6.27.2005
An Objective Faith: Why Christians Believe the Bible
Often as I surf the Internet debating Creation/Evolution with secular humanists, I find that they try to bolster their argument by accusing me of subjectivity:
"All that stuff about God and the Bible is just faith. Faith has no place in science!"
In other words, David MacMillan doesn't have a place in science either.
I've seen quite a few analogies that try to defend faith. An example of this would be the car analogy: "You have faith that your car will start in the morning." However, this falls short because it deals with faith that something will happen, rather than faith that something is true.
Jesus told us to do to others what we want them to do to us. This command stems from the fact that people normally do "unto others" what the others have done to them in the past.
So, I'm going to do to the secular humanists just what they have done to me; that is, attack the thing that their arguments rest on. We Christian believe in the Bible. Atheists believe in science textbooks.
Let's take Joe. Joe is an fictional atheist freshman in highschool studying biology. He believes what he reads in his science textbook, right? But why does he believe what it tells him? Unless he has examined every statement in the book, he must accept the book on faith.
This is anything but a blind faith. Joe has quite a few reasons to believe the textbook. To start with, viable authorities like his teachers and his parents have told him that the textbook tells the truth. His parents and teachers have never lied to him in the past, so the textbook is probably accurate based only on this support.
However, this is not the only reason he has faith in the contents of his textbook. Everything that he already knows about biology agrees with what he reads. The book shows careful attention to detail and much planning. Joe knows that all the stuff he has checked makes sense, so he trusts the rest enough to have faith in it.
The most important thing, though, is the author. On the front of the book, he can read the author's name followed by a PhD. If the writer of this textbook has multiple PhDs in biology, Joe reasons, he probably knows a lot more about this subject than I do. That's the most important point on which his faith rests: the greater knowledge of the author.
These are all the same kinds of reasons that we Christians believe in the Bible. We have faith in the Bible based on different things: the testimony of our elders for instance. Strangely, though, this is used against us: "You just believe the Bible because your parents do."
Everything that we understand about the world we live in agrees with the Bible. This is another reason that we accept the Bible on faith. Since we know that the Bible is accurate wherever we have checked it, we can have a strong faith that the rest of it is equally accurate.
The last and most important reason that we have faith in the Bible is that the Author is smarter than we are. He tells us in one of the books (2 Timothy, to be exact) that "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness."
It is true that Christians believe the Bible based on faith. But it is anything but a blind faith. In fact, it takes much more faith to believe in most scientific textbooks than it does to believe in God's Word. The only support of faith in evolution would be the recommendation of our peers. All other evidence supports faith in the Bible.
To sum up this post, I'd like to quote the renowned evolutionist professor Richard Dawkins:
"All appearance to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way."
Even when all the evidence is against the theory of evolution, they still have faith that God doesn't exist.
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15 comments:
You get it wrong.
People with no training and only a passing interest in a subject are generally impressed by arguments from authority. People who are practicing scientists don't do that. Of course, you may trust another person, but that person can still be quite wrong. In science the only thing that counts is
EVIDENCE. If you cannot back up your claims with empirical, repeatable evidence, no matter how correct you have been in the past, or how well respected you are, your claim is worthless.
There is also a different chain of reasoning between a naturalist scientist and a creationist scientist. The creationist starts out with the premise that the Biblical account of creation is right and then goes off and tries to force everything to fit into that account. A naturalist scientist surveys the known evidence and then constructs the theory that best fits the evidence. I don't believe in a young earth because I believe in what I see and I certainly don't think the evidence points towards a young earth. And I certainly know people who stopped believing in young earth creationism the more they learned about geology and biology. I have yet to meet someone who went int the opposite direction.
S
Hey S,
Good comment. It's well thought out, and it didn't have hardly any smear stuff in it.
People with no training and only a passing interest in a subject are generally impressed by arguments from authority. People who are practicing scientists don't do that.
So every single scientist out there tests every single bit of information he knows all by himself? The point I'm making is that when another scientist tells him about something, he accepts it on faith because everything else the other scientist told him in the past was true.
