Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Epistemology

  • The Limited Value of Debate

    The Limited Value of Debate

    A challenge to immediate debate is a frequent feature of discussions–perhaps arguments!–in religion and politics. But is it a reliable way to get to a better answer?

    There are certainly points of value in open debate:

    1. Hearing more than one side at the same time
    2. Airing out differences quickly
    3. Challenging alleged “facts” on each side by the other
    4. General brevity

    In many political debates, these points are lost as rules of the debate are negotiated by each side hoping to favor their own person. These rules often prevent precisely the things for which debate is most valuable.

    But there are also weaknesses:

    1. Rarely are listeners in a position to check the alleged facts themselves
    2. It’s quite possible for both, or all, debate participants to be wrong
    3. Debates go to the quick, confident speakers, but confidence is not a reliable indicator of accuracy
    4. Debates tend to demand, and often get, quick responses where more deliberation is necessary

    I write this as someone who is often asked questions with an assumption by my questioner that I am an expert. I was once informed that I took too long answering, and should just give the answer based on my expertise in about 30 seconds.

    While I am fairly confident of my answers to many questions in the area of biblical studies, I have some problems with this view.

    First, I am well aware that there are others, many with better credentials than mine, who disagree with my own position. Is it my duty to present a consensus view even if it differs? If I present my own, should I point out that the consensus is different? How much confidence should I show in a view that I know is a subject of valid debate?

    Second, while I often have the upper hand in a debate, I have also experienced times when an opponent overwhelmed me with invention. How do I know? I heard things that I couldn’t confidently refute on the spot, yet which, on further research, I discovered were unfounded.

    We tend to treat the quick thinker as more intelligent, but that is frequently not the case.

    Third, there’s a popular tendency to accept the quick, confident answer as valid and leave it at that. I prefer to fight that tendency.

    But for many people whose brains work more slowly, or whose memories are not stellar, the quick give and take of verbal debate is challenging, and not in a good way. The speaker demands a decision, yet the hearer has not had time to process. We tend to treat the quick thinker as more intelligent, but that is frequently not the case.

    I have some suggestions:

    1. You are the person who has to decide. Take whatever time allows you to make your best decision.
    2. Don’t let anyone dismiss you or diminish you because you refuse to acknowledge their self-assumed superior wisdom in an instant.
    3. Listen to more than one voice. Read more than one article. Study from more than one book.
    4. Don’t be concerned about winning debates. Learning is more important. Planting seeds is more important. Winning on points is just ego-building.

    Debating is actually a good thing and can be helpful. It’s the pressure to make quick decisions that creates problems.

    Listen, study, discern! You are responsible for you.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Measuring a Liberal Bias in Psychology

    Measuring a Liberal Bias in Psychology

    As a self-professed passionate moderate (the liberal charismatic title was thrust upon me by an opponent), I’m very conscious of bias on both the liberal and conservative sides. To be human is to be biased. I have my moderate biases, including a bias toward considering anything from the left or the right obviously biased. You just can’t win with me!

    A number of readers likely already know that FiveThirtyEight.com is one of my favorite, of not my absolute favorite, news source. Besides their efforts to state their own biases, and the fact that I like numbers, this is a result of their efforts to cite their sources and show their work. If I question their rating of a pollster, for example, I can go look at what goes into that rating.

    Before I get to the article I’m linking from them today, I want to emphasize something important. I like numbers, yes, but you have to be careful. The reason for this is that you have to understand how the numbers you’re liking were produced. Let me give an example. A friend asked me to read a book on the ancient world because I know the languages and he wanted an assessment of how much credence I should give it. In the book, someone gave measurements for the original size of the great pyramid in millimeters. There is no way the author could actually have that information. Numbers calculated in that way are designed to give the impression of precision even when such precision does not exist.

    A more common way to produce a number is to assign it, such as asking people to rate something on a scale from 1 to 10. In order to know the question asked, how it’s asked, and who it’s asked of. After that you might consider asking what those people might know. For example, asking a random sample to rate the quality of cardiac care in this country on a scale from 1 to 10 produces information on how the sample views this, but might tell you as little as nothing regarding the actual state of such care, depending on who is being asked and what they could know.

    So here’s the article, Psychologists Looked in the Mirror and Saw a Bunch of Liberals. (You need to read the article—the whole article. This material is useless without the reasoning behind it and the look for solutions.)

    Someone noted the bias with a simple show of hands, and followed up with a study looking at the way in which results of studies were presented in journal abstracts. Here’s the generalization:

    Sure enough, the abstracts more often explained their findings in terms of conservative ideas rather than liberal ones, and conservatives were described more negatively in the eyes of the raters.

