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Comment on Jesus hates American "Christians"

No true Scotsman

Knowing a name of a fallacy doesn’t mean you understood what the fallacy means.

The No true Scotsman fallacy is a very specific thing and it doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Here’s the name-giving example of the No true Scotsman fallacy:

Person A states an absolute statement: "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge."
Person B disproves that by offering a counter-example "Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar in his porridge."
Person A declares “But no true Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge.”

So for an argument being the No true Scotsman, there need to be three elements. If one or more are missing, the fallacy doesn’t apply:

Person A does not retreat from the original statement
Person A offers a modified assertion that excludes all counter-examples by definition (this turns the argument into a tautology: "No true Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge, and a true Scotsman is a Scotsman who does not put sugar in his porridge."
Person A uses rhetoric to signal that change

So why does the no true Scotsman fallacy not apply here?

Because it’s about this change, not about whether something can be classified as something.

Take for example this exchange:

Person A: "A true Scotsman is someone who lives in Scotland, holds a Scottish passport and identifies as a Scotsman."
Person B: "But Angus, who was born in the USA, and holds an US passport and who’s only connection to Scotland is that his great grandma was from there claims that he is a true Scotsman."
Person A: “He can claim what he want, he is no true Scotsman.”

In this case Person A

Did not retreat from the original statement
Did not modify the original statement
Did not use rhetoric to signal a change, because no change existed.

That’s what @Demdaru@lemmy.world argued:

A true Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Christ.
American “Christians” claim to be Christians but are largely against the teachings of Christ.
Hence they are no true Christians.

The “no true scotsman” fallacy is about changing your argument into a non-falsifiable tautology. It’s not about using the words “true” or excluding some group from some definition. And it certainly doesn’t mean “Everyone who calls themselves X surely and irrefutably belongs to group X”.

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Aljernon@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
No-True-Scotsman-Fallacy Fallacy

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snooggums@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Oh look, you had AI vomit out your incorrect position for you.

The "no true scotsman" fallacy is about changing your argument into a non-falsifiable tautology.

That is what you do when you say "They aren't real Christians because they do X." It is the poster child of the no true Scotsman fallacy.

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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Ok, let me put it in a way that you might understand:
  
  Person A: "You aren’t an Atheist if you believe in God."
  
  Person B: "But I identify as an Atheist and I believe in God."
  
  Person A: “Then you aren’t an Atheist.”
  
  You: “No true Scotsman! Anyone who calls themselves an Atheist is an Atheist, no matter if they believe in God.”
  
  Do you see how this makes no sense?
  
  An Atheist is a person who doesn’t believe in God, not a person who calls themselves an Atheist. And saying you aren’t an Atheist if you don’t believe in God isn’t a fallacy but just purely the definition of the term.
  
  Here’s the Wikipedia definition of a Christian:
  
  A Christian (/ˈkrɪstʃən, -tiən/ ⓘ) is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
  
  (Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christians)
  
  So someone who does not follow or adhere a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is not a Christian. Not by fallacy, but by definition.
  
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  - snooggums@piefed.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    What you are doing is saying they are not really Christians because they do or don't do X and that is exactly what the fallacy is.
    
    Are priests who molest children not real Christians?
    
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    squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Again: “They are no true Atheists because they believe in God.”
    
    No true scotsman or not?
    
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ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I follow your logic, and it does make sense, but I think the problem might be that those arguing against you are American, not Scotsmen /s

Can we agree that there can be good and bad, or perhaps generous vs selfish Christians? Another issue is “Christian” is sometimes used adjectively, “that’s pretty Christian of you”, which is generally used to mean generous, but has nothing to do with someone’s belief in God, Jesus etc.

Probably a person’s belief in supernatural beings has nothing to do with their ethics, morality or generosity, it’s just that in some societies at certain times there are perceived correlations, and irrespective of whether these reflect reality or not, they, through deliberate conflation of religion, morality, politics etc. can color people’s opinions of those belonging a specific religion.

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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I very much agree with that. There’s a ton of stuff being mixed up together.
  
  There’s cultural and political Christianity, that both neither require faith (or even belief) in Christ or really have anything to do with Christianity as a religion at all.
  
  And that’s quite a bit of the issue at hand. You have people like Trump, who has no connection to Christianity (the religion) at all, who runs as the “champion of Christian values”, while being pretty much the opposite of that. Because it’s political Christianity.
  
  And here you get a ton of this “us vs them” into play, that doesn’t really have anything to do with Christianity (the religion) at all.
  
  Cultural Christianity is in a very similar boat. In my country, ~70% of the people say they are Christian, according to census data, and a total of ~78% of the people say they belong to some organized religion (Christianity, Islam, …), but only 22% of the people say they believe in some kind of God.
  
  So more than two thirds of these so-called religious people, are not Christian by religion, but Christian by culture. I personally know quite a few people who don’t believe in God, don’t go to church, but who want to marry in a beautiful gothic church and use their Christian label to hate on foreigners and their foreign religions.
  
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