Evidence is not always obvious

EVIDENCE IS TRICKY

Previously I had written about a friend and former Christian brother’s, social media post. It led to a bit of a debate, which neither one of us shy away from, but that debate took a turn and went a little south rather quickly. In my reflection of the conversation broke down primarily over definition of faith, and over the conclusiveness of evidence. Both of which are tricky, and while I talked about the misunderstanding we had about faith in a previous post; evidence, can often be just as tricky to pin down. Just ask any fan of Netflix’s recent “Making a Murderer” series. If you have not seen the series I highly suggest taking a look, not only is it very compelling, but it demonstrates how are perceptions of evidence can be skewed by our own personal narrative, and that evidence all by itself, doesn’t really prove anything, as much as it serves to validate or invalidate a story.

SETTING THE STAGE

By way of reminder, my friend asserted that the definition of faith IS the NON-traditional view of blind faith,or faith without evidence. I say non-traditional because even though the concept is very popular on our current western Christian context, the actual idea is nowhere to be found in the understanding of Christian faith that we see in the scriptures. It is, at best, something that sounds vaguely spiritual enough that people believe it is Christian, like “cleanliness is next to godliness” or “spare the rod spoil the child“, and at worst, a false understanding so detrimental to Christian thought, that it gives good cause to people who wrongfully reject genuine faith, based solely on a false idea of this counterfeit faith. In fact I even told my friend that if genuine Christian faith was in fact “blind” and without evidence as he asserted, then I would have no problem renouncing my faith today. In short I disagreed and asserted that Christian faith does have evidence.

This inevitably raised a question, that question revealed our secondary problem. Once I asserted that his definition of faith was inconsistent with Christian faith; specifically that Christian faith is a faith that not only has evidence, but a faith that demands it, if faith is a faith with evidence, then the obvious question is “What evidence?” The common assumption by internet educated atheist is that there is none. This is simply not true.

WHAT EVIDENCE?

This second part of our argument did not fall apart over the actual substance of the evidence, but over whether or not my friend was willing to receive it as evidence. Spoiler alert, he was not. His common push back was “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t prove anything!” Which is true, and a claim I never made. I never once asserted that any of my evidence proved anything definitively. As such, I could give many reasons and evidences as to why I believe in Christianity, but me merely presenting the evidence cannot change whether or not someone choose to accept that evidence.

Think of it in terms of a court case. If your a fan of “Making a Murderer” like me, you know that sometimes evidence can be sketchy. Everything from how it is accepted and collected, to how it is presented and received. It is a far more complex subject than whether or not it “proves” anything. For instance, a court, before determining anything, first decides which pieces of evidence it will allow into the trial. My friend would not allow any evidence into the court room of his mind, as such, our conversation did not go very far because without first being allowed, we cant further investigate the evidence we have. Furthermore, his requirement that the evidence “prove” something conclusively (100%) is a demand that is not only unreasonable, but unlike anything we see in our judicial systems. It makes me wonder, does he hold everything in his life to that same standard, does he demand 100% proof for everything before he will accept it?

THE CHRISTIAN CRIME SCENE

Let’s build our analogy out a bit. Image you come across a room with a dead body inside. What do you know about the death of that person? Nothing, but maybe you see a gun sitting on the table, and you think, “Maybe this person was shot with this gun, maybe a murder or a suicide?” Is this a reasonable assumption? Yes it is. Is this a piece of evidence? Again, yes. Does this prove anything? No, not at all. A gun is just a gun, it is still a piece of evidence, but it shows us nothing about what happened, all you have proved is that there was a gun in the room with a dead body.

