Ah yes, Craig is yet another individual in the continual process of progressive revelation!

I can remember going into apologetics that one of the biggest things I hoped to do was “discover” a new argument for the existence of God and be the next C.S.Lewis or Aquinas. Then it started occurring to me that “discover” was simply a synonym for “invent”. Progressive revelation is really a synonym for progressive invention. This was hard to swallow!

lol, okay, I wasn’t sure!

If so, I guess I would only say that there are not eternal consequences if you are wrong about string theory, although if you are wrong about biblical inerrancy (and choose to believe it is a human text) then Christianity teaches you probably are not orthodox and therefore not saved. The analogy is good, except it does not include the potential risks and rewards associated with the two theories.

Correct me if I misunderstood your post.

So what you’re saying is that the Bible needs its own “String Theory.” An interpretation of everything so to speak. Actually now that I think of it, that’s kind of a fun analogy since string theory apparently has something like 6 different versions which has bugged scientists for several years until some brilliant guy comes along and says, “Oh no, it’s just six different ways of looking at the same thing.” Sounds kind of apologetic doesn’t it? Or at least enough that a Christian who wanted to could use it as an empty argument.

My favorite non-biblical example of “harmonization” is WL Craig’s effort to explain how an omnipotent god, who wants us all to be saved, is not necessarily in contradiction with people actually not being saved. He invents this idea of “transworld damnation” — seriously, he had a whole article on this — wherein he argues that, given free will, some people would reject god in any possible world that even god could actualize. Thus, we can rest assured that god has set things up that this is the world in which the maximum number possible will be saved.

(…which means, dear Christian, that if you are on your way to witness to someone you think is close to converting, and you pop off for a quick latte on your way there, and in the interum your potential convert gets smacked by a bus, you cant rest assured he would not have converted anyway.)

He plucked this concept right out of his as– um, the air, solely for the purpose of making omnipotent goodnes + damnation fit together. Logically, of course, it may very well succeed.

But what a *mess*!

Richard, I could not agree with you more. I was at a meeting of brights the other day, and was sharing my de-conversion story. A ‘seasoned’ atheist was explaining to me just how hard it was for him to understand how fundys can be so, well, staunch in their beliefs. I basically explained to him what you have said. Fundys are logical, it is just their assumptions that are wrong. They are thinking perfectly logically, but their fear of submitting their presuppositions to scrutiny is what keeps them irrational in their thinking.

Hence, to my way of thinking you can be simultaneously irrational but not illogical, and that is what conspiracy theorists, and biblical inerrantists, do. Their belief system is not illogical — for the reasons I laid out in this article. But it is irrational, because they prefer wildly contorted explanations in order to protect a more central belief from change, so they create webs of belief that are unsimple and implausible.

My main point is that I agree with Occams razor but its useful to articulate *why* we think simple theories are to be preferred. It is, after all, an assumption we make: that the world will be simple rather than complex. We need an argument for that assumption, or at least I believe we do.

And I think the reason is that it tends to help us avoid bias. If we find ourselves bending our theories around a central premise that we seem resistant to changing, we should be careful, because we may be avoiding the better explanation for what, I agree, are likely to be emotional or other reasons.

Im just trying to point out that, in addition to evidentiary and logical considerations, we usually employ some notion of simplicity — Occams razor — in our belief formation. So, the UFO hypothesis isnt illogical — it is not obviously impossible or contradicting something else — but it is irrational, because it is needlessly complex, compared to our background beliefs.