Friday, October 13, 2006
The Difference Between Evidence and Proof
As a part of a Sunday School class I am currently participating in, I am reading the book, The Case for a Creator, by Lee Stroebel. I cannot continue the discussion without commenting that it is an annoying book to read. Stroebel writes up interviews with a sort of breathless, internal dialogue narration that is intrusive, self-agrandizing, time-wasting, patronizing, and just plain old irritating. Were it not for the class and the need to discuss the book with others, I would have placed this book in the circular file a long time ago. Now, on to the meat of the matter.
The book begins with Stroebel interviewing Jonathon Wells, author of Icons of Evolution, which looks at the false or misleading nature of many of the more common evidences of evolutionary theory.
As I read through the interview, I was struck by the fact that I must be a bit strange. Stroebel talks in that breathless, irritating manner about each of these "icons" (the amino acid generating experiment of the 60's, Darwin's "Tree of Life" diagram, etc...) and how they lead him astray into the widerness of atheism, and how he shuddered as each was revealed as wrong in some fashion.
I was exposed to all the things Stroebel was and I never felt compelled to discard my infant faith and wander the wilderness. Why not? Maybe it's because I was fathered and raised by a lawyer, maybe its because I was born a scientist (I started trying to figure out how things work, usually by taking them apart, from the earliest possible age) maybe I was just too indoctrinated by my faith already, but I understood at those most tender ages that those evidences of evolution were insufficient to constitute proof of evolution. Evolution was and remains, a hypothesis, perhaps a theory, but it has never risen to the level of fact by any standard of proof one might select.
Nope reading this book has taught me something I also learned when I was on jury duty. More often than not, people decide a propositon and then look for evidence of it, rather than decide based on the evidence. This means most people collect evidence, but they never actually formulate that evidence into a cohesive arguement or proof, they just create an evidence pile until they feel the pile reaches some critical mass that constitutes "proof."
I find this fact most instructive when it comes to evangelism. How do we "argue" for Jesus? I have never been convinced that we do. Apologetics, "pre-evangelism" is evidence in the pile, but only a select few people will ever really be influenced by it. They will either put it in the pile that says "I am a Christian, here's why" or they will find the faults in the arguement (and all apologetic arguments have them) and put it in the pile "Why I am not a Christian."
Sometimes I think apologetics cedes too much of the naturalism/supernaturalism debate by definition. When we attempt to help someone develop faith on a purely natural level, which apologetics does, we discount the supernatural, and I think genuine faith in Christ is a truly supernatural occurence. Anything less is mere intellectual ascent.
We want to be naturalists because we can manipulate nature. We want to be naturalists because it allows us to maintain control. And yet, the essence of the Christian experience is the sacrifice of control to the Almighty. It is beyond nature and it is not subject to our understanding or manipulation.
In the end, there is the evidence for Christianity does not rise to the level of proof - but there is proof. We are the proof. That is to say we are, if we allow the supernatural God to work in us and change us and make us as He intended.
Related Tags: naturalism, apologetics, evidence, proof, faith, transformation
The book begins with Stroebel interviewing Jonathon Wells, author of Icons of Evolution, which looks at the false or misleading nature of many of the more common evidences of evolutionary theory.
As I read through the interview, I was struck by the fact that I must be a bit strange. Stroebel talks in that breathless, irritating manner about each of these "icons" (the amino acid generating experiment of the 60's, Darwin's "Tree of Life" diagram, etc...) and how they lead him astray into the widerness of atheism, and how he shuddered as each was revealed as wrong in some fashion.
I was exposed to all the things Stroebel was and I never felt compelled to discard my infant faith and wander the wilderness. Why not? Maybe it's because I was fathered and raised by a lawyer, maybe its because I was born a scientist (I started trying to figure out how things work, usually by taking them apart, from the earliest possible age) maybe I was just too indoctrinated by my faith already, but I understood at those most tender ages that those evidences of evolution were insufficient to constitute proof of evolution. Evolution was and remains, a hypothesis, perhaps a theory, but it has never risen to the level of fact by any standard of proof one might select.
Nope reading this book has taught me something I also learned when I was on jury duty. More often than not, people decide a propositon and then look for evidence of it, rather than decide based on the evidence. This means most people collect evidence, but they never actually formulate that evidence into a cohesive arguement or proof, they just create an evidence pile until they feel the pile reaches some critical mass that constitutes "proof."
I find this fact most instructive when it comes to evangelism. How do we "argue" for Jesus? I have never been convinced that we do. Apologetics, "pre-evangelism" is evidence in the pile, but only a select few people will ever really be influenced by it. They will either put it in the pile that says "I am a Christian, here's why" or they will find the faults in the arguement (and all apologetic arguments have them) and put it in the pile "Why I am not a Christian."
Sometimes I think apologetics cedes too much of the naturalism/supernaturalism debate by definition. When we attempt to help someone develop faith on a purely natural level, which apologetics does, we discount the supernatural, and I think genuine faith in Christ is a truly supernatural occurence. Anything less is mere intellectual ascent.
We want to be naturalists because we can manipulate nature. We want to be naturalists because it allows us to maintain control. And yet, the essence of the Christian experience is the sacrifice of control to the Almighty. It is beyond nature and it is not subject to our understanding or manipulation.
In the end, there is the evidence for Christianity does not rise to the level of proof - but there is proof. We are the proof. That is to say we are, if we allow the supernatural God to work in us and change us and make us as He intended.
Related Tags: naturalism, apologetics, evidence, proof, faith, transformation
