Thread by @EveKeneinan

Antony Flew seems to have done a lot of damage.

Mainly, he gave the world the “lack of belief” definition of atheism trope (which of course he later retracted, not that that stops today’s atheists).

AND he gave us the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.

It isn’t even CLEAR that the “No True Scotsman” IS any kind of fallacy.

If I say “No Muslim is an atheist,” and you say “Ali is a Muslim and an atheist!”, it seems entirely reasonable (and true) for me to say that Ali is not a true Muslim.

It certainly isn’t a FALLACY to identify the fact that there are usually “false X’s”, e.g. things and persons who seem to be something, but aren’t “truly” that.

A quack doctor with no training, MD, or license is, indeed, “no true doctor.”

And we see this all the time. There are countless case of "X's-in-name-only” (XINOs).

But even here, Flew wanted to use this “fallacy” to block religious people (mostly Christians) from disavowing certain bad people by saying that they weren’t REALLY Christians.

But part of our doctrine is that there ARE and WILL BE fake Christians.

Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has a nice piece on why the “No True Scotsman” DOES NOT WORK just where Flew wanted it to most, in respect to CREEDS.

If you don’t hold Jesus to be the Son of God, you really aren’t a true Christian.

Let me see if I can find it:

There MAY be something suspect about answering a proposed counter-example to a proposition of the form “No A is a X,” e.g. “p is an A that is also an X.”

Well, p may be. The counterexample needs to be examined to discern whether p truly is both an A and an X. If not, no fallacy.

Even HERE, suppose I determine that p is both an A and an X. Can I save my claim that “No A is X”? Yes, by PRECISIFYING MY DEFINITION OF X.

You may NOT have given me a counterexample, but ONLY a case that made my make my definition more precise.

And that’s not a fallacy either.