Hi David [Read], You wrote: “Sean, I’ve already said, several times, that …

Comment on A big reason why so many people are leaving the church by Sean Pitman.

Hi David [Read],

You wrote:

“Sean, I’ve already said, several times, that faith need not be “without any basis, whatsoever, in empirical evidence.” I believe in the value of providing evidence and argument to support faith, as I’ve said over and over and over and over and over again. But you go further than is reasonable in this regard, by insisting that no one should believe without first attempting to weigh the evidence in a neutral and unbiased manner (as if that were possible), and if they do they’re just wannabe acolytes of the flying spaghetti monster. That’s where we part company.

I fully understand that everyone is biased by background experiences. No one is immune from the problem of bias. However, as much as is possible, I do believe that one should try to interpret the evidence that is available with as little bias as is humanly possible – or with at least the awareness of one’s own bias and how that bias may cause one to overlook or miss the true meaning of the evidence in front of one’s own eyes. It doesn’t seem reasonable to suggest that it is essentially impossible for empirical evidence to overcome previous concepts that may have once biased a person in a different direction.

For example, the disciples of Jesus were heavily biased by their past experience and cultural beliefs to look for a Messiah who would create an Earthly Kingdom. It was very difficult to get them to overcome this bias, but given enough empirical evidence that their thinking was wrong, they were in fact capable of changing their minds and leaving their old biases behind. Thus is the power of empirical evidence to change the path, even the heavily biased path, of someone who is otherwise an honest seeker for truth and who is ready to go where the evidence leads – even if it leads one contrary to pre-conceived or erroneously biased notions of reality.

“I’m reminded of our dialog a couple of years ago, right after my book was reviewed at Adventist Today’s website. At that time, I realized that you view everything, including both what is popularly known as “faith” and what is known as “science,” as science. You’re a scientist by training and you approach everything as science. But I find the traditional distinction between faith and science to be useful and practical, as I imagine most other people do.”

I would suggest to you that the basic process behind “science” really is rather mundane. It is nothing more than a mechanism that is based on generally-available logical reasoning (such as induction, deduction, abduction, etc.) from currently available empirical evidence to help one determine what the evidence likely means. Whenever religion talks about the empirical world in which we find ourselves, these empirical claims move into the realm of scientific investigation – or at least they become subject to a form of scientific or rational empirical investigation which includes testing and the potential for effective falsification or at least a reduction or gain in predictive value. If none of the claims of a religion regarding empirical reality can be investigated at all, then that religion is beyond the realm of empirical testing, beyond “science”. It cannot be put to any test that could, even in theory, falsify it.

Such a religion, in my opinion, isn’t very useful when it comes to establishing a solid hope in a literal empirical future.

“Sean, these statements [comparing leaps of faith in science and religion] are ample confirmation that you view religion and science as being essentially the same enterprise. I don’t think they are the same. You seem to believe that the “leaps of faith” a scientist makes are the same as the leaps of faith a religious believer is asked to make, but they aren’t. No scientist makes a leap of faith with the intention of having his hypothesis remain forever unconfirmed. It is true that a scientist will hypothesize something that he doesn’t know but believes to be true (which in a sense is a “leap of faith”), but he immediately sets out to construct experiments that will confirm or falsify his hypothesis. If his hypothesis can’t be tested, it isn’t of much use to science. (Which, by the way, is the problem with Darwinism: it is simply storytelling about the past, based upon untestable assumptions that remain forever unproven and unprovable.)”

You seem to have this notion that science is able to absolutely “confirm” the truth of a hypothesis/theory. This simply isn’t so. A scientific theory may gain or loose predictive power, but it is never absolutely confirmed or proven this side of eternity – regardless of how many tests it passes. There’s a difference between empirical observations or “facts” and the theories that take these observations and use them to make testable predictions.

Now, if your religiously-derived notions of empirical realities that exist outside of your own mind are not based on anything that can be tested or potentially falsified, even in theory, then what good is your religion? Where is its practical value as a basis of hope in a literal empirical future?

“But the religious believer is asked to believe things that cannot be proven or falsified (at least not in this life).

While this is true, the very same thing is true of science. Scientists are asked to believe in theories that cannot be absolutely proven or even absolutely falsified this side of eternity. Predictive power may increase or decrease as additional evidence comes to light, but there are no absolute proofs in science.

