August 2006 Archives

What would it take for you to be convinced that Floyd Landis is not guilty of using performance enhancing drugs (or other cheating techniques)? Would you have been convinced if the sample B test had come out normal? What about now that his sample B confirmed the results from sample A? This current controversy brings up an important consideration when talking about matters of science and faith (or anything, really). What is your standard of evidence for believing or disbelieving something, or even abandoning belief?

Naturally, we have different standards for different beliefs. Sometimes it doesn't take much, and other times a mound of evidence may be required. For example, it would require a tremendous volume of evidence for my friend Jeff to believe that Barry Bonds didn't cheat. Meanwhile, it doesn't take much to believe that someone is a cheater. How many times do you need to observe someone cheat to know he or she is a cheater? Once.

The above examples are behavioral, but consider deeper belief systems that people hold. I have to ask myself, what would it take for me to abandon my Christian faith? Is there anything that could do it? Such a standard of evidence tends to be exceptionally high for people of dedicated religious conviction, be it Christian or otherwise. Likewise, the standard can be equally high, if not higher, for non-believers to be convinced.

For example, naturalists typically have an exceptionally high standard of evidence for accepting non-natural explanations of phenomena. I suspect that even directly witnessing a miraculous or supernatural event would leave the dedicated naturalist in search of a natural explanation, unwilling to accept a supernatural one. As scientists like to say, exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. (By the way, this heuristic generally applies in science across the board, and rightfully so.)

In terms of the intersection between science and faith, standards of evidence become critical when discussing the evolution/creation/ID debate, miracles, the resurrection, etc. I wrote about this issue to set the stage for later posts. In the meantime, think about what beliefs you hold that you would be hard pressed to abandon, and those that you would easily abandon. Is there anything that would require enormous evidence for you to believe? (see Barry Bonds example above.)

For the first time in eight years, Cynthia and I find ourselves in search of a new church. We've been visiting different churches for a few weeks now, some good and some not so good.

Years ago, I told Cynthia that I wasn't interested in any church without a building, without regular Sunday School, or without all the church trappings to which I was accustomed. Churches that met in schools and the like didn't seem like real churches to me at the time. You could say that my definition of a church was tied up with its building or location.

However, as we look around for churches now, I find myself feeling contrary to my previous bias. I'm now more attracted to churches that meet in elementary or middle school auditoriums and have home groups during the week. Perhaps this attraction is rooted in the type of church rather than its physical presence. It's the praise bands, casual environments, and home groups that draw me rather than choirs, semi-formal environments, and Sunday school. Not that these things are bad; they just have very little appeal to me at this time. Perhaps I'm "done" with church as I know it for the time being.

I should distinguish between churches that meet in schools and those that are casual. We visited a church in a nearby elementary school that managed to come across very stuffy with just eight of us in attendance (including the pastor)! And, there are several well-known large churches that are very casual (e.g., Saddleback in CA).

I'll keep you posted on our progress.