On Faithful Skepticism and Rational Faith

It is my observation that the mainstream media and academia stigmatize faith as something intellectually inferior and antithetical to both science and reason. This is not always true of every respected scientist. Some, like Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic Magazine and the one to whom I also like to refer to as “my favorite skeptic”) have a less villifying take on faith in general, and the Christian Faith in particular. Still, atheists like George H. Smith boldy assert that “Christian theism must be rejected by any person with even a shred of respect for reason”. Websites too, like Importance of Philosophy make assertions such as “The result of using faith consistently is the complete inability to think.” Richard Dawkins is quoted as saying “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”

I disagree.

To either replace their faith and justify their rejection of it, skeptics turn to other pinnicles on which to view truth and analyze the world. Some go all out in support of Science. Its all about science. What do emperical experiments tell us. What’s happening in the labratory. Others are all about reason. “This is rational.” “That is not.” “If God created everything, then God created evil. And since evil exists, and acording to the principle that our works define who we are, the we can assume God is evil.”

Media and acadamia potray these alternatives to faith (reason, science, etc) as exclusive to faith. “Science and Faith are not compatible” or “Reason and Faith cannot be reconciled”. The implication is that if you have faith, then you are not rational. You are not scientific. You wonder in the wastelands of stupidity and cluelessnes. Such implications are used, particuarly in our college campuses, as tools by which to destroy people’s religious faith.

And it works. The Christian Church doesn’t do very well educating its people on how to defend the faith. The de-conversion rate of college students is at an all time high. So when our young people go to college, who wants to be called “irrational” “stupid” “clueless” etc? And so people fall away from the faith or cower from the mighty intellecutals in fear because someone convinced them that faith is inherently exclusive to the other faculties of reason, science, and so on.

Part of the problem may be that we let our opponents define what faith is. And when that happens, they are more than happy to define it in the negative. “Faith is the opposite of reason” or “Faith is antithetical to science”.

But is faith merely a dictionary antonym for intellectual glory?

I think not.

I propose that we as Christians take our definition of faith from the 19th book of the New Testament, the Book of Hebrews, the 11th chapter, and the first verse, which says: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

In other words, strictly speaking, faith is merely the belief in something that we have not directly seen or experienced firsthand. That’s it.

If this is the case, then it has far reaching implications into whether or not faith should be stigmatized as something inherently irrational. Because if it is true that faith is merely belief in something not directly experienced, then everyone has faith.

I have not been to England. But I have strong faith that it exists. I haven’t seen it first hand, but Rick Steves has apparantly been there and made a movie about it. The name appears in my history books and all of them agree on the general size and location of the country on the map. Its a well grounded faith too, because there is good evidence for it.

Scientists have not actually seen macro-evolution happen. No one has gone to the zoo for a few million years and watched a monkey turn from ape to homo-sapien. Its a matter of faith because they’re believing in something that they have not actually seen.

In light of this, the argument in our culture ought not to be about whether faith is inherently dangerous or evil; everyone has faith; the argument ought to be over who has the best faith supported by experience, reason, science, and logic.

As a historical faith, Christianity has, in my experience, been able to meet the burden of proof to my satisfaction such that I am convinced that, while theism and christianity are not proveable with mathmatical certainty, the archeological, scientific, philosophical, and historical evidences make faith in God and the Bible a reasonable state of existence not outside the realms of science and rationality.

The evidence that makes this so will be explored on this blog as time goes on. But for now, remember: Faith is not irrational in and of itself. Everyone has to one varying degree or another in various fields of thought and persuasion. The debate ought to be over which faith is best supported by our deductions and observations.

I conclude as I often like to do with the great quote from the great Voddie Baucham:

“Is that your final answer? I hope its not. Let me give you an answer to that question that I believe is better than ‘I was raised that way’ or its better than “Well I’m Southern Baptist and that’s the way we believe’ or its better than “I tried it, and it worked for me” Let me tell you why I choose to believe the Bible. I don’t believe the Bible because I was raised that way—because I wasn’t. I don’t choose to believe the Bible because I tried it and it worked for me. My mother’s Buddhism worked for her—that’s why she was a Buddhist! I need something more than just ‘because it works’. Here’s the answer—I’ll give it to you and unpack it for you:

I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report [of] supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writing are divine rather than human in origin.”

 

 

Missing links in the Associated Press report…

I know I promised my small readership that I would develop more central themes and issues for my blog to cover, but tonight I must dissent from myself just this once…

Those who know me may be aware, to varying degrees, of my intense skepticism of evolution. Indeed, my previous article on evolution issues, one of the most visited posts on this website, I think leaves no doubt as to my position of this matter. There seems to be no end to the stream of evidence and logic that consistently works against Darwinism, and no end in sight for the consistency with which the dissent from Darwinism is suppressed and ignored by major media and scientific outlets.

