Tag Archives: Journalism

Commentary

Jay Richards explains when you should doubt “scientific consensus”

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Jay Richards writing in The American, a publication of the American Enterprise Institute. (H/T Evolution News via Apologetics 315)

This short article summarizes 10 things to look for that hint that “scientific consensus” as a substitute for arguments and evidence.

Excerpt:

How is the ordinary citizen to distinguish, as Andrew Coyne puts it, “between genuine authority and mere received wisdom? Conversely, how do we tell crankish imperviousness to evidence from legitimate skepticism?” Are we obligated to trust whatever we’re told is based on a scientific consensus unless we can study the science ourselves? When can you doubt a consensus? When should you doubt it?

Your best bet is to look at the process that produced, maintains, and communicates the ostensible consensus. I don’t know of any exhaustive list of signs of suspicion, but, using climate change as a test study, I propose this checklist as a rough-and-ready list of signs for when to consider doubting a scientific “consensus,” whatever the subject. One of these signs may be enough to give pause. If they start to pile up, then it’s wise to be suspicious.

Here are the 10 points he discusses:

  • Bundling well-evidenced claims together with speculative claims
  • The use of ad hominem attacks against dissenters
  • The use of coercion to force scientists to join the consensus
  • Publishing and peer review that is cliquish
  • Unwarranted exclusion of dissenters from peer-reviewed literature
  • Misrepresentation of peer-reviewed literature
  • A rush to declare a consensus before it even exists
  • When the subject matter is not easily testable (e.g. – simulations)
  • When defenders resort to phrases like “Scientists say…”
  • When science is used to push for dramatic policies
  • When journalists are not reporting the issue objectively
  • When supports appeal to scientific consensus instead of arguments

One can easily see how this list applies not only to global warming alarmism, but to Darwinism as well.

News

How serious is Obama about stopping the persecution of Christians abroad?

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Consider this article from National Review. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

Connect these dots: In Nigeria this week, Muslim youths set fire to a church, killing more than two dozen Christian worshippers. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been suffering increased persecution including, this month, a drive-by shooting outside a church in which seven people were murdered. In Pakistan, Christian churches were bombed over Christmas. In Turkey, authorities have been closing Christian churches, monasteries, and schools, and seizing Christian properties. Recently, churches in Malaysia have been attacked, too, provoked by this grievance: Christians inside the churches were referring to God as “Allah.” How dare infidels use the same name for the Almighty as do Muslims!

In response to all this, Western journalists, academics, diplomats, and politicians mainly avert their eyes and hold their tongues. They pretend there are no stories to be written, no social pathologies to be documented, no actions to be taken. They focus instead on Switzerland’s vote against minarets and anything Israel might be doing to prevent terrorists from claiming additional victims.

[…]Not so long ago, the Broader Middle East was a diverse region. Lebanon had a Christian majority for centuries but that ended around 1990 — the result of years of civil war among the country’s religious and ethnic communities. The Christian population of Turkey has diminished substantially in recent years. Islamists have driven Christians out of Bethlehem and other parts of the West Bank; almost all Christians have fled Gaza since Hamas’s takeover.

Muddling has some pictures of a protest by Egyptian Coptic Christians in front of the United Nations building.

CNS News notes that Obama has yet to appoint an ambassador for international religious freedom.

Excerpt:

One year after President Obama took office, the administration’s top international religious freedom post remains empty, at a time when a wave of religious persecution is troubling veteran campaigners.

“President Obama has not yet named an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom,” a State Department press officer confirmed by phone late Wednesday.

The Christian advocacy organization Open Doors USA launched a petition Wednesday urging Obama to appoint an ambassador immediately, saying that leaving the position unfilled violated U.S. law.

“By not having an ambassador-at-large for the past 12 months, the U.S. has failed to demonstrate the importance of religious freedom,” said advocacy director Lindsay Vessey.

The liberties of Christians and other persecuted religious minorities abroad must not be a real big blip on his secular leftist radar.

Commentary

Do people have to believe in inerrancy in order to be Christians?

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What is inerrancy?

Here is the statement of faith that affirms inerrancy from the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which I think is a good statement of what belief in inerrancy requires:

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and therefore inerrant in the original.  God is a Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

C. Michael Patton at Reclaiming the Mind is an inerrantist, but he thinks that inerrancy should be optional for Christians.

Excerpt:

Here is the question: Is the doctrine of inerrancy so central to the Christian faith that if one were to deny it, he or she should pack their bags and search for a new worldview? In other words (and let me be very clear), if the Scriptures are not inerrant, does that mean the Christian faith is false?

Most of you know that I hold to the doctrine of inerrancy. I call my view “reasoned” inerrancy which does not suppose a particular wooden hermeneutic to be tied to it. (You can read more about it here).

Having said this, I believe that this doctrine, while important, is not the article upon which Christianity stands or falls. I believe that the Scriptures could contain error and the Christian faith remain essentially in tact. Why? Because Christianity is not built upon the inerrancy of Scripture, but the historical Advent of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christ became man, lived a perfect life, died an atoning death, and rose on the third day not because the Scriptures inerrantly say that these events occurred, but because they did, in fact, occur. The truth is in the objectivity of the event, not the accuracy of the record of the event.

Some people who believe in inerrancy respond to complaints about errors by arguing that New Testament writers were not obligated to list all the witnesses to empty tomb, nor to transcribe exactly/all of what people said, or to list all of the events in the life of Jesus in chronological order. They argue that if you relax the standards of reporting a little, the apparent conflicts between the sources often disappear.

My position

I’m an inerrantist, but I don’t think that a person has to be one in order to become a Christian, initially. I think that the list of non-negotiables do be a Christian shouldn’t include inerrancy. Now, I don’t think that people can just dump verses willy-nilly, based on personal preferences about particular sins, or presumptions of naturalism or religions pluralism.

Instead, I think that it’s ok for people to be agnostic on some stories (like the guard at the tomb or the earthquake resurrections in Matthew) because of historical concerns. I would hope that these new Christians would make an effort to read more about problem passages and see if they can move closer to inerrancy, though.

For more about inerrancy, you want to consider watching the debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the resurrection of Jesus, or you can download the transcript here.

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