You can prove anything you want...

Sorry, it has been awhile. It comes and goes, I suppose. I did try writing a little while back when that whole thing about - what was it - "adaptive" Christianity (I think that was the term) was being discussed. I was going to chime in with my two cents at the time, but couldn't bring myself to it. I have a hard time discussing things like that; it all seems so futile to me.

Awhile back, I used to visit a site on database-related topics on a regular basis. The site was largely managed and authored by an ill-tempered database proponent. While I agreed with many of his views, I found his personality and way of expressing himself to be generally disagreeable. Basically, his site and many of his writings are devoted to debunking the prevalent misunderstandings in the database industry, which - he believes - are the fault of an industry and educational system driven by commerce and not scientific, logical, and intellectual reason. Again, I generally agree with much of his argument, but his way of going about debunking others, even if he is relying upon logical reason to do it, is done in a very inelegant manner, and that manner blinds people to his message.

This gentleman is very critical of religion, and while it is not a predominant part of his site, he has a whole section of the site that is dedicated, essentially, to debunking "the conservative right," along with the "religionists" that are often a large part of that group. The attitude he takes comes off again as arrogant; he links to sites that often treat those who adhere to religion and faith as illogical, unscientific, and foolish.

Now, I can't entirely blame him. Frankly, many of the more vocal supporters of religion do a very poor job of representing religion as a whole. Additionally, in the absence of access to revelation, they often have to fall back on faith in their own synthetic (i.e. self-created) belief system as their only defense, and unfortunately, they will adhere faithfully to beliefs which really, truly are irrational and incorrect, simply out of an incorrect understanding of God and religion in general. Yet, this does not entirely make them illogical, and furthermore, to label the entire group of "religionists" as illogical or unscientific simply because there are a few vocal advocates who exhibit those behaviors is an unfair generalization.

I recently read in a book a statement which expresses a belief I've had for a time: you can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason - if you pick the proper postulates. And further: Postulates are based on assumption and adhered to by faith. I've never bought the whole line that faith is bad and science and logic are good. I don't understand why the two can't walk hand in hand. Individuals who label themselves "scientists" and then decry all religion as stupid and illogical because it is based on faith do not properly understand logic, nor do they really understand science. Logic cannot truly tell you whether or not a statement or assertion is true; it can tell you whether an argument is valid. A valid argument is one whose structure is such that if all of the premises of the argument are true then the conclusion is necessarily true, as well. But, you see, logic cannot tell you whether or not the premises are true; you have to rely upon some other means to accomplish that. This is what is meant by the statement I quoted above: given the correct premises, it is possible to prove any conclusion true via logic, but that works on the assumption that the premises themselves are true.

As if this were not enough, logic itself is based upon laws which are unprovable and must simply be accepted as self-evident. For example, that there are only the values "true" and "false" and not some third value; that if something is "true" then it is not "false" and vice versa. If any of these laws were somehow illustrated to be incorrect, then logic would completely fall apart (indeed, even the assertion that I just made would be illogical). So, we adhere to these laws; we accept them, and we defend them; and indeed, they do appear to be self-evident; I do not argue them, but I do want to point out that they are accepted on faith

Indeed, no system can truly prove itself as being complete and accurate by itself; math cannot be used to prove that math is complete and accurate. Furthermore, you cannot really rely upon another system to prove a given system is accurate; e.g. logic cannot prove science to be complete and accurate; for then that other system must also be proven accurate and complete. And so it goes in an endless chain, and ultimately, it is only by faith - a knowledge or evidence of things unseen - that we rely upon all of the various systems - math, logic, science, religions, ethics, and so forth - that we use in our lives. So, a "scientist" who labels religion irrational and illogical because it relies upon faith is condemning science itself at the same time.

But let me not argue about logic - I believe in and rely upon logic. Rather, let me state that some religions (I cannot speak for all) are logically consistent. They accept certain premises and from those premises, through logic, they arrive at conclusions, which become premises for new arguments, and so on. One could state that religion, science, any system of belief, is essentially an argument based on certain premises that are accepted by faith. Some of those arguments are fallacious (internally inconsistent), but some are completely valid. Yet, we often do not realize this. When we debate with one another over religion or science or whatever, we tend to attack the validity of our opponent's argument; that is, we somehow expect that we can change the person's beliefs by proving them invalid. This may be the case in some instances, but I think that it often is not the case. Two individuals who approach an issue with a completely different system of beliefs that are based upon completely different premises cannot communicate accurately with one another. They'll attack a certain statement as being false, questioning the argument by which that statement is deduced, when the statement is accepted by their opponent as being true based on an argument that relies on a different set of premises; they don't have a shared basic set of premises.

So, what am I saying with all of this? I'm saying that the apologetics and arguments that happen on the Internet so often are rarely going to accomplish much in the way of convincing an individual that his prior belief system was in error. An attack at the validity of someone's argument is often entirely ineffectual. To persuade someone, it is necessary to convince the individual not by logical argument, but by an appeal to some other source that will change the individual's fundamental premises. Some might call this a "paradigm shift." How many of us Mormons, for example, who've served missions have had an encounter with someone that degraded into a logical debate about some biblical issue (known as a "bible bash")? And how often did such an argument change anybody's beliefs? True, it may happen at times, but I think that more often than not, it only serves to harden the parties against one another all the more, and create ill feelings and a bad spirit. On the other hand, how often have we had the experience of being in a discussion where the Spirit was present and touched an investigator's heart, convincing the person deeply, emotionally, spiritually that what we were saying was true. See how much more effective that is?

Time and again, especially through email, I've found that the Internet is not effective at conveying a person's spirit and attitude. So much is lost in the written word in the way of inflection, body language, and spirit, that I have doubts that it is possible to achieve the same kind of success at "convincing" others as can be achieved in personal, verbal, face-to-face communication. That's not to say that it's entirely impossible, just more difficult. And this is especially true when all we're doing is attacking one another logically. Thus it is that I usually find it futile to comment on others beliefs online.

One last note to scientists who would defame religion (despite the futility of saying it online): if you adhere to Occam's Razor, understand that it is not meant to be an a priori proof that God does not exist; if anything it means that the question of the existence of God is currently not within the bailiwick of science and so it is not the job of science to comment on the matter one way or the other; you've got other issues to concentrate on. Personally, I think that science and religion/philosophy play complimentary roles. I believe science's job is to answer the question of "how"; religion/philosophy/art/the humanities have the job of trying to answer the question of "why." Both are important, and both are useful. Without science, we would still be living in the dark ages, with little or no understanding of how the world and nature work. Without the humanities/relgion/philosophy/etc. we would be living in a different type of dark age, driven by logic and science without questioning morals or ethics and without truly appreciating anything in this life. So, I think it is worthwhile to try and appreciate the contributions that we all make.

Incidentally, I don't expect the theme of this blog entry to be a new direction for this blog; it is a digression.