Originally posted by KellyJay
Ah, I see I think, so your suggesting that as soon as you make up your mind you project
into all you see in the world in which we live, be it true or not? Unless you think only one
group of people does that, but not all. If it is a common trait among people, I like how you
describe it, it certainly describes prejudice well.
The technical term for it is “perspectivism”, which means that a what person sees is at least in part determined by his presuppositions. (Which is not to be confused with “relativism”, if by relativism one means that whatever anyone
thinks is true
is true (which is incoherent).)
Example: When Galileo looked through his telescope at the moons of Saturn, he saw circular orbits and continuous motions. When the churchmen looked through their telescopes at the moons of Saturn, they saw spirals within spirals and retrograde motions. The difference was not in the telescopes and not in the moons of Saturn; the difference lay in the fact that Galileo presupposed a helio-centric reference point whereas the churchmen presupposed a geo-centric reference point.
Example: When Hinds considers a fossil, he sees something at most 6,000 years old, whereas if I consider the same fossil, I see something millions of years old. The rock itself is the same; it is only the presuppositions which are different.
Presuppositions set out the framework and the reference points in terms of which evidence is interpreted: they form something like a lattice upon which bits of evidence are placed and connected up with other bits of evidence. Change the lattice, and you get a whole different perspective on the same bits of evidence.
Generally, speaking, one does not choose a perspective (as one chooses which pair of shoes to put on). Generally speaking, one grows into one, though occasionally one has a watershed experience which can change one's perspective (call it conversion or apostasy).
Apply this insight now to spirituality, rather than to geology or astronomy, and you get another dimension of meaning all together. Namely, what counts as evidence
at all, not merely how to interpret it. Both creationists and serious geologists agree that fossils are evidence of life in past times; they disagree about a matter of degree (as being 6,000 years old or millions of years old). Christians and non-theists disagree
entirely on whether the Bible constitutes evidence
at all. For Christians, the Bible counts as inerrant God-given proof; for non-theists, it counts no more than Homer’s Illiad--an entirely human story, probably based on some events which really took place but heavily embellished, and all the supernatural bits were simply made up for ‘effect’. Whereas for a historian, the Bible counts as evidence all right--namely, as evidence of what people
believed (but not as evidence that what they believed was(is)
true.)
As several SF correspondents, including Christians, have pointed out, it is pointless to quote the Bible at non-theists. Just as it would be pointless to mail a fossil to Hinds. People for whom God occupies the central point of the lattice evaluate putative evidence with reference to that primary point. For people not only without
God at the central point of the lattice, but with
no central primary point where a God might even fit, putative evidence will be evaluated by other criteria and with reference to other things. (This is what I meant when I replied to Bobby in another thread that atheism is not Christianity with a God-shaped hole in it.)
For this reason, theists and non-theists often find themselves talking at cross purposes.
Christianity and logic
21 Aug '15 22:34
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