Science, Evolution, and Atheism (Part 1)

KJ and Jay Discuss Science, Evolution, and Atheism

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Comments

[Berto]

Hey guys:

Love the podcast. It's great to hear some thoughtful and rational discussion, using logic, from a Christian perspective. I thought the distinctions made in the series on gay marriage were especially refreshing.

In this last post (on evolution, science and atheism), you guys make an interesting distinction: belief despite the lack of evidence vs. belief despite the existence of evidence to the contrary.

There are many examples that come to mind that may prove themselves problematic, but a simple one could be the age of the earth. If we were literalists, then according to the Bible, the universe would be no older than something like 7,000 years. All scientific data (from wildly independent disciplines), however, suggests that this figure is orders of magnitude off. Given what we know about isotopes and atomic decay, it seems that believing in the Genesis account of creation would be an instance of believing despite the existence of evidence to the contrary, wouldn't it?

Similar arguments could be used to argue against many of the miracles that Jesus performed: changing the molecular structure of water to produce fermented grape juice without any perceivable changes in temperature, walking on water, or even his bodily ascension into heaven (defying the laws of gravity). Obviously, there are many examples like this, but the point I'm trying to tease out is how believing in God, despite instances that actually do go against all reliable known evidence can be justified without simply omitting those beliefs that turn out to be problematic?

On a different note, it is interesting how (and I'm curious to see how this will play out) you guys change the definition of evidence, from the scientific definition that includes falsifiability, which Dawkins seems to embrace, to include testimony.

How would you guys resolve the issue of the unreliability of testimony in other religions? In other words, one thing that most religions have in common is a tradition of historical testimony attesting to the truth of certain historical and/or miraculous events. Since most religions hold mutually exclusive beliefs with other religions, they are incompatible, which further leads to the conclusion that, at most, only one of them can be true.

If this is so, and all the evidence we have concerning these religions is their testimony, on what basis could you argue, without begging the question and assuming Christian testimony as true, that the evidence for Christianity is better than, say, Islam, which is replete with similar accounts, thought to represent evidence for their own particular beliefs?

Keep rocking on!