Comment on A big reason why so many people are leaving the church by Sean Pitman.
Shane,
You wrote:
The origins debate is a worldview conflict. Creationists and evolutionists have been throwing evidence at each other for a long time now. The answer is not necessarily more evidence, but which worldview (way of interpreting) is the correct way to understand the evidence. I suggest is the biblical worldview alone that makes science and reasoning possible.
The answer is more evidence when you’re talking about people who are honest seekers for truth. Simply telling someone, who is an honest seeker, that they have the wrong world view “by definition” is not a rational argument.
I think a bit presumptuous to think the critics of the Bible just need more evidence. According to Romans 1:18-20, everyone has an innate knowledge of the God of creation.
This passage is not talking about an “innate” knowledge of God at all. It is talking about knowledge that is based on empirical evidence – “being understood from what has been made.”
The problem is not the lack of evidence, but that some people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
There is no “unrighteousness” or “sin” is honest error. If one is not deliberately suppressing known truth, there is no unrighteousness. There is simply error without sin.
If one is deliberately suppressing known truth, the evidence itself isn’t the problem. The evidence may be plentiful and its meaning clear, but if the individual doesn’t like what the evidence is saying, God can’t remedy that situation with more evidence…
Evidence can be used to help them understand this, but it should not be relied on as the sole source of knowledge. Otherwise this is rationalism, which is clearly anti-biblical. Not to be confused with using reason.
Using one’s God-given reasoning abilties to discover God is not anti-biblical. It is about as biblical as you can get. Nowhere does the Bible even suggest that God expects belief without a basis in the weight of empirical evidence that is first understood by the God-given mind.
Appealing to someone’s reason is not the same as relying on empirical evidence to prove something.
Yes, it is. Because, without an appeal to empirical evidence, what you have left is circular reasoning which is not reasonable by definition.
Assuming your reasoning is reliable is a presupposition, one which only can be explained through the biblical worldview. Thus you would use the Bible to show how their worldview is self-refuting and ultimately not consistent.
Come on now. What did people do before there was a Bible? Or, what do people do who don’t have the Bible now? Is it impossible for such people to rationally consider the natural world, detect the Signature of a God or God-like intelligence, and come to a rational appreciation of God in this manner? – and then use the same rational God-given mind to determine that the Bible is also raationally credible in its claims to be The Word of God?
You can rationally come to false interpretations of the evidence.
That’s right. That’s why there is always a risk of being wrong from a rational perspective. The only way you can avoid all risk of being wrong is to define your position as “true by definition”. That’s the attraction of empirically-blind faith. There is no risk to being wrong and no possibility of change.
This is the very reason why my LDS friends, who use the very same arguments you use, will not change their minds regarding the Book of Mormon – since their faith in the Book of Mormon is “true by definition”.
There are many examples of creationists and evolutionists looking at the same bit of evidence but drawing different conclusions based on their worldview (their collection of presuppositions).
Right – and there are many examples of Christians looking at the same passage of Scripture and coming to different conclusions on what it’s saying. Honest errors cannot be avoided when you’re a subjective human being. It doesn’t help to simply declare your position true by definition.
There is no such thing as neutrality for anyone. To suggest there is, is unbiblical.
There is such a thing as shared reality and a common origin and basis for rational thought – which is very biblical.
Keep in mind I’m not boo-pooing the use of empirical evidence. Use empirical evidence to confirm the Bible, but not to prove it. When you use it to prove it, you’ve elevated empiricism above God’s Word.
There is no such thing as absolute “proof” in science or in any form of a rational defense of any view of the empirical world that exists outside of the mind. One can use rational thought and tests of theories regarding the meaning of the empirical evidence to approach truth, but never to fully realize truth.
If our God given powers of reason are not submitted to His Word, then there is no way for us to properly interpret the natural world.
Not true. The Bible is simply not needed to properly interpret the natural world to a very useful degree. Again, what do people do who do not have access to the Bible? According to your argument, it would be impossible for them to recognize anything about God from the study of the empirical evidence available to them. This is not a biblical concept.
Any appeal to an ultimate standard is circular reasoning.
Not if that standard is a shared standard between all parties involved in a discussion. If certain of the parties involved have not grown up automatically appreciating authority of the Bible, the Bible cannot be used as your default source of authority to prove itself. That’s circular reasoning that doesn’t appeal to anyone but those who already subscribe to this position. In order to attract honest seekers for truth toward a new position, you must appeal to a common sourse of authority – i.e., the generally-available empirical evidence and reasoning capabilities of rational intelligent God-given minds.
You make an appeal to empirical evidence, but has that been shown to be empirically true?
With a very useful degree of predictive value, yes, it has.
Without any appeal to empirical evidence, your form of reasoning has no predictive value that will appeal to any mind other than those who have already accepted your same point of reference.
