Board index ‹ Faith and Knowledge

[Asker]

Thesis: It is hypocritical to believe in god or any religion while at the same time criticizing people due to lack of evidence. Faith truly is anti-science and anti-evidence. The two cannot be reconciled because one is belief without evidence, and one is conclusion based on evidence.

To believe in a god, any god, especially one based on scripture written by man, is essentially to believe in a fairy tale. I know many Christians who are critical thinkers in every area. When someone makes a statement without evidence to back it up, they call it out. Sometimes they even ridicule the person (not BECAUSE they are christian, simply because they've heard nonsense). They would never accept "Oh but you can't prove it ISN'T true" as any sort of valid refutation. If I were to claim to one of these friends,

"Every person in charge of corporations is a Lizard person and part of a large organization called the Illuminate that controls everything and is always watching you. My evidence is because I say so and because there are other people who have said it before," or "I just saw a unicorn run across the park and fly away leaving a trail of rainbows behind it. I also saw a man turn into a frog, and a snake talked to me about how cool it was,"

Or even one a little closer to home, like, "I am the son of an invisible all knowing being. This being demands 10 things from all of us that he doesn't want us to do. But if you do them, you will spend eternity suffering the worst torment imaginable. I can also walk on water and come back from the dead."

that friend would probably laugh in my face and say, "but there is no proof of that! Because everything we know leads to the conclusion that it is false and/or nothing we know supports the statement that it is true, what you say cannot be taken seriously."

Again, if I were to come back and say, "you can't prove that the illuminate is not real" or "You can't prove I didn't just see a unicorn/ghost/human transformation/talking animal" or "But I KNOW I saw it," They would laugh at me.

Given this, how can those same people accept a religion like Christianity and use the defense against those who challenge it "you can't prove it is not real." Of course we can't prove it isn't real. But that doesn't mean we should just assume it is, unless there is evidence to back it up.

There is no difference between The claims I have used as examples and the claim of Christianity or other religions.

[jimwalton]

You have misunderstandings on every level. Faith, according to the Bible, can be defined in various ways:

- Faith is “complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” This is the commonplace use of the word apart from any religious significance, such as when a person has faith in a chair to support his weight or has faith in his employee to do a job well.
- Faith is “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” This is the definition unbelievers often use to ridicule believers, insisting that they, unlike religious people, trust only in that which is demonstrable.
- Faith is “belief in, trust in, and loyalty to God.” This is an explicitly religious definition, in many ways similar to the theological definition of faith as involving knowledge, assent, and trust. Faith here is pictured as going beyond belief in certain facts to include commitment to and dependence on God.
- Faith is “a system of religious beliefs.” This is what is meant when one speaks of “the Protestant faith” or “the Jewish faith.” What is largely in view here is a set of doctrines. The Bible uses the word in this way in passages such as Jude 3.

I use faith, as I believe Hebrews 11.1 does, in the first sense. Here's my explanation:

Jesus never said faith is blind (anti-science, anti-evidence), and the Bible doesn't imply that faith is blind. In the Bible, faith is evidentiary. I define Biblical faith as "making an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make that assumption reasonable." In my opinion, belief is always a choice, and is always based on evidence. When you sit down in a chair, you didn’t think twice about sitting down. You believe that the chair will hold you. Faith? Yes. You’ve sat in chairs hundreds of times, but you can't be absolutely sure it will hold you this time. Things do break on occasion. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption, and you sit down. That’s faith, and it was a conscious choice based in evidence (science, if you will).

Almost all of life works this way because we can never know what lies ahead. Every time you turn a door knob you are expressing faith. Because 10,000 times you’ve turned a door knob, and it opened the door. So you turn the knob and move forward. Does it always work that way? No. Sometimes you turn the knob and the door doesn’t open. But you make an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for you to make that assumption.

We know chairs hold people. That's past experience and learning. We know turning door knobs open doors. We know that when we turn a key a car starts. But every time we turn a car key, we do it because we believe it will start. The evidence is compelling, and it was a conscious choice. We don't know for sure that the car will start, and unfortunately sometimes it doesn't. Then we use our knowledge to try to figure out what to do about it. We dial our phone (as an act of faith, assuming it will work and help us reach another person), and try to get help.

You'll notice in the Bible that evidence precedes faith. There is no fairy tale aspect to it. God appears to Moses in a burning bush before he expects him to believe. He gave signs to take back to Pharaoh and the Israelite people, so they could see the signs before they were expected to believe. So also through the whole OT. In the NT, Jesus started off with turning water into wine, healing some people, casting out demons, and then he taught them about faith. And they couldn't possibly understand the resurrection until there was some evidence to go on. The whole Bible is God revealing himself to us all—and I mean actually, not through some exercise of faith. Evidence first, then faith based on the evidence.

