in religion such as: How much free will do we have? What part of our lives does God play a part of, if any? It all depends on an individuals interpretations of the text and I think to say that one person has a more right answer than someone else about interpreting religious texts is not possible. Moral behavior is a good example of this derived from basic law: “you shall not kill”. It is hard to clearly identify what the word “kill” refers to. Does kill refer to only humans or are you not allowed to kill anything? are all lives treated equally? These are all speculations because they are interpretations which doesn’t mean that they don’t have merit, but each individual has the right to interpret things because we are not omnipotent. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 4, 2018 at 1:28 PM

    Hey Scott,

    I think that you're really on to something with this blog post. I agree that argumentation in religion can be tricky because, like you said, people have so many different ways of interpreting the text, and there really is no way to state what the "correct" translation is. Beyond that, I've been in conversations where the question of if "God's word" would have changed or adjusted with our changing world; it's hard to believe that our world can go through such drastic changes, yet we are expected to live perfectly by rules and outlines set hundreds of years ago.

    Aside of purely differences in interpretations of texts, I think it's important to highlight the differences between religions as well. If someone is presenting an argument to a Jewish community and tries to tie their argument back to 'The Quran,' there's going to be some disconnect and that argument may not be effective.

    I think that argumentation in religion can be very challenging, too, because people are often very set in their religious views. Often, that is not something that people are going to easily shift how they think or what they believe. That being said, arguing against it can be like yelling at a brick wall; you say what you want, but it's not going to change anything. Additionally, someone making an argument may have to tread water it bit more to try not to offend someone because religion can be such a touchy thing. Honestly, I think that staying away from arguing about religion or having an argument based on religion is probably what's best.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chap 5

Chapter five focuses primarily on identifying and developing propositions for problems that people think are relevant. It goes over 6 steps for choosing a valid proposition based on a perceived “feeling of doubt.” While all six steps may not be necessary, the collectively ensure a well thought out and firm proposition. The six steps include identifying the question, surveying implicated objectives (or understanding what is the goal accomplishment in regard to the question), searching for new information, considering alternative options, considering costs and risks of each potential proposition, and then finally choosing one of the propositions. The authors then go on to talk about analyzing and strengthening the proposition chosen. This includes identification and ranking of the issues that the proposition addresses as well as understanding how the decision makers will react to these issues and propositions. In general, with all these methods of critically analyzing the proposition, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chaper 8

Chapter 8 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making continues down the route of talking about support for argumentation. This chapter specifically focuses on values as support for arguments, how to recognize them and the best ways to attack them. Values are defined as “ concepts of what is desirable that arguers use and decision makers understand” (121).  There are several types of values mentioned such as stated, implied, positive, negative, terminal, instrumental, abstract and concrete values.  Stated values are state directly what concepts they hold. For example, words such as “freedom” or “health” are stated values because they mean exactly what they're trying to portray. Not all values are as explicit. Some are more vague and called implied values. One of the examples that the book uses to show the contrast between the two is in the case of work equality. When talking about the subject saying, “ Equal pay for equal work” would be a stated value and “ Women deserve th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Case Building

Chapter 6 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making focuses on the steps required in building a case. Among the concepts that are discussed, visualization stands out as one of the most important. On page 101, the authors even state “Powerful arguments are only half of the job in preparing a case or presentation. The other half is developing a convincing vision through which you can tell the story of your ultimate purpose” In other words, having a great argument alone is not going to necessarily gain you adherence. Instead, it needs to be supplemented with a story that vividly shows the decision maker the outcome if they were to agree to the proposition.   The chapter goes on to say that to create a powerful vision you must know the decision maker’s narrative of the subject you are arguing about. The example that is given is college. Some decision makers might have had the greatest time of their lives in college during which they made a ton of friends and found love. On the ...
1 comment
Read more