Concept

Fallacies

Intro

A fallacy is a bad pattern of reasoning that often sounds convincing. No true Scotsman, ad hominem, straw man, begging the question, you have probably heard the names. They show up constantly in debates about Christianity, especially online.

This folder is the codex's collection of fallacy pages. Each entry covers what the fallacy actually is, how to spot it, and how to rebut it when it gets thrown at you.

But there is a twist that makes this folder different from most fallacy guides. Half the time, when someone yells that's a fallacy! in an argument, the charge itself is wrong. The fallacy is not actually there. Someone reads a list of fallacies on a poster, then misuses the labels as conversation-stoppers. So every page here includes a section called false-fallacy examples that shows the test for distinguishing real cases from misapplied charges.

Three directions to use the folder. First, when an atheist accuses you of a fallacy, look it up here and check whether the charge actually fits. Second, when you spot a real fallacy in someone else's argument, look up the diagnostic so you can name it cleanly. Third, when you read an apologetic argument yourself, run it through the relevant pages so you do not unknowingly commit the move you would catch in someone else.

This is a working folder that grows as new patterns come up in real conversations.

In full

Master hub for the fallacy collection, informal-logic patterns that recur in apologetic discourse, with diagnostic, rebuttal, and false-fallacy treatment per entry. The collection is organized for both directions of deployment: how to spot and rebut a fallacy when used against you, AND how to recognize when the fallacy charge is misapplied (the most distinctive feature of this folder).

This is a working folder. Entries are added on the §5.4 / autonomous-loop cadence. Each entry follows the shared structure documented at _template.

Why a fallacy folder

Apologetic discourse runs on informal-logic moves. The atheist polemicist deploys named fallacies as conversation-stoppers ("that's the no-true-Scotsman fallacy"; "you're committing the god-of-the-gaps fallacy"; "you're begging the question"). The Christian apologist either (a) confirms the charge and adjusts, (b) shows the charge is misapplied (the fallacy isn't actually present), or (c) turns the principle around and shows the charger commits the same fallacy.

Most popular-fallacy-list resources (rationalwiki.org; Your Logical Fallacy Is; the "thou shalt not commit logical fallacies" poster) are strong on (a) and weak on (b) and (c). This folder corrects that imbalance, every entry includes a "False-fallacy examples" section showing the diagnostic that distinguishes legitimate cases from misapplied charges.

Per-fallacy entry shape

Each entry follows _template:

Frontmatter, type: concept, fallacy_category (informal / formal / rhetorical / cognitive-bias), severity, aliases, parent-concepts
Lead paragraph, definition, canonical form, brief origin
Canonical structure, formal/symbolic form
How to spot it (diagnostic), 3-5 numbered markers
Common apologetic deployment, atheist-against-Christian + Christian counter-deployment when bidirectional
How to rebut it, 2-3 load-bearing rebuttal patterns
False-fallacy examples, cases where the fallacy is named but doesn't apply
When it's actually fallacious, clear cases where the charge sticks
Christian scholarly resources, Walton / Hurley / Copi + apologetic literature
See also, sister fallacies + relevant defeater syllogisms

Catalog

Informal fallacies, core 15

Fallacy	Apologetic deployment	False-fallacy diagnostic
No True Scotsman Fallacy	"Crusaders weren't real Christians" charged as NTS	Doctrinal-content distinction: NT supplies pre-existing internal-standard ([[Matthew 7.21
Genetic Fallacy	"you only believe Christianity because raised Christian"	Belief-genesis ≠ belief-truth (universally applied principle)
Ad Hominem	"Christian leader X is a hypocrite, therefore Christianity is false"	Three sub-types (abusive / circumstantial / tu quoque); engage substance
Straw Man	atheist caricature of Christian doctrine (e.g., "Christians believe a magic-Sky-Daddy")	Steel-man the actual position; cite primary doctrinal sources
Equivocation	shifting between two senses of "faith" / "evidence" / "religion" / "god"	Lexical-disambiguation defeater pattern
Begging the Question	"the Bible can't be evidence for itself" / "miracles can't happen because nature is uniform"	Premise / conclusion overlap test; methodological-vs-metaphysical-naturalism distinction
False Dilemma	"either science OR faith / either reason OR religion"	The third (or fourth, fifth) option that fits the evidence
Argument from Ignorance	"you can't prove God exists" / "absence of evidence is evidence of absence"	IBE-vs-gap-reasoning distinction (see God of the Gaps)
Special Pleading	"Christianity gets a free pass because it's special"	Universalizable principle test; exemption requires principled justification; aseity-based Kalam P1 exception + skeptical theism false-fallacy diagnostics
Appeal to Popularity (ad populum)	"most scientists are atheists, therefore atheism is true"	Truth ≠ majority opinion; appeal-to-experts is distinct (and conditional)
Appeal to Authority (ad verecundiam)	citing scholar X without engaging the argument	Distinguishes legitimate testimony from fallacious appeal-to-authority-alone
Slippery Slope	"if you accept Christianity, next you'll accept anything"	Distinguishes fallacious from genuine causal-chain arguments
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc / Cum Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc	misuse of correlation in evidential apologetics	Distinguishes correlation from genuine causal evidence
Composition and Division	"if every part is X, the whole is X" / reverse	Population-vs-individual claim taxonomy
Tu Quoque	"but Christians do bad things too"	When valid (exposing inconsistency) vs fallacious (evading the substance)

