I'm responding here to a blog post about the “scientific” basis for Jesus Christ. Whatever it was, it wasn’t scientific.
It started with a picture of Mormon Jesus. The painting shows a white man in a red robe with a Nordic nose, and a blonde beard. It is exactly how you would expect a first century Jewish man to look (if you are the Mormon curriculum department). But if the Mormon Church can’t prove that Jesus did look like that picture, I can’t prove that he didn’t, can I? I'll get back to that.
The argument in the post went something like this (with some salvation/thermodynamics word salad thrown in at the end):
- Jesus had God powers.
- Only someone with a God parent could have God powers.
- Jesus had such a parent.
- Therefore, science.
The first three claims are logically consistent. "Logically consistent" is not the same as "scientific." There is no testable hypothesis in this argument. In fact, the only statement that could even be examined for empirical accuracy is “Jesus had God powers.” That is precisely the statement that the author said he was not going to defend ("We cannot examine these claims on whether these event took place"). There is no practical test for claim 1 any more than there is a practical way to test whether Historical Jesus looked like that Red Robe Jesus painting.
Science has testable claims. This does not. Therefore, this is not science.
Thank you. I have seen even professional philosophers make this mistake (strangely, only when it comes to religion). They defend the mere possibility of the truth of their religion, and then seem to take themselves to have defended the truth of their religion. But mere possibility is a damn low bar that even unicorns and the like can jump. (Uh that metaphor didn't work so well at the end but you get it ...)
Isn't faith ultimately an epistemological question? In other words, what are the limits of human knowledge? How do we know what we know (or think we know)?
You assert that the only way to arrive at knowledge is through empirical observation or scientific method; through the five senses. A Christian asserts that knowledge can also come through divine revelation; that we have a sixth sense.
If this is true, then there is nothing irrational about faith. It's not a blind leap, if it is based upon a rational and coherent conviction that the New Testament represents genuine eyewitness testimony of the resurrection of Christ.
Why think there is this "sixth sense" though? Based on the other senses that we all agree we have, or what?
You really are a philosophy professor :)
Presuppositions are inescapable. I presuppose there is a loving yet transcendent God that speaks to people and you presuppose there is no God (I read your last post about being a staunch atheist). Those presuppositions lead us to certain other conclusions. So my belief in divine revelation flows out of my experience of receiving divine revelation, and corroborated by Scripture (which I also presuppose to contain revealed truth). I'm assuming your rejection of divine revelation is rooted in your conviction that before something can be known it must be observed and empirically tested.
Why do you think there is no sixth sense?
I agree that presuppositions are inescapable, but that doesn't mean you can start with any presupposition you want. You don't get to just presuppose that Miley Cyrus is a robot from the future or that the earth's climate is not changing or that the infidel must be murdered. You should as best you're able only presuppose what's shared with others, and try to reason from there.
I don't presuppose there's no god - I reason to it, in basically same way you reason that there are no invisible pink unicorns. (You don't think there are any of those, do you?) And that's also basically the same way I reason that there is no sixth sense of divine revelation - I have no positive evidence for it, plus Ockham's razor.
By the way, thanks for the stimulating discussion. This is a great example of why I love Steemit!
I agree that you can not start with just any presupposition and I did not mean to insinuate that I am a Christian existentialist. I don't believe faith should be a blind "leap" without reasonable basis.
I see a great deal of evidence in the natural world of the God revealed in Scripture: order in the universe, complexity of life, explanation of origin of evil, basis for reality of cause and effect, etc. Then a closer look at the New Testament reveals significant evidence that a group of men and women saw Christ alive after his death and were willing to die for their conviction that he was the son of God.
But before anyone can arrive at that belief they must presuppose that the universe is not a closed system but rather one in which a creator can reach down into and defy known logic (a miracle).
I agree: Faith is absolutely an epistemological question. If God spoke to me personally and gave me access to knowledge, then I would have that knowledge. That's one "method" for getting knowledge. Is it a reliable method? If God told me that it was reliable, I would probably have to believe him. I think that's your point: A Christian asserts that knowledge can also come through divine revelation.
And that's fine. It's logically consistent. But it's not Science. I have no objective basis to assert the primacy of science or empiricism. I don't think I claimed that in the post (though maybe my tone implied it - I do have my biases). Faith/revelation is one thing and science is another.
My point in the post was to disagree with the claim that because something is logically consistent, it must be scientific. Science is testable. Revealed truth is not. Both can be logically and internally consistent (and rational, as you put it).
Thanks for clarifying. Hard to disagree with that :)
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