{"id":81171,"date":"2019-05-06T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T11:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=81171"},"modified":"2019-05-06T06:32:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T10:32:28","slug":"samuel-jmes-the-besetting-sin-of-christian-worldview-education-why-do-many-evangelicals-fail-to-recognize-the-genetic-fallacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=81171","title":{"rendered":"Samuel James&#8211;The Besetting Sin of Christian Worldview Education: Why do many evangelicals fail to recognize the genetic fallacy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The besetting sin of Christian worldview education is the genetic fallacy, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/genetic-fallacy\">defined<\/a> as an irrational error made by appealing to something\u2019s origin (or \u201ctemporal order\u201d) to explain away its truth-claims (or \u201clogical order\u201d). Here\u2019s an example of how someone using the genetic fallacy (GF) might respond to various arguments:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A: \u201cPolitics is downstream from culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>GF: \u201cAndrew Breitbart said that, and he was a right-wing troll, so you\u2019re obviously wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>B: \u201cThe unanimous testimony of Scripture is that homosexual acts are sinful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>GF: \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what Westboro Baptist Church says. Do we really want to be like them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>C: \u201cHow well or poorly policies and systems treat minorities matters to God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>GF: \u201cProgressive Democrats talk about systemic injustice all the time. This is just code for abortion\/socialism.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Notice that in each example of the genetic fallacy, the retort is <em>factually true. <\/em>Andrew Breitbart DID say that politics was downstream from culture, and he DID popularize a belligerent style of journalism. Westboro Baptist Church DOES preach against homosexuality, and they ARE a horribly cruel cult. Progressives DO talk a lot about systemic injustice, and they often DO mean abortion and socialism as part of the solution. The retorts are true, or at least believable.<\/p>\n<p>So if the retorts are true, why are these answers fallacious? Because they do not answer the actual question. Statements A, B, C make independent  claims that stand alone. By invoking a suspect source and then critiquing it, the responses are actually responding to a claim\u2014about the worthiness of the source\u2014that\u2019s not being made. In other words, the retorts don\u2019t actually tell us anything about <em>the validity of the claim<\/em>, only the validity of <em>people <\/em>who make similar claims.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/jihadists-kill-pastor-four-others-burkina-church-attack-111415589.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The besetting sin of Christian worldview education is the genetic fallacy, defined as an irrational error made by appealing to something\u2019s origin (or \u201ctemporal order\u201d) to explain away its truth-claims (or \u201clogical order\u201d). Here\u2019s an example of how someone using<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=81171\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,419,117,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-evangelicals","category-philosophy","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81175,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81171\/revisions\/81175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}