I Just Asked Dr. Craig An Important Question

I just asked my former professor William Lane Craig the following question on his website:

Hi Dr. Craig. I hope you are well.

With the relatively recent work in establishing the strong tendency of human beings toward cognitive biases such as confirmation bias, (which is the mother of all cognitive biases), along with many others like selection bias, the ostrich effect, omission bias, verbatim effect, and so on, what advice do you offer honest inquirers to overcome these biases when searching for the true religious sect? I haven't seen you address this question before.

What perspective do you suggest for honest inquirers when searching for which religious sect is true, if there is one? Surely you don't endorse one of faith seeking confirmation (i.e. Anselm!), as that is the epitome of a known cognitive bias, which leads inquirers to embrace whatever they were raised to believe.

What do you think of approaching this as a nonbelieving disinterested investigator, as best as possible, one that withholds belief until there is a sufficient amount of objective evidence? Since so many smart people can make good arguments for their religious sect, shouldn't we require sufficient objective evidence commensurate with such claims? Given our human propensity to deceive ourselves, per our cognitive biases, shouldn't we refuse to commit ourselves to a belief until that objective evidence is put forth?

Succinctly now, what do you say to someone who insists, based on the evidence of cognitive biases, that the way to overcome the many cognitive biases that hinder us from getting at the truth about religion we should require sufficient objective evidence, and that lacking it we should withhold belief?

John W. Loftus







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