Creation, Evolution, and faith

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Your whole argument amounts to nothing more than a convoluted version of the words "Titus claims".

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I agree.

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If you want to demonstrate that Christianity is not based on a simple appeal to scriptural authority, you need to show us the underlying basis for believing in, say, Christ's divinity.

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But this is not what I was asked or trying to demonstrate. I was only trying to show that theology involves evidence and reasoning. (This should be obvious, but some in this thread dispute it.)

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Saying "Titus claims" is no use unless Titus has something to back it up, something external to scripture, something tangible, something objective.

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Ultimately, yes. But this is not what I was addressing.

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Let me expand on that a bit. Science relies on objective evidence that any other person can look at and verify. There is no need to trust what anyone else says about the evidence. You don't need faith in those collecting the evidence. If I don't believe what someone says about their evidence, I can look at it for myself, as can anyone else. As long as I can trust what my senses show me, I can see the evidence myself.

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What's more, scientific hypotheses are subject to the acid test: do they work? Science produces results, science does things. What science has accomplished is further objective evidence in support of science.

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Yes, but this is not so different from religion (at least, from Christianity). Christianity relies on objective, textual evidence, which any other person can look at and verify. If you don't believe what someone says about what the Bible claims, you can look at it yourself.Theological claims are subject to the acid test: are they consistent with the text? This establishes the claims; belief in these claims is a second step. This belief produces results in one's life, both subjective and objective.Theology and science are done in analogous ways. So much so that Augustine called theology "the queen of the sciences" (but this was before the advent of modern science).

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Religion relies on authority. It depends on believing someone else's word. I can't verify anything in the bible by looking at objective evidence.

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Perhaps you overspoke here? You can verify whether or not the Bible teaches the claim in question. You can verify many historical details mentioned in the text. You can even verify some claimed results of Christian faith. But I agree that the fundamental theological claims of the Christian faith cannot be objectively proven.

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I can't share someone else's feeling of peace upon being filled with the spirit of the lord.

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True.

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Accepting religion requires faith in what others say. Is it based on "evidence?" Yes, in a sense. But it's not based on objective, verifiable evidence. It is based on evidence that must be taken on faith.

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I would quibble here. Such things as historical, archaeological, grammatical evidence are objective and verifiable. Christianity is based, in part, on these. But I agree that there is also other evidence which is not objective or verifiable.

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Science never says, "Believe because I say so." But at bottom, that's all that religion has. That's the difference between faith and evidence.

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I don't believe the difference is as clear-cut as you want to believe. Both involve evidence and reason. Both involve faith. We can quibble over how much reason or faith is in each, but that's not my point.

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If the evidence for any claim or belief system were ONLY subjective, I would have little confidence in it.

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I'd be very interested in hearing what evidence you think exists for religion that isn't subjective.

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This has been discussed in depth in other threads, and a detailed discussion would be off-topic for this thread.But one brief example: City rescue missions are filled with stories of people who were destitute, drunk, homeless, depressed, and suicidal, with nothing to live for. They then heard the Gospel, believed it, found purpose and meaning in life, and became valuable, contributing members of society. Does this PROVE Christianity? No. But Christianity claims to give purpose and meaning to one's life, and this provides objective evidence that it indeed can do so.

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I was only trying to show that theology involves evidence and reasoning. (This should be obvious, but some in this thread dispute it.)

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And you are ignoring those who point out that it involves only subjective evidence and appeals to authority. So far as I've been able to tell, that's the argument that people are making here, not that there is no evidence.

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No, I am definitely not ignoring those who make such claims. In Message 141 I demonstrated that Christian theology involves reason and objective evidence, disproving the claim that religion "involves ONLY subjective evidence and appeals to authority."

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I thought I explained this?? The text is our "data" and its grammatical structure can be considered evidence. We analyze the grammatical structure using reason, and conclude that the GS rule applies to it. We apply the GS rule, and through reasoning we conclude that Paul viewed Jesus as God.

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What I am interested in is the logic and reason Paul used to reach this view. The GS rule only allows us to discern what Paul believed, not why he believed it. Again, defining the claim is not the same as using reason and logic to arrive at a claim. If I gave you a specific definition for "leprechuan" would that be a logical and well reasoned argument for the existence of leprechuans?

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Paul's logic and reason is an interesting question, and perhaps a good topic for a Bible study thread. But I was not trying to address it here. It is not necessary to establish my claim that theology involves evidence and reason.

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I believe you asked me for an example of evidence and reason in THEOLOGY.

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I did. What you gave me was reason and evidence as it is applied in linguistics.

