Thread by @EveKeneinan

I need to address this.

Antony Flew has a lot to answer for, not least his invention of the so-called “No True Scotsman fallacy.”

Let’s talk about NO TRUE SCOTSMAN.

The main problem with the so-called “No True Scotsman fallacy” is that most people don’t understand it.

This fellow, for example, is right in the middle of using it as justification for committing an “All True Scotsman fallacy”:

He thinks it is IMPOSSIBLE that non-Scotsmen exist. To say that non-Scotsman exists is, in his mind, always a No True Scotsman fallacy, so literally everyone and everything is, by logical necessity, a Scotsman.

He thinks that LOGIC requires that it is IMPOSSIBLE for there to be a “Something In Name Only” (SINO), that no one, at any time, can ever PRETEND TO BE something they are not.

Or that it LOGIC makes it impossible for anyone, EVER, to be mistaken about the content of a teaching or doctrine which they adopt.

These are obviously foolish ideas, but he hasn’t thought anything through. He just chants “No True Scotsman” like a magical incantation—as most people in fact use the informal logical fallacies, which is, in turn, why that are at best useless, and at worst harmful to reasoning.

The FIRST KEY POINT to grasp is

(1) Informal logical fallacies, just as the “No True Scotsman” are only fallacious IN SOME CASES. That’s what makes them INFORMAL: they are fallacious by content, on a case by case basis, and NOT BY FORM. Otherwise they’d be FORMAL fallacies.

The SECOND KEY POINT to grasp is:

(2) The “No True Scotsman,” as a material fallacy, doesn’t work in all cases. Religious teachings, ideologies, and articulated worldviews are one place it DOES NOT WORK.

Flew made it up with an eye to religion, but that is one place it fails.

To take a blindingly obvious example, no Muslim is an atheist.

If you say a Muslim, Ali, is an atheist, everyone acts rationally to reply that Ali is “not a true Muslim.”

Being an atheist EXCLUDES Ali being a Muslim, so if Ali is an “atheist Muslim” he is NO TRUE MUSLIM.

Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, lays this out cogently, as he usually does.

You should all read his blog.

But if not, at least read this (black text is mine, blue is Vallicella’s):

The very EXISTENCE of heretics shows that it is possible to be “No True Christian.”

That is, in fact, what Christian heretics are, by definition: those who claim to be Christian, but are not, because they do not believe what Christianity teaches.

What does Christianity teach?

Formally, it teaches what Christ taught the Apostles and what they taught the Church.

That is what the term “Christianity” MEANS. It does not mean “Whatever thing anyone happens to think it does.”

There is, in fact, A teaching.

And as in science, the fact that some people misunderstand the teaching and teaching others their misunderstanding, this does not mean that the teaching is “anything and everything.”

For example, should we say that “Darwinism teaches that black people are inferior to white people”?

Why shouldn’t we?

“Scientific racism” and an appeal to evolution were commonplace in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

A: “No, no, B, the racists who tried to scientifically justify racism on the basis of evolution did not really understand the theory of evolution or were misusing it to dishonestly justify their racism.”

B: “NO TRUE SCOTSMAN!”

This is not really that hard to grasp.

If you use the “No True Scotsman” this way, it entails that the claim “X is not a Y” is always fallacious.

A: “No 5-year-olds are 10-year-olds.”
B: “This 5-year-old is a 10-year-old.”
A: “No, he can’t truly be both.”
B: "NO TRUE SCOTSMAN!"

To bring this back to the starting point to end it:

Just because someone was raised in some wacky fringe religious group calling itself “Christian,” and at some point realized it WAS a wacky fringe teaching, does not justify dismissing Christianity as such.

They never knew it.

Batshit crazy fringe variants of Christianity no more discredit Christianity than racist Social Darwinism discredits Darwinism.