Ever so often in a religious debate Stalin is brought up. "Look at him," say the theists smugly, "he was an atheist, and an evil man." We're quick to point out that this is a meaningless comparison, correlation does not imply causation. In any case, we say, look at the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials. We don't judge Christians by that. "Ahh," they reply "but they weren't true Christians, otherwise they wouldn't have done all those bad things." And that's where it falls apart.
This idea of a "true" Christian has a big flaw in it. Who gets to decide? It seems only their interpretation of the Bible is right, and everyone else is a "false" Christian, in name only. In fact, this logical fallacy is so prominent it even has a name - the No True Scotsman fallacy.
The logic goes something like this:
I. Christians are told to be good.
II. Lucy is bad.
III. Thus Lucy is not a Christian.
Actually, false. Logically we cannot imply III. from I. and II. Firstly, the definitions of "good" and "bad" (i.e. "my interpretation of the Bible" and "someone else's") are incredibly skewed and subjective. Secondly, I. is not a reasonable tautology. Christians basically try to exclude undesirable members from their ranks on the basis that no true member of their group would do such a thing. It's a way to distance themselves from an unpleasant act carried out by members of their group. Thus there is a fallacy in the very definition of the group itself.
A similar example would be my saying "No atheist has a mullet." But then MMM replies "I have a mullet." hence MMM is not a true atheist.
Philosophers, both Christian and secular, have agreed that the fallacy does not hold, yet people insist on bringing it up. I'd rather not explain it at the Christian groups (they tend to accuse me of militant 'sarcasm'), so to the few Christians who do frequent this group, do you have any thoughts on this argument and it's use in debates?
Some further reading:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_Scotsman
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ueScotsman
No true Scotsman
25 posts in this topic.
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I hate it when people do that. It makes me angry. I end up debating the atheist side of the argument half the time because I can't hear Christians use that argument and let them get away with it, but they rarely understand why it doesn't make sense. The people who use it are just bad debaters. I've noticed that the same people who use this argument in Christian studies can't have an intelligent debate in, say, English class either. Unfortunately, bad debating skills and faith seem to be a particularly bad combination.
There is nothing to be done about these people - they rarely see reason even if you explain the fallacy to them. I suggest just walking away from such arguments. -
No true Scotsman would ever use such a fallacy as evidence! LOL.
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The difficulty in applying this fallacy to religious groups is that you don't have as obvious an external metric as you do for the trope's namesake. It's easy to see the fallacy in the namesake because we have other constructs for determining national identty: citzenship, bloodlines etc. Crucially, very few states denationalise people for crimes. There isn't a moral character built into the notion of a Scotsman, and so when someone disavows the actions of a purported scotsman and claims that they cannot be a scotsman based solely on actions of a certain moral flavour, we can fairly denigrate their logic.
With religion, it becomes a bit more complicated, but I'll try to ease into the false application of this fallacy by referencing non-religious, non-national groups.
Consider a club developed on the notion of justice and the rule of law. A group of knights protecting the residents of a particular valley from the predations of bandits. One day, a group of villager's arrive at the keep where these knights hold residence and announce that one of the knights has turned into a bandit himself, ignoring the rights of the citizens and stealing from them and threatening them with violence. The knights get together and have a meeting and decide that this rogue knight is a bit of a douchebag, and though he still maintains the title of a knight, a hereditary rank, he is no longer a member of their order. He is "No True Knight". They are able to do this because their club has standards other than hereditary and self-identification: the protection of Justice and the Rule of Law.
You can kind of see where I'm headed, I hope. Most religious groups will not say that a member is simply "not a christian" or "not a muslim" because those labels privilege self-identification and the expression of belief. However religious identity *also* priveleges moral character. Consider the long and unresolved discussion within the Christian Church over the neccessity of Acts for Salvation. On the one hand, you've got The book of James saying that Abraham was justified by acts alone, which reinforces a moral prerequisite for "True Christianship" In contrast, you've got Paul saying that Abraham was not justified by acts alone. Even in the original Greek these are directly antithetical statements. So you've got two distinct schools of thought, one which priveleges Faith as the primary construction of Christain Identity, and one that Priveleges Acts. Then you get groups like the Anglicans which muddy the waters a bit by saying that 'True' Faith is illustrated through Acts. The Acts themselves aren't neccessary, but are evidence of Faith, which is.
