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In this episode, Jimmy looks at an unethical debater’s tactic known as the Gish Gallop, why debaters who know their case is weak use it, and how Protestant debater James White regularly uses it when he confronts other viewpoints.
Transcript:
A while back, I did a couple of debates with Protestant apologist James White. One was on sola scriptura, and one was basically on the subject of justification.
James used a debater’s tactic that I think it’s worth taking a look at. Despite the fact that this tactic is avoided by ethical debaters, James uses it in his debates a lot. In fact, he used it in both of the debates we had.
The tactic is known as the Gish Gallop—a term that was coined in 1994. It’s named for Young Earth Creationist Duane Gish, who was known for making so many claims in his debates that there was no way for his opponent to respond to them all.
The tactic is based on a related principle known as Brandolini’s Law, which holds that it takes less time to make a claim than to refute it. To give an example that both James and I could agree on, it takes only a moment for a Jesus mythicist to make the claim “Jesus never existed!” But it will take—at a minimum—several minutes for a Christian, or even just a competent historian, to refute this claim by laying out historical evidence for the existence of Jesus.
Consequently, a debater can attempt to force his opponent into an impossible position by making so many charges that the opponent has no chance to respond to them all.
In any debate with a time limit, you have to prioritize what you’re going to discuss. There are top-level issues that are the core arguments that both sides need to discuss, but there are also low-level issues that the time limit won’t allow you to go into.
What an ethical debater does is focus on the top-level issues and get the most important issues on the table for the audience to consider. Low-level issues and issues that are not relevant to the current debate must be left for other occasions.
What a Gish galloper will do is bring up multiple low-level issues in an attempt to get the opponent to waste his time by engaging with them. And this not only wastes the opponent’s time, it also wastes the audience’s time by directing attention away from the top-level issues that need to be discussed.
Let’s suppose that I and another person are having a debate, and we both have 12 minutes to state our case. We’ll also suppose that it takes 30 seconds to make a low-level claim and—based on Brandolini’s Law—3 minutes to respond to it.
Under those circumstances, I could state the core of my case for 10 minutes of the 12 I have, and in the final 2 minutes I could toss out 4 low-level claims.
However, if I’ve made 4 low-level claims and it takes 3 minutes to respond to each, my opponent would need 12 minutes to reply just to my low-level claims. Therefore, if my opponent takes the bait and starts discussing the low-level claims I tossed out, he will waste all of the 12 minutes he has and never even get to interacting with the top-level issues that need to be discussed.
You can see why unethical debaters like the Gish Gallop. It’s a way of deflecting heat—particularly when your own case is weak. It also makes it look like your opponent is not responding to the charges you make. But since the charges you make are low-level or even irrelevant to the present debate, it wastes the audience’s time since they’re not hearing a rigorous testing of the top-level issues that are the core of the matter under discussion.
Later I’ll discuss how to handle a Gish Gallop, but for now let’s look at how James White employs it. We’ll ring a bell every time he raises a lower-level issue or one that’s not relevant to the present debate.
Here are some of the things he said in our first, sola scriptura debate.
The apostolic and biblical pattern of local churches led by elders/presbyters cannot realistically be connected to the massive hierarchy of the Roman Magisterium (itself, by the way, a very modern term) led by single bishop [*The Pope] (currently Francis). Cardinals [*Cardinals], archbishops [*Archbishops], and the myriad of offices and designations that make up the modern Magisterium is far, far removed from the authority structure ordained by Christ through his apostles.
Consider the basic reality that the apostolic paradigm did not include a sacramental priesthood [*Priesthood], for example, as a basic point of departure. . . .
And remember, we have the Immaculate Conception [*Immaculate Conception], perpetual virginity of Mary [*Perpetual Virginity], such doctrines as purgatory [*Purgatory] and indulgences [*Indulgences] and papal infallibility [*Papal Infallibility]. All these things, are they apostolic traditions? You see, Mr. Akin gave us the real easy ones. How about the ones that the apostles really had to teach? But the reality is church history teaches us nobody back then knew anything about it.
No one was preaching about the bodily Assumption of Mary[*Assumption]. No one believed that the pope in Rome was the infall— . . . well the pope in Rome might’ve thought he was infallible [*Papal Infallibility], but nobody else did. Ask Augustine [*Augustine’s Views on Infallibility], ask Cyprian [*Cyprian’s Views on Infallibility], ask the number of people who contradicted that kind of thinking down through church history. That’s why it’s so important that if you’re going to say that these apostolic traditions were taught by the apostles and not recorded in Scripture, you’ve got to give us evidence. And Rome can’t do it.
In just these two clips, James raised 12 low-level or irrelevant issues.