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Close; this is reason and evidence as applied to Greek grammar. Greek and Hebrew grammar are part of theological studies. Theology rests on original language study, history, philosophy, and other fields. The study by Wallace that I referenced was excerpted from his PhD thesis submitted to a theological seminary.There are a number of sub-threads going on, so let me remind everyone of what I've been claiming in this thread. The thread started with the OP claiming that evolution relies on faith. I joined the thread in Message 25, where I intentionally and explicitly broadened this claim. I claimed that science involves faith, and that it does so in two ways. As an aside, I also mentioned that religion (especially Christianity) relies on evidence. Some in this thread disagree, claiming that religion involves NO reason or evidence. I believe it should be obvious that any scholarly field of religious study (e.g. theology) involves reason and evidence, but even this claim generated disagreement. So I presented an example of a grammatical/theological argument in Message 141.

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Aside from the fact that conservative Christians are often wrong about what the Bible says this IS clearly different. Nobody in science would take a book as the final word.

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The analogy is between Scripture and nature. Science studies nature; if someone disagrees with an interpretation of nature, he can go and examine nature himself. Analogously, Christianity studies the Bible. If someone disagrees with an interpretation of the Bible, he can go and examine it himself.

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How does this evidence the claim that God exists in the first place? Many non-theistic organizations give people purpose and meaning in their life. I don't see how providing purpose and meaning leads to the conclusion that God exists. Can you lay out that reasoning?

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It doesn't PROVE God's existence. But it does provide EVIDENCE; Christianity makes a claim (the ability to change lives in a positive way) and we see this born out. As you imply, the strength of this evidence depends in part on whether or not other, non-theistic approaches lead to the same result. (But I have never seen an atheist rescue mission, able to provide purpose and meaning to those in the gutter and turn their lives around by preaching a message of atheism!)

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The analogy is between Scripture and nature. Science studies nature; if someone disagrees with an interpretation of nature, he can go and examine nature himself. Analogously, Christianity studies the Bible. If someone disagrees with an interpretation of the Bible, he can go and examine it himself.

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The question is whether the Bible accurately portrays reality. It would seem to me that whether or not the Bible is accurately interpretted has little to do with whether or not the Bible accuratley portrays reality.

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Another good question which I was not trying to address, and another good analogy between nature and Scripture.Analogously, whether or not nature is accurately interpreted in science has little to do with whether or not our science accurately portrays reality. I have mentioned "last Thursdayism" and Omphalism a few times already in this thread. We can't prove or disprove such metaphysical positions. We can't prove that science, even when correctly done, tells us something "real" about the past.In fact, this is even true of the present. The "Standard Model" works well. It has been verified repeatedly. But does this mean that quarks REALLY exist? Do they REALLY come in various flavors and colors? Or is this simply a fictitious model that gives accurate predictions, similarly to Aristotelian geocentrism patched up with epicycles on epicycles? We can't say for sure.

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Paul's logic and reason is an interesting question, and perhaps a good topic for a Bible study thread. But I was not trying to address it here. It is not necessary to establish my claim that theology involves evidence and reason.

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In this thread you have claimed that theologians use logic and reasoning to arrive at religious beliefs. Why wouldn't Paul's logic and reasoning be applicable here?

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It would be applicable, of course. But Paul's logic and reasoning in any particular instance doesn't affect my general claim that theology involves evidence and reason.

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Close; this is reason and evidence as applied to Greek grammar.

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Yes, otherwise known as linguistics. That linguistics is taught in seminaries is not under dispute. That students study greek and hebrew at seminary is not under dispute. What is under dispute is that religious belief (not our understanding of greek grammar) is reached through logic and reason. Or are you saying that learning a language is the same as believing in a deity?

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My claim that you and others have been disputing for the past few pages is that "theology involves evidence and reason." My initial claims back in Message 25 relating to this were: Note what I mentioned: theological data and biblical evidence. The Bible is a text; its evidence is necessarily literary and grammatical. This is a central, inseparable part of theology. Your attempts to divorce study of the text from Christianity are disingenuous.Christianity is based on the teachings of the Bible. The Bible must be studied to understand first what it says and then what this means. This study involves evidence from many different disciplines (grammar, history, literature, etc.) This process clearly involves evidence and reason. I don't understand why you and others find this claim objectionable and try to deny it?

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But I have never seen an atheist rescue mission, able to provide purpose and meaning to those in the gutter and turn their lives around by preaching a message of atheism!

