Appeal: appeal to authority
From Jay Dyer vs Styx Debate Abortion – Pro-Life vs Government Overreach.
- #154322:13upheld Styxhexenhammer666 psogos: appeal to authority (+2)
The council upheld the call: Styxhexenhammer666 gave away 2 points.
“That's when the breath of life enters the infant according to the bible, at least the the King James version.”
Diogenes: Styx rests his cutoff on the authority of a text he insists is in the New Testament and then admits at 23:11 "I can't remember the exact verse," yet keeps asserting its content as settled.- Aristotle uphold: On the record: Styx has held throughout a pragmatic-consequentialist, non-scripture-grounded case; this scriptural claim is an ad hoc rhetorical thrust against Jay's own professed authority (the Bible/Orthodoxy) rather than his standing framework, but the fallacy's elements (authority invoked, unsupported when challenged, pressed on regardless) are independently present in this stretch of the transcript. The verified record shows Styx asserts a specific doctrinal claim ("breath of life enters... according to the Bible, King James version"), insists it is New Testament when Jay locates a different (Old Testament) text, and when he cannot produce the verse ("I can't remember the exact verse, but it—") does not retract the content but continues asserting it and pivots away (rejecting the church fathers' contrary reading, then to demographics) rather than supporting or withdrawing the claim. That is an appeal to an unverified textual authority pressed past the point where the speaker can substantiate it, which is the fallacy as named.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. Styx is engaging Jay on Jay's own accepted authority (scripture) to argue that even within a biblical framework the moment life/ensoulment begins is contested, feeding his later point that the KJV-reading Protestant majority (not Orthodoxy) is the operative religious culture for US policy. He states it with some confidence but, when pressed for the verse, immediately concedes uncertainty and offers to look it up rather than bluffing it as settled — that is honest hedging, not a dogmatic appeal to authority substituting for argument.
- Plato uphold: On the record: S0's framework rests on pragmatic consequentialism with no stated moral realism, so his invocation of "the bible... King James version" here functions as an internal-critique appeal to Jay's own authority (scripture) to argue life begins at quickening rather than conception; he never departs from raising this point, but he also never substantiates it. S0 asserts a specific New Testament basis for the quickening claim, admits at 23:11 he cannot remember the verse, and nonetheless presses on rejecting the patristic consensus and pivoting away rather than withdrawing or qualifying the claim — an unsupported citation kept in play as though settled is precisely the evidence-collapses-to-appeal-to-authority pattern the rubric describes, and major fits given he keeps building on it (rejecting the fathers, changing topic) without ever producing or retracting the claim.
- Thesmothetes uphold: By the rule: authority cited in place of a reason. At 22:06 Styx names "the bible... King James version" as the source for the substantive doctrinal claim that "breath of life enters the infant" at quickening, but never once produces or explains the actual text; when Jay locates a specific passage (Exodus 19-22) that says otherwise, Styx insists on a New Testament source, guesses at First Corinthians, and at 23:11 admits "I can't remember the exact verse" — yet in the same breath restates the conclusion ("but it essentially states that life begins with quickening") rather than withdrawing it, then pivots to a demographic argument about which denomination is dominant in the US rather than ever supplying the reasoning the citation was standing in for. That is the authority named in place of the reason, pressed on after the speaker concedes he cannot supply it, which is squarely what the rule catches; Socrates's characterization of this as an "immediate concession" that ends the claim is not borne out by the transcript, since the assertion is restated, not retracted, in the very sentence containing the admission.
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