- The Pope
- Cardinals
- Archbishops
- Priesthood
- Immaculate Conception
- Perpetual Virginity
- Assumption
- Purgatory
- Indulgences
- Papal Infallibility
- Augustine’s Views on Infallibility
- Cyprian’s Views on Infallibility
Later in the debate, he would bring up even more topics.
But his was a debate on sola scriptura, and James White took the affirmative in this debate, which means that he shouldered the burden of proof of showing that Christians must base their doctrine on Scripture alone.
Since I was taking the negative in this debate, I didn’t have to prove anything. I didn’t have to prove my view at all. All I needed to do was show that James was not proving his.
However, since we had a mostly Protestant audience for this debate, I wanted them to have at least some exposure to the Catholic alternative, so I briefly sketched the Apostolic Paradigm of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. I showed how this paradigm was used in the New Testament era, and I gave examples of apostolic Traditions that even Protestants agree with, like the fact that there are to be no new apostles and the fact that there is to be no new public revelation.
James didn’t challenge those as authoritative, apostolic Traditions—even though they’re not mentioned in the Bible. He blew past them and instead questioned a bunch of other things that Catholics believe.
In doing so, he was committing another debate error—namely, trying to shift the burden of proof that he had accepted off of himself and onto me. And this is a serious error. It would definitely cost him with debate judges, but we’ll ignore that for present purposes.
What we’re interested in here is the fact that James is Gish Galloping. He’s raised 12 issues in hopes that I will engage at least some of them. Note that he said:
It’s so important that if you’re going to say that these apostolic traditions were taught by the apostles and not recorded in Scripture, you’ve got to give us evidence.
But none of these issues are what we’re here to debate, which is sola scriptura. This is not a debate on the papacy, the priesthood, the Immaculate Conception, Mary’s perpetual virginity, her Assumption, purgatory, indulgences, or papal infallibility.
Are some of these related to sola scriptura? Sure! If you accept sola scriptura, that will affect what you think about these issues. But these issues are not what we’re here to debate. We’re here to debate whether sola scriptura is true. If you wanted to debate those issues, you should have asked for debates on those topics—where both sides would have time to actually explore them.
Some of White’s issues are absurdly irrelevant to the present topic. Like his statement that the present Catholic Magisterium isn’t like the one in the first century because it has cardinals and archbishops. That is completely irrelevant, and I suspect James does not understand the relevant concepts here. The Magisterium is simply the bishops of the world teaching in union with the pope.
Cardinals are irrelevant to that because being a cardinal does not make you a member of the Magisterium. Avery Dulles was a cardinal, but he was not a bishop and so not a member of the Magisterium.
Similarly, an archbishop is simply a bishop who has a special title. But he has no more teaching authority than any other member of the magisterium just because he has a special title.
So James is simply throwing up a bunch of issues in a Gish Gallop, hoping that I’ll start wasting my time responding.
And he indicates that he’d do the same thing with other groups if he was debating sola scriptura with them. For example, he said:
Eastern Orthodoxy, if I was debating an Eastern Orthodox person, I’d be talking about their traditions. I’d be talking about the second Nicene council [*II Nicaea] and the absurdities that it introduced [*II Nicene “Absurdities”] and how that was completely contrary to what had come in the hundreds of years before that.
So James openly acknowledges he will Gish Gallop others if he was debating sola scriptura with them, which is a sign that he understands how weak his case for sola scriptura actually is.
Now, how can one respond to a Gish Gallop? There are actually several ways, some of which are just as underhanded as the Gish Gallop itself. But here’s the ethical and most fundamental way to respond:
So there’s a lot in there that I would love to respond to that I simply don’t have time to, because James is engaging in a debater’s tactic that’s sometimes called overloading, where you just throw one charge after another, after another, after another, and you make claims about them that your opponent has no chance to respond to. So in such a circumstance, the only option for an ethical debater is to not be distracted and to just point out what one’s opponent is doing and then move on and stick to basic principles. So that’s what I’m going to do.
Here I was being polite by not immediately referring to this as a Gish Gallop. So I used the term “overloading” instead, but it’s the same thing.
And this is the fundamental and ethical response to a Gish Gallop: to point out what one’s opponent is doing and then stick to the main subject and not waste the audience’s time by diverting from what they came to hear debated.
That’s especially important when you’re under the kind of tight time limits we were in this debate. In terms of the segments we had when we could speak without being interrupted, both of us had:
- 15-minute opening statements
- 7-minute first rebuttals
- 4-minute second rebuttals
- And 5-minute closing statements
That’s a total of just 31 minutes of uninterrupted speaking time, so it was vitally important for us to stay on topic. But that didn’t stop James from trying to get us going down rabbit trails.