What’s the empirical evidence that it works and is even applicable to all truth claims? I would agree that there are some truth claims that can be verified through empirical methods, but not all, and is limited when it comes to the Bible.
Empirical evidence and rational thought is always limited. It is never perfect short of access to all information and all knowledge. Yet, just because the empirical evidence is incomplete and our reasoning ablities subject to the potential for error, doesn’t mean that they are not useful or that we have access to any better means of identifying truth from error…
It should also be noted that there are certain special cases where circular reasoning is unavoidable and not necessarily fallacious. Remember that begging the question is not invalid; it is considered fallacious because it is arbitrary. But what if it were not arbitrary? There are some situations where the conclusion of an argument must be assumed at the outset, but is not arbitrary. Here is an example:
1. Without laws of logic, we could not make an argument.
2. We can make an argument.
3. Therefore, there must be laws of logic.Most of the examples of circular reasoning used by evolutionists are of the fallacious begging-the-question variety—they are arbitrary. Consider the evolutionist who argues:
The Bible cannot be correct because it says that stars were created in a single day; but we now know that it takes millions of years for stars to form.
By assuming that stars form over millions of years, the critic has taken for granted that they were not supernaturally created. He has assumed the Bible is wrong in his attempt to argue that the Bible is wrong; he has begged the question.
By this argument one would be unable to detect if any particular biblical interpretation were right or wrong. What if the Bible said that the American Indians were decendants of the lost tribes of Isreal? – while DNA evidence showed them to be from an Asian background? You’d argue, in a ciruclar manner, that the DNA evidence must be wrong since the Bible, and your interpretation of it, is true by definition.
While we must assume, without absolute proof, that we are rational before we can have a rational discussion, this assumption is based on a shared reality within which this assumption produces a useful level of predictive value when applied to empirical evidence within that shared reality…
If your views about that shared reality are “true by definition” you are making a non-testable non-falsifiable claim about that shared reality which is irrational from that particular perspective. In other words, there is no predictive power to your argument because your argument is not subject to testing or the outcome of any test…
The Bible does and can appeal to a persons reason and that many scientific findings confirm the Bible; however, approaching the validity of the Bible solely human terms elevates man to a position he is not meant to be or capable of handling.
We cannot approach the Bible as more than we are – i.e., human. We must investigate and interpret the claims of the Bible from the human perspective using our God-given human abilities. Again, we cannot be more than we have been given.
Faith is not created by man, it is a gift of God and grows as a result of it being exercised.
Intelligence is not created by man either. None of our inherent abilities were created by us. This does not mean, therefore, that we can be more than what we are and what we have been given. Faith is not some magical method by which we can obtain useful information about the world in which we live beyond what our God-given abilities to think and reason from the empirical evidence are telling us. Faith is simply a process of accepting as true what are minds tell us is most likely true without obtaining absolute proof.
I’m not against the use of science to confirm the Bible. It’s just not what the authority of the Bible rests on.
If one uses science to “confirm” the Bible, one is indeed affecting one’s faith via such confirmation. If there is no such support or “confirmation”, what then is left as a rational basis to support the authority of the Bible? Faith that is entirely devoid of empirical support is not useful to even the honest seeker for truth. God does not expect us to blindly believe in anything about the world in which we live for which there is no real empirical support.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Sean Pitman:
Sean Pitman – Sat, 05/07/2011 – 09:08
Yakshaver,
You wrote:
“I think there is a difference between the concept of irrational (that Professor Kent is accused of encouraging) and the concept of non-rational. A big difference in my opinion, which might make the accusations [against] the writer of the article a bit… irrational.”
Certain conclusions are indeed “non-rational” rather than “irrational” – such as a personal opinion that vanilla ice cream tastes better than chocolate ice cream. No “rational” explanation is needed for this preference to be “true” for the individual. The same thing is true about personal notions in the existence of a God who has never interacted with nature in a detectable way outside of the pre-established mindless “laws of nature”. Such a belief is also a “non-rational” belief or faith.
However, when someone makes specific claims regarding the existence of a God who has actually acted in real history and continues to act in a detectable manner, one has moved from the realm of non-rationality to the realm of either rationality or irrationality.
Beyond this, non-rational beliefs aren’t really all that helpful beyond the individual since there is no rational argument that could be presented to convince anyone else of one’s own non-rational opinions or beliefs. How can I convince someone who likes chocolate ice cream that vanilla ice cream is truly better tasting? As another example, as already noted, some argue that a belief in a God who does not interact in a detectable manner within nature is a non-rational belief. Well, as Richard Dawkins famously pointed out, so is a belief in the “Celestial Teapot” or the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” All such beliefs are technically “non-rational”. Yet, while they are not exactly “irrational”, non-rational beliefs are not very convincing or compelling for those who do not already subscribe to such beliefs.
