if once like you was X but now i am Y.

cross posted to reformed community since that is where the quote below was taken from. reposted here because this is where i see the structure most often.


I was X, like you are now, but i discovered the real truth and am now Y

what prompts this thread is:

I used to be a "book worm" thinking that "the answer" was in my own intellect and power, but His Spirit showed me how wrong that is. May He show you also.

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from: http://www.christianforums.com/showp...0&postcount=15

The structure of this argument is rather common on Origins Theology or on the Creation Evolution forums but i think this is the first time i've see it here on SR.

The usual form i encounter is:

I was an evolutionist all through school but i read _The Genesis Flood_ and God convinced me that young earth creationism is the right way to read the Bible. I'm sure God will do the same thing for you if you just pray about it.


It is a curious mixture of personal identification with the other poster, a partial ad hominem, and an attempt to trump the argument with personal experience.

the issue of personal identification is a good one. we all ought to strive to identify with and sympathize with those with whom we discuss things here.

the issue of partial ad hominem is that it relies on a progression that person has undergone but you are so slow or retarded that you haven't taken this natural and necessary step, as did they. It is especially curious because i think the average age of people using the argument is in their late teens (this is not the case with the poster of the above quote however). i often reply to them asking how many years they were X, or how really dedicated and knowledgable about X they really were.

but i think that the issue of attempting to trump the issue with personal experience, often followed like here with an explicit call to pray and/or illumination by the Holy Spirit. Since i have found Y, while you are still at an intermediate step X, it is only necessary for you to ask God for a bit more knowledge and faith and then you will be like me, correct.

i find the structure of the argument curious, and wonder if anyone else here has given the structure of the:
i was X but now i am Y
any thought?
but more importantly, i came up empty handed on google, i bet it is a logical and rhetorical device that has been well used since the Greeks, but i am without the name for it.....yet, until you'all supply it.
tia

notes for CE forum.

we see this structure a lot here.
what is causing people to argue thusly?
it is only persuasive IF you believe that their's is the natural progressive in the topic. If anyone has truely thought about the issues, this is not an evidentiary type of argument but rather a specific appeal to be more like them.

interesting. has anyone followed up and seen online essays on the rhetoric underneath this structure?

It's a carry-over from apologetics. A common argument is that "I once held religious beliefs A but [insert personal experience] so now I have religious beliefs B." And then going from there to argue that B, by virtue of one's experiences, just has to be right. Such an argument is inherently subjective and non-evidential, but anecdotal evidence tends to be a very powerful persuader.

bingo, that was enough help to find the links.

http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art10-drphil.html

It argues that the morphology of conversion is comprised of two components: the confessional and the testimonial. As participants proceed through these ends of the spectrum of the conversion narrative, a transformation of self is depicted. The televised presentation of reoccurring conversions functions to produce a sense of moral authority, self-empowerment, and an imagined community.

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rhetorical form: testimonial narrative; confessional(i used to be just like you), conversion(but i changed), testimony(but now i've progressed where you want to be)


common enough pattern *grin*