Intro
This article is inspired from a video Randal Rauser made in response to something Wes Huff said, and it involves what is known as the “Meager Moral Fruits Argument” (MMFA). The MMFA objects to the truth of Christianity by saying Christians have done terrible things or that Christians are at least not morally superior (though one could dispute the idea that Christianity does not have a positive behavioral influence). Wes Huff made a rebuttal to one version of this argument (the rhetorical question being, “Christians have done terrible things; how can you possibly believe in Christianity?”) and Randal Rauser gave his response. In this article I’ll explain how I don’t think Rauser’s response quite succeeds in addition to critiquing the MMFA itself.
An Ad Hominem Fallacy?
First, when we say “Christians have done terrible things,” how exactly are we defining “Christian”? The everyday definition of “Christian” seems to be something like (a) someone who accepts certain religious beliefs; and (b) self-identifies as Christian. Complicating criterion (a) is the fact that there are multiple varieties of Christian religious belief sets, but for our purposes let’s use the specific example of the Nicene Creed (alternatively, we could also use the Apostles’ Creed). Let’s call this the “broad sense” of Christian. Let’s also assume arguendo that not only have Christians done terrible things, but Christians are no better than the average person.
For those trained in logic and critical thinking, there seems to be an obvious problem with the MMFA we’re discussing: at first blush at least, it seems to commit the ad hominem fallacy, i.e., the fallacy of judging the truth of a belief by the qualities of its adherents. For example, if data were to show that atheists were morally worse on average, this would not be good evidence that atheism is false (I think atheism is false, but we shouldn’t use fallacious arguments against it!). Similarly, one cannot judge the truth of Christianity by the misdeeds of its adherents; that would seem to be a fallacious argument against Christianity.
One argument I’ve seen is that Christianity promises that Christians will be good people, but if we’re using “Christian” in the sense described earlier, it is dubious that Christianity does teach that. Notably, neither the Nicene Creed nor the Apostles’ Creed says that those who accept their creeds will be good people. So while some Christians may think that Christians are morally superior on average, that is not something that Christianity per se teaches.
If one thinks that the New Testament teaches that Christians (again, in the broad sense of the term) will necessarily be better people, one might be disappointed to find passages like Matthew 7:21-23 and James 2:14-24. In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus prophecies that not all who call him Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven (indeed, he says many such people will not enter heaven), but only those who do the will of the Father. James 2:14-20 discusses faith (which in this context seems to refer to having correct theological beliefs), saying that faith without works is dead, and warns against relying on mere faith for salvation (see especially James 2:19). If we are to accept the truth of these passages, it’s clear that any saving faith is the sort that disposes one to do good deeds and refrain from evil. This is perhaps not surprising; can one truly be a follower of Jesus if one does not follow his way?
At any rate, if Christianity does not teach that Christians (in the broad sense) will be good people, this is a serious problem for those who think Christians not being good people is evidence against Christianity. After all, atheism per se doesn’t carry the expectation that atheists will be good people, so the fact (if it were true) that atheists are morally inferior wouldn’t be evidence against atheism. Similarly, if Christianity per se doesn’t carry the expectation that Christians (in the broad sense) will be good people (e.g., it isn’t part of the Nicene Creed), this is problematic for those who think bad Christians is evidence against Christianity; that would smell too much like an ad hominem fallacy.
Wes Huff versus Randal Rauser
Wes Huff responds to the “Christians have done terrible things; how can you possibly believe in Christianity?” rhetorical question with an analogy: “if you judge Beethoven on my ability to play the cello, you’d be getting a few things wrong, wouldn’t you?”
Randal Rauser unfortunately immediately responds with a straw man at 5:17 to 5:36, satirically saying, “Stupid skeptics; you shouldn’t judge Christians on their ability to follow Jesus.” In case you didn’t notice the difference between Wes Huff’s actual position and the position Rauser ascribed to him in 5:17 to 5:36, consider the following:
| (a) | Ascribed position: You shouldn’t judge Christians on their ability to follow Jesus. |
| (b) | Actual position: You shouldn’t judge the truth of Christianity on the bad behavior of Christians. |
Position (a) is clearly a straw man of (b). Wes Huff’s point is that just as we can't judge Beethoven's music by people practicing it badly, so too can we not judge the truth of Christianity by its adherents practicing it badly.
As much as I like Randal Rauser and I appreciate his importance of critiquing Christian apologists, he does sometimes misrepresent the people he critiques. To use another example, when critiquing William Lane Craig’s view on the slaughter of the Canaanites, at 7:48 to 8:06 Rauser falsely claims that Craig just said, “Don't kill the children quickly and painlessly, the children need to die in a very painful way,” when Craig didn’t say that at all in the source Rauser cited. I actually agree with Rauser that God never commanded the slaughter in the first place, and I recommend his book Jesus Loves Canaanites where inter alia he explains excellent principles of exegesis and a view of Biblical inerrancy that is worthy of Christian thought. Even so, I also recommend people watching his YouTube channel to be cautious about how he portrays his opponents. Randal Rauser is highly intelligent and well-educated, but even he is not immune to the scourge of straw men that plague the internet.