If you really want your faith to be shared in a meaningful way with other intelligent candid minds so that they are able to gain the faith and hope in the future that you have, you should be able to provide something more appealing than non-rational “reasons” for your faith (even if you aren’t being overtly irrational). You need at least a few rational reasons for your faith that are rooted in actual empirical reality. Otherwise, your non-rational faith will most likely die with you…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Sean Pitman:
Sean Pitman – Sat, 05/07/2011 – 06:51
Phil Brantley,
You wrote:
“You ask the question how could an ignorant pagan come to believe that the Bible is the Word of God without becoming convinced of the Bible’s truthfulness through reference to external data. Ask Mark Finley or Doug Batchelor or any one of our Church evangelists. The question is irrelevant. My point is that for one who believes that the Bible is the Word of God, no criticism of the sacred text is permissible.
The question of determining that the Bible is truly the Word of God vs. all other competing options is not at all “irrelevant” to the concept of a rational faith in the Bible as the Word of God. Your argument that the Bible is true “by definition” can be used, in the very same manner, by those upholding the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an. There is no difference, that I can tell, in your argument vs. that of my LDS friends. None at all…
It is easy to make up a fairytale or an allegory or a novel that is internally consistent with regard to prophecies, times, places, peoples, and events – none of which are literally true. Such internal consistency is not, therefore, a rational basis for belief in the literal truth of the Bible as being the Word of God when it comes to its claims regarding my own empirical reality – current or future. Such a determination of truth requires something beyond the text itself if it is to appeal to the rational candid mind.
You yourself actually cite real historical empirically-based evidence. based on historical science, as a basis for the Bible’s historical credibility when it comes to prophecies. I knew you would do this if pressed to answer the question of determining original credibility. You cannot help but do this because if prophetic statements were only verified by the Bible itself, having no basis in (or even in conflict with) known external historical reality, they would carry very little if any weight as evidences for Divine origin.
As I’ve mentioned before, this is one of the main problems with the Book of Mormon, its prophetic statements, while largely being internally consistent, conflict with known historical reality. It is for this reason that many, like me, completely dismiss the metaphysical claims of the Book of Mormon – because those claims dealing with physical reality can be so clearly falsified.
If the same is true of the Bible, how on Earth can you expect a rational person to still hold to the notion that the Bible is in fact the Word of God? – without any appeal to external empirical evidences / reality? That’s simply not a rational position in my book… and will not appeal to most candidly rational intelligent minds out there.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:
Phil didn’t actually answer my question, but dodged it yet again. My response is as follows:
Phil Brantley,
You listed off a number of evidences that, “support the claim that the Scripture is the Word of God.” What I find strange about your list is that you include numerous evidence that are dependent upon extra-biblical empirical information, to include historically-fulfilled prophecies and an understanding of various elements of the text that is dependent upon extra-biblical historical knowledge of the existence of people, times and places… all dependent upon the historical sciences.
Yet, you go on to explain:
“You should understand that my belief that Scripture is the Word of God necessarily precedes my hermeneutical approach to Scripture. In contrast, your hermeneutic of criticism necessarily precedes resolution of the question whether Scripture is the Word of God. And because external data is always subject to change, the critic never arrives at the position that Scripture is the Word of God.”
It seems to me like you confuse epistemology (how we know what we know) with hermeneutics (how to interpret or determine the intended meaning of a given text). While certainly being related, and even interdependent, they aren’t the same thing.
The confusion I have with your arguments in this and other forums is that you seem to suggest that one’s epistemological conclusion that the Bible is in fact the Word of God cannot rationally “precede” one’s hermeneutic understanding of the text itself… that one must somehow definitively decide, without any question, that the Bible is the Word of God before one has actually interpreted what the author of the text was trying to say and if that interpretation does in fact match key elements of known physical reality – i.e., if what the author was in fact trying to say is most likely true or false.
For example, given your approach one could conclude, a priori that the Book of Mormon, or the Qur’an, is really the true Word of God. Then, after coming to this conclusion, one would then proceed to actually read and interpret the Book of Mormon, or the Qur’an, according to one’s pre-established epistemology that the Book of Mormon, or the Qur’an, is in fact the true Word of God. It wouldn’t matter, then, if DNA evidence showed that the American Indians really aren’t “descendants from the lost tribes of Israel”, as the Book of Mormon claims, but are, rather, descendants from an Asian background. After all, since the Book of Mormon would be “true by definition”, such DNA evidence should not effect one’s faith in the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon as being the Word of God – right?
This is the circular element in your argument. The very same argument could be used to simply declare any text to be the true Word of God without any means to detect if one has in fact made an error in this “by definition” or “just-so” declaration.