So it actually makes sense to apply the "No True Christian" Trope. Just because Joseph Coney calls himself a Christian, doesn't mean he is. And just because he calls the brutal civil war he operated through the Congo through the means of regiments of child-soldiers a "Christian Act' does not make it so. There is a clear moral flavour in the construction of Christian Identity which makes the application of the "No True Scotsman" Fallacy itself fallacious. -
You raise interesting points, however, I don't think the analogy quite fits. You see, in the example of the knights, one is a knight presumably by belonging to the organization. And one can only belong to the organization if the majority of the members approve. So when one of the knights turns bandit, the majority disapprove, and hence kick him out, so he's no longer a knight. With Christianity, one doesn't have to belong to a single church to be Christian. You don't need a church group's approval to be Christian. Basically, there is no justifiable tautological definition to being a Christian. Sure, moral character may be built into the notion of being Christian, but then again moral character is also completely subjective. Joseph Koney's Lord's Resistance Army considered their acts part of a 'holy war' and completely morally justifiable. If there was a single definition of what a Christian is, which one would it be? The Catholic one, the Methodist one, the Baptist one, the Russian Orthodox one, or one of the hundreds of other sects?
Since Christianity is basically about worshiping a higher power, presumably no one but that higher power can deem someone 'Christian' and 'not a Christian' given the subjectivity of the hundreds of different groups who all call themselves Christian. (One exception to this is Papal Excommunication, but then again Catholics believe that the Pope has the power ecclesiastical jurisdiction.)
Since the moral flavor in itself is subjective, I would say that the fallacy still holds. -
Hitler was a Catholic. XD Apparently he was never actually excommunicated? For shame! There is, as you can guess, lots of scandal involved. But it's an interesting story! If you want to read more about that, you can go to the Jewish Virtual Library. There are a bunch of good papers on this with many different perspectives! Just search us "Pius XII"
ANYWAY. Only God can really decide who is really Christian or not (though we do get say as to whether they are in our churches or not). Excommunication, contrary to popular belief, is not "damning" someone to hell but rather just removing someone from communion. Until they repent. In which they can come back again. If they want to.
In any case, pointing to corrupt rulers or awful regimes is probably pointless. Power corrupts! Not that everyone in power is corrupt, of course. But! At the same time, if you don't follow the rules of a particular organization, it's very probable that you probably shouldn't belong to that organization. It's like claiming that you are against private property and yet you own a very large mansion. It's hypocrisy!
Still. The arguments used are pretty pathetic in either case. -
Yes, I agree that as a point for or against religion this is just completely pointless. Yet you'll be surprised by how often Stalin and Pol Pot will be brought up in an argument, but Christians will completely deny that Hitler was Christian.
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You entire diatribe can be summed up into this sentence:
"Adolf Hitler claimed to be Christian, but wasn't, because he did things no Christian would do."
You obviously ignored the entire discussion above your post, else you would have seen why that statement is illogical and untrue.
Adolf Hitler was Christian. Does that mean anything? No. Get over it. -
Did you bother to read anything posted above? It was already concluded that as an argument against Christianity it is meaningless. I really couldn't care less if Hitler was associated with Christianity or not; there enough evils within Christianity to make it seem perverse without adding Hitler into the mix.
It is a fact that Hitler was Christian. It is not an important fact, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. So yes, I urge you to get over it. -
Eh.. Christ did not exist either.
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Not at all, my dear.
The fact is, there is absolutely no contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. All supposed "evidence" is derived from hearsay accounts.No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus came well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources about Jesus derive from hearsay accounts.