    The study authors tested for a bias in their raters and found that their liberal raters actually rated the abstracts as more negative regarding conservative views than did conservative raters. In a  separate test, they also note that a panel of psychologists surveyed for their expectation of bias expected the results to be more biased than the study showed they were. You should, in turn, read the note on the potential problem with the panel of psychologists surveyed.

    Note to self: Doing a deep enough study on an issue to have a strong opinion is a lot of work and takes a lot of time!

    One of the solutions suggested is studies done by “trans-ideogical teams,” i.e., have research done by people who expect different results and who then design a study based on what would change their mind on the topic. I like this idea quite a lot.

    I’ll note that this has a great deal to do with the way I publish (my company). I look to create conversation between people of widely differing viewpoints. (This is not identical to creating a church congregation, where some identity is necessary. I also support diverse congregations, but the boundaries will be set up differently.) I believe that in learning, there is great value in hearing the opposing position from someone who actually supports it.

    A conservative professor requiring readings from a liberal book and explaining liberal ideas is not as challenging as hearing from an actual liberal. Similarly, if you reverse liberal and conservative. I have lived and learned in situations dominated by conservatives and at other times in ones dominated by liberals. The result I see is the same: Complacency, laziness, and arrogance. One decides one doesn’t have to have support for an idea because “everybody knows that.” But this “everybody” is a very selected subset.

    I don’t see any solution here except intentionally involving people who disagree. I have found for myself that I cannot truly express the support for an idea I don’t accept myself nearly as well as a person who truly does support it, even if I try diligently.

    This article is encouraging to me because it attacks bias in two ways: 1) Identifying and quantifying it, and 2) Looking at ways to correct for it.

  • Our Perceptions Are Frequently Right

    It’s fairly fashionable to call the thinking of our time “post-modern” and to talk about how people believe we really can’t know anything for sure, or perhaps just can’t know anything. In many discussions that is the conversation ender. You really can’t know that you’re right,  so I could be right as well. Alternatively we hear “My opinion is as good as your opinion.”

    (Boring meditation alert!)

    There’s a certain value in humility, in realizing the possibility that we may, in fact, be wrong. But I still tell people not to make use of any epistemology (theory of how we know stuff) that you wouldn’t want used by the designer of an airplane you were about to fly on. In a discussion about aerodynamics, my opinion is not of the same value as that of an aeronautical engineer. It’s possible that either of us could be wrong. Aeronautical engineers have been in error. But it’s more likely that I will be wrong on the subject than the engineer. Similarly if the issue is the translation of a New Testament Greek verse is at issue, I am more likely to be right than the average person who has not studied Greek, or the seminary graduate who has allowed his or her Greek to slip away. I not only have continued to read Greek, but continue to read whole Greek grammars. On the other hand, my opinion on the passage is of less value than that of someone who works with the language on a daily basis, such as a translator or a Greek professor.

    That doesn’t mean I’ll automatically surrender my position. As I have frequently pointed out when someone has tried to trump me with the “I’m more educated” card, I can generally provide a reference to someone more educated than either of us. Following which it’s time to discuss our views on the merits. But that assumes that there are merits and that our opinions are not of equal value. One or both may be wrong. One may be more plausible than another.

    I recall a debate between two of my undergraduate professors. I worked for one of them, so was able to discuss it with him afterwards. I took one philosophy class from each of them. In this debate the first one picked up a book from the table in front of them, fanned the pages, and said, “This is a book. I know it’s a book. It’s not just likely it’s a book. It is a book!” The other responded, “It’s always possible that I put something there very cleverly disguised as a book.”

    Yes, it would be possible. Difficult, but possible. The probability was high that it was a book; low that his opponent had tricked out a fake book facsimile to catch him on precisely that point. But he was very likely right.

    Similarly, in a recent discussion I had, an individual strongly derided those who were intolerant. How could they be so sure they were right? Nobody could be that certain. Nothing was that certain. Moments later this individual described another group of people as just plain wrong and said they should not be tolerated.

    I was challenged on a similar point. I value tolerance, but I have low tolerance for the intolerant. I’ve been told that this is inconsistent. If I truly value tolerance, I must also be tolerant of intolerance.

    I think all of these stories illustrate one problem in different ways. Our knowledge is not absolutely certain. Even the most certain things have some potential, however small, for error. On the other hand, we do have sufficient knowledge of many things for practical purposes. While aeronautical engineers are not perfect, they manage to design aircraft that tend to fly the vast majority of the time. Things may go wrong, but only rarely do they go wrong in a catastrophic fashion. Language is often a target of skepticism. How can we know the meaning of what someone has said or written? The further in time and space we are from the origin, the harder it is to comprehend. Yet communication does take place for practical purposes.

