Andy Borgmann's Blog

We have been on the radio for three years now. I have decided that unlike men, all opinions are not created equal which means not everyone deserves to have an opinion. For now on, I am going to require a simple, but apparently difficult, logic test for all people before they share an opinion.

Ready...

True or false:
      If A implies B.
      Then B implies A.

Simple enough right? Think you know the answer? Read on...

The inspiration behind this post is an email we received last night from Lucida on our topic "Man's Best Friend Has Become Man's God". She writes: "From a factual standpoint: It has been well studied and documented that animal cruelty is associated with crimes against human beings." The implication. Those that are cruel to animals are just destined to become murders.

Now the study she is referring to is true. It has been proven that those who have committed serious crimes had shown a propensity towards animal cruelty before acting out on humans. But does the inverse ring true as well?¹

Another classic statement I hear is that studies have shown that serial rapists were also pornography users.

Well duh! Of course those who are rapists are going to have an abnormal view of sexuality. But does the inverse run true? Are those who struggle with porn one image away from becoming a rapist?

When I was in high school, I took an Introduction to Philosophy class at Huntington University. As I later realized, it was less a class on classic philosophy and more a class on logic. The above test was essentially day one of the class.

Let's take the murders and rapists and alphabet letters² out of the equation and put it in more simple terms.

If it is raining the streets are wet. The streets are wet, therefore it must be raining. Wait a minute, something isn't right about that statement.

And now we are back to my test. Why doesn't that sound right? Because logic that assumes since a implies b, therefore b implies a is false. The streets could be wet because of a fire hydrant or because a dam break or thousands of other reasons.

If you answered true to the test above, you would be wrong, and no longer deserve to have an opinion as there is something fundamentally wrong at the core of your logic.

If you have an opinion, be sure to leave it in the comment box below.³