Re: [asa] Sins of pseudoscience

Quoting Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>:

>
> I've a friend who believes she is sensitive to just about all kinds of
> electromagnetic fields, from mobile phone radiation right down to the mains
> .... My wife and I
> have had to bail her out on occasion when she was on the brink of suicide;
> but now all that is put down to the effect of EMF's. It is a coping
> strategy.
>
> Likewise, the YEC David Anderson I wrote about earlier told me "if I
> believed, as you do, that the earth is billions of years old, I would give
> up my faith and become an atheist". What is one to do? Be responsible for
> the collapse of someone's faith? Or is it better to be an atheist than to
> base one's faith on a lie? If someone's faith cannot survive at the same
> time as accepting billions of years/common ancestry etc, is one to say that
> this faith is worthless?
>
> I kind of think not - if you examined what we all thought and believed,
> there is probably some bit of irrational dishonesty that we all cling on to
> for dear life. >
> Iain

I can understand the sympathy we can have towards our coping mechanisms -- but
Christianity is so easily reduced to just such a phenomenon by those outside the
faith. "It's our delusional way of coping." While we don't want to be
"trigger-pullers" towards a brother's fragile faith, I don't think we do him any
favors by patting him on the back and letting him go either. Hebrews 5 may be
relevant to this: a person of fragile faith needing the "milk" of reassurance
on the basic foundations of his faith; he needs to see some answered prayer,
hear some glowing testimonies, "feel" a presence of God and so on. I think God
 actually provides this as needed for a "babe" who needs it. But to think that
 an immature death-grip on a certain fallacious view of Scripture can be
included in this, is, I think, dangerous for the infant --who needs more than
anything to grow up.
  A more mature believer, however, may get his boat rocked a bit more without
his foundations getting blown apart. He can handle the night times of the soul,
the desert wastes encountered in life; and while he is shaken -- he still
recognizes the Rock. I think Paul demonstrates a commitment to Truth above all
when he says in I Cor. 15, if these things are not so, then we are found to be
false witnesses -- and indeed our whole faith is a most pathetic affair if
Christ was not really raised from the dead. No sympathetic word here about how
it still might all be a nice coping mechanism.

I don't have a good answer for you Iain about how to handle some of these. You
obviously have a bit of experience. But if we don't somehow gently pry these
"time-bomb falsehoods" away from a friend, then someone else later may be happy
to pull their trigger, and you may not be around at that point to help pick up
pieces.

--Merv
 
p.s. I think the question has been asked: If you had to choose between
happiness or knowing the truth, which would you want? Our Christian faith leads
us to see that as a false dichotomy. But in the meanwhile, Truth would seem
the more paramount of the two, I think. Happiness built on falsehood is to be
on stormy seas in a cardboard boat. And we don't do our Christian witness any
favor when it becomes apparent that our commitment to truth is not preeminent in
our theology.
   

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Received on Mon Jan 21 17:23:34 2008