{"id":137,"date":"2012-10-11T14:49:28","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T19:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=137"},"modified":"2012-10-12T16:16:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T21:16:04","slug":"truescotsman-together-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2012\/10\/11\/truescotsman-together-at-last\/","title":{"rendered":"True\/Scotsman together at last"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

Apparently, True\u00ae and Scotsman\u00ae are complementary, after all. The one on the left\u00a0is an ice-making machine (the good kind of ice<\/a>) while the other one keeps your beverages cold. Don’t tell the folks over at Iron Chariots, who continue to insist “True Scotsman” is some sort of fallacy<\/a>\u00a0used by\u00a0religious apologists\u00a0to import the concept of morality into the meaning of non-moral terms such as “Christian” or “Scotsman” or “Chiropractor.” Okay, so I added that last one. <\/p>\n

I’m not entirely confident that this fallacy is always fallacious. Sometimes a term such as “Christian” or “Humanist” comes pre-loaded with all sorts of moral baggage. If someone were to say “No true Christian blasphemes the Holy Spirit,” I’d be willing to take that as a statement about what the word “Christian” should be taken to mean in light of the purported teachings of Jesus<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly, if someone were to suggest<\/a> that no true Humanist would go on a shooting spree prior to killing himself, I’d be apt to believe them. Just as Christianity bars the victimless crime of blasphemy, so also Humanism has always emphasised non-violent means of conflict resolution. Either way, there is a behavioural component inherent to the meaning of the identifier at issue, not merely a set of doctrines.<\/p>\n

Finally, I have to add that no True Scotsman<\/a> ever wears underpants beneath his kilt. It’s just not proper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apparently, True\u00ae and Scotsman\u00ae are complementary, after all. The one on the left\u00a0is an ice-making machine (the good kind of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-counter-apologetics","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}