Appeal: non sequitur
From Religion Debate: Islam vs Christianity.
- #11762:52:31upheld Ijaz Ahmad psogos: non sequitur (+1)
The council upheld the call: Ijaz Ahmad gave away 1 point.
“I showed you where Jesus the Christ affirms that whatever the pharisees tell you, do it.”
Diogenes: The verse he is leaning on continues "but do not do what they do," so obedience to their teaching from Moses' seat cannot yield the conclusion he draws from it twice over — that Jesus thereby endorsed Pharisaic practice, child marriage at 127:14 and genocide here.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Ijaz has held since the opening a method of internal critique using the New Testament's own text against Christian claims; here that method is used correctly in citing the passage but the conclusion drawn from it does not follow from the passage as a whole, repeating the same non sequitur previously made at 127:14. Ijaz's declared method is internal critique of the New Testament text, and citing Matthew 23 against Christian claims fits that standing approach. But the specific inference drawn here does not follow from the text cited: Matthew 23:2-3 says the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat so "do what they tell you," but immediately qualifies this with "do not do what they do" — an explicit disclaimer of their practices. Ijaz uses the first half to conclude Jesus "affirms" or is "okay with" Pharisaic conduct (first applied to child marriage at 127:14, now to conduct bearing on genocide/violence), which the verse's own second half directly contradicts. This is the same selective inference made twice in the debate without ever engaging the "but do not do what they do" clause, which is a genuine logical gap between the premise cited and the conclusion drawn, not merely an aggressive but defensible reading.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "non sequitur". Matthew 23:2-3 does have Jesus tell the crowds to observe what the Pharisees teach from Moses' seat, so the citation itself is checkable. But Ijaz immediately leverages it into "we know that they committed genocide" and treats that as proof Jesus "affirmed... the genocide" — obeying a teaching authority's instruction does not entail endorsing every unspecified act, let alone an unsupported "genocide" claim asserted with no citation, date, or event named. The conclusion does not follow from the premise, and the text itself (which Ijaz notes calls the Pharisees "hypocrites") cuts against reading it as blanket endorsement of their conduct.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Ijaz's declared method is internal critique of the New Testament text against Christian moral claims; deploying Matthew 23 for that purpose is consistent with his method, but drawing an unsupported inference from a verse whose own wording contradicts the conclusion, and doing so a second time for a different extreme practice, is a flawed execution of that method rather than a sound internal critique. Matthew 23:2-3, the verse Ijaz leans on, explicitly qualifies whatever they tell you, do with but not according to their works, for they say and do not do; Jesus is instructing obedience to the Pharisees teaching authority from Moses seat while explicitly disowning their conduct, the opposite of a blanket endorsement of anything Pharisees believed or did. Even granting the premise at face value, obey their teaching does not support the further leap to Jesus therefore endorsed genocide, or as raised earlier at 127:14 child marriage, since nothing in the passage ties Pharisaic legal authority to those specific practices.
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