Today we're going to look at how to identify and use inconsistencies when you're in a conversation.

Last summer my wife and I spent some time in California: driving up the coast, going to Yosemite, it was a great time. One of our stops towards the end was near the Monterrey Bay Aquarium. The day before we went there we were hiking the coastal area by the water with the awesome redwood trees.

The people that were on our trip were interesting; we had people from all over the country. One lady was talking about how excited she was to actually move to the area and volunteer at the aquarium and help rehabilitate sea lions. At this time at least, I don't know if it's changed, but they actually were having trouble surviving. There was a deficit of food, and it was pretty cut-throat for which sea lions could survive.

At that point, it seemed like there was a sea lion who'd actually given birth to twins. As I understand that, this is extremely rare. The mother only had enough milk to nurse one of them. The aquarium was taking care of the other. This woman was very concerned, extremely concerned about this sea lion — the twin that the mother hadn't had enough milk for.

She was excited to go see it the next day, to hopefully volunteer and rehabilitate it. In the time of talking with her, and listening to her talk with other people on our little hike, it became apparent to me that she was pretty liberal on social issues. She was very concerned about this sea lion. Now I'm guessing with this next point, but I think it's a pretty fair guess that this woman is probably pro-choice. In fact, having listened to her she's probably pro-abortion.

Now, that is a guess about her position, she didn't explicitly state that. There are certainly people who have a very high view of animals, a very high view of endangered animals where we should spend lots of money, lots of time in to protect them. But they don't have nearly as high of a view of the unborn. They don't think a woman needs to give a reason for why she should be able to kill her unborn child. This is an inconsistency, because what it's saying is, you can kill human life without any justification, without any reason needed to be given. You can't kill this other type of life, this animal, and indeed you should even do all that you can to protect it. That's inconsistent.

This week when I saw the story about the child who had gotten into a gorilla’s cage, and the gorilla had been holding this child, and handling him, and there was great concern that the gorilla could actually tear the child apart, or kill, or gravely harm the child. So, the gorilla was killed.

In my own Facebook feed I have seen comments, where people objected to this, strongly objected saying that the gorilla was just as important, just as valuable as that child. Why didn't we try to do more to save the gorilla? I want us to think through this together, a lot has been said about it, but there are two points I want to kind of bring out in this story. My goal is going to be to find inconsistency in the persons position. In a logical argument, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. I would say in a worldview, inconsistent positions are an indicator of a bad worldview, of holding an incorrect view of reality.

I've had conversations with people in the past and they've actually admitted that they hold many points that don't fit together. My question to them is, then why do you believe them? Why would you fight to hold onto these contradictory points? Some or all of them are assuredly false because they contradict each other. The reason we should identify inconsistency in someone's worldview, in someone's position, is because it gives us an avenue to have a conversation. To ask a question on how they reason t…