Although I mostly limit my research to topics like Christian Apologetics, Politics, and Public Policy, it is not unheard of for me to find myself intruiged by some scientific discovery or anecdote. Such was my situation this evening that brought back several reflections on Darwinism and media reporting in general as relates to that theory (note “theory” not “fact”)

My attention was immediatlely drawn to this article written by the Associated Press and linked to the front page of yahoo.com. The yahoo headline read “New Flatfish fossils solve missing link in evolutionary theory”.

The article explained that “Some odd-looking fish fossils discovered in the bowels of several European museums may help solve a lingering question about evolutionary theory, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. The 50 million-year-old fossils — which have one eye near the top of their heads — help explain how flatfish such as flounder, sole and halibut developed the strange but useful trait of having both eyes on one side.”

The article then went on to describe various facts of interest that made for a decently written article in many respects, but even as I was reading it, two things immediately came to mind:

First: Will “missing links” really provide that panacea that evolutionists are so quietly desperate for?

I think not. While the absence is missing links is hailed by the oft-supressed skeptics of evolution, I think there is little chance that finding a even a substantial number of “missing links” will prove anything or convince anybody. As a point of debate, it is too easy for the creationist/intelligent design advocate to argue three things, to start with. First, say something like “The presence of ‘missing’ links does not prove anything for  the evolutionist because it is just as reasonable to say that God created many similar things on day one (or two, etc) without evolution”. Second, a legitimate point could be made by saying that “the similarity between two things does not prove the ancestry of the objects in question”. I find two similar fossils. What does that prove? One thing, and one thing only: That two fossils look the same (further investigation might show that there are those who believe it proves more). That’s it. To say as much as Darwinists want to would be to commit the logical fallacy of non-sequitar–‘it does not follow’. Just because a Honda hubcap is compatible with a Chevy rim doesn’t prove that Chevy evolved from Honda 60 million years ago. Thirdly, the people concerned with propelling this message as a support of Darwinism do so while making an important mistake by failing to differentiate between macro and micro evolution. There’s an important difference; micro evolution is something that everyone, whether Darwinist or not, are perfectly aware of and at peace with. Micro evolution refers to small changes that can occur over time within a specified species. Breeding dogs will create diversity in kind–retrievers, labs, pointers, setters, shuitzou, etc. Nobody disuputes this. The point is, whatever you started with, you still have. We started out with dogs, and we still have dogs…just different variations of the same creature.

The debate comes in over macro-evolution. This refers to the idea that, given enough time (or chance) huge changes within species by combining many many small changes together will result in an entirely different entity altogether (like from microbes, to monkeys, to humans). No substantial missing link establishing this branch of evolution has been established; and when they have been in the past, no great length of time has passed before they are discredited. Do we have fossils showing how a whale graduated from whale-ness into lizard-ness? There is no such thing. And even if one were established, we would simply refer to the first argument presented in this post.

So two branches of evolution: Micro-evolution, which states that small changes within a species will occur while still maintaining fundamental characteristics, and Macro-evolution, which states that large changes will occur over time that result in an entirely different species. Creationists agree with the small changes, and evolutionists are hard pressed to substantiate the historicity of the large ones.

Does the article presented by the Associated Press on the front page of Yahoo! do anything to resolve this struggle and give a victory point to the Darwinists? By no means. Notice that the article refers primarily to the fact that some flatfish had one eye, and some had two. Does this represent huge change such that we end up with entirely different species? No.  It simply substantiates something both sides of the creation/evolution debate agree on…that changes within a species overtime can occur. But notice that we still have the same fundamental being: fish. This does nothing to resolve the chief point of dispute between creationists and evolutionists, although the media made the article headline seem to hope we’d be led to believe otherwise.

Speaking of the media leads me to my second major reflection of this post. While the first one had to do with the actual evidence and logic of the evolution debate, this second thought concerns the media only. Look through the article carefully, and see if you don’t notice something:

There is no dissent presented in the article at all.

No alternative viewpoint. Usually the media inserts phrases like “but critics say” or “…but according to…”. This is especially true for political coverage, but it is the mark of every semi-balanced media report. Yet no such regular and essential feature appears here. I would think it should, since many qualified authorities would differ with the point of view presented in this article. According to this report from WorldNetDaily, (in response to an assertion by PBS that “virtually every scientist in the world believes the [Darwinian] theory to be true”) over 600 PhD scientists signed a document expressing a “skeptic[ism] of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

“Examination…should be encouraged”? I think so, but I guess the fair and balanced media didn’t get the message. Why? I’m not aware. Ask Bernard Goldberg