Appeal: red herring
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #128523:09upheld Pastor P psogos: red herring (+1) tempered from major to minor
The council upheld the call: Pastor P gave away 1 point.
“… everyone that came to my church was a former Catholic or Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox. And they were they came I'll use the word ignorant. I don't I don't mean to put them down, but they came knowing nothing of the word of God.”
Diogenes: With Dyer's canon and multiple-referent arguments on the table, and the moderator having just asked him to address his opponent, he answers with an anecdote about lay ignorance, which bears on neither question.The bench graded it minor (Aristotle, Plato); the referee had major.
- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Pastor P's declared and consistently-held position since the opening is that the perfect written word outranks the fallible church, defended mainly by assertion, personal testimony, and appeals to divine blessing rather than by engaging his opponent's specific textual/historical arguments; the called line is a continuation of that same pattern of substituting personal narrative for direct engagement, not a new departure. The quoted anecdote is not merely background color: it is delivered exactly where the moderator has twice, explicitly, asked Pastor P to stop and "address the arguments Jay was making" (22:27, 23:56), and Pastor P instead tells a personal story about ignorant former-Catholic/Orthodox converts, which bears on neither Dyer's multiple-referents-of-"word of God" claim nor his apostolic-succession/canon claim. It is true that the anecdote eventually winds toward "the church can't add to or take away from the word of God" (24:46-51), but that landing point is simply a restatement of Pastor P's own opening thesis (Scripture is perfect, unchangeable) rather than an engagement with the specific arguments on the table (multiple referents; apostolic-succession basis for canon), and it only arrives after the moderator's second redirect, confirming the anecdote itself was substituting for, not accompanying, an answer at the moment it was given.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "hasty generalization", on the same ledger as the callout. Having just been redirected by the moderator to address Jay's actual arguments, Pastor P instead offers a personal anecdote and generalizes from it: "everyone that came to my church was a former Catholic or Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox... they came knowing nothing of the word of God." A self-selected sample of people who had already left their churches to join his Baptist congregation is not a representative basis for the sweeping claim that Orthodox/Catholic laity as such are biblically "ignorant," and no further evidence is offered to support the generalization beyond his own experience.
- Plato uphold: On the record: S1's opening and standing position is that the perfect written word outranks the fallible church/councils; here, rather than engaging Jay's specific opening arguments about tradition and canon, he departs into an unrelated personal anecdote in direct response to the moderator's request to address those arguments. The moderator had just explicitly redirected S1 to "address the arguments Jay was making" (Jay's opening points on the multi-referent "word of God" and church-mediated canon/apostolic tradition). Instead of engaging either point, S1 pivots to a personal-ministry anecdote about ex-Orthodox congregants being biblically "ignorant," which bears on neither of Jay's live arguments. The moderator interrupts again seconds later with the same request, confirming the anecdote did not engage the point on the table. This is a clean instance of leading the discussion away from the question actually asked, not a jab and not mere rhetorical color, since it substitutes for an answer rather than accompanying one.
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