So we take that small piece of inconclusive evidence and we examine it. We notice the gun holds six bullets in its clip, and there are only five left in the gun. Does this prove anything? No, but it suggest that maybe the gun was fired. We go back over to the body and we notice an exit wound from a bullet. Does this prove anything? No. You still don’t know 100% that this gun is the gun that fired the bullet that made the wound. It makes a very good case for your assumption, but does not demonstrate your case with 100% infallibility, nor does it show what really happened. Was the gun shot self-inflicted, or a murder? Do we have a fired bullet to match with this gun? The evidence demands more investigation, and at some point you to make an educated guess based on all the little pieces of evidence you have.

Sadly, if a homicide detective held to the same standard of evidence as my friend, many pieces of evidence would not be allowed to be part of this investigation, much less part of a court case to determine what truly happened. According to my friend, in our imaginary scenario, sense the gun doesn’t “prove” anything 100%, it is NOT evidence. His words, “It’s not evidence, it doesn’t prove anything.”

In reality, it is hardly ever just one piece of evidence, in fact it is normally a collection of many pieces of circumstantial evidence that make or break a case. This is what I tried to convey to my friend. It’s not just one thing, it’s a multitude of things. Together, these things make a pretty compelling case.

WHAT EVIDENCE SHOULD WE CONSIDER?

This is a good question, but a question that has no real answer. It really depends on the conversation. In the particular conversation with my friend we started with the validity of the bible. If the validity of the bible is on trial, then there is a very easy string of questions we can ask to begin to build a case. While I wont go over all the evidence, there is simply too much for one blog post. I can tell you how I tried present the evidence to my friend.

First, we can simply start with Jesus, all of the bible’s claims fall flat if there is no Jesus. So, was Jesus an actual person? Yes, he was, some try to claim otherwise, but no serious scholar, even atheist scholars believes this fringe claim. All serious history points to Jesus being an actual person who lived around the time, and in the area, that the bible claims he did. If accepted, then this piece of evidence becomes a positive piece for the case of Christianity. Obviously if there is no Jesus, there is no Christianity. Does this prove that he was God? No, but it is a pretty obvious place to start. Granted, it still does not prove anything 100%, but if our two available options are “valid” versus “invalid”, the fact that Jesus is a real person points us more towards the “valid” category over the “invalid” category. My friendly opponent, would not grant this conclusion.

Secondly we could look to the writings of the bible itself. On the bible, there are a myriad of things we could ask along the lines of credibility, and I think the first and most obvious is simply is “Is our copy of the bible even accurate?” What I don’t mean to say is that all of it’s claims are true, what I do mean to say is “Has the bible been tampered with over time? If we are supposed to accept these documents as true, how do we know if we even have a fair representation of the originals? Which is a good question, but this blog is not about the reliability of the new testament, or the science of textual criticism, so I won’t go down that rabbit whole. You can click the highlighted links for more on that topic. This blog is about evidence, and after presenting to my friend a number of evidences that show that the bible is well preserved, accurate and not tampered with, he still refused to accept my evidence into his consideration. His reasoning still “It doesn’t prove anything!” In my view, it is intellectually dishonest.

WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON?

If this were a court room, and my friend the judge, those of us observing the trial might wander as to why the judge wont allow any of this evidence to be heard. We have demonstrated the evidence’s potential viability, and this evidence is certainly relevant to our case. Maybe we could assume that the judge refuses the evidence based on some personal bias against the story that we are trying to present. If this were an actual case, we would say that this judge, if not completely corrupt, is not impartial or fair enough to hear this case, and we would move for a mistrial. Unfortunately I do not think my friend is able to fairly give the bible and its claims and honest hearing.

However, if the bible is true, you would think that it would have something to about our partiality against it’s claims. In fact it does…

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

-Romans Chapter 1

If the bible is true, then what it says about the human condition is true. If what it says about the human condition is true, then the above verse is true for my friend. He has believed a lie, another story that is counter to the story of the gospel. That story is so ingrained into his mind, that it affects his bias so much, that he is unable to see the evidence in front of him with any sort of fairness. So what are we to do then? Well, if the bible is true, then the Holy Spirit of God regularly opens the eyes of the blind, and gives life to the dead. I will do my best to continue to faithfully present the evidence to any who ask, and I will pray for the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of all who are blind.

