>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Tom Pearson
>Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2001 1:17 AM
>Glenn, I apologize for intruding on the coversation at this point,
>especially since others have responded to you in their own way, but I'm
>honestly puzzled by what you appear to be asking for. I don't understand
>why "faith based upon faith" is a problem, and I certainly don't undersatnd
>how we could ever "totally escape" such a condition.
It is never an intrusion to have you. We agree that we can't verify the
events that really make a difference to Christianity or for that matter any
other faith. This is largely what my point has been in this go-round. This
fact has several implications for me.
1. claims that apologists like to make about demonstrating the veracity of
the faith, do no such thing.
2. we can easily delude ourselves about what is true (as I did when I was a
YEC) because we ignore sensory disconfirmation of what we believe. I assume
that adherents to
metaphysically false religions also delude themselves.
3. Since we can't verify the actual issues of faith, then the issue of how
to determine the true faith becomes difficult. How are we to tell if our
faith is really the true one? THere are several ways people handle this
problem.
a. we can trust our subjective feelings that this is true, but then the
Mormons do
that (in spite of the falsification of the history portrayed in the book
of
Mormon) as do all other faiths. The YECs also believe the history
they portray in
spite of falsification of that history--they have faith that God did
it that way
and claim that those who don't believe what they do, lack faith. It
seems to me
that if we are going to chastize the YECs for believing what is
false, we should
take a close look at what we believe which is also false (like the
Mesopotamian
flood concept).
b. we can reject faith as a way of knowing anything and thus become
atheists or
agnostics.
c. we can use sense data to verify/falsify the history expounded by
the different
religions and make our choice based upon that. This is the option I
prefer. And
I prefer to go after an improbable event for verification only
because verifying
probable events (like this guy lived on earth) have less impact upon
verifying
that God actually intervened.
d. We can believe because this is what our parents taught us. But this
makes
metaphysical truth depend upon the accident of birth.
e. We can assume Christianity is true and then reject all other
religions because
they don't live up to the Christian standard. A rather provincial view
that
doesn't take the problem seriously. Many argue from this point of view.
f. we can believe because we believe what our senses tell us about what is
on the pages of the Bible when we read it and we furthermore
believe what is
conveyed by those pages. But our belief doesn't make those concepts
certain.
I am sure that there are other possibilities which I have omitted.
>
>For instance, there seem to be at least a couple of faith claims in your
>question above. You apparently believe that there are "facts," and that
>these "facts" can be "verified" by some procedure. But how do we establish
>the existence of "facts," particularly of the sort that you repeatedly ask
>for? What "fact" will demonstrate the existence of "facts"? And how do
>we establish what it means to "verify" something? Is there a way that we
>can "verify" the proper approach to "verifying"? The difficulty here is an
>endless regress, and the most genuine response to that regress is to
>acknowledge that our confidence in these things rests on faith. Why think
>that "facts" and "verifying" are something other than a set of
>faith claims?
First, I will say that if there are truly no facts and no way to determine
facts, then there was no way for the disciples to determine that Jesus
actually arose from the dead, and thus this approach leads to the
destruction of Christianity. Why should we lay our lives down for what may
not be a fact? And to then take the approach that everything is faith
therefore one shouldn't seek verification leads to the situation in which
all faiths and all beliefs are equally valid (or equally false). If we can't
verify anything, then we Christians have no basis upon which to say that
ours is the only religion, the only truth, the one way to God etc.
Secondly,I will take a G.E. Moorean response to you because it is the only
philosophical answer that I learned in philosophy grad school that really
made any sense to me. At heart your question is involved with the question
of the world's existence and our ability to detect that world. Being a
philosopher, you know that this issue has occupied the great philosophers
such as Kant, Descartes, Austin etc. Kant had his noumena and phenomena. The
reason I beleive we can know/verify things is because if we don't treat this
world as if our senses verify events, then we get hurt really badly. Every
time I try to take a Christian Science view of the world, that it is merely
an illusion --that sense data doesn't verify reality for me--and thus I am
lead to ignore the big bad bee with that nasty stinger--I get hurt. We have
to act in our everyday lives as if our senses verify things for us; as if
our senses are giving us facts. If our sense data do not bring us facts,
then we do indeed have one grand illusion. To claim that our senses don't
'verify' things, then the guy who finds his wife in bed with the next door
neighbor has no right to later claim in court that his senses verified for
him that she was an adultress. She could rightly respond as you did above!