In science the only thing that counts is EVIDENCE. If you cannot back up your claims with empirical, repeatable evidence, no matter how correct you have been in the past, or how well respected you are, your claim is worthless.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. But since we are dealing with origin science (what happened in the past), our hypothesis are neither repeatable or testable. Empirical science tests only natural processes in the present tense; it cannot tell us anything about the past. The best we can do is apply some of the information learned from empirical science to try and figure out what's gone on before.
The creationist starts out with the premise that the Biblical account of creation is right and then goes off and tries to force everything to fit into that account.
A naturalist scientist surveys the known evidence and then constructs the theory that best fits the evidence.
The part about the Biblical scientist is basically right, but you've butchered the description of the naturalistic scientist. Both people start out on the same footing except for one thing: the totally naturalistic scientist has already ruled out the possibility of any supernatural Creator.
Then, the same basic steps take place. Both of them find a model which they feel best fits the evidence. The Biblical scientist, unhampered by a pre-existing bias against God, accepts the Biblical account. The other scientist accepts the basic naturalistic account (Big Bang, Macroevolution, etc.).
Then, both of them begin interpreting new data according to their scheme. They look at the Grand Canyon; the Biblical account calls for short periods of time and the naturalistic account calls for long periods of time. Obviously, water carved the canyon (that's the empirical side). Then, the scientists decide based on their presuppositions whether it was a lot of water and a little bit of time or a little bit of water and a whole lot of time.
The difference between a naturalistic scientist and a Biblical scientist is only the model that they already hold to. Everyone enters the scientific field with bias. It's just a question of which bias agrees the most with the given evidence; in other words, which bias is the right bias to be biased by.
And I certainly know people who stopped believing in young earth creationism the more they learned about geology and biology. I have yet to meet someone who went in the opposite direction.
Please look at just a few of the following links:
Gary Parker
George Howe
Arthur Jones
Edward Boudreaux
John Cimbala
James Allan
Bob Hosken
John Rankin
Timothy Standish
Keith Wanser
Almost all these scientists started out believing in evolution but switched over once they examined the evidence more closely.
OK, now you've "met someone who went in the opposite direction".
The point is that Biblical scientists function just the same as secular scientists. They just start with a different bias.
BTW, Anonymous S,
You are a research scientist at LANL in Los Alamos, New Mexico, right?
It's great to be debating with a scientist from such a prestigious intellectual foundation!
Just a little feature of StatCounter. :-P
The point I'm making is that when another scientist tells him about something, he accepts it on faith because everything else the other scientist told him in the past was true.
This is an odd definition of faith you are using. But anyway, the scientist has a degree of measured skepticism about the claims made by his fellow scientists. This is hardly blind faith.
But since we are dealing with origin science (what happened in the past), our hypothesis are neither repeatable or testable. Empirical science tests only natural processes in the present tense; it cannot tell us anything about the past. The best we can do is apply some of the information learned from empirical science to try and figure out what's gone on before.
This is another one of those interpretations of science made only by creationists. First off, science is a methodology for learning something about the physical world. It doesn't apply just to the present or what we can perform an experiment on on some tabletop. A hypothesis is testable if one can perform an experiment or make an observation that supports it. An testable result is reproducible if different people given access to the same data can find similiar results. This is the accepted definition of what science is.
It would be interesting to see how someone with the above view of science would act in court if a murderer killed someone dear to them. I can only imagine them argueing, "well, the forensic scientists found a weapon on the accused with DNA evidence which matched by beloved's. But since no one was there to witness the murder and we can only test that which occurs in the present I have to request that all charges be dropped against the accused since we cannot establish beyond a reasonable doubt the accused's guilt." Somehow I doubt I'll ever hear this argument.
Both people start out on the same footing except for one thing: the totally naturalistic scientist has already ruled out the possibility of any supernatural Creator.
Unfortunately for you most scientists are usually not "totally naturalistic", a phrase I am assuming you mean as someone who advocates philosophical naturalism. Scientists span a vast spectrum of religious beliefs and I can't imagine the Christian, Muslim, or Jewish scientists I have known have ruled out any possibility of a creator. So I think this type of argument is without merit since many people have reconciled scientific and religious beliefs. Again, as I see it, it is only those already committed to the literal interpretation of the bible that are swayed by YEC arguments.
