There are 2 issues here. You first of all make …

Comment on Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools by Sean Pitman.

There are 2 issues here. You first of all make certain assumptions about how we can ever know what God “actually said”, You assume that the Bible is the Word of God and is effectively inerrant in the original autograph (don’t complicate this by silly claims that minor inconsequential errors are present and you therefore don’t view it as inerrant).

It’s the same as any group of witnesses viewing a crime scene. You’ll get different perspectives and different abilities to describe what was observed and different minor errors. However, given that the witnesses are trying to be honest about what they saw, you’ll still get a very good idea about what really happened.

You assume that the words as written down in Hebrew convey directly information from God which you then assume as empirical evidence.

No. There is a difference between an empirical claim and empirical evidence. The Bible makes many empirical claims about the world. These claims may or may not show themselves to be true after testing them against available empirical evidence. However, once the claims demonstrate themselves against the evidence to be reliable, the witness gains credibility. This credibility can then be used as a rational argument in favor of the validity of those claims, from the same witness, that cannot be directly tested in a potentially falsifiable manner.

So Moses (and you of course know it was Moses) in talking of the first day was shown an evening and a morning.

That’s the empirical claim… which may or may not be true. The likely truth of this claim must be based on the established credibility of the witness.

What you never talk about is the physical processes or “empirical realities” involved in the showing by God. Moses was not of course an eye witness since in your view creation happened Oct 4004 BC while Moses lived 1391–1271 BCE (according to the Rabbinical tradition) and 1451 BC according to Ussher, The book of Genesis probably was compiled in the 6th century BC as an antiquarian history under Persian reign around the time of the captivity. Did God show Moses and or the compiler/s the events you think were direct from God? Of course the fundamentalist argument is that God preserved this with absolute fidelity throughout the process.

That is the claim – suggested by the Bible itself (even by Jesus Himself). Moses is described as a prophet who talked “face to face” with God and was shown, by God, the past and the future of the world with perfect “fidelity” – like a 3D video of the events. Of course, that’s just a claim. The credibility of this claim must be supported by evidence that goes beyond wishful thinking or some entirely subjective “gestalt” sensation.

But is this a warranted belief.

Not without empirical evidence to support it’s credibility.

This gets to my second point. You seem to claim religious positions are warranted under the assumption of hegemonic evidentialism. Your accusation that I am a fideist is really a distortion of the reality just as much as is your claims that your beliefs are based on the “weight of empirical evidence” is an appeal to evidentialism.

I would call your attention to the entry on religious epistemology in the Stanford dictionary. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-epistemology/#RejEnlEvi

I don’t see where this explains how you’re not a fideist or how the weight of empirical evidence is not required to reasonably argue for the truth of one position among many competing options?

Your claims to science and evidence as a basis for your religion seems to lay claim to the enlightenment evidentialism largely rejected by most Christians living in a post-modern era. Even defences of natural theology can only conclude that “…on probabilistic terms belief is justifed but not fully justified”. This I think is at best all you can claim with your evidentialism.

Science itself is all about presenting hypotheses that are “justified, but not fully justified”. Again, as I’ve mentioned many times before, there are no absolutes in science. It’s all about the weight of the small amount of evidence that is currently in hand. That is why scientific hypotheses and theories are always open to the potential for falsification given additional empirical evidence.

You, on the other hand, continually ask for some kind of absolute demonstration – something that goes even beyond your personal observation of someone being raised from the dead (which still wouldn’t do it for you). Otherwise, you argue that all that is left to determine truth are your entirely subjective “gestalt” feelings that are not open to testing or the potential for falsification – regardless of the weight of empirical evidence that might be presented to you. This is the very definition of extreme fideism.

I am sympathetic to reformed epistemology:

“While the details of grounding might be controversial it may be assumed that reformed epistemologists assert that ordinary religious experiences of awe, gratitude, contrition, etc., ground the beliefs implied by the believer’s sincere reports of such experiences, provided they can be said to cause those beliefs. Such grounded beliefs are warranted provided they can be defended against known objections. They can then be used as evidence for further religious beliefs. Thus if religious experience grounds the belief that God has forgiven you for doing what is wrong to other humans beings, then that is evidence for a personal God who acts in a morally upright fashion.”

We’ve already gone over this. I’ve already agreed that morality or the “Royal Law” is internally derived and can actually be used as subjectively derived evidence for the existence of God. This particular argument has convinced a number of atheists of the existence of God. However, this internally derived truth, as previously explained multiple times, cannot be used to determine that the Bible is true or of its Divine origin any more than some other book that claims to be Divinely inspired, like the Qur’an or the Book of Mormon. A subjectively derived truth cannot tell you if various empirical claims of the Bible, such as the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or a real place called Heaven are actually true.

But I will admit I am probably closer to Wittgensteinian Fideism

“The incommensurability thesis tells us that religious utterances are unlike scientific or metaphysical claims and so we are confusing different uses of language if we judge religious utterances by the standards of science or metaphysics (Phillips 1992). Stress on the autonomy thesis brings Wittgensteinian fideism close to the fideism of many religious conservatives, but stress on the incommensurability thesis brings it close to the extreme liberal position of Braithwaite (1955), namely that religion is about attitudes not facts, which would, of course, be rejected by religious conservatives.”

This is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. Your definitely a fideist. It is just that you emphasize moral or ethical truths as the basis of your fideistic religion – which you then think to extrapolate to pick out which empirical claims of the Bible to believe as true. As far as your fideism is concerned, you’re just like any other religious “fundamentalist” who claims that their faith, even in the empirical claims of the Bible or the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an or whatever is internally derived and is therefore not subject to testing or the potential for falsification. Your faith-based knowledge is quite absolute and your confidence in your position supreme.

