My last post discussed some of the problems with demanding "extraordinary" evidence before considering the possibility that an extraordinary event - like the Resurrection of Jesus - actually did occur. Setting artificial standards for evidence, I argued, does little to advance the goal of determining the truth.Skeptics often respond by insisting that nothing short of the miraculous will convince them of the existence of God. After all, they reason, if God did exist, he would expect us to use the mind he gave us to come to our own conclusions, based on evidence and reason, in order to separate fact from fantasy. When pressed, the skeptic will often provide the following examples of "adequate" proof:
- God appearing to everyone, everywhere at the same time;
- Finding microscopic writing on every living cell identifying God as the manufacturer;
- Present day miracles such as amputees regrowing limbs through prayer;
- Alien life coming to earth and also proclaiming Christ as savior;
- Finding large etchings on Mars authored by Yahweh.
The first step in assessing this challenge is to consider whether God has an adequate reason for not addressing each of us in a direct and unambiguous way. Why doesn't God write us an email each day that makes his will known? The answer, I suspect, has to do with the Fall - as a result of which God removed himself from direct contact with us - and from the fact that he actually does intend us to use our intellect to move towards him. To better know, and experience and understand him requires not a one-sentence tag line - "You should take that job. /s/ God" - but a conscious effort of the will to solve the puzzles of life, of revelation, of awareness of God in our lives. That this is achievable requires little more than perusing a book on the lives of the saints.
But at a deeper level, the skeptic who insists on such direct communication is actually betraying the very commitment to rationality that he pretends to have. The skeptic insists he cannot just believe "on faith" and that he expects that a God who gave us a mind would expect that we use it. Christians agree. In fact, many passages in Scripture reaffirm Jesus' admonition that we are to love God with all of our minds. In placing trust in the Biblical account of reality, Christians use a rational process known as abduction - reasoning from inferences to a logical conclusion - piecing together dozens of bits of information to see where they lead. This process is an example of how rationality works.
By contrast, despite their asserted reliance on rational thinking, skeptics insist 1) that the evidence be "extraordinary" (whatever that means) and 2) that nothing short of a direct contact by God would suffice. Do they not realize that the intellect isn't necessary if one's expectations are set to that level? Even the person of below normal intelligence would be able to conclude "God Is" with such evidence and without any use of rational thinking. Reasoning from evidence to a conclusion would simply not be necessary.
The skeptic's position is like that of a juror who refuses to convict the murderer because there was no confession, or no video of the killing as it took place. But killers always leave some evidence behind, and piecing together the bits and pieces of that trail allows for a thoughtful, rational person to find guilt regardless of the killer's silence. Now, the skeptic may object that God should not try to hide, the way the killer does. No matter. Use a different example. Many of the greatest discoveries of science - for instance, unlocking the secrets of the atom - required effort to uncover the reality that lies beneath the surface. If scientists waited for an instruction manual to appear written into the canals of Mars, or printed on the cell, we would still be lighting fires to illuminate our caves. In any other pursuit of knowledge and understanding, the thoughtful person understands that the answers will not always be clear and that reasoning to best conclusions is a viable way of attaining knowledge. Why should it be any different when it comes to knowledge of God? What is too easily obtained is often too little valued.
The skeptic sets impossible standards because he is trying to find reasons to reject what is patently obvious to most people who ever lived - created things require a Creator. Christians take this knowledge to a deeper level, placing confidence in their conclusion that this Creator revealed himself in the pages of the Bible. In so doing, Christians rely on reason; it is the skeptic, with his impossibly high demands, that refuses to.
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16 comments:
The irony is that the same skeptic that demands extraordinary evidence (by their own definition) but will take on faith that there is a multiverse or there is natural explanations for the universe springing from nothing we just haven't found it yet.
So it's not about the skeptic not wanting to exercise faith because they already do. There is no imperical evidence what so ever for things coming from nothing or multi universes. They just place their faith that naturalism will eventually explain something from nothing.
It seems pretty ironic that they don't require extraordinary evidence for their own faith in naturalism.
Eric,
There is plenty of evidence for methodological naturalism explaining previously unexplained phenomena. The evidence of science's ability to explain the world around us is extraordinary, particularly when compared to the evidence of religion's ability to do the same.
I think most christians would not say that science is not a valid tool. Those who would, are not the majority even if they seem vocal.
What many would say is that science explains HOW god did it, and is not an ultimate explanation in and of itself.
