Begging the Question

Excerpt from BYU professor/LDS apologist Daniel Peterson, ‘Can there be any valid criticisms of the church?’ (September 4, 2017): ¹

Daniel C. Peterson, “Can There Be Any Valid Criticisms Of The Church?,” Patheos (Dan Peterson blog), September 2017

Here, though, is the more serious question that some really want to ask:

Can there be any valid evidence against the Church?

To which my answer is No, there cannot.

This is the point at which some of my critics began to froth years ago, and over which some continue to wax occasionally indignant still today. So permit me to explain:

My answer presumes the Church to be true. Why? Because I believe it to be. (The question is about my personal opinion on the matter, right?)

Since the Church is ex hypothesi true, there can be no genuine evidence that it is false. There can be seeming evidence against its claims, evidence that reasonable people might well regard as genuine and damning. In the end, though, on the assumption that the claims of the Church are true, what seems to be genuine, damning evidence against it must ultimately prove not to be such.

There is evidence that parallel rails on a train track converge in the distance. However, they don’t actually converge at a distance; they remain parallel. The visual evidence that they converge proves to be illusory.

There is evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. For millennia, close watchers of the sky thought that it did, and they had reasons for thinking so. However, we can now explain those reasons, that evidence, in other ways.

Begging the Question Fallacy: ²