So around NSW we are all—those of us with kids—eagerly checking onto the myschool website to see how my school compares with yours (It goes without saying that mine's better, but if yours is better, there must be a reason ;) )
That's not a bad thing, but it may not be a good thing either.
My own thought was that it would be well worth the while of someone who had the time to check out the correlation between schools that allowed and welcomed school scripture, and those that don't. I don't know whether results would be good, bad or ugly. But if results were good, it would be a help to those who are struggling with getting Scripture, Religious Instruction, or what have you, included as part of their curriculum.
If the results were bad, we would feel disappointed and carry on teaching children that good or bad, the Lord Jesus judges us not according to our merits but because he is good, kind, faithful and gave all he has for us.
4 comments:
This kind of reasoning is precisely the kind of cherry picking endemic in Christianity: if the evidence is good we'll use it, if it's bad, well it doesn't matter anyway because we're right.
I can see this kind of bad thinking pervading through many articles of this blog, and represents a deeper problem in Christianity itself.
Hi Alexb,
apart from my New Year's resolution never to use the term 'cherry picking' in a sentence voluntarily used by me, which you've now caused me to break, you are right to think that I've got prior commitments in the way I look at the world.
The evidence may point one way or the other, but all of us have prior commitments. It's just that mine is that 'Jesus is Lord', and that yours are unexpressed.
Of course you have prior commitments, as do every other Christian. My point is that Christians filter everything through their prior commitments to the point of distortion, so that their opinions are usually not backed up by evidence, but only by the internal consistency checks provided by their particular picture of the world (in this case: their version of Christianity).
Let me give you an example of how this can go terribly wrong: suppose I am committed to the belief that childhood vaccination is linked to autism. I read an article which contradicts my belief. By your reasoning, I can disregard the statements in this article because it conflicts with my prior commitments. What if I read a hundred such (credible) articles? At what point should evidence correct an erroneous belief?
Spot on, Alexb... spot on.
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