Science and Equivocation

Neil deGrasse Tyson

On the Instagram feed "MoneyTips" there's a snippet of an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicists, author, and science commentator who often appears on television to talk about science. Tyson is articulate and presents himself well. 

Unfortunately, Tyson often gets derailed to talk about religious faith about which he has ideological blinders. In the process he projects his own logical fallacies on the religious faithful. It's a form of psychological projection—"I'm doing what I find fault with you, and the fault I claim you are committing, I'm committing as well." Some of what he says is true of some religious groups, but he over generalizes and inadvertently reveals his "faith" in atheism. At the same time he seems to discount the "faith" that is required for productive scientific investigation. One must have faith in a rational, intelligent, and ordered universe for the scientific method to function. 

Now, I don't want to spend time here explaining all of this, as I have a different purpose in mind. I do explain this in my webisode series The Logic of Catholicism, which could be titled The Logic of Christianity. In either regard much of the same material is covered in our book of Dr. Stan Walter's lectures Basic Christianity. 

Here's the quote from the Tyson clip and the link so you can hear for yourself. 

So these are people who apparently require data to support their faith. That I find odd, right? Because then it's not faith, right? I mean, if, if you have religious faith, then whatever anyone says about the world wouldn't matter to you. If it does matter to you, then that's a different kind of contract that you're taking out on information. And that contract is there could be data out there that would conflict with your religious philosophy, and then you'd have to go along with it. But that's not what actually happens. There's a pretense that data matters. And then they filter it, reinterpret it, ignore parts of it, slice and dice it so that it all fits in to the religious philosophy. So it requires blinders in order to make that happen. 

Here's the link to the above quote: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Ccs_MUjj1zd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link 

In this clip Tyson is defining faith much the way many Evangelical Christians define faith—a mental construct that does not require physical, historical, or logical evidence. Christianity, which I am defending here, requires all three kinds of evidence for its authenticity. Many other religious faiths require little. So Tyson is right about some "faiths" but wrong about Christianity. 

In a Catholic/Christian sense "faith" is a belief that things will happen in the future that are consistent with what has happened in the past. In Basic Christianity, Walters refers to D. Elton Trueblood's little book, which I love, titled "The Trustworthines of Religious Experience," which is still in print and I encourage all to read it. It's the "scientific" argument for Christian experience. That is, it applies the scientific method to the religious experience of Christians throughout the ages. 

Tyson's projection is that he is using blind "religious" faith in his disbelief of Christianity and the Bible. His own words describe this, which I've taken the liberty to edit (see italics) to show his projection:

If you have atheistic faith, then whatever anyone says about the world of Christianity wouldn't matter to you. If it does matter to you, then that's a different kind of contract that you're taking out on information. And that contract is there could be data out there (about the facts, evidences, and reasons for the Christian faith) that would conflict with your atheistic philosophy, and then you'd have to go along with it. But that's not what actually happens. There's a pretense (I ascribe to) that data matters. But I filter it, reinterpret it, ignore parts of it, slice and dice it so that it all fits in to my atheistic philosophy. So it requires blinders in order to make that happen.

When Tyson comments on what he believes is the unreconcilable juxtaposition of science and faith, he equivocates to make his arguments sound logical, but in fact his equivocation makes his comments irrational.  Christian faith requires an abundance of facts, evidences, and valid logic to make sense. 

Now, my purpose in bringing this up is a comment thread I got partly involved in with a couple of belligerents who in in Tyson's camp and are too lazy to study the counter evidence or stubborn in their ideology to come out of the darkness into the light of reason and the world around us. Tyson's comment in the picture above amazes me: "The more I look at the universe the more I'm convinced there is no God." He's essentially saying, "the vast, interrelated, functioning, complexity of the universe convinces me that it all happened by random chance." This reveals, again, Tyson's blind faith in creation happening by random chance for which he has no evidence.

So, one person (Alex) engaged me in a discussion and eventually asked for some evidence of Christ's resurrection. He claimed he didn't want to read a book, although he seemed to be familiar with a few Biblical stories. Here is what I attempted to tell him, but Instagram refused the length of my reply. So, if Alex comes to this post, he can read this summary of some of Walter's lecture from Basic Christianity.

Alex, i’ll try but this is not an easy format to edit. 

The best historical evidence we have for any historical event is the verbal/written testimony of eye witnesses. There is that difference between scientific evidence and historical evidence. Of course you have to have faith in the eye witness accounts, and there are techniques for authenticating such accounts. (See Walter's BC book.)

You such accurate accounts in the case of the New Testament writings. There are many arguments that attempt to discredit the New Testament writings as made up or fictional or just facetious. But the arguments are thin and easily refuted. (See Walter''s BC book.) What you do have regarding the resurrection is that the Gospels claim, as well as some of the letters after the Gospels, that Christ appeared to over 500 people at one time, as well as spending time with his apostles and disciples of which there were many more than 12. He ate with them and he drank with them and he instructed them for many days before he ascended into heaven. 

Those eye witnesses that wrote about Christ’s resurrection did so during a time when other eye witnesses, which might have refuted his resurrection, we\re still alive. And yet you have no contravening evidence or testimony in the historical record that Christ stayed dead. At the same time, Christianity spread like wildfire throughout the region and into other countries principally because the resurrection story could not and was never refuted by those that were against the Christian sect.

There is evidence like there is no tomb in which the body of Jesus could be found. And there wasn’t at the time. The Romans and the Jews and the others that might not have liked Jesus could not find such place. That means they could not find the body. And it's hard to reason that a few fishermen and a single tax collector could outwit Roman legions and the great political power of the Jewish authorities. 

And then you have the evidence that hundreds if not thousands of Christians willingly gave up their lives because they believed the resurrection which occurred in their lifetime and to which they were eye witnesses. You have to ask yourself would you die for a lie? Or would you rather show the authorities where the body was or explain what you did with it and live?  All but one of Christ's 11 apostles were martyred because they refused to believe that Christ was in the grave. Of course they had seen him alive, and ate with him, and spend many days with him after his resurrection.  

There were plenty of officials, Roman and Jewish, who could’ve easily produced the body or pointed to a grave if in fact Christ was in the grave or his body somewhere. But no one could. And yet Christ kept appearing to these hundreds of people that followed him. And they wrote about it, and they died for it. 

Now there are many arguments that attempt to refute all of this and other things. And the only way to discern it for yourself is to look at the arguments make a list of them and see the rebuttals and refutations for the arguments. Which is more reasonable. That the testimonies are true of his resurrection or something else. And that is what the BC book does. You can also go online to the book site that I linked above and there are some audio lectures that I’ve recorded from the books author, as well as a video that might be helpful. 

The point of the whole Christian idea is that something happened. And that something that happened is Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. There is a lot of historical evidence that the claims of Christianity are true historically. And there is the Trustworthiness of Religious Experience and I and millions of others give personal, eye witness, testimony to, as well. 

In the end, you have to ask yourself, if it did happen what does that mean for your life? If it didn’t happen and if it can be easily disapproved then Christianity is fake and it’s worthless and it means nothing. And yet today Christianity is based on this one event — that the Jesus rose from the dead that in fact he is God in person. It is unlike any other religion that ever has touched the face of the earth. That God came down and became man and we saw him and we spoke with him, argued with him, and we killed him, and yet he rose from the dead proving (giving evidence) to an event that no other religion as ever even suggested—that God came to live among man, as a man, and we saw him, talked with him and he lived among us.