    My wife writes a grocery list. I take it to the store and buy groceries. Most of the time I come back with what she wanted. Sometimes I don’t. The communication is not perfect, but it works for our practical purposes. She continues to make lists. I continue to follow the lists. We continue to eat.

    We live with the potential for error all  the time, and it tends to work.

    The problem we have in discussions is that we (inclusively!) tend to think in binary fashion. People must either be able to communicate, or not. I must be able to understand a scripture passage, or not. But in fact I partially communicate, and I partially understand. (Methinks the apostle Paul said something of the sort!) I don’t get it perfectly, but I don’t (always) completely miss. I’m certain I’ve missed the interpretation of a passage pretty near totally a few times in my life. At least I’ve reversed my position on them, so I was either wrong before or now, or perhaps even both! But still I move forward.

    There are two things I’m suggesting here:

    1) The uncertainty of your position doesn’t mean mine is right. I’ve encountered this in various historical studies. Your position is weak, so the traditional position must be right. Not necessarily! Let’s discuss its merits.

    2) Everything is uncertain so let’s be paralyzed and not act.

    I can manage uncertainty in my perceptions of the grocery list. I can manage my uncertainties elsewhere. I don’t have to claim greater knowledge than I possess in order to move forward.

     

  • The Problem with Stories

    I like stories. I believe we think largely in stories. I have a separate blog where I write stories. I have published two collections of stories from my blog. I like stories—got it?!

    But I also really enjoyed the talk I’m embedding below by Tyler Cowen, who blogs at Marginal Revolution about the dangers of thinking in stories. You need to listen all the way to the end to get the ful impact.

    (HT: The Agitator)

  • Scientific Study of the Supernatural

    In a post a few weeks ago I commented that science could not study the supernatural. Regular commenter Lifewish, who blogs at Metasyntactic, brought up the expected and proper question in a comment:

    Please insert the usual question here about why precisely it is that “supernatural” effects wouldn’t be subject to science. Are we using a definition of “natural” that makes this tautological?

    Well, yes, it is. If we define science as a method of studying the natural world, and then we define supernatural as something other than part of the natural world, which seems a reasonable plan to me, then “science cannot (or does not) study the supernatural” would be tautological. But at the same time that means that to suggest scientific study of the supernatural, using those definitions, would be just a bit illogical.

    Now it would be possible to alter the definitions, though I think that would be a counterproductive plan, since any definition of science that would include study of the supernatural would make it less effective as what it is, while any definition of the supernatural that makes it more natural would, well, make it more natural, and less supernatural.

    But Lifewish includes an important word “effects” in his question that makes it more difficult to answer. Can we study the effects of the supernatural through science? To that I have to give a qualified “yes.”

    If it happens in the natural world, some method of scientific study should be able to observe it. Thus to take the classical Christian miracle story, the resurrection, were it to happen under the right circumstances, one should be able to observe that a corpse comes back to life (or not) or perhaps that it is eliminated and a new one produced as some interpret 1 Corinthians 15. If a person is healed, science should be able to determine whether they were, in fact, ill to begin with and whether they are now truly no longer ill.

    The problem comes in with studying the causes. If there “is” a supernatural, then things that were supernaturally caused outside of the natural order could be observed, but their natural causes couldn’t be discovered through science, even theoretically, because they would not be natural. If they are discovered through scientific processes, by definition they would have to be regarded as natural.

    To return to the example of healing, determining that the person was ill, but no longer is, would be quite simple. Determining why is a bit harder. That’s why we have terms such as “spontaneous remission.” But I know of nobody who would argue that all cases of spontaneous remission are divine healings. It is perfectly logical to say simply that this person became well through a process that is unknown. That is what I think science should say about such things. A scientist who is also a believer should be very clear what is science and what is faith. “This person is no longer ill,” can be a scientific statement. “God healed this person,” is not.

    This clearly paints an arrow in the direction of “god of the gaps” theology, suggesting that God might be the cause of things whose cause we do not know. And that far, god of the gaps is fine. God might be doing all kinds of things of which we have no knowledge, but lacking knowledge, we cannot be definitive about those things.

    I don’t build my theology there, however. My fundamental theological position is that everything that happens in the universe is ultimately an act of God, because God is the “uncaused cause” or the “ground of all being.” I prefer the latter phrase from Paul Tillich as more comprehensive. Now neither of those labels describes the Christian God. That is a limited subset. A deistic view of God fits the bill nicely. But that is nonetheless one jumping off point for my faith. If you convince me that God in no way and at no time intervenes in the universe outside of the course of natural law, I am still a believer in the sense I’ve just stated.