My faith in God is a conscious choice because I find the evidence compelling. It's an assumption of truth based on enough evidence to make it reasonable for me to make that assumption. When you read the Bible, people came to Jesus to be healed because they had heard about other people who had been healed. They had seen other people whom Jesus had healed. People had heard him teach. Their faith was based on evidence. Jesus kept giving them new information, and they gained new knowledge from it. Based on that knowledge, they acted with more faith. People came to him to make requests. See how it works? My belief in God is based on my knowledge of the credibility of those writings, the logic of the teaching, and the historical evidence behind it all. The resurrection, for instance, has evidences that give it credibility that motivate me to believe in it. My faith in the resurrection is an assumption of truth based on enough evidence that makes it reasonable to hold that assumption. The same is true for my belief in the existence of God, my belief that the Bible is God's word, and my understanding of how life works.

I would contend that faith is never blind.

Christianity is set apart from other religions in that it is based in history and therefore is evidentiary. It's not an unconfirmable intellectual religion like Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam. If I want to do an intellectual religion, I say something like "The grasshopper on the wall is the model of us all," and, well, good luck with that. But if I say, "At 9:00 in the morning Jesus was hung on a Roman cross outside of Jerusalem by the order of Pontius Pilate," now that's a completely different matter, and that's what Christianity is like.

[Goo Goo]

> Jesus never said faith is blind

"Then Jesus told him, 'Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.' How is that not encouraging blind faith?

[jimwalton]

That doesn't mean there's no evidence. Jesus knew that very soon he would be leaving the earth and people would have to make a decision based on the evidence of the testimony of reliable witnesses, the historical evidence of the resurrection, and the experiential evidence of changed lives. But it's true they would not get to see. Not everyone gets to see, but visible evidence isn't the only kind of evidence. Even visible evidence can have its drawbacks, in case a particular event was a hallucination or a dream. That doesn't mean faith is blind. The people who believed in the resurrection of Jesus after he ascended were still making a decision based on evidence.

[Asker]

Your argument hinges on these analogies. But all of them could be objectively proven or tested by you if you weren’t willingly ignorant of how they work or if they are reliable. Other people also have objectively verified all of your analogies. No faith is necessary in the religious sense of the word. You can objectively find out whether the chair will support you etc. This is not the same as religious faith. Religion has no evidence therefore you are putting your faith in something that has no evidence. This line of logic leads to the inescapable conclusion that to be religious is to not value evidence. This is anti-science. Now you may think you have evidence. But you don’t. There is evidence that corroborates SOME aspects of the Bible. But the vast majority is self-contradictory nonsense. There is certainly no evidence that it comes from divine inspiration or is any god’s word. It is a story, nothing more (from a credibility standpoint).

[jimwalton]

My argument doesn't hinge on them; they merely support my contention with understandable, common-life parallels to show that faith is largely evidentiary. You say, "Other people also have objectively verified all of your analogies," which makes it sound like you're assuming that nobody at the time ever objectively verified the resurrection, no one but Moses saw the sea part, no one but Moses saw the plagues happen, and so since they were never objectively verified, faith was the only recourse. But that's a disproportioned misunderstanding, for most assuredly at the time these occurrences were objectively verified by those present. We just didn't have the opportunity to be there, since we are necessarily of our era, not theirs. But it prejudicial to assume there was no objective verification and they just decided to religious believe in nonsense.

> Religion has no evidence therefore you are putting your faith in something that has no evidence.

There is nothing true about this statement. One of the uniquenesses of Christianity is that it is thoroughly embedded in history, unlike any other religion. There's nothing you can do to prove Krishna, but the Bible talks about David, Hezekiah, Sennacherib, Jesus, and Paul. There's plenty of evidence. Archaeologists have dug up mountains of it.

> This line of logic leads to the inescapable conclusion that to be religious is to not value evidence.

This is a false conclusion based on false premises, as I said above.

> Now you may think you have evidence. But you don’t.

But I do, and I guess that's what we need to talk about.

> But the vast majority is self-contradictory nonsense.

I guess this is what we really need to talk about, then.

> There is certainly no evidence that it comes from divine inspiration or is any god’s word.

Of course not. Theology is not subject to scientific inquiry any more than science can guarantee who's going to win a presidential election. Philosophy isn't subject to scientific inquiry, but that doesn't mean it's a bunch of nonsense. Economics isn't subject to scientific inquiry. Does that make it anti-science? Of course not. Theology isn't anti-science. Science is a fantastic discipline that has shown us tremendous things. I'm not anti-science. But I also know that the faith I have is built on many levels and layers of evidence. There's nothing blind about it. The reason I believe in the theology is because of (1) the credibility of the text in other areas shows me it's reliable, (2) science and nature makes more sense from the vantage point of theism than from scientific naturalism, and (3) my spiritual experiences (along with those of others) have affirmed that credibility. So you can't just wheel out the prejudicial statement that I have no evidence, I believe in self-contradictory nonsense, and the stories are nothing more than fiction from a credibility standpoint. That's just slanderous.

Your original statement that faith is nothing but anti-science and anti-evidence is patently untrue.

[Goo Goo]

If visible evidence can be mistaken, why do you believe the testimony of ancient witnesses is reliable regarding fantastical, magical events?

