The Genetic Fallacy is acceptance and rejection of ideas, not on their merits, but on the basis of who is speaking them, of tribal bonds, political allegiances, and ecclesial affiliations

Arguing Well by Avoiding the Genetic Fallacy

by Mark P. Shea

Fixating on who uttered an idea or argument can distract us 

from whether or not it is true or false

It is often said that faith (and, if comes to that, culture) is “caught, not taught.” A massive amount of what we believe most deeply comes to us, not from engagement in abstract arguments about ethics, philosophy, or theology, but from somebody we love. Indeed, the inadequacy of the mere intellect against the volcanic forces of the heart is a well-known principle we all understand in practice. As C.S. Lewis said:


No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that “a gentleman does not cheat,” than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers.

We are social animals and our habit of imprinting on somebody we trust, of forming tribal bonds, of having faith in those we love and distrust of those we dislike is an enormously powerful feature built-in at the baby factory. Before you ever learn about abstract ethics at school, you know in your bones that you’d trust your Uncle George with your life, that the Hatfields are dirty lying cheats that decent people don’t trust as far they can throw them, that Mama has never lied to you and that Father Malone may be a gruff old coot but he’s a saint and the salt of the earth. We learn what we love and hate in very large measure from the fact that people we love find certain things lovable and other things loathsome.
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