Unfortunately, we Christians have come to expect this kind of treatment from an increasingly secular culture. We are often misrepresented, caricatured and subjected to straw man allegations. But we dare not retaliate in kind. Nor can we indulge ourselves in self-pity. The Founder of our Cause was treated much worse than this, and our precious brothers and sisters have been throughout Christian history. Yet we dare not remain passive for this implicitly acknowledges the charges themselves. Rather, we must gather intellectual tools that will allow us to respond graciously and decisively to such claims.

What are those tools and how do we acquire them? In a sense, every article in this series is such a tool. In this article, however, I want to introduce a powerful, widely useful device that will give you an ability to understand what people are saying and the means to respond to it effectively. I want to introduce you to self-defeating statements.¹

Consider the following statement: “It’s wrong to judge the moral beliefs and behaviors of others!” Crucial flaws are often revealed in a view when advocating it requires making self-defeating statements such as this one. But what exactly is a self-defeating statement?

All statements are about some subject matter. (For instance, the subject matter of “all dogs are mammals” is “dogs.”) When a statement is included in its own subject matter and fails to satisfy its own standards of acceptability, it is self-defeating. Put more specifically, a statement is self-defeating when it exhibits the following three characteristics:

1. It establishes a standard of acceptability for an assertion.
2. It places itself under that standard of acceptability.
3. It fails to meet that standard of acceptability — i.e. it fails to meet the very standard of acceptability that it stipulates.

The statement “it’s wrong to judge the moral beliefs and behaviors of others” sets a standard of acceptability; it claims that moral judgments are not acceptable. Because this statement is itself a moral judgment, however, it places itself under its own standard of acceptability. Yet (because it’s a moral judgment) it obviously fails to satisfy this standard of acceptability — i.e. it’s own standard of acceptability. The statement “it’s wrong to judge the moral beliefs and behaviors of others” is therefore self-defeating; if we accept it, then we have to reject it; and if we reject it, then, well, we’ve already rejected it! Either way, rational reflection on self-defeating statements will always lead us to reject them.

Some other examples of self-defeating statements are: “no sentence is longer than three words;” “I cannot write a word of English;” “I do not exist;” “there is no truth;” and “there are no truths that cannot be verified scientifically, with the five senses.”² When it is uttered or written by somebody who intends a specific meaning and intends to have that meaning understood by somebody else, the statement “there is no such thing as an author’s intended meaning” is also self-defeating.³

When identifying a self-defeating statement, great care must be exercised in making sure that the statement actually refers to itself, that it is a part of its own subject matter. For example, the claim that one cannot utter a word of English is not self-defeating if the claim is asserted in French. More importantly, though it is false, the statement “there are no moral absolutes” is not self-defeating. Why? The statement is a philosophical assertion about morality and not a claim of morality. To be a claim of morality, an assertion must be a moral rule such as “do not kill,” “abortion is wrong,” or “one ought to be tolerant of others.” While “it’s wrong to judge the moral beliefs and behaviors of others” is a moral rule, “there are no moral absolutes” is not itself a moral rule. Like a statement made in English about all French statements (for example, “no French statement is longer than three words”), “there are no moral absolutes” is false. But since it is not included in its own subject matter, it does not refer to itself; and since it does not refer to itself, it is not self -defeating.

A common argument goes, “there are no moral rules, so one ought to refrain from passing judgment on others.” Is this argument self-defeating? It’s hard to tell because the word “ought” is ambiguous and comes with different meanings: A rational ought occurs in “given the evidence, one ought to conclude that the defendant is guilty.” A rational ought places an intellectual duty on someone, and a violator is irrational, not immoral. An aesthetic ought occurs in “one ought to play this piece with great emotion.” This places an aesthetic duty on someone, and a violator is guilty of failing to produce beauty. A moral ought occurs in “one ought to keep one’s promises.” This places a moral duty on someone, and a violator is immoral.

The ought in “there are no moral rules, so one ought to refrain from passing judgment on others” is either a rational or moral ought. If the former, the assertion means “the evidence suggests that there are no moral rules, so one has an intellectual duty to stop judging that others have violated these (nonexistent) moral rules.” Though false, this statement is not self-defeating because it does not itself assert a moral duty. Rather, it asserts an intellectual duty; a violator of it would be irrational, not immoral. Still, if one asks why this is an intellectual duty, one may find a self-defeating statement lurking in the neighborhood. For example, an advocate of this idea may think there is no evidence for absolute moral rules because he accepts the self-defeating idea that a claim can only be true if it is verifiable by the five senses. If, however, this ought is a moral one and not an intellectual one, the statement means, “there are no moral rules, so one has a moral duty not to make moral judgments.” Obviously enough, this is self-defeating in the same way as “it’s wrong to judge the moral beliefs and behaviors of others” is.

A statement like “two plus two equals seven” cannot possibly be true. Two plus two necessarily equals four. It could not possibly equal seven, three or anything other than four. Other statements, like “I had cereal for breakfast,” happen to be false, but could have been true — I could have had cereal for breakfast. Some self-defeating statements do not just fail to meet their own standards of acceptability. Some of them are necessarily false. It is literally impossible for them to be true. “There are no truths,” “only what is testable by science can be true” and “no sentence is longer than three words” are all necessarily false; none of them could possibly be true. Among other things, this means that no amount of research will ever show that these self-defeating statement appeared to be false, but were true after all. This is important because a statement like “only what is testable by science can be true” is not itself testable by science, so a skeptic cannot say that, in spite of the fact that there is currently no evidence for it, someday science will prove it was true after all.⁴

Be careful as you identify self-defeating assertions. I suggest memorizing the three traits of self-defeating statements mentioned above. Find a Christian partner and practice spotting them. Start with the journalist’s claim in the first paragraph of this article. What does it mean? Is it self-defeating or not? List as many self-defeating claims as you can and identify why they are self-defeating. Compare them to statements that are false, but that are not self-defeating. Keeping this tool at the center of your mental equipment will help you respond to claims in a decisive, yet non-defensive way. And remember: If you point out that someone’s assertion is self-defeating and he responds by saying that he doesn’t care, truth is probably not his primary concern. In this case, rather than continued debate, interpersonal relationship will likely be your only means of persuasion.

¹ Note that self-defeating statements are sometimes called “self-refuting” or “self-referentially incoherent” statements.
² Read more on this claim and an analysis of its relationship to scientific naturalism.
³ For more on this, see Walt Russell’s “ The Hazards of Reading on a Battlefield .”
⁴ The recent PBS special “The Question of God” features several scientific naturalists arguing the intellectual superiority of Sigmund Freud over C.S. Lewis. Careful attention to their arguments reveals that their support of Freud is rooted in precisely this belief — that only what can be tested scientifically, by the five senses, can be true. Since the belief “only what can be tested by science can be true” cannot itself be tested by science, their arguments are rooted in a self-defeating belief, a belief that can’t possibly be true.