Definition: the quality of seeming true or of having the appearance of being real.[1]
If you repeat a lie often enough eventually people will begin to believe it.
Attributed to Vladimir Lenin (1870 – 1924)
A good liar will tell you 90% of the truth and the other 10% will be a lie.
(anon)
None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
- When God closes a door somewhere He opens a window.
Assumes that God wants you to do something or go somewhere. He may not want you anywhere near what you have planned.
If He opens anything it will be a door, not a window.
“What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1855-1955)
Sometimes a bad experience can ruin a person’s life which he is never able to recover from.
Guns kill people
People kill people.
Knives kill people too as do other methods.
“No good deed goes unpunished.”
Runs directly counter to Bible teaching.
There is no absolute truth.
Ask them if that is absolutely true.
If you believe in yourself nothing is impossible (paraphrase). – seen on a poster at the VA medical center I go to.
Jer 17:5 – Do they really think they have that much control of their lives, and others about them?
“There are no dumb questions.”
If they already know the answer. However, I could ask an atheist a question that I already know the answer to, the purpose being to get him/her to think about something they said.
So called “fake questions” or meaningless ones.
‘Gotcha’ questions.
Whether or not I talk to the animals (happens a lot).
“The customer is always right.”
Sometimes they are just rude and obnoxious which is not right.
They may ask/demand a refund on a product that’s already been used.
Hindsight is always 20/20.
Just not true. We will never know everything about the situation; there may have been some or many things we missed or overlooked.
For example – we will never know all the assumptions that went into a decision; their intelligence, upbringing, education, influence of friends and what are called ‘influencers’.
“Never say never”
This statement denies itself by not meeting its own standard.
“Anything goes”
In the long run, not really. Let’s say a man cheats on his wife. This is going to have several long-term effects.
“Doing the same thing over and over defines “insanity”.
This one if often true, but there are exceptions.
This is where it fails to be true; Trying to start your car more than once and it working would disprove this one.
I grew up with the saying ”If at first you don’t succeed try, try again.”
The old ‘nature vs nurture’ debate. ((Saad, 2021, pg.24)[1]
Actually, it’s both – Thid Is a logical fallacy called a ‘false dichotomy’.
Leftists say that we should let ‘illegals’ in because they do jobs others won’t do.
What a joke; actually, illegals take jobs that others could and would do, if they were still open. This one tests our ‘truth detector’.
“You made me do that.” Of something to that effect.
Does that mean they are handing control over to you?
The real purpose of this kind of statement is to trap you. Unless you know what to look for you may fall for it. What they’re really trying to do is to stop you and if you can’t come up with an answer, to doubt yourself.
The “bucket list” – What’s the point?
If you believe you just go away when you die, what have you gained (& at what cost)? You could at least save or invest the money and pass it on to your heirs.
If you believe you’re going to heaven, then that would be so much better than anything you could experience here on earth, so why not take that money and use it to help others like the poor and hungry which will be credited to you in heaven.
[1] Saad, G. (2021). The parasitic mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. Regnery Publishing.
There is a special set of sayings that fit the definition of ‘self-defeating’ because they don’t meet their own standards. An example would be ‘only science can tell us the truth’. This one is self-defeating because it is not a scientific statement.[3]
Let us train our thinking to spot these false and misleading sayings.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/verisimilitude
[2] Saad, G. (2021). The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. Regnery Publishing.
[3] Geisler, N. L., & Turek, F. (2004). I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Crossway Bibles. See Chapter 1 Can We Hande the Truth?
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