Lovejoy's answer with an if

There are several quotes from the Simpsons that I think hilarious, here is one of them:

This is the most vague answer I can think of. Though it utilizes logic: short answer is an implication. If ?, then yes. If we have the placeholder ?, then we must have yes, else the poor reverend is speaking absurdities. On the other hand we have no but ?. "but" is a conjunction so in this case we must have the placeholder ? satisfied in order to keep Lovejoy's advice apart from falsehood. Add to that that he isn't saying anything at all.

Pointless add on #1: say the two placeholders are the same, that is $?_1 = ?_2$, this implies that both evaluate to $true$. Now we must have both yes and no. Not good!