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…

Closed-mindedness. Is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? As one t-shirt said, "If I kept an open mind, everything would fall out." Joking aside, there are people who just seem to legitimately not want to even consider another person's point of view. Maybe at a future time we'll talk about how to deal with the claim of closed-minded being applied to you. There are some helpful ways to deal with.

Today I want to address how we should think about talking with people who seem very, very closed. The first thing I want to point out is that pretty much everyone is closed. Pretty much everyone has a narrow view. That's the nature of truth. It is narrow. It is exclusive, and it does contradict other things. I think that should give us a little bit of patience with people.

By default, I don't walk out of my house each day thinking, "Well I hope someone will convince me of something new today." That doesn't mean I'm closed to learning new things or closed to surveying evidence. I'm not, but it does mean that we all are pretty much comfortable where we are, and so is any person we're going to talk to. From a spiritual perspective, certainly, people are not going to accept the truth of the Gospel without the work of the spirit.

Why are we tackling this question today? Over the last week I had 2 people each ask me, "What should I do with people who seem very closed-minded?" These people aren't timid people. One's in the military. Another is an outgoing individual, and they're both wondering, "Is it even worth it? Could it be fruitful to talk with someone who just seems very closed to anything about Christianity."

I gave this some thought, and here's what I want to say. I think when we approach the issue this way, understandably, what often happens, is that we diminish our trust in the sovereignty of God. That sounds really spiritual and you might be thinking, "Why do you say that? Why do you think that?" Here's the thing. We often think in terms of what we can do, right? If the floor needs to get cleaned in my house and I don't clean it and I say, "I'm waiting on the sovereignty of God," you're going to laugh at me. If anything gets done in a physical sense, for the most part, it's we that have to do it, but in a spiritual sense, and when we're talking about spiritual matters, we're not the only players in the game. As Greg Koukl has said in his book, "Tactics," man is 100 percent responsible for his part, and God is also 100 percent responsible for his part, and we need to trust that when we are faithful with the opportunities we have, that God will be faithful to accomplish his purposes, which he always does.

There are actually several potential avenues of fruitfulness in this conversation in conversations with people who seem closed.

The first is in a real sense that most conversations occur around other people, so the person you're talking with may very well come away not having their mind opened at all, not having even listened or countenanced anything you've said, but what about the people around you? There are 2 ways that you can affect them positively. One is obviously with the things you say. They're listening to this conversation. They're not in the conversation, so they're not guarding turf. They're not having to defend their point of view. They're just able to sit back and listen to the exchange and hopefully you have a well-reasoned point of view that will be persuasive to this person who is perhaps more open than the direct person you're talking with.

The second way you can hopefully have an influence on those observers to the conversation - Maybe it's the break room, maybe it's family dinner - is in your character and how you comport yourself. In these…

Closed-mindedness. Is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? As one t-shirt said, "If I kept an open mind, everything would fall out." Joking aside, there are people who just seem to legitimately not want to even consider another person's point of view. Maybe at a future time we'll talk about how to deal with the claim of closed-minded being applied to you. There are some helpful ways to deal with.

Today I want to address how we should think about talking with people who seem very, very closed. The first thing I want to point out is that pretty much everyone is closed. Pretty much everyone has a narrow view. That's the nature of truth. It is narrow. It is exclusive, and it does contradict other things. I think that should give us a little bit of patience with people.

By default, I don't walk out of my house each day thinking, "Well I hope someone will convince me of something new today." That doesn't mean I'm closed to learning new things or closed to surveying evidence. I'm not, but it does mean that we all are pretty much comfortable where we are, and so is any person we're going to talk to. From a spiritual perspective, certainly, people are not going to accept the truth of the Gospel without the work of the spirit.

Why are we tackling this question today? Over the last week I had 2 people each ask me, "What should I do with people who seem very closed-minded?" These people aren't timid people. One's in the military. Another is an outgoing individual, and they're both wondering, "Is it even worth it? Could it be fruitful to talk with someone who just seems very closed to anything about Christianity."

I gave this some thought, and here's what I want to say. I think when we approach the issue this way, understandably, what often happens, is that we diminish our trust in the sovereignty of God. That sounds really spiritual and you might be thinking, "Why do you say that? Why do you think that?" Here's the thing. We often think in terms of what we can do, right? If the floor needs to get cleaned in my house and I don't clean it and I say, "I'm waiting on the sovereignty of God," you're going to laugh at me. If anything gets done in a physical sense, for the most part, it's we that have to do it, but in a spiritual sense, and when we're talking about spiritual matters, we're not the only players in the game. As Greg Koukl has said in his book, "Tactics," man is 100 percent responsible for his part, and God is also 100 percent responsible for his part, and we need to trust that when we are faithful with the opportunities we have, that God will be faithful to accomplish his purposes, which he always does.

There are actually several potential avenues of fruitfulness in this conversation in conversations with people who seem closed.

The first is in a real sense that most conversations occur around other people, so the person you're talking with may very well come away not having their mind opened at all, not having even listened or countenanced anything you've said, but what about the people around you? There are 2 ways that you can affect them positively. One is obviously with the things you say. They're listening to this conversation. They're not in the conversation, so they're not guarding turf. They're not having to defend their point of view. They're just able to sit back and listen to the exchange and hopefully you have a well-reasoned point of view that will be persuasive to this person who is perhaps more open than the direct person you're talking with.

