Challenge #4 from the April 1 post was…
Christianity is just an emotional crutch for those who need to believe in life after death to make their lives worthwhile. Besides, if you were born in Iraq, you would probably be a Muslim anyway. You are only a Christian because you where born here.
This challenge commits what is known as the genetic fallacy. This is where an argument focuses on the origin of a belief without addressing its justification. CS Lewis coined the term “Bulvarism” (named after some contemporary) in God in the Dock…
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is “wishful thinking.” You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself….If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at arithmetic…but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely mathematical grounds….In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong.
So, if either of the challenges it true, it has no bearing on whether or not our faith in Christ is justified. So, don’t let anyone get you side-tracked arguing over something that has no bearing on the matter at hand.
Greg Koukl goes into detail on answering this challenge here.
Excellent subject. It does make sense that cultural religions of a particular country or region will have a concentration due to the environmental influence. However, how does this argument answer for those within the particular culture embracing another religion? There must be a boil-down point in which those who promote this thinking are held in “the dock” themselves. How do they defend their proposition since there are those who jetison their “birth religion?” If this proposition were true then all home-grown religions would dominate. Does anyone know how this point is answered?
i would first like to begin by saying that those who use the genetic fallacy argument are guilty of the exact same thing they accuse christians of doing.they use their secular humanist views as a crutch for their own insecurities.(am i the only one who ever notices that these people never use that genetic fallacy argument to explain atheism and/or agnosticism)?they say that claiming jesus being THE ONLY WAY to heaven is CLOSED minded(because they say that no one view is any more true than another)but then turn right around & say that secular humanism being THE ONLY WAY to enlightenment is OPEN minded.i’ve come to the conclusion that it is all about ego (their’s) here.