(I would love to see the judge's face at that point). :-) The above approach
implies that sense data is of no value to us. It is of crucial value to us
and is the basis for verification and the very basis of our faith itself.
Thirdly, at heart this approach is an attack on the validity of sensory data
which is what we use for verification. It disconnects our experience from
the outer world making conclusions about the latter meaningless.
THat being said, while I absolutely agree with you that all knowledge is
based upon assumption, there is a crucial difference between factual claims
and theological claims. I can get feed back via sensory observations which
confirm my factual claims (the sun is yellow or red, the bird is black) But
I have no means of getting observational/sensory confirmation of theological
propositions (God loves me, there are 10,000 gods, God caused the flood
because he thought humans were noisy). If we take the approach you do, then
we can believe anything we want, because facts are not facts and cannot be
used to verify anything. By golly, under the above approach, the YECs very
well may be correct! At the least, I can't tell them that my facts disprove
what they say because there are no facts for me to beat them over the head
with. ANd indeed I have head several YECs take exactly the approach you laid
out above.
>
>I should confess that I am something of a direct realist, and not some
>slack-jawed postmodernist who delights in catching people up in these
>self-referential paradoxes.
I know you aren't a postmodernist, but I am enjoying going after that
position in the above which is postmodernism in essence.
I do believe in "facts," and (within limits)
>some versions of "verifying." But my commitment to them is a faith
>commitment, and I don't see how else it would be possible to ground them.
>And it seems epistemically appropriate to me that people (including those
>who engage in serious scientific inquiry) should be satisfied with
>grounding their commitments in this way. I don't see the problem.
The problem is this. If we choose to ground our commitments in this way,
then we must be consistent and then apply that grounding to everything EVEN
TO OUR RELIGION as best we can. The problem to me seems that we want the
YECs to pay attention to us because we can prove their position wrong and
false by means of such grounding (and the facts which contradict their
view), but then when it comes to our own theological views, we want to avoid
such grounding. That is why we will beleive things which are inconsistent
with that grounding-like water flowing uphill in a Mesopotamian flood, or
believe in the superhuman strength of Noah and company to push a boat
upstream against raging flood waters, or that it really doesn't matter how
bad the misfit between facts and the biblical accounts are, they are true
anyway. All of these approaches contradict the grounding you speak of. At
the least, we christians are terribly inconsistent on this type of point.
And inconsistency does make a difference. Why should one respect a religion
which which tells others (like YECs and Mormons) to pay attention to the
observational data, while they themselves ignore observational data against
their position or who escape into a theological position which avoids
observational data entirely? Are we christians hypocrites in this regard?
>
>The same issues, I think, can be approached from another angle. I know a
>lot of Christians who establish their their theological certainties by
>holding to propositions such as the following:
I am going to make comments on the following to try to illustrate how
important sense data, and its reliable interpretation is to the things you
say below.
>
>*God desires to reveal Himself to human beings
We can't know that without sense data. They read that in the Bible and the
words were brought to them via light waves. If we can't trust lightwaves to
verify what is on the page, then we can't read this. And unless we claim
that God himself revealed this to us individually, we can't know that apart
from sense data. Indeed one might wonder exactly how we can experience this
revelation without some form of sense data. And if sense data is incapable
of telling us any 'facts' as this approach suggests, then why should we
believe the revelation anyway?
>*That revelation consists primarily in the communication of information
Via sense data, which means we need to use our senses to verify what the
communication is. If it can't tell us any facts, the communication is lost.
>*That information is reducible to expression in language
Heard via audiovisual sensibilia
>*The basic lingusitic expression is propositions
Which somehow are processed by means of electrical activity of our brain,
which also may be broadly classified as sense data because we can measure
it.
