Appeal: misrepresentation
From Jay Dyer vs Pastor P Debate Orthodoxy vs Protestantism, Sola Scriptura and Church History.
- #129024:45upheld Pastor P psogos: misrepresentation (+2)
The council upheld the call: Pastor P gave away 2 points.
“… so the the church can't change the word of god. We can't add to it. We can't take away from it.”
Diogenes: He answers a claim Dyer never made — Dyer argued the church recognised and transmitted the canon, not that it may change God's word — and when challenged he could not point to where the argument was made.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Pastor P's declared and consistently held position is that Scripture is perfect and superior to fallible councils/churches; the called line, however, comes as the punchline of an anecdote about a different (Catholic/Orthodox) priest's "we wrote it, we can add the apocrypha" boast, which P then redeploys as though it answers Jay's actual opening argument that the church has historical/tradition-based authority to recognize and transmit the canon (including the deuterocanon) — a position Jay never stated as "the church can change/add to scripture at will.". The transcript shows Jay immediately tests this: "Did you hear me make that argument that the church changed the word of god?" and Pastor P cannot point to any such statement, retreating instead to "you said the church has had oversight" — then, when Jay distinguishes oversight from change, P offers no textual support and simply conflates the two ("well, maybe not to you, but how come they could"). This is a textbook case of answering a claim the opponent did not make and being unable to locate it in the record when challenged, which is exactly what misrepresentation requires.
- Socrates uphold: Read blind, found "misrepresentation". Pastor P frames this line as a rebuttal to Jay, but Jay had never argued that the church can "change" or "add to" the word of God — his opening claimed only that the church exercises oversight/tradition in transmitting and canonizing the text. Pastor P conflates the crude claim of an anecdotal priest ("we can add the apocrypha... make changes wherever we feel like") with Jay's actual position, and when Jay immediately objects ("Did you hear me make that argument... do you think oversight and change mean the same thing?"), Pastor P cannot sustain the equation ("Well, maybe not to you"), confirming he had attributed to Jay a claim the transcript shows he did not make.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Pastor P's opening thesis, held throughout, is that the perfect written word outranks fallible churches/councils; nothing in that record commits him to claiming Jay argued the church may "change" scripture, and this line inserts that claim into the exchange precisely where he was asked to answer Jay's actual (different) argument. The moderator had just asked S1 to address Jay's opening arguments; S1 responds with an anecdote about a Catholic/Orthodox priest who allegedly said "we wrote it... we can add the apocrypha... make changes wherever we feel like," and caps it with "the church can't change the word of god. We can't add to it. We can't take away from it" — framed, in context, as his rebuttal to Jay. But Jay's actual opening claim was that the church's tradition recognizes/transmits which texts are apostolic and preserves the canon (15:07, 19:54), never that the church may freely "add to" or "change" scripture at will. Jay's immediate on-record challenge ("Did you hear me make that argument that the church changed the word of god?") is answered by S1 retreating to a vaguer paraphrase ("you said... the church has had oversight"), and S1 never identifies where Jay said this. This is a defensible instance of answering a claim never made, dressed as a rebuttal to the opponent, rather than a restatement of a standing objection on the record.
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