    Let’s try an example of a primitive tribe who discover that already prepared food appears at a certain point outside their village at irregular intervals. They don’t know how it gets there, but they make use of it. From our perspective there are many options. It could be a scientific study group providing this food to determine something about the tribe. One might theorize a random space warp connecting the village to someone’s pantry. Silly, I know, but do the villagers have any way to eliminate the option? Or one could imagine the ancestral gods supernaturally providing the food.

    Which has happened? Until the villagers have learned how to eliminate all natural options, they don’t know, but they can determine that the food appears. If we call the cause supernatural, we are stating that they can never truly discover the cause, because as far as they go in the natural world, no explanation will be adequate.

    It is a definition game. I believe that there is a supernatural, but I also belief that absolute proof is unavailable that the supernatural interferes. Even those things that appear to be miraculous from time to time may well simply have natural explanations so far beyond current science that we haven’t even imagined them.

  • Evolution, Historical Methods, and Assumptions

    Andrew Lamb has commented on a post I wrote back in July. I have responded to most of the comment there, but he references an article of his own, Immeasurable Age, and it employs an approach that, while I do not think it has merit, is so common in both public discourse and apologetics, that I want to respond.

    In the comment he states:

    Contrary to your assertion Henry, age is dependent upon assumptions, i.e. age is not something that can be measured. See the article Immeasurable age.

    It’s interesting to note here that Mr. Lamb introduced the term “measured” and then uses a mildly eccentric definition of the term. Apparently if any form of inference is involved, one is not measuring. But we use various types of inference in a number of measurements. For example, inference is involved in measuring radio frequencies. One observes the effect and from there infers the frequency.

    Now you should rightly point out that my example of inference is substantially different than the types of inference involved in determining the age of the earth. (Note again that I did not use the term “measure.”) That is why I called his use only mildly eccentric. There is no device, such as a time ruler that I can put up against the time line of earth’s history and read off the actual age. That is the nature of historical study, whether human history or historical science. (At the end of this post I will provide links to a couple of online sources on the age of the earth. I’m not planning on discussing the actual science, but rather the general approach.)

    I would prefer better definition of terms like “assumptions” (which Mr. Lamb uses) or “presuppositions” (which is seen frequently elsewhere). In this case Mr. Lamb is using “assumption” in a manner that borrows some of the baggage of “presupposition” without actually going there. (A presupposition is something one must suppose or assume to be true to make sense of a worldview, i.e. it is unquestionable within that worldview. An assumption can be something that one takes temporarily to be true, but which one intends later to test–or not, as the case may be.)

    Thus I would immediately disagree with the definition Mr. Lamb provides in his article:

    All three methods involve making assumptions. Assumptions are things we believe, but which cannot be proven.

    That definition is closer to the definition of a presupposition. Now note that I’m not much of a fan of the term “presupposition” either, but I’m much happier with it when it is either carefully defined by an author, or used in a standard defined sense. I have found so many senses of the term, however, that I think each author would do well to state how he understands the term whenever it is used.

    A more serious problem, however, is the way that this idea is used in the article. We are told that because the age of the earth cannot be measured, but is rather based on assumptions, pretty much anything goes. Lamb gives a number of ideas of measuring age based on clearly false and ridiculous assumptions, such as checking your current rate of growth and extrapolating, thus implying without saying so that scientific assumptions (if such they are) are also perversely stupid. One could summarize this as “It’s all based on assumptions (probably bad ones), so why not ours?”

    To quote:

    When it comes to the age of the world, we can use historical methods (method 1 above), which involve assuming or trusting particular records to be accurate. This is the way we at CMI calculate the age of the earth. We trust the Bible to be a supremely reliable record of world history, and from the information in the Bible we can calculate that the world is about 6,000 years old.

    So we are to believe that the assumption that the records in the Bible are accurate, and the assumption that rates of radioactive decay have remained essentially unchanged, are to be placed on the same level. Then if one is a Christian, of course one should accept whatever the Bible says over equally speculative scientific options.

    I hope you note the way I worded that. I believe a number of my more conservative friends would be uncomfortable with the idea that the accuracy of Biblical records was simply one assumption among many, so hey, why not accept it.

    But the assumptions involved are not even close to the same level. An age based on radioactive decay may be based on an assumption of a constant rate (though more on that later), but the assumption that the earth is 6,000 years old is based not on a single assumption, but rather on a large number of them.