Higher-order / rhetorical fallacies

Fallacy	Apologetic deployment
Loaded Question (complex question)	"have you stopped beating your wife?" structure in atheist questions
Appeal to Consequences (ad consequentiam)	"if Christianity is false, life has no meaning, therefore..." (the move runs both ways)
Is-Ought Fallacy (Hume's guillotine)	naturalistic fallacy in moral arguments; foundational for moral-argument apologetics
Moralistic Fallacy	the reverse of is-ought; ought-to-is move
God of the Gaps	covered as concept + paired defeater syllogism

Cognitive biases (boundary cases between fallacies and biases)

Bias	Apologetic relevance
Confirmation Bias	"you only see the evidence that supports your faith" (cuts both ways); Wason 1960 2-4-6 task; bidirectional charge; Christianity's substantive falsifiers ([[1 Corinthians 15.14
Survivorship Bias	answered-prayer / miracle-collection criticism; Wald bomber-armor template; Lourdes Bureau as structural denominator-control; [[Hebrews 11
Availability Heuristic	Tversky-Kahneman 1973 cognitive shortcut where retrievability is misread as frequency; New Atheist iconic-cases-stand-in-for-category pattern (Crusades / Galileo / Salem / Stalin); Christian deployments equally vulnerable; symmetric diagnosis with base-rate-engagement + missing-cases + cognitive-structure-naming as the three rebuttal patterns

Reading guide

For deployment, when you encounter a fallacy charge in conversation, navigate to the entry, read the "How to rebut it" section first, then the "False-fallacy examples" if the charge seems misapplied.
For preparation, when preparing for a debate, work through the entries that fit the topic. Most New Atheist-style debates rely on a small number (genetic / no-true-Scotsman / god-of-the-gaps / equivocation / ad hominem); pre-loading the rebuttal patterns is high-leverage.
For taxonomy, the catalog table above shows category, status, and load-bearing diagnostic; it's the fast index when you're searching for a specific fallacy.

What this folder is NOT

Not a replacement for substantive apologetic engagement. Naming a fallacy is not winning an argument, it identifies a logical-structural problem that may or may not be present. Engage the substance.
Not a license to charge fallacy promiscuously. False-fallacy charges are themselves rhetorical fouls. Each entry's "When it's actually fallacious" + "False-fallacy examples" sections are equally important.
Not a survey of every fallacy named in informal-logic literature. Fallacy-list resources catalog 100+ entries; this folder focuses on the ~20-25 that recur in apologetic discourse, treated in depth.

Christian scholarly resources

Douglas Walton, Informal Logic 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 2008), the standard academic taxonomy of informal fallacies
Patrick Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic (Cengage, multiple eds.), the standard critical-thinking textbook used in undergraduate courses
Irving Copi, Carl Cohen, & Kenneth McMahon, Introduction to Logic (Routledge, 14th ed.), alternate canonical textbook
Norman Geisler & Ronald Brooks, Come, Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking (Baker, 1990), explicitly Christian-apologetic logic primer
Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God (Ignatius, 2017), classical-theist arguments + treatment of common atheist fallacy-charges
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000), the de jure objection's structure analyzed with attention to genetic-fallacy patterns
Antony Flew, Thinking about Thinking: Do I Sincerely Want to Be Right? (Collins, 1975), origin of the "No True Scotsman" formulation
John Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists Are Missing the Target (Lion, 2011), popular-academic engagement with New Atheist informal-logic moves
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith 3rd ed. (Crossway, 2008), engages many of these fallacy-charges in apologetic context