I'm an enemy of science and reason now, says Oldbill

A Xanga post of mine from July of last year got this response:

You know absolutely nothing about American history. Many of the key Founding Fathers were not Christians at all. They were Deists, and for the most part they detested Christianity. The "separation of church and state" doctrine came from Jefferson, a devout critic of the divinity of Christ.

If you wish to make yourself an enemy of science and reason, by all mean, do so. But don't expect any respect for these claims for which you have absolutely no valid evidence to corroborate them. There's a lot of rage here, and I think it can easily be translated to the overwhelming fear of being wrong.
Posted 3/18/2007 8:45 PM by Oldbill

The Founding Fathers

While it is true that I don't know much about history (say, isn't there a song about that?), two years ago I wrote a research paper (reproduced here online exactly as I turned it in - no apologies for the look or poor writing) to address the claim that the Founding Fathers were Deists. The definition of Deist, I have found, is problematic because it is not uniform. If we assume a liberal definition of Deism (that is, not stipulating that Deists believe God made the universe and checked out), then I would argue some of the Founding Fathers were Deist. Others, however, were not. Others indeed were Christian. I don't recall if I found any proclaimed Atheists in the lot of the 9 or so I looked into; there may have been one and it may have been John Jay - I don't recall.

Whatever the case may be, Oldbill is incorrect that most of the Founding Fathers detested Christianity. In my paper, for example, I quote George Washington's statement to an Indian detachment from Delaware, in which he said, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and way of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.” I'm therefore sure that Washington did not detest Christianity.

Likewise, the Founding Fathers were not all Christian, either. I found it most difficult to determine (especially in Washington's case) whether those who considered themselves Christian believed in Christ's deity or were actually referring to their morality. But it was easy enough to determine that most of them (Jefferson included) believed personally in (some) God.

According to USConstitution.net, "The Constitution Online" - "Jefferson's Wall of Separation Letter," Jefferson may be cited for the Separation doctrine. As I stated in my paper, he firmly disbelieved in Christ's divinity. He and Franklin are probably the closest example to firm Deists (or possibly even Atheists -- or better, Agnostics of today) that I studied.

I'm an enemy of science and reason?

I consider myself a scientist. I'm a computer science major focusing on computer engineering, and I go to an almost excessively technical school. I believe that science is the best tool we have for studying the universe, and I must believe in reason or else this and everything else I have done today and will do in the future is a sham.

I, however, also freely admit the limitations of science and reason. It is unscientific to put too much faith in science, and it is especially dangerous to believe the things that people (e.g. the newspaper, popular authors, even scientists themselves) have said about scientific results. The only way to be sure about something (scientifically speaking) is to do the experiment yourself, make observations, and draw your own conclusions. The worst of it, though, is with scientists. The problem I see is that scientists are either forced to or voluntarily skew their conclusions to fit certain political agendas.* Scientists are notorious for misrepresenting the authority of science to further their beliefs. It's common, and I probably do it myself. It's only human.

I don't think I made any attack on science and reason in my Xanga post, though. I believe Oldbill is here referring to my ending attack on Atheism. It saddens me that people (as Oldbill represents and I have so often seen myself) associate a belief in Atheism with being logical and reasonable. That is, today it is widely considered logical and reasonable to be Atheist. (I suppose wide is not so wide judging from statistics regarding how many people in the world believe in God, but I feel like the majority of scientists -- our modern prestige class -- think religion is unreasonable. Richard Dawkins is an extreme example of this.) But I claim that to be religious is not to be unreasonable, and though the metric of science cannot truly be applied to God, it is not out of the question that reason can lead me to belief in God. I would represent here all of my reasons and my evidence, but it would take some thought and preparation. (It is no trivial matter to present those reasons - nor should it be. I have no trite sayings or heuristics for you.)

Conclusion

I am not afraid of being wrong. For the past year I have wondered and doubted, and I have tried to be wrong, and I have tried to find a way not to believe the claims of the Bible and not to see Jesus as the forgiver of sins (even to see sin as a nothing, trying to make it out that there is no such thing as sin). But in the face of my personal experience, in light of what I have seen and heard, and in light of how I feel in my heart, I have not been able to cast off my faith -- I have seen it renewed at every turn. I have been critical of science and religion, and I have come to the conclusion that Jesus is Lord. It is the most reasonable theory in light of all I know. It is a terrible and wonderful thing, and would that I could show it wrong because then I would not be responsible for my own terrible deeds.

But how beautiful it is that even though I know I cannot discount sin or remove them from the past I can yet bear no responsibility for them because of the sacrifice made on the cross. No, this is not wishful thinking --for wishful thinking would have a world where there was no sin and no one was responsible -- but this is grace.



*Take as an example the doctrine of many Atheists that evolution disproves the notion that God created the universe. Evolutionary theory cannot make this claim. There is no scientific argument that can make such a claim. In fact, many have called God unscientific and they are right in one sense - science makes no claims about realities it cannot measure, reproduce, or control. It is not a powerful enough framework to make claims about God. (It also cannot describe other known phenomena, like human emotion - though we do have some inside information on human emotion. C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity claims that we have inside information about the nature of Deity, too).