Equipoise, Faith & the Purpose of Apologetics

When investigating a claim, common ethics require that one approach the claim with equipoise. To quote a rather nice definition from the January issue of Skeptical Inquirer, "Equipoise means beginning one's research, investigation, or diagnosis without bias. Equipoise is essential so that the investigation can be pursued adequately, as bias can influence data acquisition. If an investigator begins acquiring data with an aim toward finding something in particular, then one is apt to discard some data, or misinterpret data, even potentially unconsciously, in order to confirm one's hypothesis."Hello all. I'm happy to see that this board has a forum dedicated to the topic of faith. I've come to a time in my life when it feels important to me to understand the roles of faith and skepticism. In particular, I'm fascinated and puzzled by the purpose of apolgetics and would like to discuss it.My background is Christian, so when I think of apologetics, I tend to think of Christian apologetics. To be quite frank, as I began to lose my Christian faith, apologetics that once seemed brilliant to me came to seem unconvincing in the extreme. Has anyone else had this experience? Why would this be?To quote Hebrews 11:1 from the NIV, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope to find and certain of what we do not see." Can a person of faith examine an apologetic for that faith with equipoise? Is it possible to present an apologetic for a matter of faith that will seem excellent when approached with equipoise? If an apologetic does indeed stand up to harsh skeptical scrutiny, has it by very definition passed outside of the pale of faith and entered the scientific realm? Does one require faith, as it has been suggested to me, in order to approach an apologetic "aright?"Is there some middle ground or a third alternative that I'm failing to take into consideration? Edited by GlassSoul, : No reason given.

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My looking ripens things and they come toward me, to meet and be met. ~ Rilke

Hi GlassSoul, and welcome to EvC.If you haven't spent much time looking around it would be a good idea to do so, and especially to read up on the Forum Guidelines.I don't think I completely understand your post, even well enough to suggest improvements. Maybe I can at least break it down enough to get some questions going. 1) I gather that "equipoise" simply means neutrality, an absence of bias. It might be clearer if you used a more common word.2) I have a problem with the idea that "faith allows one's hopes to take on a virtual substance." I've never read that passage in Hebrews that way. I take it to mean simply that there is an invisible reality that faith permits us to recognize. As one commentator puts it, faith is a sense like seeing or hearing, "a 'sense' that gives us evidence of the invisible, spiritual world." If you mean something different from this, please explain further.3) I don't understand how faith's being "the substance of things hoped-for..." relates to "examin[ing] an apologetic for that faith with equipoise [or without bias.]" 4) This is confusing because I understand apologetics to be arguments addressed to unbelievers, not to believers.5) Is it possible you are asking something simpler, such as whether a person who has faith can be truly neutral about that faith? If so, it might help if you spell out more of your thoughts about this.I hope this will help you make your post clearer.Please reply to this post when you're ready.Edited by AdminFaith, : No reason given.

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HI. Thanks for the suggestions.I'd really like to keep the term "equipoise" in there. The first paragraph defines it quite nicely, I think. "Unbiased" is a fairly good synonym, but "counterbalanced" would be a better one.Instead of putting my own spin on the Hebrews passage, why don't I simply quote it from the NIV. I think doing that makes the questions that follow a little clearer. I've gone ahead and changed that.Apologetics may be addressed to unbelievers (and believers too, I would think), but not all unbelievers are skeptics. The passage in Hebrews seems to me to describe a mindset that is the antithesis of equipoise. In light of that, can an apologetic be posed for a matter of faith that will stand up to skeptical inquiry?So, I'm not really asking if a person who has faith can be neutral about his faith, but whether a neutral person can be brought to faith by means of an apologetic. Edited by GlassSoul, : No reason given.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

I see much of what is offered by apologetics as downright unconvincing. I see some of it as outright lies. Sure. Some do, and some don't. Perhaps not. There is good reason why a matter of faith is a matter of faith rather than a matter of evidence. When apologeticists try to claim that it is a matter of evidence, they are wrong. For the most part, apologetics is not aimed at persuading the skeptic. Rather, it is aimed at satisfying those who are looking for an excuse to believe. Often a good story, presented with suitable rhetorical flourish, is all that is needed to provide such an excuse.

hi glass, welcome to evc.i think i will probably participate in this thread a litte more once it gets off the ground, because you sound somewhat similar to me.i can't stand apologetics. i see the whole field as dishonest, an attempt to misrepresent and bend science/reality and the bible together, perverting both in the process. equipoise, i suppose would be a good word for my position -- though many have called it contradictory. i promote both a strict literal reading of the bible, and proper understanding of the sciences, though i hold that the two are utterly incompatible. too me, it's an issue of respecting the text, instead of paying lip service to it, or worshipping it outright.i'm sure i'll explain a bit more ast he thread goes on, when i invariably run afoul of the fundamentalists here, again. out of curiousity, are you currently a christian? questioning? recovering? i would say that certain dogmatic positions the fundamentalists espouse here (all or nothing attitude about the bible, especially) are quite damaging, and that the logical outcomes of these position is not a good reason to forego faith altogether. but i'd be lying if i said i didn't find that advice very difficult myself.