    1. We assume the Bible’s accuracy
    2. We assume that the Bible intends to present us with history in specific passages
    3. We assume that we read those passages correctly
    4. We assume that genealogies are, or are even intended to be, complete
    5. We even make an assumption of constant rate in reading Genesis 1, that each day is 24 hours long even when it occurs before the appearance of the sun
    6. . . . and many more

    But do we have to make such assumptions, or are these things testable? Other ancient records go well beyond the 6,000 year history based on the Bible. The great pyramid and the Sumerians, amongst others, would have live through the great flood. In later years, records from these other nations can be synchronized with part of the Biblical record. If we can synchronize the record at one point, why would we take the Bible in isolation earlier, unless it proved to be accurate in providing this specific type of historical data?

    I discuss the issue of historicity in the Genesis accounts on my Participatory Bible Study Blog in articles Historicity of Genesis 1-11, Literary Types in Genesis 1-11, and Perspective on Vocabulary and Genre in Genesis 1-11. To summarize, there are good indications that these chapters are not intended as narrative history, and if they are not narrative history, then the assumption (!) that one can glean that type of information from them would be incorrect.

    But my intent here is not to prove the 6,000 year old earth wrong. While I avoid the term “prove,” I think that the evidence against a young earth is so strong that it is perverse to reject it. But what I am concerned with here is what one does with the concept of “truth.” This isn’t capital T “Truth” with which one can pound the table, but valid data on which one can base sound decisions for one’s life.

    I depend on such information from science and technology all the time as I live my life. I’m using a computer that is based on such information. Of course, I am again not speaking of historical information.

    So let’s turn to the resurrection. I’ve discussed recently how far from proof this is, and looked at a couple of attempts to place it on firmer ground. Some of my conservative friends may be concerned that I’ve given away the store by stating that a miracle can’t be the most probable explanation of an event by nature from an historical point of view.

    But one can provide some evidence that sets up the circumstances and the results of the resurrection. This too is based on many assumptions. First, one assumes that there were witnesses, that nobody just made this all up. Second, one assumes that this material was passed on with any sense of accuracy. Both of these assumptions involve a set of other assumptions about the nature of the ancient world and how its people worked.

    But if I use the word “assumption” in the manner in which Mr. Lamb uses it, I would say, “Well, those are your assumptions, and that’s how you choose to believe.” There’s no basis for testing and discussion. Any believe is equally plausible because they are all based on assumptions. But are all assumptions equal?

    What I would suggest rather, is that each of those assumptions can be discussed and tested and we can discover what is more or less probable. Then we can build a complete picture based on the best set of parameters we can work out. Note that I begin to deviate seriously here from the definition of “assumption” that I stated earlier. That’s because I believe it is the wrong concept to use.

    “It’s all based on your assumptions” parallels “that’s just your interpretation” in terms of tearing down the possibility of intelligent discourse and discovering truth. “That’s just your interpretation” suggests that a text actually has no meaning of its own, and anyone can read into it whatever they desire with equal validity. “It’s all based on your assumptions” does the same thing to scientific data.

    As used here, some “assumptions” are more equal than others, with apologies to George Orwell. Only in this case I’ve inverted the idea, and it is true and right that some assumptions be more equal.

    In fighting what he perceives as falsehood, Mr. Lamb has taken an unwitting (I hope) shot at any sort of truth or validity.

    To simply consider one thing regarding the age of the earth, one of the most common young earth creationist objections to constant rate in a natural process is the idea that the global flood would have massively changed deposition rates, as indeed it would. But the first point here is that there is no assumption that deposition rates everywhere and at all times are the same, but rather than the physical laws that govern them remain the same.

    Scientists are well aware that a flood deposits different things at different rates depending on the specific conditions. That’s why they can look at the state of the geologic column and be quite certain that there was no global flood. It would have left certain depositions. Old earth creationists are willing to go with the evidence here and understand the flood to be more local, though certainly great enough to stand out.

    Amongst the things that one can use to check deposition are the fossils of creatures that lived at that time. For example, if a layer was deposited instantly in a massive flood, all of the creatures involved would have to have been alive at one time.

    Just as we can divide up the various assumptions that we would have to make about the Bible in order to get the young earth position, we can divide up the assumptions here as well. Then we can test these one against another. One need not make all these assumptions at once, and many of them can be tested and determined to be probable or improbable.

    Let me provide references to a couple of articles:

    Abundant Evidence, Skepticism, Apparent Age (from the American Scientific Affiliation). Provides a more detailed discussion of the relativism involved in this type of argument.

