RE: Dembski's "Explaining Specified Complexity"

John E. Rylander (rylander@prolexia.com)
Sat, 18 Sep 1999 17:38:46 -0500

> > Actually, there is no reason to think the two are mutually exclusive.
> > Speaking only for myself, I would simply say that if I did not
> > think there was evidence of God's existence, I'm not sure I would
> > still have faith (after all, I wasn't raised to believe in God).
>
> That reminds me of John 20:24-29. In my opinion there is no better
> illustration of the profound difference between scientific skepticism (as
> demonstrated by Thomas) and faith. I was raised to believe in
> God, but as a
> scientist who sees no evidence of the existence of God that cannot be
> explained just as well by assuming naturalistic materialism and
> scientism, I
> would not believe in God if somewhere within me there was no core of
> certainty based on faith alone that God truly exists.
>
> When it comes to God and Christianity, I see faith as a rock
> whereas I see a
> reliance upon evidence as sand. What can be proven by evidence
> can also be
> disproven by evidence (like building a house on sand), but what
> is based on
> faith is everlasting (like building a house on rock).
>
> Just a personal testimonial for you to consider.
>
> Kevin L. O'Brien

If you're interested, some of the coolest stuff in contemporary religious
epistemology discusses just these sorts of issues, albeit not usually in the
context of science. (We're philosophers -- we try to leave facts out of
this as much as possible. The last thing we want is for another branch of
philosophy to turn into a science!! ;^) )

In a tiny nutshell, it cannot be the case that all of our justified beliefs
require independent evidence, since then we'd require infinitely many
beliefs (A bucking up B, B bucking up C, etc., forever, or the whole chain
is unjustified). So some beliefs can be, or can be in part, basic
beliefs -- beliefs which we do not believe (or not entirely) on the basis of
our belief in other, evidential propositions.
Are these things taken by faith, then? Well, perhaps so or perhaps not,
depending on one's defn of faith. But it's not just belief in God that is
often enough in this category, but also things like belief in the laws of
logic and arithmetic, belief in the material world, belief in other minds,
belief in the past, belief in induction, belief in our sensory perception
and memory, belief in some basics of right and wrong, and more. Does
just -anything- go, then, so far as properly basic beliefs? No, obviously
not -- that seems intuitively absurd, anyway. But just because not just
anything goes, that doesn't mean that there aren't many things that properly
go -- like belief in God, e.g.

If you're interested in pursuing this in a little more but still very
accessible depth, see:

Theism, Atheism, and Rationality
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth02.html
Intellectual Sophistication and Basic Belief in God
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth03.html
Advice to Christian Philosophers
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth10.html

all by Alvin Plantinga. He's an exceptionally bright Christian philosopher.
A great mind, and a great guy, too. (And we all know often enough those
things don't exactly go hand in hand.) (For more on Plantinga, see
http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/plantinga/index.html.)

John