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So no one outside of religious believers have purpose in their lives? Do you really think that? Do you really believe that no one has found purpose in secular causes? Do you really believe that anyone who has quit drugs or made something of themselves required a belief in God? Do you really think that no one has found purpose and meaning in their relationships with friends and family, and that purpose and meaning led them to stop using drugs and make something of themselves?

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I didn't say or imply any of these things, of course. What I said was quite clear, and is quoted above.

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Science studies nature; if someone disagrees with an interpretation of nature, he can go and examine nature himself. Analogously, Christianity studies the Bible. If someone disagrees with an interpretation of the Bible, he can go and examine it himself.

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You are leaving out a lot here. For a start, as soon as you go beyond "the Bible says" to claiming that what it says is true you are invoking faith. And then again, on the liberal side you have many Christians who do not accept that the Bible is absolutely authoritative, dismissing the parts of it that do not agree with their theology. On the conservative side you have many Christians who do exactly the same thing, but can't even admit it. Worse, the conservatives are often hostile to Bible scholarship, which should be an essential part of any serious study of the book.

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And there are some philosophers of science and professional scientists who likewise do not claim that their theories are necessarily "true" or that they reflect reality. Some are happy to view scientific theories as pragmatic models or constructs that may actually have no fundamental reality (i.e. there may actually be no such thing as a quark).I was not claiming that the presence of reason and evidence makes either religion or science true.

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No, I am definitely not ignoring those who make such claims. In Message 141 I demonstrated that Christian theology involves reason and objective evidence, disproving the claim that religion "involves ONLY subjective evidence and appeals to authority."

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No, you showed quite clearly that it relies only on appeal to authority, the written word of the bible. That's the only "evidence" that you relied on. True, anyone can look at the bible and see what it says. But looking at the bible and seeing what it says is nothing more than an appeal to authority. Nobody can look at any evidence to see if what the bible says is true.

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A classic appeal to authority.

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Did you actually read Message 141? Where did I appeal to authority? Where does the grammatical/theological reasoning that I presented depend on the Bible being authoritiative?The evidence and reasoning that I presented in Message 141 specifically do NOT appeal to the authority of the Bible. Studying the Bible to figure out what it says and means is no more an appeal to authority than studying Homer or Einstein to figure out what they say and mean. This is an analytical, reasoning process. It can be done by non-Christians as well as Christians. I did NOT claim that the presence of evidence and reasoning means that the biblical message is necessarily true.

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Let's see if we can get to the core of this one. We have two possibilities; "Titus 2:13 claims x" and "Titus 2:13 claims y". Suppose we resolve the linguistic conundrum that is the subject of your reasoning; let's say it's "x". Where do we go from there?

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Working out exactly what the text says is all well and good, but at best, it leaves us with "Titus says x". What are we to do with this statement? Appeal to it's authority as holy writ? What else might we reasonably do with it?

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The simple example that I gave in Message 141 is a theological/grammatical argument to determine what Paul meant in Titus 2:13. Yes, this reduces to "Paul claims x in Titus 2:13." Other theological arguments are more complex, correlating topics and concepts from various parts of the Bible to systematically explain biblical teaching. Yes, these complex examples still reduce to "the Bible teaches x." Christian faith rests on Christian theology, on what the Bible teaches. This is all dependent on evidence and reasoning.

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Throughout this thread you have attempted to show that the reasoning employed by religion is equivalent to that used in science.

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I claim that it is similar or analogous, but not equivalent. The type of evidence used in each field is different.

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I believe this is false. With your example of religious reasoning, all we can do is ascertain what the opinion of the author of Titus was. At best. It leads us nowhere, except to a bald assertion, with no data to back it up. This is wholly different from scientific reasoning, which always leads back to an original set of empirical observations.

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In theology we apply evidence and reasoning to the Bible determine what it teaches. In science we apply evidence and reasoning to nature to determine how it functions. These endeavors are analogous, not "wholly different." There is a close analogy between the "theological method" and the "scientific method". (In fact, some would claim that the scientific method was historically derived from the theological method. I think this claim goes too far. But it IS true that modern science developed from a Christian worldview, and that its main developers were devout Christians.)Questions of the truth or reality of either endeavor are a separate category of question. In science, this becomes the metaphysical questions that I mentioned in Message 25. Is cosmic history is real or illusory? Are our physical models are real or not?

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You have demonstrated that theists can apply reason in interpreting a text. That is all. Anyone can do that, it's nothing special.

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Exactly. So why is there so much opposition to this? Why do so many here still want to claim that religion has NO basis in evidence or reason?

