Brad and I were drifting the South Fork of the Boise River. He was a bit high on weed, and the fish weren't all that active, so in a quiet moment, he asked me if I was a religious man. He was, as they say, testing me, and I answered, "not in a way that you would recognize," and left it at that. No discussion followed, and it's probably a good thing. I would have had to answer that "any doctrine that requires me to have 'faith' in it, to the exclusion of all others, including the evidence of my own senses, is a doctrine founded on willful ignorance." On another occasion, Mike, arguing of all things the veracity of global warming, sought to settle the argument by saying, "if you believe in the Bible at all, it says ..." He quoted some obscure passage that I didn't quite catch or don't quite remember, but in truth I don't "believe" in the Bible, not if belief is the act of positing complete and final authority in its verses. Why would I posit any more authority in the Bible than in the Quran, the Lotus Sutra, Das Capital or, for that matter, any other religious text that also purports to carry complete and final authority in its verses?
The idea of a "comprehensive" doctrine is not original to me. I come to it by way of Berlin and Rawls, with a metaphorical sprinkling of Goedel by way of Kuhn in the mix. If I were to state my principles around this, one would go something like this, "no 'comprehensive doctrine' -- that is to say, no doctrine that purports to be the complete and final authority, once and for all -- is proof of its own truth." In other words, I cannot quote the Bible, and its own claims to final authority, as "proof" of its final authority. I can only quote the Bible to prove statements about the Bible. If I wish to prove the truth of statements in the Bible, then I must step outside the Bible and provide evidence in support of its claims. For example -- brace yourself -- the Biblical claims around creation, that God created man in his own image. If I wanted to prove the truth of Genesis, then I must step outside the Bible and provide evidence in support of its particular claims. What that evidence would look like, I'm not sure, but we cannot, in the end, take the final refuge of parental authority, "because I said so." Every parent, at one point or another, wants their authority to be complete and final, and are often willing to use coercion to insure their authority is complete and final, but every child knows it is simply not enough.
For what it's worth, I should also point out that "scientific evidence" in support of Darwinian evolution does not in any way "disprove" the Biblical account. I can no more "disprove" the Biblical account of creation any more than I can "disprove" God's existence. I cannot prove a negative claim. I can prove a positive claim, at least provisionally. No matter how many white swans come before me, I cannot prove that black swans do not exist. The next one that comes before me may well be black. I can, however, prove that black swans do exist. I simply need to produce one black swan. Even if it is one among billions, I need only produce one. On the same order, I cannot disprove the Biblical account. I can, however, provide an alternative explanation -- Darwinian evolution -- and provide evidence for that, and there does seem to be evidence in abundance for that account of "creation," little or no credible evidence in support of the Biblical account. Consequently, given the evidence at hand, I choose to believe the Darwinian account over the Biblical account, though I know my choice is provisional. There may come evidence that supports an even better explanation than either the Biblical or the Darwinian account.
All this is by way of saying that no comprehensive doctrine, including the more or less comprehensive statements of science, are in fact ultimately comprehensive. I am not suggesting that we should discontinue any search for more and more comprehensive accounts of ourselves and our universe. I am, however, suggesting that all such accounts are themselves always provisional -- in other words, always theoretical. The evidence for this comprehensive account, this theory, may well be supplanted by evidence for that even more comprehensive account, that theory. Epistemologically speaking, we live in a provisional universe. All our accounts of ourselves and our universe are provisional, theoretical, and to say "we stop here" is to close the mind, is to hunker in with a willful ignorance.
Next post -- why it's not the comprehensive doctrine that's dangerous, but rather the insistence on willful ignorance ...
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