Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) bashed former President Trump online and said Christians who support him “don’t understand” their religion.
“I’m going to go out on a NOT limb here: this man is not a Christian,” Kinzinger said on X, formerly known as Twitter, responding to Trump’s Christmas post. “If you are a Christian who supports him you don’t understand your own religion.”
Kinzinger, one of Trump’s fiercest critics in the GOP, said in his post that “Trump is weak, meager, smelly, victim-ey, belly-achey, but he ain’t a Christian and he’s not ‘God’s man.’”
He’s not wrong, but this is honestly the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy.
The bible does technically say you should treat your fellows as you would want to be treated and promotes brotherhood, but it also says women and other races are inferior and advocates for truly heinous behaviour. Cherry picking has always been the point, and shitloads of crimes against humanity have been officially sanctioned by the church.
There’s a very good reason the founders these people claim to venerate wanted the church and state to be separate. They were deists, but not overt Christians, and they’d seen what happens when religion mingles with government: horrible, horrible things.
I don’t think so. He’s not saying they aren’t “true” Christians, an undefinable standard of "true. He’s saying they don’t understand it. Christ flipped the tables and whipped the money changers, these people worship a real estate speculator. Christ’s message is one of social welfare and commonwealth, conservative populists literally killed Jesus for blasphemy.
Like, he’s right, they don’t understand it. I went to Christian Sunday school. There wasn’t one lesson about taking health insurance from poor people and charging interest on school lunch debt.
I’m not sure what distinction you’re trying to make. He’s saying these Christians don’t understand their religion, as in they’re not following what he thinks Christianity is supposed to be. That’s the very definition of the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy.
You’re doing it too, honestly. What you learned in Sunday school doesn’t match how these republicans are interpreting it, so they’re not following the real teachings.
I’m saying you can look through the history of the official stances of the Christian church and find many, many examples of sanctioned atrocities. You may not like it, but Christianity has never been what’s printed on the tin.
If we are going that road you could argue that much of the “Christian church” has split pretty far from Christ’s actual teachings.
Sure. Or that the original teachings were all over the place to begin with, because it’s an amalgamation of various regional beliefs and stories meant to gain political and social control over areas it spread to, adopting and bastardising random beliefs it encountered. Because that’s what literally happened.
Eventually the Catholic and Anglican churches decided which books/teachings would be ‘correct’ based on what whomever was in charge at the time wanted. There are many books that were included or excluded from the bible because they were convenient or inconvenient, and the end result was a weird, inconsistent mess. The Catholic Church’s official library has what’s now considered banned texts that were official canon a few centuries ago. What changed that made them wrong? Politics.
And of course the three major Abrahamic religions can’t agree over whose interpretation is correct, to the point of genocide. But yeah, one sect of evangelical Christianity is ‘right’ such that we should all be subjected to it.
Removed by mod
I can’t tell if you’re being serious, but in case you are, these definitions may help:
No true Scotsman fallacy: No true Scotsman fallacy is an informal logical fallacy that occurs when one tries to define a term or group in a way that excludes certain counterexamples by arbitrarily changing the definition to fit their argument.
metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
Removed by mod
Obviously Trump is not a Christian. That’s not the bit I’m referring to.
I mean the bit where he’s talking about people who follow trump and who call themselves Christian. Literally no true Scotsman. They 100% think they’re Christian, and they have just as much a claim on the title as anyone.
eta: relevant quote:
e: and if you think they can’t be logically correct in squaring their devout Christianity with their support of Trump, they’ve got several ‘imperfect vessel’ bible quotes for you.
You are assuming though that Kinzinger is…
…, which he is not doing. He’s using the definition as defined by Jesus.
Or, as @agitatedpotato@lemmy.dbzer0.com puts it …
I’m not assuming, I’m asserting that those gospels are heavily edited and censored by the church, so who really knows what the original intent was?
Leaving aside that the KJV that most Christians learn is filtered, sometimes erroneously, through multiple language translations, several of the original texts were cut from fairly recent editions because they contradict other texts or were morally problematic.
Claiming authority on what Jesus did or didn’t mean when referring to people who believe just as strongly they’re right is a fallacy, especially when, given the context of many other horrible teachings the bible espouses, it’s morally dubious at best. And those same texts have been used by church officials who should be authorities on the topic to justify atrocities.
So yeah, this is a fallacy.
That’s one hell of a debate catch-all escape hatch you’ve got there.
If you’re arguing that what we’ve all been told about Jesus’s intent and teachings are not true, then that’s a completely different discussion to be had, and we’re wasting our time discussing this current subject.
It’s not a debate catch-all, it’s just the truth.
My point is and has been that Christians who say other Christians are Christianing wrong are using a fallacy, because it’s just as valid that they think you are doing it wrong, and everyone on all sides can find bible quotes that support their views.
A hundred years ago, white supremacists used Jesus’ teachings to validate slavery, and they thought they were just as correct as you think you are. You can say they were using those passages erroneously, but they’d say the same about you with equal conviction and, looking at it from the outside, you’re both right.
Not when there is an entire book explaining the ideology of Jesus. Ignoring everything it says proves they haven’t read it which proves Kinzinger right.
I don’t think he was doing that though, but instead was stating that what Jesus says is Christianity is different than what today’s people say Christianity is, via by how they actually act, as “Christians”. In other words, Jesus practiced Christianity different than today’s Christians.
Or are people not allowed to say to someone else that they do not act in the way that the group they are in says they should act?
Sure, they’re allowed. I’ve spoken to loads of them (where I live, I’m surrounded), and they fully believe people like Kinsinger are the ones not following those teachings.
My point is when a belief system is so subjective and abused – even by the church itself – it’s the Spider-Man pointing meme.