Trent,
What is your support for saying this? I don't know any Christians personally that say science is not a valid tool. PleaseConvinceMe.com is certainly not an organization that says this. There may indeed be Christians who say that but it's not "most".
Vinny,
You are correct science does explain lots about our world, I completely agree. I've spent most of my career working for companies in the scientific arena. However, science and nature don't explain everything about our world. The science points to the universe coming from a singularity. However, it can't answer the question of how something comes from nothing.
Eric,
I agree that science doesn't explain everything. I don't know whether we can determine which things it will never be able to explain.
On the other hand, "God did it" has never impressed me as much of an explanation. I would prefer simply to admit "I don't know."
You're implying God of the gaps and that's been refuted here by PCM, Stand To Reason, William Lane Craig and others so the answer to that can be obtained from those sources. Here's an article addressing just this - http://t.co/UAKv0uGc
We actually can say what science can't tell us. Science can't tell us about immaterial things. It can't prove I love my wife. It can't tell us what is moral. It can't tell us why thoughts come to be. It can't tell us how something comes from nothing. Science can't even prove that "science is all there is."
You didn't explicitly state this but it seems like you're saying something like "Science doesn't have an explanation why something comes from nothing but it will so therefore God is not the explanation." That's nothing more than an apriori commitment to naturalism and is a "science of the gaps". It's placing faith in science to be able to explain something by science that science could never observe or recreate.
It also doesn't follow that because some one believes in the existence of God that they reject science. I look to natural explainations for the world around me until the evidence points somewhere else. The universe creating itself is not something there is evidence for and we don't observe other things coming into being on their own. So its not unreasonable to say that the cause of nature is something outside nature. That seems to be the most reasonable conclusion based on what we observe. And explanation that we don't know so it has to be science and only science has never impressed me as reasonable.
I think this topic is really interesting, and I would like to go back to Eric's first comment here, where he made the point that skeptics are already placing their faith in something. I find this completely true. Vinny, you responded by saying that science can explain lots of unexplained phenomena. I also completely agree. But what science has done in the last couple of decades, and continues to do at an alarming rate, is pile up "extraordinary evidence" that God does in fact exist. It's pretty amazing.
Also, no evidence is ever evaluated in a vacuum. The claim that Jesus rose from the dead (which is the "extraordinary event" described in the original post) would not be so extraordinary if you already knew that (1) God exists, (2) He sent His only begotten son into the world to die for our sins, (3) the wages of our sin is death, and (4) all of these things were predicted by the old testament writings and the saying of Jesus before he was crucified. In that back drop, the claim is not quite so extraordinary.
And that's exactly why we don't need extraordinary evidence for this single event. It's a cumulative case, or, as Al often puts it, abductive reasoning.
Greg,
I agree that evidence can’t be evaluated in a vacuum. I try to evaluate evidence in the context of observed processes of cause and effect. For example, fingerprints on the handle of a gun constitute evidence of who may have handled the weapon because I understand the natural processes by which the patterns formed by the skin on human fingers are transferred to other objects and I believe that those processes act consistently. If I thought that those patterns appeared on objects randomly or by divine fiat, fingerprints on a gun wouldn’t be evidence of anything.
Unfortunately, I don’t understand supernatural processes of cause and effect so I am unable to infer from any given collection of evidence that a supernatural cause is most likely responsible. Based on my knowledge and experience, the most common causes of supernatural stories are wishful thinking, gullibility, ignorance, and want of critical thought. I cannot eliminate the possibility that some ancient supernatural stories are the product of actual supernatural events. Nevertheless, I cannot think of any criteria that would enable me to assess that probability higher than some natural cause.
Vinny,
What evidence in science or nature is most convincing for believing the universe caused itself?
Eric,
I don't know.
Vinny,
Is science all there is?
Eric,
All what? I'm not sure what you think I would be denying if I answered yes or what I'd be affirming if I answered no.
Vinny,
Can everything be explained by science? Is nature all there is?
Eric,
Science does not presently explain everything, but I don't know whether it is capable of explaining everything. I am doubtful, but I can't think of any way to determine that something is beyond the reach of science.
I don't know whether nature is all that there is. I think that nature may be all that there is that can be objectively known.
I think the point is that there are certain things in life that can't be explained via science - like how the nature was created and how it extends till now. However, please note that this does not mean that we should have God as the answer. Just like a multiple choice question, when we know that option A is wrong, there are still many options to choose from such as B, C and D. This is definitely not a True/False question as God is not established as a fact as of the present.
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