Spot the Fallacy: God & Geography

I'm posting two today. My other one is here. (The original entry and explanation of the game is here.)

I came across this one recently from a post titled: "10 ways to prove that a god doesn't exist."

#2 - A god belief is simple geography. Being raised in a religious home decides which god you believe in.

Spot the fallacy.

Um...how does this prove that any god doesn't exist?

All it demonstrates is that your environment determines (in part) your beliefs.

non sequitur ?

We can say that this claim, as it is written, is an insignificant cause . But I would argue that not only are not being very charitable in our interpretation, but we are also showing a lack of common sense if we take this claim literally. No mentally-stable person would actually believe that where you were raised "decides" (100%) your religion - as this is clearly disproved by countless examples. This is a case of sloppy wording from a non-logician (and perhaps someone who doesn't debate much).

The fact in sociology of religion is that geography and culture are significant factors in religious belief. If a child is raised by two protestant parents, they have a roughly 80% chance of being protestant as an adult. This number goes down significantly if just one of the parents is protestant and the other is unaffiliated (63%). 63% is also the percentage of people who identify as "unaffiliated" who were raised by two parents who also identify as "unaffiliated."

https://www.pewforum.org/2016/10/26/links-between-childhood-religious-upbringing-and-current-religious-identity/

When we look globally, the influence on culture and geography is even more clear. For example, if you are born and raised in China, there is a 3% chance that religion would be important to you compared to being raised in Indonesia where that changed would be 93% (and you would be Hindi).

https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/why-do-levels-of-religious-observance-vary-by-age-and-country/

I write this to demonstrate that the big blunder here is in the letter (wording) rather than the spirit (meaning). "A god belief is simple geography" is rhetoric that oversells the influence of geography. The use of "decides" is also too strong a word that fails to accurately communicate the level of influence geography actually has.

A god belief is simple geography.....genetic fallacy

Being raised in a religious home decides which god you believe in.....stupidity fallacy...lol

No intelligent rational logical etc. person would ever assert those two "claims".

Hi, Jordan!

The argument's conclusion is that there is no god. The reason given is that a person's belief in god is just a matter of his or her upbringing. It looks to me that the argument's thrust is that god does not exist because no person's belief in god is justified. That is an argument ad ignorantiam. Here is what I think the arguer's thought process looks like:

A belief in a god is formed simply by social pressures, such as the influence of the person’s household when growing up. The arguer has stated that premise clearly enough. What seems to be an implicit premise is that social pressures are not a kind of justification. Since social pressures do not justify beliefs and beliefs in a god are formed simply by social pressures, no belief in a god is justified. Therefore, god does not exist.

The arguer is reasoning fallaciously with an argument from ignorance. A belief in a god is not proven false just because the belief is unjustified. 

Thank you, Jordan.

From, Kaiden