I love philosophy. It is the field of study that every single other field depends on. You cannot do science without doing philosophy, you cannot do language studies without philosophy; virtually everything in some way falls under the umbrella of philosophy. I started this blog to write about philosophy and philosophical apologetics for Christianity, but I've not actually done that until now. This is part one of a two-part conversation concerning the very real and practical claim against Christianity that people don't believe in Christ because of hypocritical Christians. Part 1 talks about the Genetic Fallacy itself, and Part 2 talks about why claiming "I don't believe in Christ because Christians are hypocritical", though a very real and understandable claim, is a bad reason not to believe in Christ.
In philosophy, there are several mistakes in reasoning that one can commit. One of the most common of those is called the Genetic Fallacy. The Genetic Fallacy isn't hard to understand; you probably use it or recognize it often. A person committing the Genetic Fallacy is finding fault with a belief or a truth claim based on it's supposed origin. A good example that I hear quite often from my liberal friends is "Because [insert truth claim] came from Glen Beck/Fox News, it's not true". Independent of the merits of the claim itself, a conclusion about a claim is formed on the sole basis of it's origin. It fails to assess the claim on it's merit by refusing to examine the evidence for and against the claim. While that wasn't a plug for either Glen Beck or Fox News, I hope you get the point.
For Christians, it is important to be familiar with the Genetic Fallacy for several reasons. For one, it gets used against us quite often. A very common form of the Genetic Fallacy against Christians (and one that was used on me the other day) is "You only believe in Jesus Christ because that is what you were told to believe by your parents/friends/pastor". Regardless of how I came to form my belief that Jesus Christ is God, the question is whether or not the claim is true; namely, that Jesus Christ is God. Saying that the claim is false simply because of how I came to hold that belief is to ignore the merits of my belief/claim and judge it by false merits. Another common example is "I don't believe what the Bible says about Jesus Christ because the New Testament was written by Christians". When you think about it, that is such a silly claim. If the New Testament as we have it is false because it was written by Christians, would the New Testament be true if it were written by pagans? Of course not. Just because the New Testament was written by Christians does nothing to disprove what they are saying. Indeed, Luke has been shown over and over again to be a very solid historian when writing Luke and Acts, even though he was a Christian. If we aren't careful, we can get trapped in a corner with no good reason other than our own ignorance of how to handle a faulty objection.
Christians who make an effort not to commit the Genetic Fallacy are doing a huge service to both themselves and society. By resolving to not commit the Genetic Fallacy when having discussions about faith or politics, you are granting a massive amount of grace to people who believe differently than you. By being willing to show evidence as to why you think someone is wrong (and subsequently showing evidence for your own beliefs) instead of assuming they are wrong from the start, you open the door for an opportunity to show the other person good, solid reasons why his/her belief is wrong are yours are right. Not only that, you show that you care about the person himself/herself because you are taking an interest in his/her beliefs and treat them seriously. Of course I believe that Muslims and atheists are wrong in their beliefs about God, but I don't assume everything that they say is wrong from the start. How they came to become a Muslim or an atheist or whatever is irrelevant to whether or not what they are saying is true or not. I let evidence decide. By letting evidence be the reason why you discount the belief, you are being a solid representative of Christ. Of course, being familiar with evidence means studying and research and understanding. Failure to do any of those is to handicap you beyond repair. Do your homework, but make sure you understand the facts. Trust me, you don't want to be a "quote mine" unless you can explain the ins and outs of your quotes!
The next post will be about the relationship of the claim "I don't believe that Christ is God because of hypocritical Christians" and the Genetic Fallacy. If you have ever wrestled with that claim, either from yourself or someone else, you will want to check out the next post.
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