Tag Archives: Genetic Fallacy

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Do people become Christians because they are born in Christian countries?

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J. Warner Wallace takes on a textbook case of the genetic fallacy.

Excerpt:

The History of the Ancient World
Christianity emerged in a largely Jewish or Pagan culture (a polytheistic mix of religious beliefs within the Roman Empire) completely hostile to the claims of Christianity. History records the hardship faced by 1st Century Christians who concluded Christianity was true and devoted their lives to Jesus. These believers did not become Christians because Christianity was the default religion of the time.

The History of China
China also has a history of religious suppression related to Christianity. The native culture of China has historically embraced some version of Shenism or Taoism. While Christian missionaries labored in China for centuries, their efforts were often suppressed by governmental regimes (like the Communist Party of China). In spite of this suppression and the cultural inclination toward Shenism or Taoism, Christianity has continued to grow as an underground movement, with some reporting as many as 130 million Christians now living in China. These believers did not become Christians because Christianity was the default religion of their region or culture.

The History of Persecution
History has demonstrated Christianity continues to grow in spite of intense persecution. Christians have historically come to faith in regions where Christianity is not the default religion. For this reason, Christians are still the most persecuted religious group in the world, particularly in places like North Korea, Muslim countries, India, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. These suffering believers did not become Christians because Christianity was the default religion of their region or culture.

And he concludes with this:

Millions of Christians have historically demonstrated a willingness to embrace the Christian worldview simply because they found it to be true. In many of these situations, Christianity was not the default position of their family, culture, region or era in history. I was not raised in a Christian home. The one man I respected more than anyone else (my father) has always been a committed atheist. I didn’t know any outspoken Christians growing up, and I was hostile to the claims of Christianity until the age of thirty-five. While I had examined a number of eastern religions, Mormonism, Islam and the Bahá’í Faith, I was eventually persuaded by the evidence of the New Testament gospel eyewitness accounts. On the basis of those accounts, I began an investigation of Christianity and the existence of God. Like so many others, I came to believe Christianity is true, not because of my surrounding influences, but on the strength of the case itself.

I remember Wallace saying in one of his podcasts or in the audio book how he didn’t need anything when he became a Christian. He had a wife and family and a job he loved, which he excelled at. Sometimes, people just investigate things and then go where the evidence leads. My entire family on my mother’s side is Muslim and atheist, and on my father’s side it’s Hindu and some Catholic. No one pressured me into becoming a Christian – I didn’t even go to church until 5 years after my conversion. I am the first evangelical Protestant in my family. No one tries to deter me from it, because they lose the debate. They just haven’t looked into it as much as I have. Usually, what happens is that it all ends up as “do it because we’re your family”. Well, that doesn’t work on me.

Protestant Christianity is what you settle on when you investigate these things seriously, and are willing to live with what you find out. Most people don’t want to live with what they find out. I have Hindus in my family who reject Christianity because of pride in their Indian culture. Others reject it for community reasons – they want to please their parents and relatives. Some in my family reject it because they wont let anything come between them and their pursuit of success, health and wealth. Others simply believe what their professors tell them in order to get good grades. I wasn’t born into Christianity and even as a Christian, I’ve received no mentoring or support, even from people I look up to. I’m very much a lone wolf Christian – the kind that William Lane Craig warns everyone about. Sometimes, you just go where the evidence leads, whether people support you or not. I’ve never cared what people thought of me, or felt pressure to believe as others believe. I think that desire to fit in is a non-Christian trait.

Polemics

Is belief in God explained by chemicals in the brain?

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Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason explains. (H/T Melissa)

As Greg often says, before you can show WHY a belief is false, you know to show THAT a belief is false.

For those of us who are stuck behind a firewall, you can read this article by Paul Copan instead.

Here’s the problem:

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins suggests that our “extraordinary predisposition” to “insist on believing in God” is that we, like computers, tend to do what we’re told. Young minds are susceptible to “infection” and mental “viruses” especially when they latch on to the bad or worthless religious ideas of charismatic preachers and other adults.1 Anthropologist Pascal Boyer believes that the latest “scientific” developments reveal that our “central metaphysical urge”—an “irredeemable human propensity toward superstition, myth and faith, or a special emotion that only religion provides”2 stands at the root of all religion. Author Matthew Alper considers humans to be religious animals whose brains are hard-wired for “God,” though no God exists, and maintains that the “spiritual” is really the “scientific.”3

And here’s the solution:

To say God doesn’t exist because people believe for inferior reasons or motivations is to commit the genetic fallacy—to say that a view is true/false based on its origin. God’s existence, however, is logically independent of how people come to believe in Him.

Consider the strong reasons for God’s existence distinct from human hard-wiring and psychology. The existence of valuable, morally responsible, self-aware, reasoning, living human beings who inhabit a finely tuned universe that came to exist a finite time ago is not plausibly explained naturalistically—namely, as the result of disparate valueless, mindless, lifeless physical processes in a universe that came into existence uncaused out of nothing. The better unifying explanation is a supremely valuable, supremely aware, reasoning, truthful, powerful, intelligent, beautiful Being. Such a context robustly explains—and unifies—a wide range of factors where naturalism fails. If God exists and leaves clues of his existence, then CSR’s reductionistic claims about theistic belief lose their force.

There is a LOT more in the Paul Copan essay on cognitive science of religion (CSR).

And Michael Murray published a book with Oxford University Press on his solution to this problem.

Excerpt:

Critics argue that belief in God is unwarranted because it arises from evolved, hard-wired cognitive mechanism. But, if these psychologists are right, so are many (if not all) of our other beliefs.

“Surely the critic doesn’t want to say that any belief that is the output of our mental tools—our cognitive tools—is unwarranted,” Murray notes, because “we can’t reasonably think that all of our beliefs are unreliable.” Further,

most of these critics think that our cognitive tools usually get things just right. To see this, just substitute the following words (or phrases) into the argument [above] and see if the critic would still find the underlying reasoning acceptable: human minds, rocks, rainbow, or science’s ability to discover the truth.

In other words, “Why do they think it’s fair to single out belief in the existence of God as the one thing that turns out to be unreliable or unwarranted?”

Hence, Murray notes, this sweeping argument is self-defeating. For if all brain-dependent beliefs are unwarranted, then the idea that “belief in God is unwarranted” is itself unwarranted.

Dawkins and many of his peers think this argument shows belief in God to be “merely” a “by-product” of human evolutionary development. Theistic intellectuals like Murray conclude that “God instead, designed us so that belief in him is easy and natural. The human mind is naturally constructed in such a way that we have a tendency to form beliefs in God concepts, and even of a somewhat specific sort.”

So if you believe Koukl, the argument commits the genetic fallacy. But even if you allow it to go through, like Michael Murray does, it’s self-refuting. (You can read more about Murray’s views in “Contending With Christianity’s Critics” and “Passionate Conviction” – and don’t worry about chastising him about his moderate views of intelligent design, I already wrote to him and beat him up about that, and he said it was just a bias / preference he had against intervening acts of fine-tuning subsequent to the moment of creation).

You may also be interested on the original “wish-fulfillment” objection, which Greg Koukl demolishes here. And another Greg Koukl article on whether you are your physical brain, or whether you are your non-physical mind and you have a brain.