The second way you can hopefully have an influence on those observers to the conversation - Maybe it's the break room, maybe it's family dinner - is in your character and how you comport yourself. In these…

It's very likely that when you've talked about your Christian convictions that God created the world, even that God exists, or that Jesus (man and God) came to Earth and died on the cross for sin and lived a perfect life, that people will say to you, "Well, that's an extraordinary claim, and you've only presented (if you have) just some ordinary evidence, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Doesn't that just sound really compelling? Like, well, it is an extraordinary claim that a God exists, I guess, from a certain perspective, so ...

Now, if you're anything like me, which maybe you're not, but the first time someone says this to you, your reply might go something like, "Whose evidence are you saying isn't extraordinary? What's wrong with my evidence?!” Joking aside, you're probably going to feel stuck. That has been my experience in the past, but here's what I want to suggest to you, that you not accept their claim, their assertion that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

What if you replied, "That sounds like an extraordinary claim to me. What evidence do you have that that's actually the way it should work? Why should I just believe you that an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence? I understand that that sounds pithy and nice, but why should we believe that? What is your evidence for that assertion, that an actual extraordinary claim requires actual extraordinary evidence?"

This puts the burden of proof back on them. Now, I will admit that's a slightly odd type of question, but I think it fits. I want them to do the explaining here. I want them to explain to me why it actually has to work this way.

If they're able to, or even if they're not, my next question is going to be, "What type of evidence would you accept? Not specifically what type, but what specific evidences would you accept to prove to you that God exists, to prove to you that Jesus rose from the dead?" I want them to lay out for me what they are going to accept. Because oftentimes they're going to keep asking the Christian, "Yeah, well, present evidence. Well, that's not enough. Present more evidence. That's not enough. Present extraordinary evidence. Well, that's not enough for me."

Let's get them to set the ground rules here. What evidence will they accept? A lot of times you're not going to get an answer, even in professional debates. A lot of times when the atheist is asked this question, they don't have a good answer, and a lot of times the answers they do give, if they give one, pretty much renders all of history unknowable.

In fact, oftentimes some of the evidences that are required for Christian claims would make it where we couldn't even know that George Washington was President of the United States or anything else in even recent history. We're going to get standards in these types of conversations that aren't really capable of being applied in the real world. They don't function in any other area of knowing accept when the atheist wants to apply them to Christian or religious claims.

I once asked a guy this question, "What evidence would you accept?" Or, "Why don't you believe Christianity?" He said, "Well, I don't know everything about it, and I can't believe in something I don't know everything about." I said, "Do you understand gravity?" He said, "Well, it holds things down." I'm like, "Well, do you understand why or how or what produces the force of gravity?" He said, "No." I said, "But you believe in gravity." He said, "Well, yes." I said, "Well, doesn't that seem inconsistent? You don't understand everything about it, but you're willing to say, 'Well, I believe in gravity.'"

I said, "What about the i…

It's very likely that when you've talked about your Christian convictions that God created the world, even that God exists, or that Jesus (man and God) came to Earth and died on the cross for sin and lived a perfect life, that people will say to you, "Well, that's an extraordinary claim, and you've only presented (if you have) just some ordinary evidence, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Doesn't that just sound really compelling? Like, well, it is an extraordinary claim that a God exists, I guess, from a certain perspective, so ...

Now, if you're anything like me, which maybe you're not, but the first time someone says this to you, your reply might go something like, "Whose evidence are you saying isn't extraordinary? What's wrong with my evidence?!” Joking aside, you're probably going to feel stuck. That has been my experience in the past, but here's what I want to suggest to you, that you not accept their claim, their assertion that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

What if you replied, "That sounds like an extraordinary claim to me. What evidence do you have that that's actually the way it should work? Why should I just believe you that an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence? I understand that that sounds pithy and nice, but why should we believe that? What is your evidence for that assertion, that an actual extraordinary claim requires actual extraordinary evidence?"

This puts the burden of proof back on them. Now, I will admit that's a slightly odd type of question, but I think it fits. I want them to do the explaining here. I want them to explain to me why it actually has to work this way.

If they're able to, or even if they're not, my next question is going to be, "What type of evidence would you accept? Not specifically what type, but what specific evidences would you accept to prove to you that God exists, to prove to you that Jesus rose from the dead?" I want them to lay out for me what they are going to accept. Because oftentimes they're going to keep asking the Christian, "Yeah, well, present evidence. Well, that's not enough. Present more evidence. That's not enough. Present extraordinary evidence. Well, that's not enough for me."

Let's get them to set the ground rules here. What evidence will they accept? A lot of times you're not going to get an answer, even in professional debates. A lot of times when the atheist is asked this question, they don't have a good answer, and a lot of times the answers they do give, if they give one, pretty much renders all of history unknowable.

In fact, oftentimes some of the evidences that are required for Christian claims would make it where we couldn't even know that George Washington was President of the United States or anything else in even recent history. We're going to get standards in these types of conversations that aren't really capable of being applied in the real world. They don't function in any other area of knowing accept when the atheist wants to apply them to Christian or religious claims.

I once asked a guy this question, "What evidence would you accept?" Or, "Why don't you believe Christianity?" He said, "Well, I don't know everything about it, and I can't believe in something I don't know everything about." I said, "Do you understand gravity?" He said, "Well, it holds things down." I'm like, "Well, do you understand why or how or what produces the force of gravity?" He said, "No." I said, "But you believe in gravity." He said, "Well, yes." I said, "Well, doesn't that seem inconsistent? You don't understand everything about it, but you're willing to say, 'Well, I believe in gravity.'"

I said, "What about the i…