“Even if you reject Wittgensteinian fideism you might still take a lesson from it. For it must surely be granted that religious utterances are not made in a purely intellectual way. Their entanglement with commitment to a way of life and their emotional charge might help to explain the fact, if it is one, that those who take religion seriously, whether believers or not, do not in fact have a continuous range of degrees of confidence but operate instead with full belief or full disbelief.”

This is not true of me or my religion. There most certainly is a range of degrees of confidence for my beliefs. Some I hold with a very high degree of confidence while others are much more tentatively held – being based on lesser degrees of evidence.

In reality we are both somewhere on the spectrum from Enlightenment Evidentialism to Fideism but you imagine you embrace evidentialism which in its purest form of Enlightenment evidentialism leads to atheism as the only warranted belief. But I dont really think you do; you have a conservative fideism that does not allow you to examine with any sort of rigour the evidence for the canon in any sort of scientific way.

I think you’re projecting here. The fact is that I do reject fideism and see no use for it. I think fideism is completely irrational and illogical and no better than wishful thinking. Unlike you, I would never think to use fideistic arguments to explain my position or why I’m a Christian. In fact, you yourself cannot explain the difference between your faith and wishful thinking. It seems to me that this is why you refuse to even address this question.

Perhaps I am glad of that even if it does mean you misinterpret my conversation

How have I misinterpreted your conversation or position? I ask you yet again, what is the difference between your faith in the reality of empirical claims like the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Incarnation, a real place called Heaven – and wishful thinking?

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
As I’ve pointed out before, there are a lot of books claiming to be “The Word of God”. How do you know that the Bible’s claim, among so many competing options, is true? – based on a feeling? That’s how you know? Did an angel show up and tell you that the Bible’s claims are true? – or how to interpret it? Were you born with this knowledge? or did you have to learn it? If you had to learn that the Bible’s claims are true, upon what did you base your learning? – and how did this basis of your learning help you distinguish the true from the false?

At first approximation, the Bible is just a book making a bunch of claims. How can you tell the difference between the origin of the Bible and the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an? In order to determine that God had anything to do with its creation, you have to read it and make judgments about it. If you base your judgments on some kind of deep feeling or gestalt sensation of truth, I say that this isn’t a reliable basis for a leap of faith. However, if you base your acceptance of the claims of the Bible on rational arguments that make sense given what you already think you know to be true, then you have yourself a much more useful and helpful basis for faith… as the Bible itself recommends.

God does not expect us to believe or have faith without sufficient evidence to establish a rational and logical faith in the claims of the Bible. Have you not read where the Bible challenges the honest seeker for truth to “test” even the claims of God? (Judges 6:39; Malachi 3:10; John 14:11; etc…). We are not called to blindly accept anything as true, not even the Bible. The claims of the Bible must be tested to see if they truly are what they claim to be – i.e., the Words of God.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
I haven’t changed my mind. I still see atheism as the most logical alternative to Christianity and any other view of God if such views of God are only based on a wishful-thinking type of fideistic faith. Why should one be a Christian or believe that the Bible is anything more than a good moral fable? – or believe that God exists any more than Santa Claus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? For me, it’s because I see real empirical evidence for God’s existence as well as His Signature within the pages of the Bible and within the universe and the world in which I find myself.

You see, we are called to have an “intelligent trust” in God’s Word – a trust that is based on something more than a deep feeling or internal gestalt. Otherwise, you’re really in the same boat as my LDS friends with their “burning in the bosom” argument for faith in what is or isn’t true.

Now, it is possible to doubt the Divine origin of the Bible while still recognizing the Divine origin of the universe – based on the weight of empirical evidence. This is where quite a number of modern physicists are in their view of God. And, it is a reasonable position given the honest conviction that life and its diversity can evolve via the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection over long periods of time to produce what we have today on this planet.

So, there are different “levels” of recognition when it comes to seeing God’s hand behind various phenomena. And, once His Signature is recognized at a different level, the implications and responsibilities change for us. It’s a “first step” toward God to recognize a Divine Signature behind the origin of the universe and the natural laws that govern it. However, once one recognizes the Divine Hand behind the origin of the Bible and the credibility of the Bible’s empirical claims, one is called to experience different responsibilities and privileges in a higher level walk with God – “in Spirit and in truth”.


Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
Again, there are somethings that, if seen in vision, cannot be easily misinterpreted. If you see that “there was light” then “there was darkness” and that this pattern of was used to mark off a series of seven days, that’s pretty hard to get wrong or misinterpret. Mrs. White also confirms these biblical claims by arguing that God specifically showed her that the creation week was a literal week “like any other”.

So, what needs to happen now is see which claims among competing claims are most likely true. Where does the “weight of evidence lie”? If the claims of neo-Darwinism are true, then the claims of the Bible aren’t just a matter of honest misinterpretations – they are either completely made up fabrications or they are outright lies – from God.

I will say, however, the Darwins observations did help to shed light on the Bible. For example, there were those who believed in the absolute fixity of the species – that nothing could change and that no new species of any kind could be produced by natural mechanisms. Darwin showed, quite clearly, that this interpretation of the Bible was false. So, Darwin’s discoveries did shed light on the Bible’s comments about reproduction “after their kind”. However, the Bible sheds light on Darwin’s claims by showing the clear limitations of Darwinian-type evolution – to very low levels of functional complexity over a short period of time (i.e., not hundreds of millions of years of evolution).

Again, we have science and Scripture shedding light on each other…


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

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