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avevale_intelligencerLast night, in response to a friend who linked to the Wikipedia article on the "no true Scotsman" fallacy in connection with the terrorism in Norway (apparently perpetrated by someone who is described as a "conservative Christian"), I posted this:
"A Scotsman is a person of Scottish extraction; no more, no less. One can be a Scotsman and be anything. One cannot be a Christian and, say, worship Kali, or Cthulhu. Someone who describes himself as a Christian and worships Cthulhu or Kali, or commits acts of terrorism, or does something else incompatible with the teachings of Christ, is therefore by definition no true Christian, and the fallacy is not a fallacy. Q.E.D."
I should not have done that there, and I apologised this morning, but I think (I hope) that I've successfully demonstrated that the NTS fallacy does not apply here. It doesn't matter if the person who commits an act of terrorism considers himself a Christian, or goes to church, or donates to Christian charities when he's not blowing people up. It doesn't matter if he's dim enough to believe that every word in the Bible is literally true, except when it would stop him blowing people up. It doesn't matter if he has a triple-certified, scrambled, privacy shielded genuine hot line to something that calls itself God, and from whom he got his orders to blow people up. He is not a Christian, because he does not live as a Christian should, and his God is not the Christian God.
I added:
"(Cue long boring derailment discussion about the precise meaning of "I come to set brother against brother" and so on and so interminably forth...)"
because that's usually what happens; having failed to refute my argument, the next step is to prove that Christ actually was a terrorist because he turned over some benches and talked about swords and That Proves It. We then move on to the Inquisition, the Pope's inaction during the rise of Hitler, the fact that he (H) claimed to be a Christian, the oft-trumpeted wrongsayings of the current Catholic establishment and so (as I said) on. None of which affects my argument, and I'm not interested in going through all that again. I know enough Christians who express their faith in their lives to know that the distinction I've made is a valid one, and that the fallacy does not apply in this case.
Not disabling comments. Please don't make me regret it.
"A Scotsman is a person of Scottish extraction; no more, no less. One can be a Scotsman and be anything. One cannot be a Christian and, say, worship Kali, or Cthulhu. Someone who describes himself as a Christian and worships Cthulhu or Kali, or commits acts of terrorism, or does something else incompatible with the teachings of Christ, is therefore by definition no true Christian, and the fallacy is not a fallacy. Q.E.D."
I should not have done that there, and I apologised this morning, but I think (I hope) that I've successfully demonstrated that the NTS fallacy does not apply here. It doesn't matter if the person who commits an act of terrorism considers himself a Christian, or goes to church, or donates to Christian charities when he's not blowing people up. It doesn't matter if he's dim enough to believe that every word in the Bible is literally true, except when it would stop him blowing people up. It doesn't matter if he has a triple-certified, scrambled, privacy shielded genuine hot line to something that calls itself God, and from whom he got his orders to blow people up. He is not a Christian, because he does not live as a Christian should, and his God is not the Christian God.
I added:
"(Cue long boring derailment discussion about the precise meaning of "I come to set brother against brother" and so on and so interminably forth...)"
because that's usually what happens; having failed to refute my argument, the next step is to prove that Christ actually was a terrorist because he turned over some benches and talked about swords and That Proves It. We then move on to the Inquisition, the Pope's inaction during the rise of Hitler, the fact that he (H) claimed to be a Christian, the oft-trumpeted wrongsayings of the current Catholic establishment and so (as I said) on. None of which affects my argument, and I'm not interested in going through all that again. I know enough Christians who express their faith in their lives to know that the distinction I've made is a valid one, and that the fallacy does not apply in this case.
Not disabling comments. Please don't make me regret it.