    FAQ: Age of the Earth (Talk.Origins Archive). Goes into more of the nuts and bolts.

    CB102: Mutations Adding Information (Talk.Origins Archive). A good starting point on this issue, raised in Mr. Lamb’s comment to the earlier post.

  • Newbigin: Proper Confidence

    With it’s subtitle, “Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship” this little big sets sail into a rather intense area of debate, and one which is very relevant to recent discussions on this blog. I’m not really going to try to summarize it. It is only 105 pages and those aren’t too terribly intense if you’ve done a bit of theological reading before. I’d suggest getting a copy and reading it. I got mine as a gift from a friend. Giving me books is a great way to get on my good side!

    I’m afraid to summarize. Newbigin boils down a great deal of material into those 105 pages, so setting out to summarize is difficult. But I would say briefly that he holds that all knowledge involves risk, as a subject makes a commitment to some thing. In the same way all knowledge is subjective, as it is known by a subject. There is no point in discussing knowledge without a subject who is doing the knowing. Nonetheless we can be confident of such subjective knowledge, and in fact we regularly are.

    I’m pretty certain I’ll be dissatisfied with that summary later, and I’m sure someone who has read the book will come back and point out how I have oversimplified everything, lost all the nuances, and perhaps even misrepresented some aspect. I guess I will take the risk of choosing to believe it will do to lay the groundwork for my response.

    I agree with Newbigin in broad outlines, but find myself coming to a different point on the spectrum as a result, always providing that I am correctly reading where he comes out within the outline. A key point here is simply that all knowledge is subjective to some extent. We do not know absolutely or from a perspectiveless framework. We know from who we are and where we are.

    In some postmodern thought, this results in the claim that all ideas are so subjective that we shouldn’t make truth claims between them at all. In the creation-evolution controversy, many people who would probably forcefully reject any idea that they are postmodern nonetheless use the “all stories are equal” approach to denigrate science and thereby make their own story look better. If scientists might be wrong and creationists might be wrong, then why privilege the results of scientific research over young earth creationism? (Note that the example is mine, not Newbigin’s.)

    Newbigin doesn’t leave us there, however. He does believe that there is a reality to be perceived, and that we do our best to perceive it, and in doing so take a risk through the commitments that we make. There is a certainty, not that we are right, but that we are going toward what is right, or so I interpret page 67, separated from its specifically Christian commitment.

    But the whole cannot be separated from its Christian commitment, because that is ultimately what Newbigin is talking about–the commitment to the one who is truth, a subjective commitment because it is a choice taken with risk, but not something of which one cannot be confident at all.

    I certainly agree that all knowledge is limited and subjective. The results of scientific research are not complete, and my theological wanderings are certainly not absolute. (I do believe there are things that are absolutely true, but they are so far from our perception that we have to be satisfied with doing our best to head that direction. It’s sort of like navigating by the north star. You’ll never get there, but if you keep on, you’ll arrive somewhere in the vicinity of the north pole.

    So in the sense that all knowledge is subjective and that one makes choices, takes risks, and can (indeed will) have confidence in things one does not know absolutely, I agree with Newbigin. Where I perceive that I differ is in the relative levels. I think it is very easy to overemphasize how relative certain elements of physical knowledge are, and to underemphasize just how relative certain spiritual issues are. The idea that all stories are equal results from such a confusion.

    In practical terms most of us treat “objective” as something that can be similarly perceived by multiple people. A scientific experiment that can be repeated by anyone with the proper supplies and equipment is considered objective. Fantasies in my own mind are subjective because nobody else can perceive them. While there is a subjective element in the most objective fact, and there is an objective element in the most subjective (neurons fire when I fantasize, I would imagine!), there’s a very valuable distinction there. I don’t think Newbigin misses that point; I do think he emphasizes is somewhat less than I would.

    As an example, let me relate three experiences, two of them singular and one that has been repeated many times. In the first, a couple of days after our son died, I was in my wife’s home office with her when I clearly heard our son speaking in the next room. It was clear enough to me that I actually got up and started to head over there to talk to him before I was jolted by the reality that he was dead. My wife heard nothing, of course, and a recorder would have recorded anything. In fact, the only evidence you have or can have of this event is that I relate it. I didn’t even tell my wife what happened at the time. She simply noticed me leave the room and decide to come back, and since such inconsistent behavior is not uncommon for me, she never noticed.

    In the second, we were both in the living room and I heard water running. I got up mumbling about having left the tap running in the bathroom (though it did sound oddly different). My wife starts laughing and says, “No, that’s my new screen saver with sounds of running water.” In this case there is an objective event, but I misperceive it.