Rome uses apostolic tradition as the basis for binding dogmas upon your soul, such as the bodily assumption of Mary [*Assumption] and papal infallibility [*Papal Infallibility]. You need to be able to recognize the difference between these things because it’s real easy to defend the easy one. “Well, no, we all agree that revelation’s ended,” but we don’t all agree that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven, do we? And yet, allegedly it’s all based upon apostolic tradition. I say to you, the apostles never taught anyone anything about bodily assumption [*Assumption], about papal infallibility[*Papal Infallibility], about Immaculate Conceptions[*Immaculate Conception], about purgatory[*Purgatory], about indulgences[*Indulgences], or any of those other things that Rome has bound de fide upon people’s souls. And if you want to say they did, then you’ve got to be able to prove it.
Here James continues to try to get us off track and onto side-issues that we’re not here to debate. You’ll also note that he acknowledged I had brought up an apostolic Tradition that’s not in the Bible that even Protestants accept as authoritative—namely, that public revelation has ended. He didn’t refuse that claim—he agreed with it! He said it was easy to show that extra-biblical apostolic Tradition, and then he did a bunch of “whatabout-ism”—what about this? And what about that? And what about this other Tradition?
And he was still trying to get these issues discussed, for he said:
And if you want to say they did, then you’ve got to be able to prove it.
But, that wasn’t the topic of the debate we were in, so I refused to take the bait, which left James disappointed in his closing statement:
And we certainly have not been given anything that would be a foundation for the massive developments of theology in sacramentalism [*Sacramentalism], in the Marian dogmas [*Marian Dogmas], in the development of church offices [*Church Offices]and ecumenical councils [*Ecumenical Councils]and conciliarism [*Conciliarism]and the papacy[*Papacy].
We’ve been given nothing that you could in any meaningful way trace back to the apostles historically. You couldn’t do it. It’s not possible.
So that’s what happened in our first debate, but what about the second?
The resolution of the second debate—which James requested—was “One finds peace with God through the once for all finished work of Jesus Christ provided to us by his imputed righteous which is ours by grace through faith alone.” For practical purposes, this made the second debate about the topic of sola fide or justification by faith alone.
I did what I normally do in a debate on this topic, which is to use a common ground approach. I thus pointed out that Catholic theology has no problem with the formula sola fide as long as it is understood properly. I quoted from the New Testament to show what the proper understanding is. I quoted Pope Benedict XVI saying that the formula by faith alone is correct as long as you understand it as faith working through love. And I pointed out that John Calvin agreed with this understanding.
But James wasn’t satisfied with this, so in his first rebuttal, he said:
So it’s difficult for me in seven minutes to go, yeah, but what about the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice[*Sacrifice of the Mass]? What about priests[*Priests]? What about Mary[*Mary]? What about Mary’s intercession[*Marian Intercession]? What about Mary as the neck that turns the head of God’s grace[*Mary as “Neck”?]? What about all the rest of this stuff that is the real issue at hand? It wasn’t even presented. We didn’t hear anything about purgatory [*Purgatory]and punishments [*Punishments?]and temporal punishments[*Temporal Punishments], and we didn’t hear any of that. And I don’t have time now in five minutes to try to bring all of that up.
Except, of course James just did bring up all those subjects—none of which were what we were there to debate.
So I decided to respond in a lighthearted way, and I pointed out that James just said he didn’t have time to bring these up—even though he did—so neither do I:
I’m so glad that James brought up all those things he said he wasn’t going to bring up because he didn’t have time to answer ’em. And that means I don’t have time to answer ’em either. So I’m afraid, to quote Ludwig Wittgenstein, that which we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence.
That didn’t stop James from trying to keep distracting us, though, so he continued his Gish Gallop when it was his turn to speak again.
Are we justified by faith in Jesus Christ so that his righteousness is our soul standing before God? Or do we accept the idea that the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice[*Sacrifice of the Mass]? Do we accept the idea of the sacramental priesthood [*Priesthood] and the forgiveness of sins through the sacramental priesthood[*Forgiveness thru Priesthood?]? Do we accept the distinction of venial and mortal sins[*Mortal/Venial Sins]? Do we accept the idea that you have to go to purgatory [*Purgatory] to have those punishments that are due to the temporal punishments [*Temporal Punishments] that you have not worked off in this life removed before you enter into the presence of God? Do we believe in indulgences[*Indulgences]? Do we believe that you’ll someday stand before God because you have had imputed to your account the righteousness of Christ, Mary, and the saints[*Treasury of Satisfactions], as well as your own suffering of satispassio in purgatory[*Satispassio]? Do we believe these things or do we not? Do we believe that you can pray to Mary and have Mary intercede for you [*Marian Intercession]?