Further down in your post you come very close to adopting a relativist position. A relativist believes that our own cognitive bias prevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational bias will apply to whatever allegedly can be measured without using our senses.
I firmly reject philosophical relativism. But it is amusing how often I've seen creationists argue like a relativist since supposedly they should be the ones most committed to believing in objective facts.
It's well thought out, and it didn't have hardly any smear stuff in it.
Thank you. However, I believe respect is earned and not given. I don't see the point in civility with people who make false claims when they should know better.
Yes, I am a year away from earning my Phd in nuclear astrophysics with side interests in statistical thermodynamics. I do work at a national lab.
S
Hey S,
There's one thing I want to go into real quick:
The creationist starts out with the premise that the Biblical account of creation is right and then goes off and tries to force everything to fit into that account. A naturalist scientist surveys the known evidence and then constructs the theory that best fits the evidence.
In his book, "Origin of the Species", Darwin says:
"Geological research, though it has added numerous species to existing and extinct genera, and has made the intervals between some few groups less wide than they otherwise would have been, yet has done scarcely anything in breaking down the distinction between species, by connecting them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been effected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many objections which may be urged against my views."
And more than 150 years later, I'm afraid that the same problem still exists. Geological research has yet to reveal "numerous, fine, intermediate varieties". Evolutionists have tried to account for this by creating new theories to account for evolution's shortcomings, theories that are as hard to believe as the original. Take as an example neo-Darwinism. Remember, the theory of evolution was created before scientist knew about DNA. So once scientists understood that an organism's DNA prohibits it from evolving, they realized that for an organism to change, it would have to mutate. With this theory, however, a new problem arises: there has NEVER been a documented case of a mutation that makes an organism more fit to survive than its parents.
Then there's punctuated equilibrium, another theory designed to fix the problem addressed by Darwin concerning intermediate (missing) links. In punctuated equilibrium, evolutionists say that organisms might undergo short periods of exposure to high levels of radiation, toxic chemicals, or anything else that might bring about mutations, thus causing drastic changes in the organism. Then these mutants would go through a long period of no mutations. This would explain the lack of intermediate links in the fossil record, since the intermediate links would only have existed during the short periods of mutations.
Ok, my point is, S, that it is the evolutionists who start out with their theory, which is completely void of evidence to begin with, and then try to force everything to fit into that account, even if it means devising ridiculous theories to explain earlier ones.
By the way, I have recently started a blog addressing some problems that I see within the theory of evolution, and would love to get feedback from someone on the evolutionist's side of the debate. The URL is http://creationismunleashed.blogspot.com. Thanks!
Eric
Eric,
I love your comment. I had a beautiful rebuttal of everything S said, but the PC crashed and I lost it. Phooey.
Feel free to post anything I write here on your creationismunleashed website. Just make sure to put my name at the bottom.
One thing though: There have been beneficial mutations every now and then. However, these mutations are always the loss of information, not the gain.
For example, beetles on a Pacific island might have a mutation removing their wings. Normally, this would be detrimental and this defective gene would be removed immediately because all the carriers would die out (Natural Selection).
However, on this isle wings are a handicap; flying insects are blown out to sea and drowned. As a result, many more wingless insects survive than winged ones, and soon the gene pool has totally lost the flight ability.
A beneficial mutation to be sure. But observe: information was lost, not gained. Besides, in order for macroevolution to happen mutations must not only be beneficial, but they must also be a small step along the road to an entirely new and better species. The loss of wings is in no way one of these steps.
Happy Independence Day!
That's exactly right. I should have mentioned a lack of mutations that are not only beneicial, but also make the mutant more specialized than was its parent, since this is foundational for the theory of evolution. Good point there, David.
I'm thinking about inviting you to my blog as a poster, since you obviously have a plethora of knowledge on the subject. Meanwhile, feel free to comment on it.
Eric
Well, eric. We could have a link war and I could point out that biologists disagree with you and send you to the Talk.Origins and the evowiki website which documents beneficial mutations. I have also gone over the sister argument to "there are no beneficial mutations" on the comments to this weblog already so please look at older comment threads to see where I stand so I don't have to repeat myself. But if you want to argue please pick a very specific claim to argue about since one can sometimes resolve an issue when its scope is specific enough.
S
I found the lost comment!