>*Propositions, therefore, convey God's revelation
Sense data tells me that propositions CAN but don't have to convey God's
revelation. The proposition "Satan is a good guy" isn't part of that
revelation. But I can only know that via sense data--the lightwaves
reflecting off the pages of the Bible tell me that Satan is a bad guy.
>*Human beings are so created that an orderly assemblage of divine
>propositions are intelligible to us
Once again, one can only know this via sense data. If we can't verify the
sense data that told us this, we have no way to know if this is true. We
either read this or we deduced it from our observation of nature. Both are
from sense data.
>*The most natural place to encounter an orderly assemblage of divine
>propositions is in a written text
Whose information is transmitted via sense data. If that sense data is
wrong, or unverifiable, then the text very well may not be there
>*The Bible is a written text, purporting to contain such divine
>propositions
They read this in the Bible which makes the claim somewhat circular. I don't
think the Koran says this, nor do the Veddhas.
>*The Bible is, therefore, an orderly assemblage of divine propositions
Which don't match reality in the early chapters among many here who still
affirm the truth of those accounts and disdain those who might want to make
the interpretation of the account consistent with sense data.
>*The Bible was, therefore, authored by God
Hmmm...then shouldn't it be true--i.e. match or be consistent with the sense
data which we both have agreed to be 'grounded' in?
>*The Bible contains divine information that is intelligible to human beings
Sense data from the Bible transmitted to the eyes and interpreted by the
brain brought this proposition to the reader. The fact that this comes from
the Bible itself makes the claim circular and in order to attempt to break
out of the circularity (one can't do it entirely) one must verify that the
Bible speaks truly on other points--such as history.
>*The Bible is a final and independent authority, inspired and reliable, of
>God's revelation
It isn't reliable if it contradicts sense data that is, what we know of
history via our researches, all of which is based upon our senses.
>
>Now, I don't deny any of those propositions. But none of them are "facts,"
>and none of them can be "verified." They are all faith statements. Are we
>to jettison the Bible as an authoritative source of divine revelation,
>then, since our reliance on it is not based on "facts"?
Would you find the following convincing?
Are we
to jettison the Book of Mormon as an authoritative source of divine
revelation,
then, since our reliance on it is not based on "facts"?
Tom, your approach here means that the Book of Mormon might very well be
correct since their reliance on it isn't based on facts either.
[snip]
Still, what
>happened on Calvary cannot be reduced to a set of public "facts" (if it
>were so reducible, I imagine a great many more of us would be clamoring for
>another look at the Shroud of Turin, for instance). So in the long run --
>2,000 years worth -- we are back to "faith based upon faith."
Agreed. So if this is the case, why do we have a right to tell others that
their religion is wrong?
>
>It makes sense to me that people would trust the central testimony of
>Christianity -- the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ -- because there
>has been a community of faith that has witnessed to these things for the
>past 2,000 years, and that this community, fluid in all its expressions
>over the centuries, has created a series of doctrines, documents (including
>the Bible) and practices that continue to embody the spiritual power and
>hope of the Christian faith.
One could make the claim that it is 4.5 times more likely that the Rainbow
Serpent religion of the Australian aborigines should be trusted. After all
there has been a community of faith that has witnessed to these things for
the
past 9,000 years, and that this community, fluid in all its expressions
over the centuries, has created a series of doctrines, documents and
practices that continue to embody the spiritual power and hope of the
Rainbow Serpent faith.(see Christopher Wills, The Runaway Brain, p. 147)
And one can make a case that the present form of bear worship, seen among
circumpolar peoples has been practiced in Europe since the days of the
Neanderthals, 80,000 years ago.
"It makes sense to me that people would trust the central testimony of
the bear cult -- the atonement for sin by the sacrifice of a bear -- because
there
has been a community of faith that has witnessed to these things for the
past 80,000 years, and that this community, fluid in all its expressions
over the centuries, has created a series of doctrines, documents and
practices that continue to embody the spiritual power and hope of their
religion.
If one wants to be consistent in his apologetic, one needs to occasionally
substitute the name of another religion into the claims one makes for his
own in order to see if he would belief the claim if applied to another
religion. We shouldn't make claims about christianity which we wouldn't
believe if another religion's name were in that sentence.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Jan 27 2001 - 07:23:17 EST