Defining Terms : The Nature of Faith

It’s no secret that I don’t mind a good debate, I mean I do have a blog and that blog is dedicated toward theology, in a way, I’m asking for it! While I like to think that I have gotten better at holding my tongue by choosing my battles, from time to time I still feel the need to interject some perspective whenever I think I see an error that can be easily addressed. My personal lesson from a recent Facebook interaction is, that if you are going to semi-regularly open your mouth, you need to be ready to defend what comes out of it.

Ultimately I decided to engage in conversation with this Facebook friend, because I love him. At one point we would have considered each other brothers in Christ, sadly that is no longer the case as he is a professing atheist. While everyone is responsible for their own choices, there are some external factors in place that I believe helped this young man leave the faith so easily. So maybe, in some small way, being that I knew him then, and I know him now, I feel responsible for what part I may have played in his poor understanding of Christianity. So, if I can do anything to help I will, and if I can do so faithfully, I hope God will give me the grace to continue.

A DEBATE OF DEFINITIONS

The first thing you must do In debate is establish common ground, you do so by agreeing on the set meanings of the terms and phrases being used in your arguments. In short, you simply cannot have a good dialogue if both sides are arguing from different understandings of the same thing. You have to endeavor to present your opponent’s position accurately.

For the atheist, if a Christian says you misrepresent their perspective, you should be charitable and listen intently, maybe you missed something. If truly intellect, logic and reason is on  your side, then you, above all the worldviews, should desire to have all the correct information at you disposal so that you can apply it to your way of thinking. For the Christian, since in our worldview we are to value truth higher than anyone else, we too must also listen intently to represent our opponents position truthfully, and to search for our own errors honestly.

A DEBATE WITH NO DEFINITIONS IS A SILLY ONE

Jumping right into to our debated definitions of faith is tricky, and it is more important to me that you see how this failure to represent your opponents position will leads us nowhere fast. So to illustrate my point I want to make a bit of a silly example of what this looks like, and during my debate, it felt like…

Person 1: “Jesus was an actual living person.”

Person 2: “Well that is ridiculous, we all know that you think Jesus is really a carrot.”

Person 1: “No I don’t, and my scriptures don’t say that, so please stop arguing against my faith insisting that Jesus is a carrot.”

Person 2: “You can’t just change the definition to suit your needs, that’s unfair, you’re shifting the goal post in your favor.”

Person 1: “I am not, I am simply trying to show you that what you are saying is not actually what Chrsitians believe. I know there are some who may think Jesus is a carrot, but you wont find that in the scriptures, you have to evaluate my faith by it’s actual teachings, NOT what some people wrongfully teach about it.”

Person 2: “Your wrong, Jesus is a carrot and therefore cannot be a person and cannot be God, your worldview and objections have been destroyed.”

Person 1: “No you just destroyed a straw-man definition of my faith that I am telling you is NOT true. You really only tore down your own representation of my argument, not mine. So I agree with you, if Jesus was a carrot, he can’t be a person or God, but I am telling you that Jesus is not a carrot, and biblical Christianity does not believe that.”

Person 2: “Wrong”

As cartoon-ish as this seems, this is certainly how it felt from my perspective. Essentially if you define things a certain way, it changes your perspective on that particular subject. In a debate, if you have one meaning in your mind, and your opponent has another, you must be clear over which definition that you are discussing, or else the conversation will go nowhere. A simple example to use is the dual definition of “orange”, it is both a color and a fruit. If you are hungry and ask “May I have an orange?” and someone hands your a crayon of a particular hue, you had better clarify your definition if you are really trying to satisfy your hunger. Or, if you don’t want to appear rude, you can just eat the crayon.

