- 5 Objections
- Response to 5 Objections
- The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
- 3 Points of Departure
- On Christian Origins
- On the Holy Spirit
- On Belief
- The Trouble with (Traditional) Worldviews
- Imagination, Authority, and Knowledge
- On Marxism
- Christianity and Marxism
- In Defense of Skepticism
- Skepticism and Ethics
- Where I’m Coming From
- Tradition, Knowledge, and Metaphysics
Epistemology
I sense that in some ways we have significantly different epistemological approaches. I think we would both agree that one should have a healthy balance of skepticism and trust, but I think we disagree about where that balance lies, with you leaning significantly more towards skepticism. I recently ran across a quote by Phillips Brooks, the 19th century Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts, which I resonated with: “To believe is to live. Skepticism as a habit, as a condition, is a sign of deficient vitality. It is a vastly nobler fear which dreads lest it should lose some truth than that which trembles lest it should believe something which is not wholly true.” I can’t prove that this is the correct way to approach life; I can just say that it seems that way to me. Much more evil in human history has been caused by people lacking conviction who did nothing about or went along with evil than by the small number of people who have been deeply committed to evil causes. I would rather spend my life fully committed to a good cause which might not be completely true than spend it withdrawn in skepticism.
Worldviews
When discussing worldviews, I think the concept of paradigm shift is helpful. When we look at the natural sciences, typically regarded as the most “objective” and “rational” of academic subjects, even there it is never simply a matter of the evidence adding up to produce a scientific theory as a conclusion. All “evidence” is already interpreted from the perspective of a scientific theory. Scientific theories are not produced by the evidence; they are created in the imagination of the scientist (This is why Albert Einstein famously said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”). If a new scientific theory comes along that seems to provide a perspective that can make sense of the data in a more elegant fashion, there will be a paradigm shift and this theory will be accepted in favor of the old one. For example, all observed planetary motion was able to be explained from a geocentric theory of the solar system, but the heliocentric theory became accepted instead because it was able to explain planetary motion in a more elegant and less convoluted way. The new theory may still leave some bits of data unexplained, or even create new problems (e.g. “If the earth is spinning, why don’t we feel like we’re moving?”), but if it has greater explanatory power overall, it is reasonable for scientists to accept it, in the hopes that further investigation and/or tweaks to the theory will eventually explain these problems. I say all this in order to point out that imagination (what you call “assumption” and “speculation”) plays a role in all human knowledge; it is never simply a matter of the evidence directly proving every part of our beliefs. So, to me, it is perfectly reasonable to adopt a worldview even though “the constituent beliefs within a given system depend to some extent on each other for support” and there is not direct evidence for each constituent belief, as long as one is convinced that this “theory” is the most reasonable way to view the world and to live life.
Authority
I think you are probably right that many of our disagreements center around the issue of trusting authority. You are right to point out that human authorities can only speak with authority regarding particular topics, not every topic. However, many Christians who believe in the authority of Tradition and/or Scripture would say that they speak authoritatively only on theological matters, not other topics. You are right that, in principle, all claims of human authorities are open to examination or verification. However, in practice, often this is not the case. I do not have the scientific knowledge necessary to conduct an experiment carried out by a scientific expert, and even if I did, I do not have the scientific knowledge necessary to analyze the resulting data. Theoretically, I could undergo the years of scientific training necessary to do this, but realistically, I (along with the vast majority of human beings) am not going to do that. Certainly, no human life is long enough for someone to become an expert in every field and then scrutinize the claims of all authorities in every field. In many cases, we must simply put faith in the claims of authorities (even as we acknowledge that they are not infallible). Furthermore, there is an important difference between the claims of human authorities on science and other topics and the claims of divine revelation. In order for finite beings to know an infinite God, God must actively reveal Himself to them. Therefore, in principle, there is no way unaided human reason could independently scrutinize and verify the claims of divine revelation; they must, because of the very nature of the subject matter, be accepted by faith. If we are willing to accept by faith the claims of fallible human authorities on matters which we could investigate ourselves if we wanted to, then it is reasonable to accept by faith the claims of divine revelation on matters which, in principle, are not accessible to independent investigation. Additionally, while it may be reasonable to accept only some of the claims of a human authority and not others, such an approach is not reasonable with regard to divine Authority, which, by definition, is infallible.
Of course, none of this answers the question of where exactly we encounter divine revelation and what kind of evidence we need to be reasonably convinced that it is in fact divine revelation. Whether one finds the Christian claims of divine revelation convincing depends on many different factors, not the least of which are the historical questions regarding the origins of Christianity, which I will look forward to continuing to discuss.