Hypothesis

In defense of a prevailing belief, apologists sometimes press the reader to examine the introduced notion against their own intuitions. If this new notion does not seem to fit one's reigning set of held values (morals, perhaps), then it is to be rejected: if it doesn't "feel" right, then there's something screwy going on.

One major problem with this argumentative method, though--one's reigning set of held values are directly influenced by one's own incumbent beliefs. Therefore, the argument is inherently biased towards the prevailing belief, which is already in line with one's other values.

Is this troubling to others? It seems like something worthy of psychological research...or it might simply be a good example of the cognitive dissonance bias.

In any case, it's kind of funny that this method is nevertheless a great way to show that one's *prevailing* beliefs don't jive with one's other held values...

(Anscombe is the person who disproved Jack's original argument for God. Here's a very interesting argument that has me thinking about the above...)
On Chastity