Again, if you’re asking someone to believe in anything with regard to the nature of the world that exists outside of the mind, and you have no empirical basis for your assertions which can be tested and potentially falsified (or at least challenged with regard to the degree of its predictive power) why should anyone believe what you’re saying?

People have been trying to prove the existence of God for thousands of years, so far without success. Those who have tried to prove that there is no God have similarly failed. There are arguments for faith (and for unbelief) but faith remains faith.”

Again, you’re talking about absolutes here. If it truly is impossible for an honest seeker for truth to consider the evidence and rationally conclude that the best explanation for it must be a God or a God-like intelligence, upon what basis should one believe in the existence of a God? Your say-so alone? Do they simply have to randomly pick the right universal paradigm in order to make this leap of logic that is otherwise without rational basis in empirical evidence?

You do realize that many physicists, to include a few well-known modern physicists, have come to the conclusion that a God of some kind must exist to explain various features of the universe? You realize that these scientists have often been forced to this conclusion against their preferred bias against such conclusions? – by the empirical evidence in its favor which they simply could not deny any longer despite their ardent efforts to do so?

“You say that “all notions of the reality that exists outside the mind are open to the potential for falsification.” No, they aren’t. Many beliefs are not falsifiable. The belief that God exists, and that there is an unseen world with angels and demons and powers and principalities, is not falsifiable. Beliefs that are essentially religious in character–e.g., belief in an unseen spiritual reality–are not falsifiable.

You’re talking about a type of God equivalent to Flying Spaghetti Monsters, garden fairies, and the Celestial Teapot here. I’m talking about the theory that a God has acted, and continues to act, in a detectable manner in nature. I call this theory the God-only hypothesis. Such an assertion about empirical reality is in fact testable in a potentially falsifiable manner. All one has to do to falsify the God-only hypothesis is to present any other known force which can affect the universe to produce the phenomenon in question. Such a demonstration would effectively falsify the God-only hypothesis.

Christianity isn’t about a God that is doesn’t interact with the empirical world. Such a God would indeed be non-testable and non-falsifiable… outside of the realm of scientific investigation. Belief in such a God would also be as worthless as a belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster… as Richard Dawkins intuitively points out.

Lucky for us that Christianity describes a testable God that is in fact active in the empirical world in which we live in a manner that is actually subject to a form of rational investigation and detectability… i.e., a form of science. There is in fact, or at least can be, a form of science behind one’s faith.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:

Rejection of the Seventh-day Sabbath because of a rejection of the clear reading of the Genesis account of origins is a rejection of the nature of inspiration of the Bible that Mrs. White (and the SDA Church) was trying to promote. Such a rejection completely changes the picture of God in one’s mind and the nature of the Bible as well as the Bible’s power to change one’s life and one’s world perspective. The Bible means something very different if it is viewed as a allegory vs. if it is viewed as literally true on those topics where the author(s) clearly intended to be taken as describing real historical events.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Professor Kent:

There are many different ways to “believe in the Bible” that are completely opposed to the type of belief or faith that Mrs. White was trying to promote. Many believe that the Bible is a book of good moral instruction, but has nothing of any real value to say about the physical world. Many believe that the Bible is a collection of man’s best wisdom over the centuries, but is not actually the Word of God.

What Mrs. White was talking about is that a belief in mainstream evolutionary theories destroys a belief in the Bible as the clear Word of God on every topic it touches upon – to include the topic of origins. The evolutionary perspective undermines faith in the character of God that Ellen White understood and which the SDA Church is trying to promote. It undermines faith in the reasonableness and rationality of God – suggesting that God is willing to “command men to observe the week of seven literal days in commemoration of seven indefinite periods, which is unlike his dealings with mortals, and is an impeachment of his wisdom.”

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


A big reason why so many people are leaving the church
@Shane Hilde:

Exactly! Not even Abraham was asked to believe in the naked word of God devoid of empirical evidence that would appeal to the rational candid mind. God was not offended when Abraham asked for this evidence because without such evidence, Abraham would truly have been insane to simply follow voices in His head claiming to be the voice of God without any external empirical confirmation…

There are false spirits out there that will lie to us. These spirits must be tested. And, the only basis upon which to employ and interpret tests is our God-given human reasoning abilities.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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