    In the final case, which happens commonly, I hear the dog barking, and I assume something has happened. This is objectively demonstrable, as in anyone who goes to where the dog is will likely perceive him barking and almost as likely notice why. He generally only barks for some reason. It may not be a good one, but there will be a cause!

    My point in all those words is that there are many levels of confidence that we have in our knowledge, and the question here would be where we place certain matters of spirituality on this continuum. I think that on a day to day basis I rank them much more subjectively than does Newbigin, but we both rank them somewhere.

    Which leads to the point on which the preceding paragraph is completely wrong–or is it? Both Newbigin and I make a very fundamental choice, the choice to believe in the incarnation. This provides at the foundation of our thinking the believe in God as creator, in other words, that the universe makes sense, and second that we have placed our final confidence in a person. In my personal thinking, and as I read Newbigin in his as well, this becomes a central axiom in our way of thinking. Subordinate facts may fall wherever on the spectrum, but this choice remains at the core, and is the one to which we give our true confidence.

    To quote from page 66-67, and do so more faithfully to its context than my previous allusion:

    If we are to use the word “certainty” here, then it is not the certainty of Descartes. It is the kind of certainty expressed in such words as those of the Scriptures: “I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12). . . . The weight of confidence rests there and not here with us. Secondly, the phrase “until that day” reminds us that this is not a claim to possess final truth but to be on the way that leads to the fullness of truth. . . .

    That’s a pretty good expression, I think.

  • Convincing Yourself of Falsehood

    . . . or perhaps of less than complete truth.

    Some years ago when I was in the Air Force I had a roommate who was an excellent software engineer. At the time I was a serious hobbyist programmer, so occasionally we would work together on projects. I remember a case in which he had a routine that would work when run under the debugger but would hang when run normally. After checking all the options either of us could think of, he could not conceive of any reason why it would do so.

    At this point, being more ignorant, and thus less certain that all the bases were covered, I suggested putting a delay into the routine at that point (I believe we used something like 1/100th of a second eventually). He didn’t want to do it at first, largely because it would solve the problem (if it worked) without actually discovering what the real problem was. Finally he did try it, it worked, and he released the code in that form, because he never did find anything.

    Now the point isn’t that I was a better programmer; I wasn’t. It’s not that I was more clever; I’m not. It’s simply that, lacking the ability to check off all the boxes I had to try some considerably less logical options, one of which worked.

    It’s very easy to convince ourselves that we have covered all the bases on a subject, or that the evidence for something we believe in very fervently is much stronger than it is. In fact, I suspect that the single most common reason why people accept a particular piece of evidence as reliable is that it supports a conclusion they like.

    I mention this because of a discussion about lying in science and other matters. Larry B made an interesting comment here, and expanded on it over at Quintessence of Dust.

    This all reminded me about a comment a political science professor once made to me when discussing conspiracy theories. “Never attribute to conspiracy what can adequately be explained by human stupidity.” I think he got that from someone else, but I’m not sure who. After reconsidering all this material, I might just paraphrase that to “Never attribute to lying any statement that can be explained by stupidity and/or the overwhelming desire to believe.”

    Perhaps Dr. Matheson’s term “folk science” is the best term after all.

  • Reasons -> Intentions -> Actions

    When I was near the end of my first four year enlistment in the United States Air Force, I had already made a firm decision to separate at four years, which I proclaimed quite vigorously. But during the last few weeks I read some things about decision making–I can’t recall where–and I decided to rationally examine my decision. I regarded this as a fairly safe thing to do, because I was quite certain that I was separating from the Air Force for highly rational reasons in pursuit of my goals.

    I sat down with pad and paper, and began listing goals, what I needed to do in order to accomplish them, and then I put these under headings as to whether another four or six years in the Air Force would advance my goals or hinder them. I even included my dislike of military structure and formality into the list as a reason against. I did my best not to weight these in favor of one conclusion or another. I then weighted the various factors to the best of my ability and totaled the scores. I don’t recall the numbers, but it was a substantial balance in favor of another term of service. By my best factoring of the decision, I would be much further along toward my personal goals in six years were I to re-enlist than I would be if I separated and used educational benefits immediately.

    There were two really hard things in this for me. First, I had to admit that I had been terribly wrong in a decision I thought I had made quite rationally. Second, I had to admit that and go sign papers. But could a reasonably rational person do otherwise? Well, I did all that, severed the additional six, and then separated, and I have never regretted it, nor have I regretted separating at the ten year mark. (At that point it was either plan for 20+ or get out.)

