Credo Ut Intelligam

Summary and Addition

Unfortunately, due to circumstances in the real world, I will not be able to access the internet as frequently as I have been, so I won't be able to keep up with the fast and furious pace of these discusions. Thus this is something of a final summing-up of my perspective on all of this, together with something I've been wanting to say for a while, but haven't had the chance yet. But first the summary.

Smijer successfully refuted the arguments in AiG for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Not only did he show them to be flawed, he demonstrated that the things they call "evidence" are not really evidence at all. He also propounded the more general claim: There is no evidence for Mosaic authorship. From this he inferred that Christians who believe in it are dishonest.

The two problems with this: he hasn't interacted with those real scholars who claim there is evidence, and he hasn't shown why the Christians' belief in the inspiration of scripture doesn't give us good reason to believe in Mosaic authorship. (I say "good reason" because I don't want to quibble over the term "evidence"---If we have good reason then we're not dishonest, regardless of whether or not that good reason counts as "evidence").

In response to the latter problem, Smijer argued

a) Christians believe in the inspiration of scripture without evidence
b) It's bad to believe things without evidence unless they are axioms
c) The inspiration of scripture is not an axiom

From my perspective, this seems a very unconvincing argument. It would only take one bad premise for the whole argument to fail. But the first two premises are false, and if (b) were true we would have no grounds for asserting (c).

So I argued that (a) was false. There is evidence for the inspiration of scripture--I mean stuff that counts as evidence even on Smijer's epistemology. Not overwhelming evidence, perhaps, but some evidence. Smijer hasn't offered any refutation of my argument. I don't blame him for this. He's being attacked from seventeen different angles at once; this probably just got lost in the shuffle. However, it should be noted that quite a few prominent Christians have pointed this out, so we have every right to expect a response to this before we start talking as if the conclusion, that Christians are dishonest, has been established.

Secondly I argued that, if we accept (b) and the epistemology that goes with it, we have no right to assert (c). For according to (b) we shouldn't believe (c) without evidence.

Smijer's evidence for (c) consisted in an appeal to Occam's razor. I argued that Occam's razor cannot apply to axioms, because if it did Smijer's own axioms would fall to a skeptical critique. He responded to that, and we've been back and forth on it for a while. I still think my argument is successful, but, I should point out that I don't need to prove this to accomplish my goal. Rather, Smijer needs to prove that Occam's razor does apply to axioms. After all, he is the one trying to get to a conclusion (that Christians are dishonest). And by asserting (b) he has put the burden of proof on himself every time he makes a claim that is not an axiom (this is one of the reasons the epistemology reflected in (b) is so problematic--it's very hard to live with). As far as I can tell, the only evidence Smijer has given for thinking Occam's razor applies to axioms is the fact that axioms are risky. But he hasn't shown why it's not OK to take the really big risk of possibly believing lots of falsehood, for the sake of a chance at some truth.

All of this is nothing new--it's just summary. Now for the addition. So far I've been assuming for the sake of argument that the epistemology of (b) is true. But now I want to articulate just a few of the reasons I think it is false.

First, there is the problem of self-referetial incoherence. According to (b) I should not believe (b) unless there is evidence for it. But I've never found any evidence for (b). So if (b) is true, I shouldn't believe it. Obviously, if (b) is false I shouldn't believe it either. So I won't. Instead, I'll believe what seems to me to be a much more intuitively plausible principle, namely: "If something seems intuitively plausible to me I can believe it unless there is good reason to think it false."

Second there is a problem with the so-called axiom, "my senses are generally reliable." While I agree that this is true, it doesn't seem like an axiom to me. For one thing, it doesn't seem to me that I actually use it. I find myself with the belief that there is a computer in front of me. I don't recall ever going through an inference from the general reliability of senses to this conclusion. It doesn't seem based on inference at all. One might hypothesize that there is a subconscious inference going on. But what evidence is there for this hypothesis? If Smijer's epistemology is right, we can't believe things without evidence. Perhaps it explains the fact that my inferences are justified. I don't think this evidence ammounts to much. Consider the following syllogism:

1) my senses are generally reliable
3) therefore there is a computer in front of me.

Obviously this is invalid. It's missing the premise

2) My senses are telling me that there's a computer in front of me.

But what evidence do we have for (2)? We can't infer it from the axioms. Now, I admit that 2 is intuitively obvious. About as blatantly obvious as they come. But on Smijer's epistemology, "intuitively obvious" won't cut it. On Smijer's epistemology, we shouldn't believe this unless we have evidence for it. But we don't have evidence for these kinds of beliefs. Rather, they are evidence for other things.

To save the epistemology we would have to add a whole bunch of particular items of knowledge of the form, "my senses are telling me this now, and now they are telling me this, and ..." But now there seems little reason to posit a subconscious inference. I'd much rather say that my belief in the computer is not inferred from anything, nor does it need to be. It just seems intuitively obvious that there is a computer in front of me. Doubtless my senses were part of the mechanism that made this belief seem obvious to me, but a mechanism is not an inference. The belief that there is a computer in front of me is not derived from the belief that I am having a certain kind of sensible experience. Rather, the two beliefs are both effects of an underlying cause, which is something going on in my brain.

As I see things, there is no need for axioms at all (exept, perhaps, purely logical axioms). We find ourselves with a number of beliefs, some of them more central to our thinking than others. We change the belief system either for non-rational reasons (such as when our senses deliver a belief to us) or for rational reasons. In the latter case, what happens is that we notice that two beliefs conflict with each other, and the rational thing to do is to get rid of the one that is less central. When two people disagree, the burden of proof is on the one who is trying to convince the other. Luckily, we share enough beliefs that it is often possible to overcome this burden of proof. But sometimes the only thing we can do is put the other person in a position where he obtains beliefs in a non-rational way. Sometimes this is legitimate, as when we display something to a person's senses. Sometimes it is illegitimate, as in brainwashing.

There are some things, things near dead-center of our belief system, that function somewhat like axioms (belief in God is near dead-center of my belief system). So long as the center is logically consistent, there is no way to reason me out of my central beliefs, IN ONE STEP. But it can be done in two steps. First step, convince me not that my belief is wrong, but that it should be less central; push it towards the periphery, while pushing something else toward the center. Second step, show that the belief conflicts with something in the new center.

For instance, belief in the infallibility of scripture used to be pretty well near dead center of my beliefs. Then it was pointed out to me that the first Christians did not have the NT, and yet they had the same faith I did. So it couldn't be an essential part of the gospel that the NT is inspired. As a result, my belief did not become less firm, but it did become less central than things like "Jesus is the Messiah" (though still more central than most of my beliefs). If someone could show me that my belief in the infallibility of scripture contradicts my more central beliefs, the rational thing to do is to give up the more peripheral belief. This is not likely to happen given what my central beliefs are. In fact, it was largely by reading scripture and believing what it said that I came to my most central beliefs in the first place. Nevertheless, I do not now hold these beliefs solely on the basis of my belief in the inspiration of scripture. Rather, they are fundamental presuppositions that are not based on any other beliefs. At best, I could say my belief in inspiration of scripture corroborates my belief that God exists, that Jesus is the Messiah, etc.. My belief that my senses are reliable is probably somewhere inbetween my belief in God's existence and my belief in the inspiration of scripture.

Had I world enough and time, I would talk about the implications of these ideas for apologetics. Perhaps some other time, or some other world.

Posted by mccartney at August 15, 2004 07:05 PM