Christianity (and all religions) absolutely do have this same problem! Jesus' philosophy is (IMO) quite good, but it doesn't make sense to ignore the thousands of years of what has been done in the name of the religion when evaluating it. Both things matter. A nuanced view of a movement includes both evaluating its principles, and considering what people have done with those principles as the movement has met reality and evolved over time.
Well, I think it's a step too far to evaluate principles based on what people do in your name. If I do something in your name, that shouldn't bring into question your principles. And if it does, that's people not thinking clearly.
I'm just saying: It's not irrelevant to consider what people who profess to be living by the principles of a movement have actually done in reality. It's fine to say "well, by my understanding of the principles, those people were not actually doing it right". (That's certainly how I feel about a bunch of stuff that has been done in the name of Christianity!) But that doesn't make their behavior irrelevant.
Point I'm making is they may well not being living by those principles. I could say Atkins doesn't work because I do Atkins and its claims don't live up, but if I'm not actually doing that then that has zero reflection on the diet, and purely reflects on me.
No, that does reflect on the diet. And, again, this is what "no true scotsman" is all about. Or, if you like, it's the same as "communism has never been tried". If "the Atkins diet works" but it doesn't work for most people because "they just aren't doing it right", then no, it doesn't work; if it did, people would do it right, and it would work.
The actual aggregate outcome of ideas / principles / movements matters, in addition to their intentions.
For what it's worth, I think the major religions actually hold up fairly well to this level of scrutiny, despite all of them having major obvious failures in the particular, and that that's a big contributor to their longevity. For instance (just because it happens to be Christianity that I know the most about), it is notable that when Martin Luther put up his demands for Church reform, he was rejecting very specific behavior that had become ingrained in practice, rather than the foundational principles of the religion. Despite being essentially a radical reformer, he thought the principles were nonetheless good.
Maybe effective altruism will also have staying power, because maybe its principles will also stand the test of time, and its scandals fade. But I think people who care about it shouldn't just rest on their laurels and assume that will happen! I think people should be aware that if most people are "doing it wrong" then they aren't actually doing it wrong, it just is what it is.
> if it did, people would do it right, and it would work
No, that's a non sequitur. People aren't machines following rules. It's hard to stick to principles. Saying "if love thy neighbour worked, people would do it right, and it would work" is just not right. It would work if we did it, but we don't do it.
It isn't a non sequitur! The circularity you're responding to in what I said is implicit in all these "no true scotsman" issues.
Maybe I'm not being explicit enough: It is not effective to just have principles, and then when it turns out that nobody is following them, keep saying "well if people would just follow the principles, it would work!". What is effective is to develop practices that reinforce the principles.
So Christianity didn't just write down "love thy neighbor" as a principle, it developed a practice - going to church - to continuously reinforce that principle, and in practice that has worked out very imperfectly but also much better than most things (like the Atkins diet!). And indeed, I think a big part of the problem with contemporary political Christianity in the US / Christian nationalism, is that it doesn't emphasize this kind of praxis, but rather mere identity and sloganeering. And that doesn't work!
