Refuting the No True Scotsman Fallacy
Considered by many as the greatest atheist of the 20th century, Antony Flew was, in fact, an intellectual without philosophical rigor who put forth inconsistent and fanatical ideas. The philosophical harm caused by figures like Anthony Flew to the development of atheism is immense. It’s not surprising that his thoughts in his later years were unhealthy; he began to advocate pseudoscience like intelligent design and passed away with dementia.
Fallacies are problematic because they are errors in reasoning, mistakes used to arrive at or support conclusions. Just as taking the wrong path to school can make you lose your way, using fallacies is also disadvantageous because it leads to incorrect conclusions. However, pointing out the logical error represented by a fallacy hides the deeper error that produced it. Pointing out a fallacy does not necessarily encourage someone to reconsider their viewpoint. While it’s okay to debate on the internet and attempt to identify fallacies, in everyday life, it’s often inappropriate to point out fallacies to those who have no knowledge of logic. This usually just irritates people and makes them even more fanatical. It might be better to show logical errors without using any rhetorical terms like ‘fallacy.’ Internet intellectuals like to point out fallacies and even misuse them, distorting every detail, as if it were the fastest way to win a debate. I’ve often been accused of fallacies I didn’t even commit, so I would laugh at the intellectuals and their addiction to using robotic arguments.
One day, logicians will discover that there are counterexamples that invalidate attempts to identify certain fallacies in certain situations. In fact, the use of fallacies can lead to strange situations and even logical errors. Certain situations have their own logic, while in other situations, the opposite is true. Few people have mastered the complexity of logic to the extent that they realize that a fallacy is not a logically perfect and unquestionable structure!
The fallacy popularly known as the No True Scotsman fallacy, created by Antony Flew, is flawed, a conceptual construction that is erroneous, artificial, and incomplete. In general, this fallacy is used in the context of a religious person who has committed a crime, and it is also used when discussing the truth of belonging to a group. But what truly determines participation in a group? It will depend on the personal definition used to define a group. For example, if we agree beforehand that the definition of a Scotsman is someone born in Scotland, there will always be the possibility that the person is lying. If you say that someone born in Scotland is not a ‘true Scotsman’ because they don’t wear a kilt, you commit a fallacy according to our predefined definition. However, if we use the definition of a Scotsman as someone who strictly follows Scottish traditions, you can assert that someone is not Scottish if they don’t meet those criteria, while someone born outside of Scotland who wears a kilt is a Scotsman! The fallacy fails because it requires defining the characteristics of a group with precision.
From a materialist perspective, certain practices and behaviors are determinants in defining a human group that is not based on heredity, physical appearance, or geographic location. In this sense, self-identification is not a valid form of belonging, because if an individual claims to be part of a group but does not share the practices that define it, they cannot be considered part of that group. I will insist that actions speak louder than words:
P1: All X behave like X.
P2: Clearly, not all who identify as X behave like X.
C: Therefore, anyone who does not behave like X is a Y.
It’s not enough to claim that you are an atheist; you must prove your assertion. In other words, you must prove that you are a true atheist, just as someone claiming religiosity does not necessarily mean they are what they claim to be. Often, people lie to themselves and to others about their true nature. Of course, it doesn’t make much sense for someone to say that a priest who commits a criminal act was not a true Christian. In this case, we have an example of someone who undeniably belongs to a group. Even if they are a criminal, every priest is a true Christian. However, not every Christian is a priest, and not everyone who claims to be a Christian truly is. Only those who spend their time praying at home or in church are true Christians.
If there is no standard of behavior that defines what is religious or atheistic, it means that no one is religious or atheistic because there will be no collective behavior that sets the group apart from the rest of society.
Sometimes, an appeal to purity is necessary because it’s essential to define a group. The atheist movement often encounters apologists who claim to be former atheists when, in general, they present no evidence of their atheistic behavior. This is a serious problem where appealing for a purity of actions becomes necessary. In other words, many who claim to be atheists and ex-atheists were never true atheists!
