I'm Mike Hickerson, and I serve as Associate Director for the Emerging Scholars Network, a ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. I also teach a variety of Bible and theology classes at Lakeside Christian Church in Northern Kentucky, write when I can, and maintain a few different websites for InterVarsity, family, and friends. This is where I publish book reviews, personal commentary about technology and society, and the occasional poem.
Over the 4th of July, we went down to my parents’ house. We visited (in order):
Here are some pictures. Enjoy!
Over at slate.com, this interesting paragraph showed up:
Systems of belief such as religion and even scientific paradigms can lock their adherents into confirmation biases. And then tidbits of fact or gossip appear over the Internet to shore them up. There’s a point of no return beyond which it’s very hard to change one’s views about an important subject.
The writer, Arthur Allen, is discussing a scientific theory that he believes is patently false (the theory that childhood vaccinations have increased the incidents of autism), but that’s not what I’m most interested in. Rather, I want to focus on the way he makes it sound as if only “adherents” view evidence through a biased lens.
Here’s the thing: everyone has a system of belief. It might be not be systematic, it might not be considered a “belief,” it might not even be consistent or agree with any traditional philosophy or religion. But everyone has one. It’s impossible not to. Otherwise, how would you even begin to make sense of the world? How would you know what to pay attention to, what to ignore, where to start considering a new idea or newly acquired fact?
Rather than blaming what you perceive as someone’s mistake simply on the fact that they adhere to system of belief, it’s better to examine that system of belief itself. Is it consistent? Does it align with known evidence? Do you have trustworthy foundations for your system? Is there a better system that explains what’s going on?
Then, rather than pretending that Person A is judging things based on a system, while Person B is looking at “just the facts,” we should mutually recognize each others’ biases and presuppositions, as well as our own. If we are aware of our own assumptions – even if we have good reasons for them – then we can much more easily communicate with people whose assumptions differ from ours. Futher, the other person might have very good reasons for the assumptions they make, even if their conclusions are ultimately wrong. By understanding and sympathizing with those reasons, we can love our neighbors as ourselves, even if we disagree completely.
If you happened to read this article in Tuesday’s NY Times, you would have found some pretty shocking statements.
The idea that human minds are the product of evolution is “unassailable fact,” the journal Nature said this month in an editorial on new findings on the physical basis of moral thought. A headline on the editorial drove the point home: “With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside.”
With all deference, the NY Times quotes Nature as stating, Jews and Christians are ignorant bumpkins. Why should that trouble my sensibilities?
The article goes on:
Or as V. S. Ramachandran, a brain scientist at the University of California, San Diego, put it in an interview, there may be soul in the sense of “the universal spirit of the cosmos,” but the soul as it is usually spoken of, “an immaterial spirit that occupies individual brains and that only evolved in humans — all that is complete nonsense.” Belief in that kind of soul “is basically superstition,” he said.
Let’s be exactly clear with what V. S. Ramachandran, who is Indian, is saying here. I don’t know what Dr. Ramachandran’s personal religious beliefs are, but he here argues that the Hindu-Buddhist religious concept of “the universal spirit of the cosmos” is scientifically acceptable. Meanwhile, the Jewish-Christian concept of personal souls is “superstition.” (Though I’m not aware of any theologians who would consider the soul “occupying” the brain or having evolved.)
If Dr. Ramachandran wishes to believe that, then that’s between him and God (or the universal spirit of the cosmos, as the case may be). But how, exactly, is this science? Further, how would Dr. Ramachandran counsel a Christian working as graduate assistant under him? “Superstition” is a strong word, especially from a professional scientist.
We have heard from scientists, such as Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion can peacefully coexist. Science, we have been told, discusses the “what” and “how” of the world, while religion examines the “why.” Here is at least one group of scientists who expose that as a false paradigm. For them, science – understood materialistically, with no room for anything that can’t be measured – determines the whole of truth.
