Thread by @scott_m_coley

I've noticed a lot of excitement (from the usual suspects) about Michael Young's critical review of @kkdumez 's J&JW.

I happen to think that Young's review is particularly unimpressive, due to basic confusions about epistemic justification and human cognition.

The thrust of Young's critique is as follows.

Even if Du Mez demonstrates that various evangelical commitments are self-serving, she doesn't even consider the *truth* of those commitments.

Young contends that this is a problem for Du Mez's account because, "...whether or not our sociological situation inclines us toward one belief or another is not relevant to whether or not those beliefs are actually *true*."

Young continues, "Her method sets aside the difficult work of determining truth and replaces it with the cheap substitute of speculating about people's perceived interests and motives."

At this point, Young seems to be unclear on the source of his own frustration with Du Mez: initially the complaint was that Du Mez ignores doctrinal truth altogether. Now his worry seems to be that Du Mez uses unconventional methods for deciding questions of doctrinal truth.

His real objection seems to be that Du Mez commits a genetic fallacy that runs as follows. "White evangelical males hold doctrinal commitments that are self-serving. Therefore, those doctrinal commitments must be false."

This line of inference would, of course, be a non-sequitur: it can be the case that P is true even if the truth of P happens to align with my own interests.

For two reasons, this objection to Du Mez fails.

First, that's not Du Mez's thesis. It's just not. So Young critiques an argument that Du Mez doesn't make.

Second, Young completely overlooks the epistemic implications of what Du Mez does argue--which argument Young seems to grant, namely that a lot of white evangelical theology is self-serving.

Here's the upshot.

Let 'P' be some doctrine, the truth of which aligns with my self-interest.

Yes, it's possible that P is true even if P aligns with my self-interest.

(To deny this would be a genetic fallacy, as we've noted.)

*BUT*

The fact that the truth of P aligns with my self-interest means that *I am not a reliable judge of P's truth*.

Why do we expect referees to be neutral?

Why do we ask judges to recuse themselves when their own financial interests might be affected by the outcome of a given case?

Because of what psychologists call 'motivated reasoning'--the human tendency to reason in ways that are motivated by our own self-interest, which is an *incredibly* powerful (and well-documented) epistemic force.

Bottom line: if Du Mez's work demonstrates that a lot of white evangelical theology serves to protect the interests of white evangelical males (which it does), it doesn't follow that said theology is untrue.

That said, it does follow that (all else being equal) we shouldn't expect white evangelical males to be reliable judges of the truth of certain theological claims (because those claims serve the interests of white evangelical males).

So although Young makes some points that might pose strong objections to a different book, his review of J&JW misses the point entirely.