Appeal: red herring
From Jay Dyer vs Pedro from Crucible Debate: Sola Scriptura and Protestantism.
- #155012:47overturned Pedro psogos: red herring (+2)
The council overturned the call, so no points were given away.
“The knee jerk reaction should be to immediately switch your mind to defending scripture itself, not solescriptura [sola scriptura].”
Diogenes: The objection he has just stated is about the canon list being fallible, and his answer, delivered as his own case, leads the argument onto the reliability and inspiration of scripture — a different question that no one in the room disputes.- Aristotle overturn: On the record: Pedro's opening statement was explicitly structured as (1) defining sola scriptura and (2) pre-scripting responses to anticipated objections; this passage is a straightforward continuation of that second stated purpose — advising how to answer a future objection — not a departure that redirects away from anything currently being argued. A red herring requires an argument already on the table that the speaker's words lead away from. At 12:47 Pedro is still delivering his uninterrupted opening statement, laying out in advance, as a piece of instructional commentary ("the knee jerk reaction should be...") how one should answer the canon objection if and when it arises — no live question from Jay is yet on the table to be diverted from. This is a description/recommendation of a rhetorical strategy, which the rubric treats as mention, not use, of the tactic; the actual deployment of this maneuver against Jay's live canon-authorship question comes later in cross-examination (~33:43–34:26), where it was already correctly caught and scored as begging the question / fallacy spotted rather than as a red herring here.
- Socrates overturn: Read blind, found nothing worth calling. This is Pedro, in his opening statement, describing and recommending a rhetorical strategy for future use ("switch your mind to defending scripture itself, not sola scriptura") rather than actually deploying it against a live objection from Jay, who hasn't spoken yet. Per the use-not-mention principle, describing or recommending a tactic is not the same as committing it; the actual instance of this move (e.g., the "Bible is authoritative, Jesus is authoritative, Jesus is God" chain used to answer the Matthew-authorship objection) was already committed and flagged later at 33:43.
- Plato uphold: On the record: Pedro's declared method for answering the canon-fallibility objection is to redirect toward defending scripture's general reliability and authority rather than the specific epistemic question of the list's contents; this is not abstract commentary on debating but the actual strategy he then executes in his opening and later cross-examination, leading the argument away from the specific point at issue. The objection Pedro states is specifically about the canon list being fallible (how do you know Matthew wrote Matthew, absent the church), but his prescribed answer pivots to establishing general Bible reliability, Jesus's deity, and scripture's overall authority — none of which addresses which particular books belong in the list. Jay later independently notes this same maneuver "actually skirted and bypassed the very issue at heart," confirming the topic-shift was real and recognized on the floor, not merely a description of tactics never executed.
- Thesmothetes overturn: By the rule: use, not mention: describing a fault is not committing it. At 12:47 Jay has not yet given his opening statement or raised any objection; Pedro is still delivering an uninterrupted prepared monologue explicitly framed as a preview of "common objections" and how to answer them ("The next most common... argument we knock down is... The knee jerk reaction should be to immediately switch..."). There is no live claim on the table yet for this to divert from — it is advice on how to respond to a future objection, not an actual redirection executed against one, and Pedro's later, genuine deployment of this move against Jay's live canon-authorship question (~33:43-34:26) was already caught and scored there as begging the question.
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