William Lane Craig and logical fallacies

by Massimo Pigliucci

Recently a reader posted this video on my Facebook page, asking me what I thought of it. It features theologian extraordinaire William Lane Craig calling Richard Dawkins to task for committing the genetic fallacy.

I’ve had the pleasure of debating Craig twice, a number of years ago. I think it is fair to say that the first debate (on the existence of god) was a draw (it was my very first). During the second (on the existence of the Christian god) I wiped the floor with Craig’s ass, repeatedly. Apparently, by that time I had gotten a degree in philosophy, I knew much more about his rhetorical tricks and pomposity (“Surely, Prof. Pigliucci does not believe that...” — implying that if I believed it, I was a certifiable idiot).

Back to the fallacy stuff. The first segment of the video shows Dawkins addressing someone in the audience who had just told him that his belief in god is no delusion, to which Dawkins replies: “If you had been born in India, I dare say you would be saying the same thing about Lord Krishna and Lord Shiva; if you had been born in Afghanistan I dare say you would be saying the same thing about Allah.” And so on, you get the gist. (The “I dare say” is just as annoying as Craig’s “Surely,” but we’ll let it pass.)

Forward to time stamp 0:37 and you see Craig appearing on the screen, eloquently explaining to us that Dawkins just committed the genetic fallacy, dismissing belief in god because of the way it comes about (i.e., because of its origin). Of course, Dawkins does no such thing, and Craig lands himself straight in the mud of really really bad reasoning.

First, let’s see what the genetic fallacy actually is. The Fallacy Files, an excellent resource on all matters fallacious, classifies it under “informal fallacies” (bear this in mind, it’s important), and particularly as a sub-class of Red Herring, related to the Straw Man and Bandwagon fallacies. The site defines the genetic fallacy as “the most general fallacy of irrelevancy involving the origins or history of an idea. It is fallacious to either endorse or condemn an idea based on its past — rather than on its present — merits or demerits.”

Craig is therefore claiming that Dawkins is dismissing the idea of god just because the guy in the audience believes in a particular god as a result of happenstance (i.e., the fact that he was born at a particular time in a particular place). But a first rule in philosophy (as opposed to sophistry) is that one always interprets an opponent’s argument in the most charitable way, to avoid setting up straw men. Had Craig followed this basic rule of intellectually honest discourse he would have acknowledged that Dawkins’ point was simply to show the arbitrariness of specific religious beliefs. Even if gods exist, it should give one pause that people fervently believe in their own “true” god simply because of an historical accident.

But in fact, this isn’t all there is to the genetic fallacy. The Fallacy Files adds an important caveat to the definition, often neglected by sophists: “unless its past in some way affects its present value.” In other words, there are situations where invoking the origin of an idea or belief is actually pertinent to the discussion, and does not constitute a fallacy at all. This sort of qualification is what makes the genetic (and many, many other fallacies) an informal fallacy, as opposed to formal ones, where there are no qualifications and the reasoning is always bad (an example is affirming the consequent: If p then q. q. Therefore, p — there ain’t no saving this one).

Moreover, Craig goes on to engage in some really bad reasoning of his own (time stamp 1:18). He says (correctly) that psychologists have shown that young children looking at an object disappearing behind a screen and then reappearing at the end of it have the belief that the object continued to exist all along, an example of belief that is hard wired in the human brain. At 1:40 Craig claims (again, correctly) that nobody would say that that belief is false just because it is hard wired, but then immediately proceeds to claim that, similarly, some studies show that belief in god is hard wired (they don’t), and that (1:49) he is “inclined to view this [hard wired belief] as god’s provision.”

To begin with, it doesn’t matter at all what Craig is inclined to believe, inclinations are not arguments. Second, it simply doesn’t follow that because one hard wired belief is true another one also is true (bonus points if you can name that fallacy). For instance, research shows that most people have awful instincts when it comes to probability theory, repeatedly making wrong guesses when it comes to estimating the likelihoods of different outcomes. But perhaps that hardwired belief was also implanted by gods, so that casinos and state lotteries can make a buck.

Lastly, it isn’t clear what hardwired beliefs have to do with Dawkins’ original argument, since he wasn’t talking about that at all, but rather about cultural (i.e., environmental) influences, sort of the opposite of hardwired ones. Unless Craig was somehow trying to say that both cultural and hardwired beliefs are well, beliefs, and should be treated analogously. But in that case he would run straight into a contradiction, because he is now saying that it’s okay for him to be “inclined” to believe that the (actually non existent) hardwired belief in god is the result of god’s will, but is denying Dawkins’ the complementary move of dismissing a belief on the grounds of its (cultural) origin. What a mess! All throughout, of course, Craig appears very convincing because he is highly polished and self assured, and he wears a nice suit (though I question his taste in ties, but I digress — and no, my dislike of Craig’s tie is not meant as an argument against his beliefs).

And you know what the icing on the cake is? At 1:58 Craig actually demands an argument from his opponent (who, I take it, happened to be developmental biologist Lewis Wolpert) to show that god doesn’t exist, when in fact it is Craig (or any other apologist) who owes us an argument for believing in imaginary beings for which there isn’t a single shred of evidence. I’m an a-theist in the same sense in which I’m an a-unicornist, because I don’t see any evidence for the existence of unicorns, and if you are a unicornist, you owe me that evidence, I don’t owe you anything at all, as “any intro to philosophy student” (0:51) ought to know.