DEFINING FAITHS

When it comes to faith you can go lots of place for definitions. A continual place my opponents went to was the dictionary, they wanted to crucify the Christians understanding of faith by the dictionaries understanding. But we were not arguing against a dictionary definition of faith, we were supposedly arguing against a biblical definition of faith. The same word was being used, but with two entirely different meanings, like orange

Without laying out every detail of the conversation, what my friend and opponent, hereby refereed to as my “fropponent”, argued against was the idea of “Blind Faith”. He asserted that the definition of Christian faith is the same as blind faith, or faith without evidence. This view of faith is non-traditional, even though the concept is very popular on our current western Christian context, the actual idea is nowhere to be found in the understanding of Christian faith that we see in the scriptures. It is, at best, something that sounds vaguely spiritual enough that people believe it is Christian, like “cleanliness is next to godliness” or “spare the rod spoil the child“, and at worst, a false understanding so detrimental to Christian thought, that it gives good reason to people who wrongfully reject genuine faith, based solely on a false idea of this counterfeit faith. In fact I even told my friend that if genuine Christian faith was in fact “blind” and without evidence as he asserted, then I would have no problem renouncing my faith today. He asked me to clarify.

I told him how the picture of faith we see in the bible is not a faith without evidence, but a faith that demands evidence. We see in scripture that YES, faith does require belief, but not an un-reasoned belief. We never see the command to follow something blindly, we are never told in scripture that we should shut of our brains and go with our hearts, we never see a teacher, prophet, apostle or Christ himself say anything without trying to demonstrate its validity. The parables are a good example of this, its Jesus knowing that what he is asking us to believe is difficult, so he tries to break things down in such a way that we might learn to understand it through his eyes.

Furthermore we always see Jesus inviting people to come and “taste and see”. This is his common way of asking them to verify what he is talking about with their own senses. If there was nothing there of substance to verify, even if he was speaking in analogy, why would he invite them to try to verify something that is allegedly unverifiable? Most notably we see this with Thomas, he believes Jesus to be dead, and when Jesus shows up resurrected, what does he tell Thomas to do? He tells him to come and touch his wounds! In other words he wants him to see and even touch the evidence for himself. The entire Gospel of Luke was written by Luke as he interviewed and researched the claims that Christians were making about Jesus. He went and found the evidence and wrote it down. We see Paul, when defending the Resurrection, or giving account to all that he has seen, frequently name people and tell others to simply go and verify his claims by talking to these other witnesses. Unfortunately we are unable to do this today, yet even when we go to the the “go to” passage on faith in scripture, we see that Faith is described as evidence, substance, assurance and conviction.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance(substance) of things hoped for, the conviction (evidence) of things not seen.

“But the bible is hard to understand, I don’t get it!”

I know, so if I may, let me use a parable of my own…

I currently cannot see my wife, we are not in the same room or even the same building right now, she could be doing anything she wants right now. Yet, I have an assurance in what I cannot actually see, I am assured that she is currently not sleeping with another man. Do I know this for a %100 conclusive fact? No. Can I see it with my own eyes? No, not currently. Well then, am I completely misguided to place my trust in my wife? Absolutely not. Even though I do not have %100 proof do I still have good evidence or reason to believe she is faithful? Yep. Could I be wrong? Yes, but the absence of visual evidence does not prove me wrong, nor does this mean that my faith in my wife is “blind”, I still have perfectly good reasons to believe that she is faithful to me that do not require my ability to see her in all ways at all times.

In summary, the idea of “blind faith” is not in the bible, and it is therefore entirely un-christian, and therefore has implications for both sides of the argument.

So Christians, stop using the term, it damages our faith, and if you go to a church that teaches blind faith as truth, find a different church.

Atheist, to argue against the Christian worldview by attacking the notion of “blind faith” is a fallacious argument. You simply dismantle something that is not in the Christian understanding of faith. Therefore, in your attempt to dismantle Christianity, you actually leave biblical Christianity untouched and only dismantle your own staw-man arguement.