This is an odd definition of faith you are using.
There are two kinds of faith: faith that something is true, and faith that something will happen. I'm talking about the first in this context.
This is another one of those interpretations of science made only by creationists. First off, science is a methodology for learning something about the physical world. It doesn't apply just to the present or what we can perform an experiment on on some tabletop.
Empirical science only tests things that happen in the present. We can show that whenever A happens, B is likely to follow. This is the limit of empirical science. Of course, then we can make a reasonable assumption that when we see B, then A probably happened. This is evidenced by the Grand Canyon example I gave earlier. Empirical science plus deductive reasoning told them that the canyon was carved by water. Anything besides this falls into the category of logic rather than pure empirical science.
A hypothesis is testable if one can perform an experiment or make an observation that supports it. An testable result is reproducible if different people given access to the same data can find similar results. This is the accepted definition of what science is.
I agree entirely; except that this is what empirical science is. But since we can't reproduce what happened in the past, our scientific powers are somewhat limited.
It would be interesting to see how someone with the above view of science would act in court if a murderer killed someone dear to them. I can only imagine them arguing, "well, the forensic scientists found a weapon on the accused with DNA evidence which matched by beloved's. But since no one was there to witness the murder and we can only test that which occurs in the present I have to request that all charges be dropped against the accused since we cannot establish beyond a reasonable doubt the accused's guilt." Somehow I doubt I'll ever hear this argument.
Me too, but forensic science is similar to origin science in that this is not empirical science per se. You can apply what we learn from empirical science here, but ultimately this is a case for logic and deductive reasoning; the murder was not an ongoing natural phenomenon, so its not as if we can test it or repeat it. We can only look at the results and try to reason to a conclusion. A judge who was biased to believe that person X had done the crime would interpret what he saw differently than someone who was biased to believe it was person Y.
I'm not slipping into relativism here when I say this. My original words were meant to counteract what you said about backing up your claims with evidence. That bone that you dig up is not repeatable. I was trying to make the point that both creationists and evolutionists are dealing with the same sort of thing, and that the rules of empirical science don't exactly apply the same way when we are talking about what happened 50 million years ago.
Unfortunately for you most scientists are usually not "totally naturalistic", a phrase I am assuming you mean as someone who advocates philosophical naturalism.
Hey, you were the one who brought up the example of the naturalistic scientist and the creationist scientist.
Scientists span a vast spectrum of religious beliefs and I can't imagine the Christian, Muslim, or Jewish scientists I have known have ruled out any possibility of a creator.
The naturalistic scientist was the one who came up with evolution (Darwin, Dawkins, etc.) Sadly, these Christian/"religious" scientists have been convinced by the secular group to accept the system of evolution. Both Biblical creationism and the Theory of Evolution are systems that people adhere to. "Religious" scientists that accept evolution are trying to merge the systems and create a whole new system from the systems, not from the existing evidence.
So I think this type of argument is without merit since many people have reconciled scientific and religious beliefs.
It isn't about "reconciling" religion and science. A religion is a pre-existing system of belief. With this definition both evolution and creation are religions. The religion you choose (evolution or creation) depends on the pseudo-scientific evidence you see that supports the religious system.
Again, as I see it, it is only those already committed to the literal interpretation of the bible that are swayed by YEC arguments.
Not at all. Many of the PhDs I listed above were either converted through YEC or adopted YEC beliefs through their disgust with evolution.
Further down in your post you come very close to adopting a relativist position. A relativist believes that our own cognitive bias prevents us from observing something objectively with our own senses, and notational bias will apply to whatever allegedly can be measured without using our senses.
There are many degrees and definitions for relativism. It is true that we cannot be 100% objective when viewing evidence. This doesn't mean we can't make valid conclusions, it simply means that we must consider whether our bias is making us look sideways at the facts. Besides, there is hardly ever a cold, hard, unarguable fact. Everything is interpreted one way or another.
I firmly reject philosophical relativism. But it is amusing how often I've seen creationists argue like a relativist since supposedly they should be the ones most committed to believing in objective facts.
This isn't "philosophical relativisim". You are committing the fallacy of equivocation by saying that when we say "our biases affect our interpretation of the evidence" this means that we are relativists and therefore do not believe in objective facts.
