Mike Winger Critique Episode 7: PSA Fallacies & Tactics, Part 2

Paul Vendredi joins Warren McGrew for a second pass at Mike Winger’s fallacious tactics, focusing this time on the tactic called “forestalling disagreement” (phrasing assertions in a way that makes disagreement therewith embarrassing). Winger and company are reduced to such tactics because their idea of the Gospel (identified with penal-substitutionary atonement [PSA]) so blatantly violates bedrock principles of biblical morality and natural-law theory.

Winger, a past master of forestalling disagreement, employs two variants of the tactic: 1) forestalling disagreement through shame, and 2) forestalling disagreement through self-congratulation. Regarding the first variant, Winger places his adversaries along a continuum of dishonor: either one is a liberal; or a non-Christian; or perhaps one actually is a Christian, but is too dense to realize the truth of PSA. This variant is called “the wicked alternative.” Another variant is a spin on the ad-hominem fallacy. Mike says non-atonement schoolers are motivated by sin, or he slaps them with unattractive terms like “liberal” and “progressive.” Embarrassingly for the Reverend Mr. Winger, Paul produces several artifacts proving himself more conservative politically and theologically than Winger. Paul also exposes Winger’s denomination, Calvary Chapel, as an instigator of much of what conservatives now deplore in mainstream Protestantism.

Regarding the second variant of forestalling disagreement, Winger congratulates himself as enviably studious, keenly insightful, or the like. Thus, one wishing to be as studious or insightful as Winger will sign on the bottom line of PSA. Both Warren and Paul point to failings in Winger’s research that prove him to be far less knowledgeable than he portrays himself to be.