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Defender’s Voice is about answering your questions from a Biblical view point. Last night someone sent me this question: What is missing in Margie’ s letter? And I will answer this question in today’s episode.
Margie Zacharias wrote a letter defending her late husband Ravi Zacharias. We should support her efforts to tell the truth to the world. But truth is what is important in these conversations. In Acts chapter 5, we read about a Christian couple – Ananias and Sapphira. They sold land, kept a portion of the proceeds and took the remaining money as the donation to Apostle Peter. They gave the impression that they gave everything to the Lord. Apostle Peter looks through their phony philanthropy and says, ‘Why is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?’. When we tell lies, we fill our hearts with Satan. We become like Satan because Satan is the father of lies. Ananias could have said, ‘I sold my land. I kept 50 % of the proceedings. I gave 50% as a donation’. Peter would have gladly accepted it. But Ananias subverted the truth. He received a swift judgment from God. He fell to the ground and lost his life in the presence of the Apostle. Unbeknownst to her, his wife Sapphira went to the church. Her husband had already been dead. She did not know that. Peter asked her the same question. She had an opportunity to confess her sin and her husband’s sin. But she too lied to the Holy Spirit and lost her life immediately.
There is nothing wrong to support your spouse but if you tell lies to the church, it is like lying to the Holy Spirit of God, which is a very serious sin. So, let us hope Margie has told us the truth in her letter.
As I told before, everyone deserves a fair trial. Charging someone with sex crimes is a serious matter. We should carefully evaluate all evidence before we declare that person committed those crimes. We should consider the evidence from both sides: people who defend Ravi and people who prosecute Ravi.
Coming to Margie’s letter, even if everything she told in her letter is true, that does not exonerate Ravi, because if you look carefully into her arguments, they are logically flawed. I found two logical flaws in her letter: Denying the Antecedent and Affirming the Consequent.
First, Denying the Antecedent. Margie says, I went through Ravi’s belongings. Every bag, every room, every drawer, every letter, every photo, every email, every text message and found no evidence to doubt his character. She wrote, “I want you to know beyond a shadow of doubt that I found not one suspicious receipt, letter, card, expenditure…absolutely nothing to support the claims being made or the charges against him.”
So, her argument goes like this:
‘if I found evidence, that would make Ravi guilty’
‘I did not find evidence, so Ravi is not guilty’
If P, then Q
If not P, then not Q
That’s a logical fallacy.
For example, ‘if you jump off Eiffel tower in Paris, you should be dead’
‘You did not jump off Eiffel tower in Paris, so you should not be dead’
That is an invalid argument. The first statement is true, if you jump off Eiffel Tower, you should be dead. But the second statement is not true, because jumping off Eiffel Tower is not the only way to die. There are a million other ways to die. You don’t have to go to Paris or jump off Eiffel Tower. In logic, we call his Denying the Antecedent fallacy.
Margie says, If I found any evidence, that would make Ravi guilty. That is a true statement. But the second statement is not true.
I did not find any evidence, so Ravi is not guilty.
There are other women who claim that they have the evidence. There are other ways to be dead beside jumping off Eiffel Tower. Likewise, there are other women claiming they have evidence. So, we have to look into their evidence to make up our minds.
The second logical fallacy in her argument is Affirming the Consequent.
She wrote,
“I would also like to tell you that both Naomi and I have had frequent text messages from the therapist that treated his back most often in recent years, affirming the love and respect for him and for us”
so, this therapist who treated Ravi in recent years has only good things to say about Ravi. So, I don’t believe what other therapists say about him.
This is also a logical fallacy:
if P, then Q,
Q, so it must be P
‘If Ravi was a bad guy, his therapist would say so.’
‘His therapist did not say so, so Ravi must not be a bad guy.’
But remember,
All of Ravi’s accusers are his therapists, but all his therapists are not his accusers.
Let us say, you were charged with robbing a bank, a bank named Citizens Bank. You were arrested and put on trial. The prosecutor brought the manager of Citizens Bank who said, ‘this guy robbed our bank. We have evidence’. Then your defense attorney brought the manager of another bank, the Bank of America to defend your character. He said, ‘He is the best customer we ever had. He would never rob a bank. I would not believe it for a second’.
That argument is not going to work, because you could be a great customer at many banks and could still choose one bank for your burglary. You could be a great customer at the Bank of America and could still carry out your heist at the Citizens Bank. In the same way, Ravi could have been a great customer for many therapists and could still abuse a few vulnerable therapists.
All of Ravi’s accusers are his therapists. But not all his therapists are his accusers. So, I saw those two invalid arguments in her letter.
Denying the Antecedent and Affirming the Consequent.
She also said nothing about Ravi exaggerating his academic credentials. His claims of being a professor at Oxford and Cambridge. So, sadly, even if everything she wrote is true, what she wrote in her letter is not sufficient to declare that Ravi was innocent. We need more evidence. We need to talk to more people. Margie should write another letter explaining why she was silent when Ravi was visiting spas and starting his own spas in Atlanta. Did he inform her when he was starting spas in Atlanta? If he did, what did she tell him? So, I have so many questions.
That’s all for today. Please don’t forget to like this video,share your comment and subscribe to our channel. Please go to our website www.doctorpaul.org and make a tax-deductible donation for Covid victims in India. Thank you, God bless you.