politics

Please, explain to me how the “No true Scotsman” fallacy doesn’t apply to the argument.

Yeah, sure, let's do that. Throwing out some random fallacy names without understanding what the fallacy actually is is easy. Actually understanding what the referenced fallacy actually means is more difficult.

So let's go to the Wikipedia definition:

The "no true Scotsman" fallacy is committed when the arguer satisfies the following conditions:[3][4][6]

• not publicly retreating from the initial, falsified a posteriori assertion
• offering a modified assertion that definitionally excludes a targeted unwanted counterexample
• using rhetoric to signal the modification

So u/andros_rex said:

I wish Christians in red states were Christians.

That was their initial assertion, which asserted that those who call themselves "Christians" in red states don't follow the definition of what Christians are.

To which you answered:

They are whether you like that or not.

So we have an initial assertion, which you didn't falsify, you just claimed that it was false.

To which u/ABetterTomorrow (note, a different user) answered

^understanding falls short.

Which means, the original commenter didn't change anything about the original assertion, and neither did u/ABetterTomorrow.

Since no modification happened, points 2 and 3 or the definition of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy don't apply either.

The whole situation really has nothing to do with the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, except of sub-groups within a larger group being part of an argument.

Which makes your argument that this is a "no true Scotsman" fallacy in fact a strawman argument, which itself is a fallacy.

Do you now understand what the "no true Scotsman" fallacy is and why you should actually try to understand what terms mean before using them?

Edit: What's also important to know is why is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy a fallacy? It's because the argument becomes a tautology, something that's always true. "No true Scotsman will do X" means "A Scotsman who does X is no true Scotsman, thus no true Scotsman does X". That's always true, so it doesn't mean anything. It takes the original claim "No true Scotsman will do X" and transforms it into a meaningless argument. That's the fallacious part.

What u/andros_rex actually said meant was "If you don't follow Christ's teachings, you shouldn't call yourself a Christian". It's a subtile difference, but an important one. The "no true Scotsman" fallacy argues against doing X by saying that no true Scotsman would be doing X. But what u/andros_rex argues for is that these supposed Christians don't live up to the standards of Christ/being a Christian. It's basically the opposite reasoning.