The crux of the matter is this: people are always saying things like this:
There is also a different chain of reasoning between a naturalist scientist and a creationist scientist. The creationist starts out with the premise that the Biblical account of creation is right and then goes off and tries to force everything to fit into that account. A naturalist scientist surveys the known evidence and then constructs the theory that best fits the evidence.
We want to show that this is absolutely false! Both evolutionists and creationists follow the same train of reasoning; the evolution starts out believing that evolution is true and interprets all the evidence to fit that account and the creationist starts out believing that creation is true and interprets all the evidence to fit that account.
Acknowledge the existence of bias and look at the presuppositions rather than these surface issues!
In Him,
D3
(whew, what a post!!!)
Hey S,
I read the info at evowiki about beneficial mutations.
I'll respond in a full-fledged post so everyone can see it.
In Him,
David
Hey S,
True, I was wrong about there not being any beneficial mutations. As a said in my previous post,I should have mentioned a lack of mutations that are not only beneficial, but also make the mutant more specialized than was its parent (in other words as David said, adding new information onto its DNA, not changing existing data) since this is foundational for the theory of evolution.
I just visited talkorigins and the first thing I saw as an example of a beneficial mutation was the peppered moths during the Industrial Revolution. My rebuttal is here.
Eric
When I say that there aren't any cold, hard, facts, it doesn't mean that we cannot know anything for certain or anything like that. Facts themselves exist, but the conclusions we take from them are many and varied.
My favorite example again: the Grand Canyon. It's a fact that the canyon was carved by water. Any and all conclusions beyond that, however, are incredibly affected by the bias that we hold. Facts are concrete, but there is no such thing as a non-biased conclusion. That's why all parties must examine their bias to discern whether it changes their conclusion in a bad way.
I really don't think there exists a meaningful distinction between "empirical" science(btw, a ridiculous name since it implies there exists a non-empirical science) and "origin" science. If a theory is in principle falsefiable and follows the same 'hypothetic-deductive' methodology as the rest of the "hard" sciences then I think it ought to be labled simple 'science' no matter what time frame the theory makes predictions about.
I guess you get this stuff from AiG as in
href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/feedback/2004/0312.asp">this page which makes the
questionable statement:
"The other science is called historical science. It isn't repeatable because it deals with events in the past. Evolution, radiometric dating,
etc. deal with reconstructing the past. So there requires quite a few assumptions to fill in the gaps. These assumptions are called 'interpretations' and they are not repeatable science."
The author of this piece calls present, experimentably verifiable science "operational" science rather than "emprical" science. I suppose taken to its logically conclusion all science ought to be classified as historical because we can never achieve the same initial conditions from one point in time to the other and we often make casual inferences from that which may or may not have been directly observed. For example in the most accurate area of science we have, particle physics, an event may occur which we cannot observe directly. We get information about the event by reconstructing the past from looking at the event's daughter reactions. While in principle we can perform the same experiment again we often very rarely get the same exact controls as we had in the original experiment. Of course, YEC have a problem with 'operational' science too when it doesn't conform to their prejudices. See discussions about thermodynamics.
A bit off topic, they mention radiometric dating isn't repeatable and subject to interpretations. Radiometric dating is based on quantum mechanics, geochemistry, and a bit of probability theory. Basically three highly grounded subjects in science and then it comes as no bit of suprise there exist strong consistency checks for different methods of dating a material.
On the other hand, YEC need radiometric dating methods to not work or at least give a theory wherein the methods give an answer that they would expect from the theory. Take a look at this theory.
Beta decay is one process of radioactivity. In beta decay the neutron decays via this reaction: n->p+e+v, where p is the proton, e is an electron, and v is an anti-electron neutrino. When a nucleus decays it loses a neutron to gain a proton and moves up one spot on the periodic tabe. The article I linked to starts out by noting that in some nuclei susceptible to beta decay the rate of decay is extremely slow. The reason is that when a neutron beta decays the electron has to go somewhere and in these nuclei the electron is "blocked in" by the atoms electron shells. Someone had the idea that if one removes electrons from the atom, or ionizes it, then the rate of beta decay should increase. Lo and behold, someone performed an experiment testing this idea and an increase of in beta decay was discovered.