With that criticism of Rauser’s video aside, Rauser has more to say. He also asserts that Christians claim that when you become a disciple of Jesus, the Holy Spirit dwells within you, and so the fact that Christians aren’t such good people counts against this theological belief.
Let’s assume that what Rauser says is true here; how exactly does it have any bearing on what Wes Huff says in the clip in question? The topic is not whether bad Christian behavior refutes this particular theological belief, but whether the bad behavior of refutes Christianity. As popular as the aforementioned theological belief may be among Christians, this theological belief is not part of the Nicene Creed nor the Apostle’s Creed. One could easily be a Christian and not adhere to the theological belief Rauser talks about here. As far as attacking the truth of Christianity itself, the argument from bad Christian behavior still smells like an ad hominem fallacy.
One could try to fix this problem by changing the target from Christianity in general to just arguing against this particular theological belief. Even if we ignore the problems with this (for example, a Christian might think that being a “disciple of Jesus” involves more than mere belief and self-identification but also a saving faith that disposes one to not be the sort of people that Jesus talks about in Matthew 7:21-23), there’s the matter that if you switch the target from mere Christianity to this particular theological belief, the argument ceases to be one against Christianity itself, and so no longer becomes relevant to the point Wes Huff was making.
Randal Rauser proposes an alternate illustration to Wes Huff’s cello-playing analogy.
If you claim you were being taught to play the cello by the world’s greatest cello player, you should expect in the people who profess to be students of that individual evidence that they are in fact really good cello players; and if they’re not really good cello players that is evidence of one of two things: either they’re not being taught by the world’s greatest cello player, in which case, you know, equivalent to the church not being true followers of God, or it’s evidence that this person is in fact not the world’s greatest cello player. Thus, by equivalence, evidence that Christianity is not true.Note that for the objection to be relevant to what Wes Huff was claiming in the clip under discussion, it would have to be the latter possibility, viz., evidence that Christianity is not true. This is an interesting objection, and while Rauser doesn’t claim this objection works in the video, it is worth addressing. I think the analogy in question is a weak one, so consider this alternative: suppose a fantastic teacher wrote a splendid book about how to improve one’s skill at playing the cello, but for cultural reasons, many people who call themselves followers of this teacher don’t actually do what the teacher teaches despite the book’s clear instructions. If those followers end up not playing the cello well due to not doing what the teacher recommended, this is not good evidence that the teacher’s teachings are incorrect! Similarly, if people calling themselves Christians do not follow the teachings of Jesus, this is not good evidence that Jesus the moral instructor is at fault, especially if Jesus gave the warning he did at Matthew 7:21-23. The fact that many people claiming to be followers of Jesus don’t really follow Jesus’ teachings would also not be good evidence that the Nicene Creed is false. In short, we still seem to have an ad hominem fallacy if we're to use bad Christians as evidence against Christianity, and no amount of cello playing illustrations seems likely to change that.
Steelman
Can we steelman the MMFA so that it is not such a terrible argument against Christianity? Kind of. One could use transform the MMFA to be an argument from evil due to the fact that God permits Christians (among other people!) to do terrible things without God stopping them. However, I get the impression that this isn’t the type of reasoning the MMFA is employing (after all, there’s little point in focusing on Christians exclusively if the reasoning is simply that God would not allow people to behave so terribly); rather, it seems to be something more along the lines of that if Christianity were true then Christians would not try to perform such evil in the first place, whether or not God would stop them from doing so. As such, I still think MMFA as originally constructed isn’t a good argument since it seems to either (a) straw man Christianity (mere Christianity doesn’t teach that Christians will be good people; e.g., you won’t find that in the Nicene Creed); or (b) employs the ad hominem fallacy.
Conclusion
As I’ve said before, I like Randal Rauser a lot and I think we need more highly intelligent and well-educated Christians like him critiquing Christian apologists. However, I don’t agree with everything he says, and I think he made some missteps in this particular case.
At first glance, this really does seem to be a strange apologetics segment to critique: Wes Huff arguing that Christians doing terrible things doesn’t mean that Christianity is false. To many of us familiar with the ad hominem fallacy, this would seem to be one of those cases where a Christian apologist said something justifiably true.
To get avoid making an ad hominem fallacy with the meager moral fruits argument, one could say that Christianity teaches that Christians (in the broad sense) will be good people, but this would be a straw man; Christianity per se doesn’t teach that. In reply one could say, “But some Christians do accept a version of Christianity whereby Christians will be good people!” Be that as it may, the target still wouldn’t be Christianity in the broad sense of the term (like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed) so it would still be a mistake to think that one is providing good evidence against Christianity itself as opposed to merely some particular version of it.
We could try to steelman the MMFA and transform it so that it basically becomes the problem of evil (viz., Christians are people who do bad things, and God doesn’t stop them), but that would seem to rob the argument of its original character and we’d be effectively then be dealing with a different argument: i.e., the argument from evil. There’s little point on focusing on Christians specifically if the reasoning is simply that God would not allow horrendous evils to occur. The original reasoning of the argument seems to be more along the lines of either (a) Christianity teaching that Christians would not behave so terribly (when mere Christianity doesn’t teach this); or (b) some version of the ad hominem fallacy.