But here’s where we are this evening. Is the righteousness in which I stand before a holy God, one that I have had to go through sacramental forgiveness to obtain [*Sacramental Forgiveness]? Do I have to maintain it through the sacraments of the Church [*Sacramental Maintenance]? Will indulgences increase my righteousness before God [*Indulgences & Righteousness] in the sense of lowering the amount of time I have to spend in purgatory [*Less Time in Purgatory]? These are the issues that have always been central to this dialogue. This is not a dispute over words. This is a dispute over substance, and I hope we can actually get into it before we run out of time tonight.
Here James expanded his Gish Gallop to include even more topics, but he also repeated many elements from his first one in this debate. And since he’d previously said he didn’t have time to bring those up—and I didn’t have time to respond to them, given what we were here to debate—I again responded in a lighthearted way. Only I was a bit more blunt about the fact James was doing a Gish Gallop.
Well, I’m so glad that James brought up all those things he said he wasn’t going to bring up. Unfortunately, it puts me in a position where I don’t have time to answer them, just like he said, he didn’t have time to bring ’em up. Last night, I mentioned that James sometimes falls into a debater’s tactic that is sometimes called overloading. It is also sometimes called the Gish Gallup, where you bring up numerous charges that your opponent has no time to respond to, and he just named numerous charges that I don’t have time to respond to. So, I will be happy to respond to any of those particulars you would like to ask me about in our cross-examination.
So I showed James a way he could get me to respond on any of the topics he wanted me to talk about. Just ask me about them in our cross-examination period, and I’d be happy to respond.
Frankly, he’d be wasting the audience’s time since we weren’t here to debate any of those topics. This was a debate about justification—not side issues like purgatory or Marian intercession, for which he should have asked for different debate topics. But, hey, when it’s his cross-examination period, it’s his cross-examination period, and he can ask me whatever he wants.
James didn’t really focus on those issues in his cross-examination, and he once again renewed his Gish Gallop in his closing statement. He also seemed to have forgotten the fact that he himself had said in his first rebuttal that he didn’t have time to bring these issues up—as I had pointed out. Instead, James thought I was asserting he had made some kind of promise not to bring these matters up, which of course was not the case.
I will submit to you that when I sought to bring clarity to the distinctions between Roman Catholic teaching on the subject of the gospel and what it is that I had presented from Scripture that was dismissed. “I’m not going to deal with those things.” Even saying that I had promised not to talk about these things. Never said a word about not talking about those things! Never said anything about it at all.
So it’s difficult for me in seven minutes to go. “Yeah, but what about the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice [*Sacrifice of the Mass]? What about priests [*Priests]? What about Mary [*Mary]? What about Mary’s intercession [*Marian Intercession]? What about Mary as the neck that turns the head of God’s grace [*Mary as “Neck”?]? What about all the rest of this stuff that is the real issue at hand?” It wasn’t even presented. We didn’t hear anything about purgatory [*Purgatory] and punishments [*Punishments?] and temporal punishments [*Temporal Punishments], and we didn’t hear any of that. And I don’t have time now in five minutes to try to bring all of that up.
So James once again said he didn’t have time to bring up all these topics—even though he had just brought them up again!
Well, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If he doesn’t have time to bring them up, I don’t have time to respond to them—and I should not.
These are not the subjects we were there to debate. If James wanted to debate them, he should have asked for a different debate topic.
What we were here to debate was justification—not the sacrifice of the Mass or priest or Mary or purgatory.
And if we’re going to debate justification, we need to stick to the top-level issues on justification and not go down rabbit trails about things at best tangentially connected to justification. That would only waste the audience’s time and prevent the debate from getting to the core of its central subject—justification.
The fact that James felt the need to try to divert us from the core issue of justification itself only indicates how weak he senses his case is on justification. He didn’t think that he could get a decisive win by sticking to the topic, so he wanted to change the topic and try to get me chasing rabbits. But I didn’t fall for that, which made it a better debate.
And that’s the takeaway lesson from both of these debates. If you’re a debater and you’re faced with a Gish Galloper—whether it’s James White or someone else—do not take the bait. Instead, calmly and cheerfully point out to the audience what your opponent is doing and assure them that you’re going to stick to the topic that they actually came to hear debated.
Also, if you’re someone who watches or listens to debates, be aware of the Gish Gallop. Look for it, and take note of who is doing it, because it’s always a sign that the galloper doesn’t think he can win if there is a sustained look at the core issues. If someone thinks he has to get his opponent to waste time, it’s a sign that he senses his own case is weak.
That’s something that applies to any Gish Galloper, including James White.
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