And just so we're clear, when you say "historical evidence of the resurrection", you're talking about four books written by his followers, right? Anything else?

[jimwalton]

> If visible evidence can be mistaken, why do you believe the testimony of ancient witnesses is reliable regarding fantastical, magical events?

First, because the nature of their writings about Jesus are meant to be historiography, not mystical or legendary treatises. Second, because there were so many corroborating witnesses. Hallucinations are only personal; there is no such thing as a group hallucination. Visions are often personal. The Gospels record that there were multiple sightings of Jesus in different places by different people, weighing against the possibility of mystical or fictional accounts. The corroborating testimony of multiple individuals gives credence to the veracity of their experiences.

> And just so we're clear, when you say "historical evidence of the resurrection", you're talking about four books written by his followers, right? Anything else?

Yes, those are the only writings we have of the crucifixion. But there is the material evidence of the empty tomb—a fact that no one in antiquity disputed. And there is also the sociological evidence of the sudden birth of the Christian Church in the very city of Jesus' death a mere 50 days after His crucifixion. These elements are evidences as well.

[Asker]

Do you realize what a leap you made? Yes there is evidence that SOME parts of the Bible are historically accurate. But that just establishes setting and that some of the people existed. None of that is evidence of any sort of supernatural occurrence or god. The reason faith (maybe I just should have used the phrase belief in god. That is what I meant.) is anti-science. Because you are starting with a belief that has no evidence (the belief that a god exists) and you are interpreting all the data presented to you in the way that supports your pre-held belief which never had any objective evidence in the first place. If something contradicts your belief, you reinterpret your belief so that it can still make sense in your head despite contradictions with science. This practice is anti-science because the scientific method doesn’t start with a preconceived belief. It pursued evidence and draws conclusions purely from where the evidence leads. I’m not saying you or any religious person is anti-science, I am saying that religion itself is an anti-science practice, as is the belief in god. A scientific person in normal life can do anti-science things. Just like how a good person can do bad things.

[jimwalton]

Then I haven't communicated well. Sorry about that.

It's impossible, scientifically, to verify God, but that doesn't make theology anti-science. Supposing, just supposing, hypothetically speaking, God really appeared to you. You were in your room, alone, and suddenly God was there. Let's just assume it was real (you weren't dreaming or hallucinating). You talked, he talked. You saw him, clear as day. You touched him. His presence was palpable. And then he was gone. You stagger out of the room and some upon some of your friends. You tell them what just happened, and they say, "Prove it to me by science." What would you have for them? Nothing. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen, or wasn't real, or it was anti-science. It just not anything that you can do a science experiment on or show material evidence for.

Does that mean it's a belief with no evidence? We have the written record of hundreds of people who had exactly that experience. And they write how their experience changed history, effected events, and changed their lives.

But how does one prove that the presence of God in a military battle affected the outcome? The person who can see God knows it, but there's no material evidence, no experiment to be done, or any way to prove it. But he knows, just as you know what you saw in your room.

You see, the starting point is not the belief that has no evidence, but the reality that has no evidence. From there there are more experiences, more proofs, more events, but no hard evidence. The belief isn't the starting point, though, and that's where you're make an illicit a priori assumption about Christian belief. It's based on evidence first—the belief comes from the evidence, and not vice versa. From the evidence one learns and formulates further understandings. Sometimes there are actual evidentiary occasions, such as when Moses parted the sea and the people walked across. But then the sea closes. "OK, prove it to me." You can't. It's done. "Prove it was God." Impossible. Moses knew, but God used a strong wind blowing all night long. Could somebody say, "Duh, it was the wind." Of course they could. Does science answer the question? Never.

So it's not anti-science. I'm not starting with a preconceived belief, but with the evidence after which I form beliefs based on what I know to have happened. Then I follow the evidence wherever it leads as there are more experiences with God and more historical occurrences where they play themselves out in real life situations. But I can never prove any of it.

But there are lots of such things. It's a beautiful day here, and a comfortable breeze is blowing through the house. I can lean back, close my eyes, and then challenge you to use science to prove what I am feeling. It can't. An MRI can tell you what areas of my brain are lighting up, but science can't tell you what I'm feeling, what memories are floating through my brain, and what associations I'm making. But I'm not anti-science. It's just that these things are outside of the scope of science.

I'm curious. I'm having a discussion with someone else on a separate topic, and he says that executing adulterers is immoral. Regardless of what you think of that, is his statement anti-science? It certainly can't be proved by science; there is no objective evidence one way or another. You see, I don't regard this as anti-science, but outside of the scope of scientific inquiry. Science is a wonderful discipline in its place, but there are lots of places science can't go: literature, philosophy, music, art, law, politics, economics, etc. That doesn't mean those disciplines are anti-science, but rather than they are not build on the scientific method of proposing a hypothesis, designing an experiment, collecting data, interpreting data, and arriving at a conclusion. They just aren't that kind of thing. Neither is theology.