Now, Woodmorphe and AiG want to argue that these type of nuclear experiments are somehow relevant to radioactive decays in nature. They do this by postulating that in the first creation day God created the world filled with a heavy-ion plasma (but why is there no evidence of this? where did the electrons go?). He then appeals to a highly speculative theory of Humphrey's that allows the strong force to be weaker in the past. After a few hours of enhanced decay suddenly God or some unexplained mechanism stops it. Apparently, this scenerio only effects beta-minus decay and not any other like beta-plus (p->n+v+e^{+}), alpha decay, and so on.
So to get the conclusion they want they need to argue that an unobserved state existed in the beginning of the universe (non-Biblical too, I might add), physics was dramatically different, and Divine intervention is necessary. No evidence is given of any. So reading this article my thoughts are, "why bother?". This isn't science, it is storytelling.
Anyway, there is more I could write but I'm just not up to it tonight.
S
I really don't think there exists a meaningful distinction between "empirical" science and "origin" science. If a theory is in principle falsefiable and follows the same 'hypothetic-deductive' methodology as the rest of the "hard" sciences then I think it ought to be labled simple 'science' no matter what time frame the theory makes predictions about.
One difference. "Empirical" or "Operational" science shows how natural processes operate. "Origin" science tries to decypher how natural processes shaped what we see today. Not a huge distinction, but one worth mentioning.
Of course, YEC have a problem with 'operational' science too when it doesn't conform to their prejudices.
YECs have a problem with secular interpretations of operational and origin science when it does not agree with the Bible. We don't have problems with science, just with secularist's fallible interpretations of that science.
A bit off topic, they mention radiometric dating isn't repeatable and subject to interpretations. Radiometric dating is based on quantum mechanics, geochemistry, and a bit of probability theory.
A bit of probability theory? No, no, no. Radiometric dating works like this: Potassium decays into argon at rate X. If we see Y amount of potassium and Z amount of argon in a rock, we can calculate the age of the rock.
But there is one gigantic fallacy with dating. We don't know how much argon was in the rock to begin with and how much potassium was in the rock to begin with. Therefore, we have to make huge assumptions about the original amounts, which can skew our final age enormously.
Basically three highly grounded subjects in science and then it comes as no bit of suprise there exist strong consistency checks for different methods of dating a material.
Rarely do "strong consistency checks" exist. Rather, different kinds of dating methods disagree.
Beta decay is one process of radioactivity. In beta decay . . . the electron has to go somewhere and in these nuclei the electron is "blocked in" by the atoms electron shells. Someone had the idea that if one removes electrons from the atom, or ionizes it, then the rate of beta decay should increase. Lo and behold, someone performed an experiment testing this idea and an increase of in beta decay was discovered.
This is another reason that radiometric dating is unreliable.
Now, Woodmorphe and AiG want to argue that these type of nuclear experiments are somehow relevant to radioactive decays in nature. They do this by postulating that in the first creation day God created the world filled with a heavy-ion plasma (but why is there no evidence of this? where did the electrons go?). He then appeals to a highly speculative theory of Humphrey's that allows the strong force to be weaker in the past. After a few hours of enhanced decay suddenly God or some unexplained mechanism stops it. Apparently, this scenerio only effects beta-minus decay and not any other like beta-plus (p->n+v+e^{+}), alpha decay, and so on.
So to get the conclusion they want they need to argue that an unobserved state existed in the beginning of the universe (non-Biblical too, I might add), physics was dramatically different, and Divine intervention is necessary. No evidence is given of any.
Hey, this is just a postulate. There are enough problems with radiometric dating that we shouldn't need this to convince people it is unreliable. No evidence? We have never seen cold dark matter or warm dark matter or nearly any other idea so vehemently affirmed by proponents of the BBT. The only difference? They must have this to substantiate BBT. We can use this, if it is true, as just another strike against established secular radiometric dating.
So reading this article my thoughts are, "why bother?". This isn't science, it is storytelling.
"Once upon a time (before time existed), nothing exploded from nothingness in an absence of space without supernatural infludence and formed our universe, complete with time, matter, natural laws, and the like. This is the Big Bang Theory."
Who is telling fairytales?
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