Are Mormons Christians?

we Christians are not committing a no true Scotchman fallacy when we note Mormons Jehovah Witnesses and even some Progressive Christians are not really Christians all right let's see it and the fit for this video is Deadpool no true Scotsman is an ad hoc Rescue of one's generalization in which the Reasoner recharacterized the situation solely in order to escape reputation of the generalization to better explain what that means we can look at the original example that Anthony flu came up with when he coined the fallacy no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge but my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge but no true Scotsman put sugar on his porridge as you can see for the first person would makes someone a true Scotsman is some arbitrary or ad hoc reason that really has nothing to do with being a Scotsman so this is not accurate the fallacy does not depend upon the identified feature being being arbitrary or meaningless the fallacy depends upon a generalization being altered so that the boundaries are constricted and a provided counter example is definitionally excluded so a no true Scotsman fallacy is when we start with a generalization and someone provides a counter example and then we change the generalization in order to Omit that counter example there are multiple steps in a no true Scotsman fallacy so so just denying broadly that Mormons are Christians is not even eligible to be considered a no true Scotsman fallacy because there is not a generalization that has been altered someone is just asserting necessary and sufficient features for membership in the category of Christian and this is not what we Christians are doing when we note someone like a Mormon is not really a Christian because we're not dismissing their claim to be a Christian from an arbitrary reason but from a meaningful reason so that has no relationship to a no true Scotsman fallacy so if someone just says oh Mormons aren't Christians because of X that's not a no true Scotsman fallacy however if they say well Christians believe this and somebody says well what about Mormons and they say well real Christians or authentic Christians or Orthodox Christians uh or historical Christians or something like that that then becomes a no true Scotsman fallacy because the generalization has been altered to definitionally exclude the provided counter example and in that case it doesn't matter if the feature that is identified is meaningless or meaningful or arbitrary or not because what matters is whether or not the generalization has been altered words have to have a coherent meaning no they don't and we Christians who are allowed to define the boundaries of our own belief system in what we mean by the term Christian which we use to describe ourselves El so that would be all and good if all people who identified as Christian had a seat at the table and had a hand in determining what the criteria and methodologies were going to be for drawing the boundary around the concept of Christian but that's not what's going on here because this creator has already drawn the boundaries around the people who get to draw the boundaries and so the boundaries have already been drawn before we even get to drawing the boundaries and that's just flagrant circular reasoning a Christian is someone who holds to Orthodox beliefs and doctrines the faith that was handed out from the apostles and what is taught in scripture if you reject an essential Doctrine like the Trinity or the physical resurrection of Jesus you're rejecting an essential aspect of what it is to be a Christian therefore we will not accept that you're a Christian so there are three main fallacies going on here first we have that circular reasoning of drawing boundaries so that we can determine who gets to be in the group that draws those same boundaries uh but we also have an appeal to definition this notion that you can reduce conceptual categories and particularly social identities to a short list of necessary and sufficient features but that's not how conceptual categories and particularly social identities are developed are learned or are used so appealing to such features is a fallacy and finally this list of necessary and sufficient features actually excludes pretty much all Christians who lived during the life of Jesus or within two or three generations of his life since the Trinity and the concept of Jesus as fully God and fully man are much later and very complex philosophical Frameworks that developed within specific historical and social contexts and so nobody living in the first second and even into the third centuy CE would have qualified as Christian according to this specific list of necessary and sufficient features and while apolog will insist that even though we don't see the articulation of these ideologies until the fourth and fifth centuy CE we can assume they were in circulation earlier the data don't support that and that's not the academic consensus notice we're not rejecting someone's claim to be a Christian from an arbitrary aspect but a meaningful aspect therefore we're not committing the no true Scotsman fallacy and as you can see in the definition on the screen whether or not the feature is is arbitrary or meaningful plays no role in whether or not it is a no true Scotsman fallacy but to meaningfully be a Christian you have to fit the definition of a Christian and that means you have to accept essential core doctrines no you absolutely don't this is another appeal to definition and definitions have absolutely no Authority beyond that group of people that agrees with the definition and there's no definition of Christian that is endorsed by the majority of Christians around the world much less all Christians around the world and even in the United States the majority of Christians accept Mormons as Christians and the only denomination in which there's just a plurality of members who reject the Christianity of Mormons is white evangelicals the group most committed to structuring power and values and boundaries to serve their own interests these are not arbitrary boundaries they are facius they have no Authority beyond the groups that accept them and yes they frequently are arbitrary as the philosopher Aon scobble said now I'm good

Channel: Dan McClellan

Views: 25,400

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Id: QuM41YMkNaQ

Length: 6min 35sec (395 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024