A TRUE DEFINITION OF FAITH GIVES US A TRUE DILEMMA

If all of this is true, then my “fropponet” has a problem. He cannot concede his error with the definition of faith without also implying that his atheistic worldview may also be mistaken. After all, it was this definition that lead to his rejection of Christianity, and if that definition is invalid, then perhaps so is his assumption that led to his rejection. At the least, he would have to admit that his assumptions are wrong, and therefore his argumentation based on this assumption is also wrong, and at the most, commit to re-investigate his own thoughts and ideas about his own worldview in light of this new information. As Christians, we should also do the same whenever we assume something wrongfully.

He is committed to his atheism, and I to my Christianity, but where we differ is that I believe that there could be some evidence out there that completely disproves my faith. For example, if I were to find out for certain that Jesus did NOT exist, then to be intellectually consistent, I would have to reject Christianity altogether. I don’t think my fropponent is willing to make the same claim about his atheism. If he was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, the honest thing to do would be to reject atheism. For him, I don’t know if there is any amount of evidence that could cause him to reconsider the positions he assumes, much more, lead to his conversion. This leads me to believe that the problem in our disagreement is more than just a problem about faith and evidence, but also a problem of the heart.

For more resources on what biblical faith ACTUALLY is, I would encourage you to look at the links below…

Faith Has its Reasons

Blind Faith

Is Faith a Leap like Sam Harris says?

A podcast if you like to listen…

Stand to Reason Podcast

And probably the best summary of the Christian Faith, a book for all of our readers out there…

What is Faith? By R.C. Sproul

Sadly, it would only take a simple google search to show any atheist that the notion of Blind Faith is NOT a Christian one.

 

{Stay tuned as I reflect more about this conversation when we look at the nature of evidence in our next post. If there is anything unclear, comment respectfully and I will try my best to clarify.}

Starbucks, Orphans and Face-less Charity

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Recently a weird coffee mermaid lady corporation, Starbucks, announced a new minimalist design for their Christmas, or I should probably say Holiday cups. Red cup, regular logo. There are many reasons for a huge company like Starbucks to make this move. Obviously the design is both specific enough to invoke them holiday feels, while non-specific so not to risk any specific holiday or religious observance. Its smart, and safe, but not without some ridiculous controversy.

Apparently SOME Christians are upset by the removal of anything that may be Christmas specific from decorating the cups. To them this is blasphemy, part of the war on Christmas, because after all, if you remove Christmas, you also remove Christ, and this is apparently unacceptable.

Now there is a lot to learn from here about worldview, both Christian and non. Is this a valid reason for Christians, I believe a minority. to be up in a tizzy? Short answer, NO, but in response to some of the hubbub, more sensible Christian folk have responded in a variety of ways.

The first response was a picture of the red Starbucks cup, surrounded by a cardboard coffee sleeve with the words “If your coffee cups define your Christmas, Honey it’s you that needsJesus.”, fair enough, point made.

This was then followed by a post from a Kevin James look-a-like “Pastor”, suggesting that Christians lie and tell their barista that their name is “Merry Christmas” so they have to write it on the cups. The first one I like, the second one, well that guy gets way too much time on my news-feed. Not to mention, he claims to be a pastor and tells everyone to go in a Starbucks and lie about their name, but it was the third post that really got my interest.

One of my fave writers Jon Acuff echoed this sentiment posting

“I’ll worry about if Starbucks says Merry Christmas as soon as we Christians find homes for all orphans, comfort all widows & feed all poor.”

Theology and adoption, two things I am familiar with and love to talk about. I am a christian, and I have two daughters who share no biological similarities with me.

While there is no direct prohibition or edict in the bible that says Christians should not drink from cups near the holidays that do not explicitly mention that holiday, there are edicts that suggest that Christians can not be neutral when it comes to the issue of adoption. The most famous of which probably being James 1:27

“Religion that is pure and un-defiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

 

Did I say “suggest”? I meant flat-out declare it.

