In this skeptical world, it seems everyone wants evidence of everything. Fortunately, there are two central facts that intrude:<\/p>\n
1) Almost nothing really important can be proved in the way skeptics demand.\u00a0 They can’t even prove that they exist, that there is such a thing as “thought,” or “personality,” or “identity,” or “love,” or even “memory.”\u00a0 Radical skepticism allows only for electro-chemical states in the brain that don’t mean anything in particular except to other electro-chemical states in other brains…\u00a0 if there are really other electro-chemical states.\u00a0 What’s really funny is their touching faith that the universe can be apprehended by “logic” (who revealed THAT to them?), and that the universe somehow developed, all on it’s own, minor extrusions with electro-chemical brain states capable of acting as disinterested observers and evaluators of fact.\u00a0 How did THAT work, again?<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0 Even radical skeptics believe that there is some level of evidence that a person should be willing to accept for the facts of history, human psychology, cultural development, scientific knowability of the universe, ethical presuppositions for humans, etc.\u00a0 Without some willingness to accept different<\/em> kinds of evidence for different kinds of propositions and assertions about the nature of reality, there is no hope of considering both science and history to be sources of “knowledge.”\u00a0\u00a0 And a corollary: nearly every kind of really important information or concept is “inferential,” meaning we can’t know everything about it, and we only know it because of a confluence of evidence that points to it, but doesn’t (and can’t) directly prove it in the deductive way that simple mathematical propositions can sometimes be proved (actually, less often than many people think —\u00a0 ask a math geek to explain “decidability” to you sometime).<\/p>\n If a person is willing to accept the notion that we all make decisions based on incomplete information, that the most important decisions of our lives are based not on deductive calculation but on inferential response to incomplete evidence (what career to pursue, who to marry, who to trust, how to raise our kids, what matters more than what, what’s right and what’s wrong), then the grounds for radical skepticism are removed, about God, about a Creator who IS Intelligence and so made a Creation that includes the possibility (inevitability?) of it, and who might make provision for His creatures to know something about Him and His plans for them (special and general revelation).\u00a0 If radical skepticism is no longer a rational response (and it isn’t to anything that really matters), then we’re left with sifting evidence, considering what we know and don’t know (or can<\/em>‘t know), and casting our net very wide for many different kinds of information, to see if, taken together, they point to anything, if there is anything we can infer.<\/p>\n This is the point where just a tiny amount of faith is enough, enough to take that first step.\u00a0 What is that first step?\u00a0 Believing that there may be something to find, so that you don’t stop looking.\u00a0 From that tiny opening, God works, in tiny steps, piece by piece, helping you build your faith a mite at a time, so that as you grow in faith and understanding (and make no mistake, genuine progress in either causes the other to grow), you find more and more ways that seemingly tiny bits of life and information fit together, and all reveal the glory of God.<\/p>\n