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What your sparring partners on this thread are trying to get at is that the central claims of religion are not of the same nature as some matter of linguistic interpretation. We are talking about some of the defining beliefs of religions. In the narrow case of Christianity, we're talking about things like the resurrection, original sin, the afterlife, the divinity of Jesus, etc. These are the kind of truth-claims that Christians make, often with a startling degree of certainty. These are claims of great magnitude, yet they appear to the outside observer to be wholly unevidenced.

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As mentioned above, here we are talking about the truth or reality of the claims. Yes, these are much more important in religion, and are "defining beliefs." One cannot be a Christian without accepting these claims. The analogous claims are much less important in science. A friend of mine doubts the reality of quarks, but is still a good particle physicist.But are these claims "wholly unevidenced" in either endeavor? These truth-claims are not provable, of course. A step of "faith" is involved in both endeavors. But I would claim that these truth-claims ARE evidenced. Quarks are much better evidenced than phlogiston. The standard model includes quarks and has been verified. it is more reasonable today to believe in quarks than in phlogiston. Likewise, the foundational claims of Christianity are based primarily on biblical evidence (but also on other types of evidence as well). It is more reasonable to believe in the Trinity than in a flying spaghetti monster.

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If there truly is any similarity between scientific and religious reasoning, you should be able to either;

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a) provide examples of reasoning and evidence for these kinds of claims, such as might be accepted in scientific circles, or;

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But the types of evidence are different in the two endeavors. You seem to be asking for scientific evidence for religion, which doesn't make sense.Further, you seem to be asking me to compare two different categories, which can't be done. I have showed that the type of reasoning applied in doing theology is analogous to that used in doing science. Further, I claim that the truth-claims of each endeavor are analogous, in that they are evidence by the reason and evidence, but not proved; they require a step of "faith." But you seem to be asking me to compare the truth-claims of religion with the everyday doing of science; these are different categories.

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b) provide examples of extremely important ideas within science that are as unfounded as the religious ideas I have outlined.*

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The actual, real existence of quarks, as I've mentioned numerous times. They may only be a mathematical artifact of our models.

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Note that I'm not talking about foundation assumptions about reality and objective observable universe; those assumptions underpin all philosophies, by necessity. I'm talking about big important ideas, equivalent to the risen Christ or such.

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Unfortunately, I can't avoid this. When we start talking about the truth-claims of religion, I believe we are in analogous territory to these metaphysical questions (which is why I raised them back in my original post, Message 25).

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To start with let it be noted that you do not answer the point that your "acid test" is widely rejected by Christians - either implicitly or even explicitly. That in itself kills your claim of a parallel.

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I don't understand what you are trying to say here?

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I am aware of the view that we should not accept even a scientific view of reality and even the proper name for such a view (Instrumentalism), I am not aware of any Christians, even the most liberal, who would go quite so far, even if we include the Sea of Faith and their "non-literalist God"

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I see the reality of our scientific theories as analogous to the truthfulness of the biblical message.

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Indeed, it seems that the view of Christianity you are putting forward is not one that many would take seriously.

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I don't understand?

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Many object when a liberal Christian says that it is not necessary to believe in the Virgin Birth or that the literal resurrection of Jesus is of no real importance.

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Correct.

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Indeed, it seems that I am almost a Christian in your view, lacking only the faith commitment that the Bible is consistent. I don't believe in God, I think that Jesus was a failed wannabe messiah and I reject the whole concept of salvation. How many self-styled Christians here would accept me as one of them ?

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I have neither said nor implied anything of the sort. No, this does not make you almost a Christian. With a LOT more training in Bible, Greek, Hebrew, biblical history, biblical exegesis, etc, you could almost be a theologian or a biblical scholar. But to be a Christian you would need the faith commitment as well.The Christian faith rests, depends on theology and biblical studies, which involve reason and evidence. All of these are parts of Christianity. But the Christian faith is not equivalent to theology and biblical studies.

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Christianity is based on the teachings of the Bible. The Bible must be studied to understand first what it says and then what this means. This study involves evidence from many different disciplines (grammar, history, literature, etc.) This process clearly involves evidence and reason. I don't understand why you and others find this claim objectionable and try to deny it?

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Understanding what the Bible is claiming does is not the same ans understanding the logic and reasoning that was used to reach those claims. Don't you understand the difference?

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Of course I understand the difference. But you are trying to "move the goal-posts" (as someone accused me earlier).Here is my original claim from Message 25 which you and others strongly disagreed with: Note that I spoke of "biblical evidence," i.e. evidence from the Bible. Establishing what the Bible says and means involves logic, reason, history, language, culture, etc.