    A few years after this a psychologist told me that people do not generally make decisions for the reasons they profess. Rather, they make decisions emotionally and then rationalize them. He said this isn’t universal, that there are varying amounts of rationality that are pre-decision, but that it is very common. I don’t know how right he is, but I was immediately reminded of my reenlistment, and while I have rarely put a decision to that kind of testing, I know there are other times when I feel very strongly that I want to do X while I know that rationally the best choice is Y. I have also observed many friends who will express one decision, but based on every expression they have made themselves, it appears that they would make a different choice if they thought the decision through in terms of their goals. (Neither of these have the faintest bit of scientific pretensions–they are absolutely personal and anecdotal and should be taken as such.)

    Of course, the follow up to making a decision or forming an intention is action. I’ll illustrate with myself again. I frequently forget things. Just about anything I am doing becomes my current total focus, and I’ll forget anything else. For example, had I promised my wife to be at lunch in five minutes just before I started writing this post, it is unlikely that I would remember that promise until I finished the post. Do note here that having thought about that issue, I know that my wife is at her work, and I’m here in my home office, thus while I may have forgotten many things, that is not one of them!

    Several people have informed me that the things I forget must not have very much priority to me, otherwise I wouldn’t forget them. I have put that to the test recently since at the persuasion of wife and many friends, when I recently replaced my cell phone I replaced it with a PDA. This thing lets me easily enter lists, and it rings alarms when things are due. It’s easy enough for me to enter data so that I generally don’t forget to put stuff in the phone. (My previous phone had a simple scheduler, but it was clumsy to use.) The other evening I had completely forgotten about a meeting I wanted to attend. It was Monday night. In church on Sunday the pastor mentioned a meeting at the church. It was something I would want to be at. I wrote a note on a slip of paper and put it in the PDA after church. The PDA dinged Monday night giving me about a half an hour to get to the meeting. Using my memory, I would have missed that meeting and I would have regretted it. Despite my dislike for sudden shifts of direction, I attended. The PDA helped me carry out my actual intentions based on what I hope was a rational assessment of where I should be.

    My point here is that intentions, even quite firm intentions are not always easy to put into action. It’s not that I want to miss lunch or dinner when I tell my wife I’ll be back in 10 minutes and wind up engrossed in some piece of writing an hour later. I do recognize that the human body must eat. But other factors intervene.

    My overall point is that between our perceiving reasons for action and the action we actually carry out there can be a considerable gap, so much so that we might not even recognize the connections if they didn’t happen right in our own brains, and sometimes not even then.

    Politically, this apparently extends to opinion polls and voting. CQ Politics has an interesting article, Polls: Can’t Always Trust Them, But Can’t Live Without Them, that discusses something very similar in voting. How well do voters know their own intentions? Do they know for sure whether they are going to vote? Do they really know how likely it is that they will change their minds? I would add that the less each decision is based on conscious, rational factors, the more likely the voter might either be wrong, or might be swayed by similar non-rational or irrational factors.

    Of course this doesn’t aim at any particular group of voters. We’re all capable of such rationalization or failure to carry through both in politics and in the rest of our lives. I just think it is both interesting and valuable to think about how we think.

  • The Quest for Absolute Certainty

    When I was a teenager, I was very involved in electronics, something that has stuck with me. My first real efforts at understanding science came in working with electricity. One day I was discussing the theory of electricity, and specifically how it “moves” through a circuit with my father, also an electronics hobbyist. We had gone through electrons moving from one atom to the next, and the reasons why some things are better conductors than others, and why some things are so bad as conductors that they are insulators. This all applied to some circuit or another I wanted to build.

    Then my father dropped a bombshell. “You know this is all a theory,” he said.

    “What do you mean by theory?” I asked. To me at that point a theory was something not so well established. There were facts and then there were theories. Facts were good, theories were not so good.

    “Well,” he continued, “we don’t actually observe subatomic particles in motion. We don’t know that an atom looks like those drawings you have.”

    “So we don’t really know any of this? What good is it then?” Of course I well knew that I could build circuits based on it, but teenagers aren’t required to be logical with a parent.

    “The theory does what it’s supposed to. It explains what we observe. It works. That’s all it has to do.”

    “Oh.”

    But somewhere deep inside I was upset. I liked my little pictures of atoms. I wanted to believe that they were just that way, and that if I could get a good enough microscope, I could actually observe those little electrons doing their thing. Now electricity is based on very good theory, and it does work. My dad was himself a young earth creationist, though we never discussed that much. I suspect now that he was more along the Kurt Wise type–there may be substantial evidence for evolution, but the Bible says otherwise, so we must believe–only he never felt the need to work on a real theory.

    (more…)