Now i think a danger here may be to make this text too broad. Some might say “Well James is really making a general appeal to look out for the needs of the least of these as an essential part of Christian living.” Those same people may also comment on the picture above or Acuff’s tweet and reply “Exactly, if only more people would…” The problem two-fold. One, this that this is a very bad way to read scripture. Two, this is face-less impersonal charity.

On scripture, we are not aloud to make specific what the scriptures leave broad, nor make broad what the scriptures make specific. This is a very good bible reading rule, and I am afraid that far too many of us interpret this passage this way. As a result, our response to this very specific call is also very broad. We agree and post “Exactly!” and the enthusiasm is great, but the quote from the picture reveal that our outward enthusiasm does not match our actual activism, our reply doesn’t not make one less orphan homeless. The reality is that far more people will share this picture or Re-tweet Jon Acuff than those who will actually adopt a child, or foster a child, or adopt a foster or adoptive family to take care of.

Here the scriptures give us a specific target. “Hey God, what should I do?” we ask. “Read James 1:27 and do it!” He replies. “Can’t I just post to facebook about it?!” we wonder.

No you can not, and every time you do there is still a child without a home.

Brothers and Sister, this should not be so!

Think of all the negative attention Christians get in the media. How people often look at us like a joke, and therefore think of Jesus as a joke. Think of all the hot button political issues like abortion and ask yourself “is adoption is the answer?” Would abortion even be needed, if every time a child needed a home, a Christian was there to greet them? Would people take us more seriously if we took our faith more seriously? Not more politically, or even more militantly, but actually let the words of scripture change the way we live!

We must take this seriously, but enthusiastic non-activism and face-less charity are not going to cut it. Sure, give your old clothes to goodwill, but guess what, my two adopted daughters don’t need your unwanted worn out clothes. Volunteer at a food pantry, but families like mine, well I make too much money to qualify for that type of assistance, so while you’ll benefit some, there will be plenty of others that fall through the cracks of the system. Meanwhile I need new tires for my car. And there are numerous programs where you can donate and some people will be helped, but you will never have to touch. or know, or see those in need face to face.

So why does James get specific here? Why widows and orphans? Well ask yourself, “Who is missing from this family portrait?” The father. And who did Christ come to reveal to us? “The Father” This is no accident, it is no tricky reading of the text, it is no mere coincidence that the very picture that the scriptures use to paint a picture of our salvation is adoption, it is by design. And Christians, aren’t you glad that Jesus was specific when he rescued you? That he didn’t just send aide from far off, but he came down, took on flesh, touched you while you were filthy, lifted up your face so you could see his eyes and loved you while you we unwanted?

So you can adopt, you can foster, or you can seek out a specific family who does, and you can adopt them. Take care of all the needs that the system fails to meet, be friend and love that family and make a real difference. If one family out of every three churches is all that it would take, then that means that there are enough families left to make sure that that one family never lacks in their ability to care for their children. Surely if there is one family per three churches, then three churches should be able to support one family.

This is a Gospel Issue.

Everything is a Gospel Issue.

Especially adoption.

Your activism needs to be greater than your enthusiasm.

Your charity needs to be specific, not broad.

Your response towards widows and orphans need to have a face, your face.

You have been neutral on this issue for far too long.

God, in Christ, was not neutral towards you.

He was active, so be active.

MEN! This is difficult…

…but necessary.

Not a long post, just a challenging exhortation from my morning read.

We see this clearly in Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus where husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church, being the head of their homes like Christ is the head of the church. This means that husbands, like Jesus, are to lead their home by being first to love, first to forgive, and first to suffer and to be accountable for sin regardless of whether it is their “fault.”

Patrick, Darrin (2010-08-12). Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission (p. 16). Crossway. Kindle Edition.