Logic can be a valuable tool for Christians to defend their faith. But mistakes in reasoning can derail even the best argument.
A person commits the fallacy of bifurcation when he or she claims that there are only two mutually exclusive possibilities—when
Logic can be a valuable tool for Christians to defend their faith. But mistakes in reasoning can derail even the best argument.
A person commits the fallacy of bifurcation when he or she claims that there are only two mutually exclusive possibilities—when, in fact, there is a third option. For this reason the fallacy is also known as the either-or fallacy and the false dilemma.
A facetious example is this:
“Either the traffic light is red, or it is green.”
This is obviously fallacious, since the light could be yellow.1
A more realistic example is this:
“Either you have faith or you are rational.”
This commits the fallacy of bifurcation, since there is a third possibility: we can have faith and be rational. In fact, faith is essential in order to have rationality (e.g., to make sense of laws of logic).2
“Either the universe operates in a law-like fashion, or God is constantly performing miracles.”
This is also fallacious because a third possibility exists: the universe operates in a law-like fashion most of the time, and God occasionally performs a miracle.
Sometimes the origins debate is framed as “faith vs. reason,” “science or religion,” or the “Bible vs. science.” These are all false dilemmas. Faith and reason are not contrary. They go well together (since all reasoning presupposes a type of faith).3
Likewise, science and religion (the Christian religion to be specific) are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it is the Christian system that makes sense of science and the uniformity of nature. Likewise the debate should never be framed as “the Bible vs. science,” since the procedures of science are fully compatible with the Bible. In fact, science is based on the biblical worldview; science requires predictability in nature, which is only made possible by the fact that God upholds the universe in a consistent way that is congenial to human understanding. Such predictability just wouldn’t make sense in a “chance” universe.
The fallacy of bifurcation may be more difficult to spot when the person merely implies that only two options exist, rather 