What Is Evidence?
What counts as evidence?
In my previous blog post, Rapoport’s Rules Meet the Outsider Test, I mentioned the dispute over what counts as evidence:
When discussing religion with persons of faith, try to be aware of their tactic of framing the argument in terms of positive arguments for their particular faith, rather than in terms of negative arguments against all competing faiths. This was on display in the four-way debate video that John W. Loftus posted about the Virgin Birth. John’s Orthodox Christian interlocutors demanded that John clearly define what he would consider to be sufficient evidence for their religious claims. But they did not mention that they must think that no competing religion has met the same standard of evidence for them. So they must know what “evidence” is, well enough to conclude that no other religion has it. Perhaps they have just never thought this through before.
In this blog post I’ll dig deeper into this dispute about evidence. I include my own manual transcriptions of the dialogue from the video with time markers, but transcribing is hard so refer back to the video for each’s speakers statements in his own words.
Solid teaching, solid truth
I’ll start with a sort of mission statement from the senior opponent to John in the video:
12:26 Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff:
“And right now I’m just very very interested in bringing the knowledge of that [Orthodox] faith to a public that is hungry and thirsty for solid teaching, solid truth.”
This statement about audience demand sounds plausible enough. It stands to reason that if Fr. Ivanoff has a job, he must have found an audience that likes what he has to say. Good for him. A man’s gotta eat. But I have some questions about what he means by “solid teaching, solid truth.” Those are rather bold claims. Presumably Fr. Ivanoff is aware that there are other audiences who are equally hungry for other “solid” teachings, other “truths.” For example, Fr. Ivanoff seems to hail from the Orthodox side of the Great Schism of 1054. The folks on the other side, for the past 950+ years, are Roman Catholics (and by extension, the Protestants who later schismed off from them like so many proliferating species). I’m pretty sure the current Pope would say he has “solid teaching, solid truth” as well. Yet these two equally solid teachings have been in conflict for fully half of the Christian era. Thus I think it’s fair to ask (a) whether Fr. Ivanoff views his own teaching as more “solid” and “truthful” than the Pope’s teachings (I’m guessing he does!), and (b) how he knows this.
I’d also like to know how comfortable Fr. Ivanoff feels about worshipping in a Roman Catholic Church.