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By definition, "apologetics" are a defence of a particular view. They do not represent an unbiased investigation.In reality, all too often Christian apologetics - especially those you find on the web or those for extreme views like Biblical inerrancy or Youbg Earth Creationism are all too obviously the products of bias. They are irrational or dishonest attempts to deny the findings of genuine investigation.I would suggest that your loss of faith opened your eyes, by removing the bias needed to conceal the flaws in apologetic "arguments". n

You are entering a wonderful time, one that can blossom like a flower and that hopefully will last the rest of your life.Often here at EvC I make the claim that there are two types of Christians, those who look for Answers to questions and those who look for answers to Question. It sounds like you will fall among the fortunate later category. Usually in my experience, that is because most apologetics are unconvincing, shallow and in very many cases simply silly. As a Christian it pains me but I find that so many Christian apologetics are either liars or really, really ignorant. That is particularly true among those who try to support the nonsense of Young Earth or ID. They just plain get it wrong.Answers should be Questioned. That is why GOD gave us the ability to think.Edited by jar, : add requisite spallin arrers

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

When I have looked at the 'fundamentalist' Christian apologists, the lack of reason, the misstatement of the facts were always quite the turn off. Most of the apologists I have seen were pushing a literal bible however. The ones that do that have to distort and twist to deny the contradictions.

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out of curiousity, are you currently a christian? questioning? recovering? i would say that certain dogmatic positions the fundamentalists espouse here (all or nothing attitude about the bible, especially) are quite damaging, and that the logical outcomes of these position is not a good reason to forego faith altogether. but i'd be lying if i said i didn't find that advice very difficult myself.

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I'm no longer a Christian. (The term "recovering" is an interesting one. )

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i can't stand apologetics. i see the whole field as dishonest, an attempt to misrepresent and i can't stand apologetics. i see the whole field as dishonest, an attempt to misrepresent and bend science/reality and the bible together, perverting both in the process. equipoise, i suppose would be a good word for my position -- though many have called it contradictory. i promote both a strict literal reading of the bible, and proper understanding of the sciences, though i hold that the two are utterly incompatible.

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When I began discussing apologetics on the web, I expected to be deeply challenged. I supposed there were brilliant apologists out there that I didn't know about, and that although I might not encounter one in debate I might be shown a link to something that could tempt me back into a position of faith. That hasn't happened yet.I had to ask myself what I thought I was looking for. What if I were to discover an apologetic that revealed itself to be excellent, not because I approached it with faith, but because I approached it with equipoise and in the spirit of skeptical inquiry and found it to stand up in every way to the most careful examination. What would be the outcome? Would I then lay aside those tools and find myself "sure of what I hoped for and certain of what I could not see;" content in a state of bias amongst un-evidenced certainties? The very tools that led me to faith would then be superfluous or even dangerous to my new state. Yet wouldn't my new state, arrived at by now suspect means, then be in question?Arrrrgh! This is the sort of thing that keeps me awake at night.

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too me, it's an issue of respecting the text, instead of paying lip service to it, or worshipping it outright.

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By the way, I suspect you and I might have some agreement on how to handle scripture.

What are you now? And what is a Christian ( for in order to not be one one must presumably know what it is to be one)Just curious..Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Welcome, GlassSoul--the luna moth and Rilke are both old friends. It's nice to see them with you. If an apologetic involves some reproducible phenomena or data, we would be out of the pale and into the whiter shade of science once we form a falsifiable hypothesis, with experimental data, methods, and theory all transparent to others--but then you were doing science all along. To be truly persuasive, an apologetic would have to be more than just science in God's name, since science cannot demonstrate the supernatural.Still, if some apologetic theory successfully predicted new phenomena, that would be quite impressive--the divine theory of accelerating expansion, say, with testable predictions of local phenomena deduced from the premise of God's existence. I don't see how that can be done, and simply rediscovering the wheel in the name of God wouldn't count for much.In either case, we can often all agree on what we see--it's what it means that divides us. Well, lowering one's threshold of persuasion into negative numbers surely makes an apologetic more...efficacious.

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Perhaps it would have been more informative for me to have said that I don't believe in any gods. There are so many definitions of what it is to be a Christian that there might be someone out there who feels I can be crowbarred into the flock somehow. What do you think about the topic? Is it possible to construct an apologetic that stands up to skeptical inquiry? Are faith and equipoise opposed to one another?

If we aren't doing science when we approach an apologetic, then what sort of guidelines do we have to insure that our thinking isn't fuzzy? Or do we want fuzzy thinking?What sort of thinking makes someone certain of something he can't see (and presumably can't hear, smell, taste or touch either)?If an apologetic is doing more than just science in God's name, what it that "more?" Edited by GlassSoul, : No reason given.Edited by GlassSoul, : Fuzzy punctuation.

i can't take credit for that one i try not to think about it too much, because it just over complicates things. but it also presumes that the following can be true: the way i look at it, you don't apologize when you've done something right -- you apologize when you've done something wrong. yet, apologetics, same root word here, seeks to say that nothing in a particular source is wrong. that's like saying "i'm sorry" without admitting that you screwed up.if the bible were 100% literally true in every way, it would be so blindingly obvious to everyone that there would be no need for apologetics. god would play a much larger and more active role in our day to day lives. but there is an incongruity between the events depicted in the bible, and our real lives, modern science, and the way we understand reality. thus the need for apologetics. ironically, i'm something of a believer. but most of the people i fight here are fundamentalists. it's always fun when i get the literalists to accuse me of "overliteralism" when i insist on sticking to words on the page, as written.Edited by arachnophilia, : typo, as usual

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