Science, faith, and God

Some comments on a recent dialogue between John Lennox and Michael Ruse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrnXdzQRISM

1. Both Lennox and Ruse are in their 70s. Lennox has something to look forward to when he dies–Ruse has nothing to look forward to.

2. Ruse illustrates the implausibility of the freewill defense, and Lennox's response is philosophically trite. In general, though, Ruse's religious ideal seems to be heavily conditioned by his Quaker upbringing and education. Even though he's an atheist (agnostic, naturalist), the Quaker paradigm remains his frame of reference.

The dialogue was interesting but frustrating because they didn't have time to develop their ideas. At one point Lennox gestured at a distinction between different kinds of science, but that was dropped. To develop his comparison, a science like chemistry is more fully and directly evidence-based than physics, which requires more theoretical filler.

It isn't clear to me if Ruse has a consistent position. However, his position may be more sophisticated than Lennox. At times, Lennox sounds like a positivist.

3. This goes back to an ancient and perennial debate on the relation between faith and reason. Here's one way of viewing it. Facts and evidence only take us so far. The evidence doesn't explain everything. The evidence leaves many important questions unanswered. Sometimes the evidence leaves us baffled. 

So we need something to fill out the evidence. Something over and above raw evidence. For many Christians, that's faith. For more cerebral Christians, that's reason. Christian philosophy and philosophical theology can help to fill the gap when the evidence runs out. Take theodicies. Mind you, faith can never be eliminated. 

Likewise, there's evidence for the Bible. And Biblical revelation provides explanations where raw evidence is lacking. Evidence can corroborate a truth-claim, but a truth-claim is distinct from the corroborative evidence. Revelation answers some questions which the evidence leaves unanswered. So revelation helps to fill out the evidence. Revelation interprets the available evidence and extends the reach of the available evidence.

In that respect, the relation between faith and reason is more like theoretical physics than chemistry. There's a necessary evidential component, but it requires philosophical and theological interpretation to fill out what's missing from the raw evidence.

4. I appreciate Lennox's courageous response to the professors. He refused to back down, even though as a college student and aspiring academic, he was quite vulnerable to being blacklisted by secular academia and the secular scientific establishment. 

5. That said, many Christians and atheists alike suffer from a nearsighted, bubblegummy idealism about "the truth", as if the truth has absolute value regardless of anything else. But truth is not a virtue in a godless universe. Truth isn't something to live for in a godless universe. Better to be a hedonist if it came to that. 

Truth is a necessary but insufficient condition for a worldview. A satisfactory worldview must have room for the good as well as the true. Truth is worthless unless truth can point us to some ultimate good. 

There is no truth for truth's sake. Rather, there's truth for goodness' sake and goodness for truth's sake. Christian apologists need to avoid a truncated worldview where bare truth, divested of anything else, is something to live for and die for. 

Christianity and naturalism aren't just two sides of an argument. It would be suicidal to abandon Christianity for atheism under the aegis of "following the truth"–as if truth has independent value regardless of what the world is like. Truth is not enough. 

Imagine a godless universe with a malevolent master race of aliens. Cruel, sadistic. Suppose they require you murder your mother to prove your undying allegiance to the alien overlords. That's nothing to live for, even if that was true.

6. Perhaps we need more discussion of what distinguishes private evidence from public evidence. For instance:

i) Some of the Resurrection appearances are to solitary individuals. That's originally private evidence. 

ii) We can compare (i) to Resurrection appearances to groups of people. Presumably, that would be classified as public evidence.

iii) However, there's a sense in which collective private evidence can be reclassified as public evidence. That is to say, multiple-attestation can be something witnessed by several people at once or else it can be something witnessed by solitary observers. If, though, you have multiple reports of the same thing by isolated observers, the effect is mutual corroboration.