Additionally, all of Christ's teachings can be traced back to other stories, myths and texts, many of which existed before his time such as the Hindu Mahabharata, the Babylonian Talmud, the Analects of Confucius and the Tibetan Dhammapada. Everything written about Christ was written decades, even centuries after his death. A lot of it was fabricated."This is one of the problems with the story. We have no writings from the days of Jesus himself. Jesus never wrote anything, nor do we have any contemporary accounts of his life or death. There are no court records, official diaries, or newspaper accounts that might provide firsthand information. Nor are there any eyewitnesses whose reports were preserved unvarnished. Even though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions, all the Gospels come from later times. Discerning which material is early and which is late becomes an important task. In fact, the earliest writings that survive are the genuine letters of Paul. They were written some twenty to thirty years after the death of Jesus. Yet Paul was not a follower of Jesus during his lifetime; nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus during his ministry." - White, L. Michael
"The problem I have with all these versions of the so called "historical Jesus" is that they each choose certain early sources as their central evidence, and each presents a part of the picture. My own problem with this, as a historian, is that none of the historical evidence actually goes back as far as Jesus—so these various speculations are that, and nothing more." - Elaine Pagels
"...if Jesus lived and died in the first century (death around 30CE), what do the Greek and Roman sources from his own day through the end of the century (say, the year 100) have to say about him? The answer is breathtaking. They have absolutely nothing to say about him. He is never discussed, challenged, attacked, maligned, or talked about in any way in any surviving pagan source of the period. There are no birth records, accounts of his trial and death, reflections on his significance, or disputes about his teachings. In fact, his name is never mentioned once in any pagan source. And we have a lot of Greek and Roman sources from the period: religious scholars, historians, philosophers, poets, natural scientists; we have thousands of private letters; we have inscriptions placed on buildings in public places. In no first-century Greek or Roman (pagan) source is Jesus mentioned." - Ehrman, Bart
Further Reading:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hearsay
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_f ... sus_Christ
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php? ... l_argument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Chri ... _mythology
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ ... tions.html
Keep in mind that since we're questioning the validity of the Bible, and that everything I've sourced shows it to be invalid, quoting the Bible isn't a valid line of reasoning to respond to this argument. -
Did you know people did not even return to their city of birth for a census, and there is no proof of a census in the supposed year of Jesus's birth?
Just sayin'. -
tr3x
You seem to be overreaching the evidence your sources provide, and selecting them in a very unbalanced manner.
A quick wikipedia search (I'm assuming this will meet an evidential standard since you cite it yourself) leads us to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicit ... an_sources . A couple of clicks of the mouse brings us to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ . A Greco-Roman pagan referencing the historical figure of Christ in 116AD, which is admittedly not contemporaneous, but quite close to the period you describe as empty of historical support. It took me about 13 seconds.
Just about every standard you set seems fairly anachronistic, as though journalists should have been following Jesus around and uploading his sermons on twitter or something. This was a time period where the written word was seen as a less reputable medium than the spoken word, unlike today. I found the expression of an unfulfilled desire for artifacts or works of carpentry particularly interesting. As I'm sure you're aware, tens of thousands of such relics exist, the vast majority of them fake, the rest unverifiable. Consider every reference made to pieces of the true cross, the holy grail, the shroud of turin and the rest of it. I'm staking no claim on the veracity of these, but the idea that no such claims are made seems almost startling in its ignorance.
The idea that all of Christ's teachings could be traced to other belief systems, the vast majority of which he (or his immediate followers) would not have been exposed to during their lifetimes seems to ignores Jesus's role in fulfilling old testament prophecy and subverting expectations of the messiah while also fulfilling them. The idea that Jesus's beliefs are a motley collection of interchangeable belief systems seems to be intellectually insulting given that he was regarded by a maverick by both the mainstream institutions and more progressive groups such as the pharisees. The recounts of his life fulfil prophecies that had been considered mutually exlusice: the imagery of both lion (warrior-king) and lamb (sacrifice), as an example among many. A rather basic response on the part of the Christian believer would be that other belief systems mirror christianity so that it makes them more believable, as they then carry the ring of truth. I understand that this presumes a conclusion of the validity of the Christian faith, to which you are not inclined, but it is relevant to the rebuttal of your argument nevertheless.
I would cite a basic truism that many young earth creationists forget when overreaching with their arguments concerning the fossil record: the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. To argue that such is the case is an argument from ignorance and generally considered to be fallacious.
In such a light, your quote from Michael White doesn't seem to be an argument against the historicity of Jesus, but merely a frustration with the quality of sources one can expect from such a historical moment. The same can be said of your other sources.
I feel the need to reiterate the fact that the expectations for evidence you construct are both anachronistic and overreaching. Historical sources were not constructed as they were in more recent times and different cultural climates; oral traditions drove the transmission of knowledge, and these traditions were distilled into what we have, more or less, in the modern gospels. The written sources that now comprise the new testament were selected based on both their mutual congruence and their perceived historicity over the next four centuries of theological study based on criteria including authorship and verifiability amongst many sources that we are aware of, but do not have access to (they are cited, but have not reached us in the modern day.) -
Slightly off-topic questions: Why does it matter if this man existed or not? We can all agree that if he did exist, he wasn't divine, or the Son of God.
"This was a time period where the written word was seen as a less reputable medium than the spoken word, unlike today."
Why then, would Jesus not have been sent to China, or to a later time period? -
Thanks for the amusement. I may be back to make some form of a formal opinion at a later time. For now, I'll just keep watching.
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