Category Archives: Practical Dialogue Tips

After going through the fire of 3,000+ conversations with pro-choice people, we’ve learned a lot of things that create an environment in the conversation where the other person is more likely to change their mind. These are some of those nitty-gritty dialogue tips.

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“Pro-Life Magazine” Interviews Me About Using Your Head AND Heart

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Pro-Life Magazine is a FREE digital magazine covering pro-life issues. They published an interview with me for their first issue, as well as interviews with Dr. Maureen Condic, Dr. Christopher Kaczor, Kelsey Hazzard and others.

You can get the magazine on your iPad or iPhone, or you can download a free PDF if you subscribe to their email list first.

Here are some of the questions they asked me for their piece on my work:

  • Do pro-choice people see pro-lifers as combative?
  • What are some common mistakes that pro-life people make, and how can we avoid them?
  • What are the most common pro-choice arguments you hear today?
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My Interview with Soulation’s Jonalyn Fincher

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My new favorite Christian organization Soulation just published an interview with me about how pro-lifers can love pro-choice people better while discussing an emotional issue like abortion.

I hope you enjoy it, and I highly recommend you follow Dale and Jonalyn’s work. It’s both important and unique. (One of my favorite combinations!)

Click the screenshot below to watch the interview at Soulation’s website.

Josh Brahm on Emerald City

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The Best Way to Expose Logical Fallacies: Don’t Call Them by Name

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

In my last post I talked about something I’ve been noticing recently, that people, especially pro-life nerds like me, are tempted to talk about logical fallacies all the time in conversation. There are several dangers to this. I’ve argued already that the first danger is accusing somebody of a logical fallacy when they didn’t actually commit one.

iStock_000015937656XSmallIf you dedicate yourself to educating yourself on what the logical fallacies actually are before bringing them up, you will be a more effective debater. But there’s a good, better, best aspect to exposing logical fallacies while creating good dialogues with people.

I think the best way to expose logical fallacies is to note the specific fallacy mentally and then use questions to show the person the problem, without name dropping the specific fallacy.

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You Should Know What a Logical Fallacy Actually Is

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One danger of accusing people of committing a logical fallacy is that you may not actually know what you’re talking about.

Last month I wrote a blog post that a colleague of mine whom I admire disagreed with. She specifically accused me of writing a post that was “full of fallacies.” But when she was asked for examples of these fallacies, she couldn’t name one actual fallacy in the piece. She was only able to name something she didn’t like about the piece. (And, as it turned out, she was objecting to an argument I didn’t even make.)

I’ve been noticing this tendency more often lately. People, especially pro-life nerds like me, are tempted to talk about fallacies all the time in conversation. I think this is often because being able to point out fallacies seems to help us quickly demonstrate the problem with the other person’s reasoning, and it kind of shows that we know what we’re talking about when it comes to logic and argumentation. To put it simply, it makes us sound smart. But there are several dangers to this. I’m going to talk about one of them in this post, and another in a followup.

The first danger is talking about fallacies when you don’t actually know what you’re talking about.

you keep using that word

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4 Reasons Why Your “Pro-Life” Friend May Not Care About Abortion (4 of 4)

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I was talking with a Life Report fan recently about one of her family members who claims to be pro-life, but doesn’t care very much about abortion. I suspect this is a relatively common thing and can be very confusing for pro-life people who believe that the unborn child is fully human and worthy of legal protection. I offered her four possible explanations why somebody who claims to be “pro-life” may not care about abortion very much. I suspect that you know at least one person that would fall under each of these categories, and I want you to have some tools for engaging each of them. I’ll cover the third reason in today’s post.

  1. She is pro-life, but falsely thinks that all social issues are equal.
  2. She is pro-life but thinks that other social issues are more important than abortion.
  3. She only thinks the unborn are semi-valuable, like a golden retriever.
  4. She believes that while the unborn are fully human, abortion shouldn’t be made illegal because of women’s bodily autonomy rights.

br#4: She believes that while the unborn are fully human, abortion shouldn’t be made illegal because of women’s bodily autonomy rights

As I said in part three, there are some pro-choice people that completely agree with pro-life people about the humanity of the unborn. Most of the time, this pro-choice person’s sole or primary reason for believing that abortion should remain legal has to do with women’s bodily rights. They feel like a law making abortion illegal would be tantamount to forcing women into slavery, unless there was a way to end her pregnancy without having an abortion, like transferring the child to an artificial womb. They feel like losing the option of abortion means a pregnant woman is now forced into nine months of forced pregnancy, having her body used against her will by her child.