Scotsmen

[avevale_intelligencer]

Last 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.

Comments

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

But there you're jumping to a completely different part of the debate. I was asking about the specific assertion I quoted, which doesn't mention the word "Christian" at all (and thus can usefully help to tease out the points of the discussion on which you and Zan might be in agreement from those on which you disagree).

For convenience, here's the quote again:
""The assertion that no-one who [...] lives [...] by the teaching of
> Christ would choose to commit wholesale murder in his name is [...]
> accurate"

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, I guess that's what happens when one goes away for several weeks and then tries to reconstruct a conversation from memory. :)

The problem is that many people have committed murders in Christ's name while remaining completely true to the teachings of Christ as they understood those teachings.

I have a degree in literary theory; I know well how extraordinarily easy it is to tease alternate meanings out of text if one wants to, or to find meanings that suit one's preconceived notions.

My husband tells me that in one of his honors English classes in high school, two students did a brilliant presentation explaining how John Lennon's song Imagine showed Lennon's support for the Vietnam War.

There is no One True "teaching of Christ"*, if indeed such a person ever existed. There are only countless interpretations of what he really meant. Ever seen the movie Life of Brian?

* And there's a whole lot more to be said on that subject, but this doesn't seem to be the place for it.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

"I have a degree in literary theory; I know well how extraordinarily easy it is to tease alternate meanings out of text if one wants to, or to find meanings that suit one's preconceived notions. "

[NODS & GRINS] ...And I'm a guy who stills considers himself an Evangelical, despite having completely reversed his understanding of various bits of the Bible from (a) the mainstream Evangelical view and (b) the view he himself held when he first took up that label. =:o}

Yep. Biblical interpretation is a minefield. And that's something most of the teachers at *every variety* of church I've been in have been at pains to point out, while firmly stating what their specific view was, detailing why they thought it was right, and even (on occasion), opining on just how mad those other people down the road must be to believe *their* crazy version... =:o?

(Edited to removed the bit where I had capslock on [BLUSH])