‘You just believe that because you were raised to believe it!’ is a familiar criticism. Many converts, however, believe the opposite of what they were raised to believe. Does this make them immune to these challenges? I scrutinize this ‘conversion defense’. If these challenges only concern belief genealogy, a certain kind of convert is immune to them. However, these challenges often concern closed-mindedness rather than genealogy. Seen in this light, the convert who is immune to the genealogical critique may be more susceptible to these challenges due to her conversion. Her conversion may make her more likely to engage in ‘epistemic self-licensing’ akin to the empirically documented phenomenon of ‘moral self-licensing’.
