Defending a religion by disowning its bad acts hides causes within the tradition

Evidence

When Communists declare that Stalinism wasn’t really communism, or when Christians and Muslims claim that the horrific things some Christians and Muslims have done in the name of their religion isn’t really Christianity or Islam, what are they doing? They are protecting their ideology or the religion from the terrible things that occur in its name. They claim only the good stuff. What gets lost in all of this is that the bad stuff may very well tell us something important about communism, Christianity, or Islam—that there may be something in the ideology and in the traditions themselves that gives rise to the ugly and horrific things some people do in its name. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 221

Categorization

• SEED: A usable essay angle: the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy as applied to religion commits the same analytic error on left and right — the ugly acts are data, not contamination.
• XREF: connects to: Religion bundles separable traits whose conflict roles must be disaggregated

Broader Connections

• Religion bundles separable traits whose conflict roles must be disaggregated #expands (0.80)