Anything that makes a claim must have some evidence that it's in fact so. I asked earlier, how does one know something's actually fact and not an imaginary figment? How to know Julius Caesar really crossed the Rubicon, or Hannibal really took elephants across the Alps? Are these myths, or historical facts? My answer is to look for witnesses to the claim, which themselves are vouchsafed for legitimacy by other witnesses, which are themselves proved reliable by similar means, and so on. There should be, as it were, an overlapping network of claims, a "chain of testimony" that can ultimately persuade one that it's more likely to be so, than not so.
Many witnesses don't make a fact. Many witnesses can all be biased, or deluded. My case in point is the Mormon faith. There are perhaps millions of adherents, but this doesn't over-ride the fact that there's no credible DNA evidence that the Native American tribes were in fact the "lost tribes of Israel" as Joseph Smith claimed. Any dispassionate investigation into Mormon claims and they fall apart quickly. One Mormon believer had these kinds of questions which he directed to the LDS Church Authorities and it was titled the "CES Letter". Somewhat like the Jo Casteel letter on Facebook, it caused a stir.
https://zelphontheshelf.com/the-mill...he-ces-letter/
My point is this: asking one to believe something, like the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, should have some compelling reasons beyond, "If you don't believe then you will be in torment for eternity." Or, "Accept our religion or we'll burn your village down." I don't have any problem with questioning religious claims. As I said earlier, I think it's helpful for my faith to converse often with the likes of Richard Dawkins. Is God tough enough to handle critical inquiry? He made us with brains - why not use them, occasionally. Or try, anyway. Talk to someone who doesn't believe what you do. Why do they hold their ideas? Are their ideational bases more solid than yours?
Here's a typical response to the CES Letter from the within the Mormon community. "It's too long. Why bother". Like the Full-Timer who says, "I sense death, so I won't read it. It's against WL, so how could it possibly be true?"
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Originally Posted by LDS Member
For a couple years I had an office at UCLA in a building called Engineering IV, a much nicer building than the utilitarian name might imply. My office and those of most I dealt with were on the fourth floor, but many mornings I would first ride the elevator up to the fifth floor to look out a large floor-to-ceiling window toward the southwest. Now and then the haze was light enough that I could see the ocean. There were no classrooms or lecture halls in this building, only offices and lab space, but it was a public building on a public university campus, so the hallways were open to the public, and we were told not to kick any strange people out, just call campus security if there was a problem.
I never saw any strange members of the public in the building, but one day I came upon a manifesto of sorts pinned to a bulletin board. Someone had done the favor of laying out in a dozen typed pages of Descartes-like reason and observation that we academics in our ivory tower were all wrong about thermodynamics. Work-heat equivalence, second law of thermodynamics, heat conduction? A bunch of fables passed along from teacher to student since Joule, Carnot, and Fourier.
I made a copy for myself, thinking it would be an interesting exercise sometime to identify where the errors were that led to such conclusions, but I never found the necessary conjunction of time and interest to dig into it. It’s probably still lying in a box in the attic packed when we left Los Angeles fifteen years ago. I still think it would be a mildly worthwhile intellectual exercise to analysis it, but I strongly doubt there would have been any value at all in debating its author, for either myself or him.
Pulling up the 84-page CES letter, I find its author did not once invoke Galileo, so it has that going for it.
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This is someone who had an office in UCLA Engineering building, supposedly intelligent, educated, and successful. But the attitude is "why bother, I'm too busy." Well, what if that screed you took off the bulletin board and tucked away in your boxes and never read, got published in the physics journals and the author got a position at Caltech? Would you read it then? The writer notes the semi-ocean view from his building on the campus, yet never attempts to address the issue at hand. You know, the reason he's writing this reply.
This is similar to the response by Minoru Chen to the Jo Casteel letter on Facebook: "All this has been answered before". No it has not - it's been evaded, obfuscated, denied and covered over. MC's "it's already been answered" is supposed to be an answer? Or, "the letter is too long, too complicated, why bother". Yes, you have given your entire life to something that shouldn't be examined or defended on its merits because why bother. Or the subjective fall-back, "They have a bad attitude". And you don't?
I know this thread was on
Nuclear and their unwillingness to accept a "Biblical worldview" versus a scientific one, but my reply here is that the Biblical worldview can be subject to the same skeptical inquiry that every other view gets. If it doesn't survive, too bad. If Richard Dawkins wants to chat with you some morning and you're afraid to let him in, what do you base your life on? Or Jo Casteel or whomever. Or the LDS Church with the CES Letter. If your faith survives it will be stronger and better for it. If it doesn't then it probably shouldn't.
The Roman Church tried the same tactic with Galileo and Luther, as the LDS church and the LSM Local Church later tried with their questioning and skeptical members. "We're big, powerful, well-established and have a lot of money. Who are you? How dare you critique us?" Or, "How dare you critique God' oracle? Who are you?" Or, "It's too long, all they do is whine and complain. I can't be bothered to stoop to reply." Okay, enjoy your comfy status, and don't bother to stir. Wave goodbye as your disillusioned members exit in droves.