If no form of empirical evidence, to include historical knowledge, should have any power to change your epistemological view that the Bible is the True Word of God, then it really means nothing that you list off numerous empirically-based evidences that do in fact support this view. Your basic argument is that such evidences are not needed – that the Bible, by itself, without any reference to any such external empirical evidence or seeming reality, can stand alone as a self-evident revelation of God’s will.
In short, I’ve specifically asked you, several times now, how one can rationally determine that the Bible, and not the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an, is the the true word of God without any reference to any external empirical evidences, and you’ve yet to provide an answer to this question – or to even directly address this question. You’ve not presented any reason, that I can tell, whereby one who did not grow up as a Christian automatically believing the Bible to be God’s Word could rationally recognize the Bible as the true Word of God among many competing options all making the very same claim… without any reference or appeal to external empirical evidences of any kind.
Do you have an answer to this particular question or not?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Recent Comments by Sean Pitman
Science and Methodological Naturalism
Very interesting passage. After all, if scientists are honest with themselves, scientific methodologies are well-able to detect the existence of intelligent design behind various artifacts found in nature. It’s just the personal philosophy of scientists that makes them put living things and the origin of the fine-tuned universe “out of bounds” when it comes to the detection of intelligent design. This conclusion simply isn’t dictated by science itself, but by a philosophical position, a type of religion actually, that strives to block the Divine Foot from getting into the door…
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:
Why is it that creationists are afraid to acknowledge the validity of Darwinism in these settings? I don’t see that these threaten a belief in God in any way whatsoever.
The threat is when you see no limitations to natural mindless mechanisms – where you attribute everything to the creative power of nature instead of to the God of nature.
God has created natural laws that can do some pretty amazing things. However, these natural laws are not infinite in creative potential. Their abilities are finite while only God is truly infinite.
The detection of these limitations allows us to recognize the need for the input of higher-level intelligence and creative power that goes well beyond what nature alone can achieve. It is here that the Signature of God is detectable.
For those who only hold a naturalistic view of the universe, everything is attributed to the mindless laws of nature… so that the Signature of God is obscured. Nothing is left that tells them, “Only God or some God-like intelligent mind could have done this.”
That’s the problem when you do not recognize any specific limitations to the tools that God has created – when you do not recognize the limits of nature and what natural laws can achieve all by themselves.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Bill Sorensen:
Since the fall of Adam, Sean, all babies are born in sin and they are sinners. God created them. Even if it was by way of cooperation of natural law as human beings also participated in the creation process.
God did not create the broken condition of any human baby – neither the physical or moral brokenness of any human being. God is responsible for every good thing, to include the spark or breath of life within each one of us. However, He did not and does not create those things within us that are broken or bad.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?'” Matthew 13:27-28
Of course, all humans are indeed born broken and are in a natural state of rebellion against God. However, God is not the one who created this condition nor is God responsible for any baby being born with any kind of defect in character, personality, moral tendency, or physical or genetic abnormality. God did not create anyone with such brokenness. Such were the natural result of rebellion against God and heading the temptations of the “enemy”… the natural result of a separation from God with the inevitable decay in physical, mental, and moral strength.
Of course, the ones who are born broken are not responsible for their broken condition either. However, all of us are morally responsible for choosing to reject the gift of Divine Grace once it is appreciated… and for choosing to go against what we all have been given to know, internally, of moral truth. In other words, we are responsible for rebelling against the Royal Law written on the hearts of all mankind.
This is because God has maintained in us the power to be truly free moral agents in that we maintain the Power to choose, as a gift of God (Genesis 3:15). We can choose to accept or reject the call of the Royal Law, as the Holy Spirit speaks to all of our hearts…
Remember the statement by Mrs. White that God is in no wise responsible for sin in anyone at any time. God is working to fix our broken condition. He did not and does not create our broken condition. Just as He does not cause Babies to be born with painful and lethal genetic defects, such as those that result in childhood leukemia, He does not cause Babies to be born with defects of moral character either. God is only directly responsible for the good, never the evil, of this life.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:
Again, your all-or-nothing approach to the claims of scientists isn’t very scientific. Even the best and most famous of scientists has had numerous hair-brained ideas that were completely off base. This fact does not undermine the good discoveries and inventions that were produced.
Scientific credibility isn’t based on the person making the argument, but upon the merits of the argument itself – the ability of the hypothesis to gain predictive value when tested. That’s it.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Don’t be so obtuse here. We’re not talking about publishing just anything in mainstream journals. I’ve published several articles myself. We’re talking about publishing the conclusion that intelligent design was clearly involved with the origin of various artifactual features of living things on this planet. Try getting a paper that mentions such a conclusion published…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
