"You're Only Catholic Because..."

“You’re only Catholic because you were born in America.  If you were born in Iraq you’d be Muslim.”  So runs a common objection to religion in general.  Religious belief, so says the objection, is not based on truth, but on geography and custom.  And if religion isn’t based on truth, it shouldn’t be believed.  How can we answer such an objection?

First, we must concede that religion is, generally speaking, geographically predictable.  Looking at a map of the world, religious groupings are generally geographic, and people tend to be the religion of their families.  But we have to ask further, what does this say about the truth claims religions make? 

Nothing.  The objection may say something about anthropology or human psychology, but this objection says nothing about whether or not the claims of any religion are true.  The objection short-circuits questions about evidence or truth, and that is the fatal flaw in the objection.  How, then, can we respond?

First, if the person making the objection happened to be raised Catholic or Christian, it can be pointed out that the objector’s own experience contradicts his objection.  If the objection holds that “you’re only Catholic because you were born into a Catholic family,” the objector should be Catholic!  The objector himself is a counter-example to his own argument.

More fatal to the objection, however, is that it is a clear example of a logical fallacy known as the Genetic Fallacy.  The Genetic Fallacy is when a belief is attributed solely to someone's history or the belief’s source.  For instance, “you’re only a Democrat because your dad was,” or “you’re only a capitalist because you were born in America.”  The fallacy fails to assess the claim on its own merit. But a good argument must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question.  Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are irrelevant to its merits.

Moreover, the objection and the fallacy it entails can cut both ways.  One could similarly reply to the objector that he is only skeptical because he was raised in a skeptical culture, or a culture antithetical to religion, or because he went to a secular university with atheist professors!  This might drive home to the objector the problem of the fallacy.

The bottom line is that religious claims need to be evaluated on their truth or fallacy, on the evidence for the claims, and the merits of the arguments.  This objection is irrelevant to any of those questions.  It’s an intellectually lazy red-herring that refuses to engage the real issue of truth.