How to Make Sure You’re Never Proven Wrong Again: Part 1

Nobody likes being proven wrong. So I am always thankful to my readers whenever they point out new ways to protect yourself from ever having to eat a slice of humble pie. With that in mind I will say a few words about two criteria recently demonstrated by two of my readers. I'll focus in this post on the first criterion with the second yet to come.

1: Set your own standard for evidence

You might have heard of Ken Ham, the Australian born head of the conservative Christian organization "Answers in Genesis." There is a scene in the final episode of PBS's "Evolution" series titled "What about God?" which depicts Ham in a church, informing them on how to rebut the proponent of Big Bang cosmology. As Ham explains, the next time a scientist tries to tell you the universe came from a big bang you reply with a question: "Were you there?" With this devastating one liner Ham works the group into a frothing frenzy. (One shudders to think what carnage would have ensued had Steven Weinberg mistakenly wandered into the room at just that moment.)

Imagine trying that one-liner out on Don Page, Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta (and an evangelical Christian). Imagine that you'd walked into Page's office just after he finished co-writing "Operator Ordering and the Flatness of the Universe" with Stephen Hawking.

You: "Mr. Page, do you believe in the Big Bang?"
Page: "Of course."
You: "Were you there?"

How do you think Page would have responded to this zinger?

Possible outcome #1: Page turns ashen white and replies, "Why no, no I wasn't there. Good gosh, what have I been doing with my life all these years?"

Possible outcome #2: Page nervously shakes his head and politely replies "No, I wasn't there" as he frantically presses the security button hidden under his desk.

Admittedly #1 is not likely, but #2 is not that bad either, because even if you wouldn't have convinced Page, you would have at least ensured that he wouldn't persuade you. Nuh-uh.

I was reminded of this helpful strategy in "Why do people get dumb when they read the Bible?"   I suggested to TheOtherSorcero, a reader who is skeptical of the church's teachings on Jesus, that he read Richard Bauckham's important book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:

"I already highly recommended to people Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses." There are many other books I would recommend as well by leading scholars, but his is a good place to start. Look at his arguments and draw your own conclusions."

TheOtherSorcero, though unfamiliar with Bauckham's work, apparently knew that it could not be of relevance with the same absoluteness that Ham knows Hawking and Page can have nothing of relevance. So he replied:

"Without having direct access to Bauckham's book, what I can gather about his reasoning is that it is based on analysis of what is in the Bible, and concludes that the NT was written with at least close proximity to the people involved. I asked specifically for independent historical records of the miracles listed in the NT, and you have not provided any."

Apparently establishing that testimony reports were written very close to the purported events they describe is not interesting and can be dismissed with the same nonchalance that allows Ken Ham to ignore evidence from Hubble's red shift to Penzias and Wilson's background radiation.

But what can justify this dismissive attitude of testimony closely proximate to the events they describe? Because TheOtherSorcero already has excluded New Testament testimony based on his own form of "Were you there?" You see, he could dismiss Bauckham's testimony because he had already demanded:

"What independent evidence is there that suggests that the events and, more importantly, the miracles described in the Gospels took place at all, and to what extent does historical record external to the Bible describe the events?"

By "independent" I assume he means testimony by those who were not part of the Jesus movement.

(If TheOtherSorcero is interested, Edwin Yamauchi has a fine popular essay on this topic: "Jesus Outside the New Testament: What is the Evidence?" in Jesus Under Fire (Zondervan, 1995), 207-29.)

But more to the point, we should note how this is a delightfully arbitrary and self-serving stipulation. As New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce once observed, "Somehow or other, there are people who regard a ‘sacred book' as ipso facto under suspicion, and demand much more corroborative evidence for such a work than they would for an ordinary secular or pagan writing."

That might work even better for Ken Ham than "Were you there?" Thus, "Do you have any evidence for the Big Bang from people who don't accept the theory?" Hmmm. Yes, I should definitley try that some time.