Appeal: red herring
From Jay Dyer vs 2 Freemason Christians.
- #121458:17tied, awaiting the moderator Chase Geyser psogos: red herring (+1)
The council is split: nothing counts until the moderator decides.
“I'm just know, for the sake of the audience, either listening online or or here, Jay does not believe that you're a Christian unless you're orthodox.”
Diogenes: He expressly disclaims making a claim ("I'm not making a claim, I just wanted to point it") and addresses the room to set them against Jay, while Jay's question about the standard of goodness stands unanswered.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: S3 has held throughout that critics like Dyer mischaracterize the craft and that free discourse should judge Masonry on its own terms; this line departs from substantive engagement into an audience-directed dig at Jay's ecclesiology precisely when a positive account of Masonic ethics was being solicited. Jay's live question was the standard of ethical "good" underlying Masonic self-improvement, and Ryan had just tried to redirect to substantive positive teachings ("I'm happy to just talk about what we are"). Instead of engaging that pivot, Chase interjects an audience-directed jab about Jay's Orthodox exclusivism, explicitly disclaiming it as an argument ("I'm not making a claim, I just wanted to point it"), which both diverts from the point on the table and plays to the crowd rather than inviting continued examination — Jay's own contemporaneous characterization ("appeal to the audience... not an argument") confirms this reading.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. Chase's line comes after Dyer has already given a direct answer (that only Orthodoxy counts as authentic Christianity), so it does not substitute for an answer; the characterization is true (confirmed by Dyer's own words moments earlier) and relevant, since Dyer's whole method rests on appeal to a "historic confessional consensus" that Chase is here showing to be, on Dyer's own lips, narrower than advertised. It is rhetorical framing for the audience rather than a further argument, but truthful, relevant rhetoric standing beside an already-completed exchange is not ad hominem and carries no fault.
- Plato overturn: On the record: S3 has held since the opening that critics like Jay mischaracterize Masonry, and here, after directly answering Jay's own chain of questions about Orthodox exclusivity (already given: "No. Any Orthodox"), he summarizes that admission for the room — a pointed but accurate restatement, not a new direction, and the "standard of goodness" exchange it allegedly buries had already been engaged in the immediately preceding turn. A red herring requires the remark to actually lead the argument away from the point on the table, but this line accurately restates what Jay had just conceded moments before and the debate returns immediately to the substance (Ryan pivoting to "what we are"); it is rhetoric addressed to the room, relevant to the live dispute over who is really "the dogmatist," and Jay's own on-the-spot label ("appeal to the audience fallacy") is commentary about the tactic, not proof that the argument was actually diverted.
- Thesmothetes leave: The three judges disagree only about whether the line fits the red herring label, not about a rule that settles it. Aristotle reads it as cutting off Ryan's mid-sentence pivot to substance ("I'm happy to just talk about what we are") right as the standard-of-good question was about to be answered; Socrates and Plato read it as a true, relevant restatement of Jay's own admission moments earlier ("Any Orthodox"), addressed to the room but not substituting for a completed exchange. Whether this single line actually "led the argument away from the point" is a factual/interpretive judgment about the fit of the label, not something any enumerated rule (the jab tests, use-not-mention, the floor, etc.) resolves, since red herring's own test — not ad hominem's — is what the judges are split on.
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