{"id":3026,"date":"2012-04-22T01:02:55","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T08:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/?p=3026"},"modified":"2020-01-09T04:34:47","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T11:34:47","slug":"why-you-cant-agree-with-r-gary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/why-you-cant-agree-with-r-gary\/3026\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Can\u2019t Agree With R. Gary"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Love ya, Gary!)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not terribly difficult to guess ahead of time which bloggernacle threads Gary (of NDBF <\/a>fame) will comment in and roughly what his position will be therein.\u00a0 This is due to a number of factors:\u00a0 his overall consistency, the forthright, no-nonsense articulation of his views and (most of all) his staunch adherence to positions which tend to drive intellectuals crazy.\u00a0 Gary is by no means alone in proudly flaunting these traits as a badge of honor but to me he serves as the perfect poster-boy for all Iron-Rodders if only because he is one of the most patient and likeable of the bunch.<\/p>\n

First, I\u2019ll give a little history regarding our interactions in the \u2018nacle.\u00a0 Those who have known me for a while are well aware that I take science fairly seriously and have always had a particular interest in Darwinian evolution.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you are also well aware that Gary has always been quite unimpressed by both, to put it mildly.\u00a0 After many frustrating exchanges between us in which I frequently allowed sarcasm and mockery to take the place of patience and charity I finally thought that I had figured out what Gary\u2019s core argument really was.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, I concluded that Gary had no interest in debating the merits of Darwinism or whether the Brethren could authoritatively speak on such matters.\u00a0 Such things were simply, although frustratingly beside the point he was really trying to make, namely that the Brethren did in fact urge us to reject Darwinism.\u00a0 It may well be that the church has taken no \u201cofficial\u201d position on the matter, but if one simply looks at the direction to which the Brethren consistently point there really shouldn\u2019t be any doubt on the matter.\u00a0 The Brethren\u2019s job is to bring people to Christ, and coming out as being officially for or against Darwinism would probably hinder more than help in this objective.\u00a0 Besides, what in the world do faithful members of the church need an \u201cofficial\u201d declaration on this matter for anyways?<\/p>\n

If this is in fact Gary\u2019s argument, then I actually agree with him.\u00a0 Having reached this understanding, I excitedly sent him an email asking if he also felt that I had finally gotten him right.\u00a0 His response, to paraphrase a bit, was: Exactly! \u2026 Kind of.\u00a0 Naturally, but somewhat unfortunately, I focused more on the first part than I did the second.\u00a0 But the truth is that I didn\u2019t really get Gary\u2019s intent as well as I thought I had.\u00a0 Furthermore, I\u2019m guessing you don\u2019t either.\u00a0 Let\u2019s see if we can\u2019t fix that a bit.<\/p>\n

In my last post<\/a>, I briefly described a fundamental difference which exists between Religion and Science, broadly construed.\u00a0 More specifically, each one takes truth to be something quite different than the other, a difference which infects essentially every disagreement between the two.<\/p>\n

For Religion, truth is a path which is to be followed to some destination.\u00a0 If some belief or claim leads you to this destination, it is true and if it leads you astray, it is false.\u00a0 Thus, there is a kind of consistency built into this notion of truth, but it is not<\/em> the logical consistency with empirical data or other well confirmed claims.\u00a0 This is why it makes sense for Jesus to say that he is the truth and for people to say that the church is \u201ctrue\u201d.\u00a0 Truth is a path.<\/p>\n

For Science, on the other hand, truth is more like a picture of the world or a Sudoku puzzle.\u00a0 There is a certain amount of observed data in the world (the \u201cgiven\u201d numbers) which scientists can combine with logical and mathematical analyses to discover the unique solution as to how the rest of the unobserved spaces must be filled in.\u00a0 The solution will then be a complete and totally consistent picture of how the world actually is.\u00a0 The idea that a person or a church could be \u201ctrue\u201d simply makes no sense in this view.\u00a0 Truth is a picture.<\/p>\n

Of course the relationship between these two is not a mutually exclusive, all or nothing affair.\u00a0 Religious people frequently use the rules of Science and the other way around.\u00a0 Rather, the question is one of priority: are the rules of science to trump those of religion or the other way around?\u00a0 Both sides agree that the truth ought to be believed, but when the truth of Science conflicts with the truth of Religion, which are we \u201ctruly\u201d supposed to believe?\u00a0 Most important of all, as well as most difficult to wrap one\u2019s head around, since truth just is the outcome of these rules, there can be no independent way to decide which set of rules \u201ctruly\u201d has priority over the other.\u00a0 One cannot ask if truth is truly a picture or truly a path without entirely begging the question at hand.<\/p>\n

As a side note and test case, this is actually what was at stake in Galileo\u2019s famous clash with Religion.\u00a0 The Catholic Church didn\u2019t much care what the empirical, mathematical and logical data were for or against Galileo\u2019s particular hypothesis.\u00a0 Painting an accurate and logically consistent picture of reality was simply not what truth was about.\u00a0 Truth, for them, was that which consistently pointed people to God and the application of those other rules were largely beside the point.\u00a0 By their lights, it wasn\u2019t the Copernican theory which was false as much as the idea that the rules of science were true *even if they did not point God*.\u00a0 To them, such a suggestion was contrary to the very definition of truth.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing my misunderstanding of Gary is fairly predictable by now.\u00a0 I took him to be offering logical arguments in favor of a particular picture of how the world is (what the Brethren \u201ctruly\u201d wanted us to believe).\u00a0 But I was wrong.\u00a0 Gary was not trying to paint a picture of reality or solve any such puzzle.\u00a0 That is not what truth is for Gary, and any argument to the contrary simply begs the question.\u00a0 Instead, Gary was consistently and forthrightly pointing people the way of Truth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>