Finding Disconfirmation Conditions for My Religious Beliefs - Part 4

The Greatest Challenges

The thought experiment to discover my disconfirmation conditions was full of challenges and the biggest challenge I faced was overcoming my own reluctance to accept the challenge in the first place. In Part 4 of this series, I describe the four greatest challenges I encountered during the thought experiment, and the ideas and strategies I used to overcome each one in chronological order. I suspect others who undertake the same thought experiment will experience similar difficulties. I have always liked the idea that I should be ready to give an answer for why I believe what I believe (1 Peter 3:15), so I spent a lot of time in the past looking for conditions that if true, would tell me my beliefs are correct. Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay’s book helped me recognize it is also important to look for conditions that if true, would tell me by beliefs are wrong. Once I started considering possibility of performing the exercise to discover my disconfirmation conditions, I was confronted with the first and biggest challenge of the thought experiment.

The First Challenge: Should I even take on the thought experiment?

My first obstacle was my suspicion that such a thought-experiment could turn out to be an unhealthy mental exercise. I believe that even the elect can be deceived (Matthew 24:24, 2 Thessalonians 2:11) and I’m wary of committing to assumptions that could be false because of the principle of explosion, or the principle that any statement can be proven from a contradiction. If I am not careful in choosing my starting assumptions (i.e., carelessly assuming a falsehood to be true), it is possible to proceed rationally from that starting point and convincingly arrive at false conclusions. I had to contemplate on the merits of the mental exercise for several days before finding a solution to overcome this challenge.

Solution: Eventually, I decided that the exercise was not only healthy, but necessary. I realized the stumbling block in my most difficult conversations was me. I came to this conclusion while considering the great commission (Matthew 28:19), which is to "make disciples of all nations". I have always understood “all nations” to mean everyone, including people that strongly disagree with me. In the past, I found it frustrating that my conversation partners had no conceivable conditions that would cause them to question their beliefs. Reading the book “How to Have Impossible Conversations” helped me realize that a primary stumbling block in my conversations is my own inability to conceive of such conditions for my strongly held beliefs. If I want my conversation partner to sincerely consider the possibility that his or her belief could be wrong, then I should begin by genuinely modeling that behavior myself. If I care enough to seek constructive conversation with people with whom I strongly disagree, this mental exercise is a necessary first step. I decided to take on the thought experiment having faith that if I proceeded with humility, God would honor that humility and not allow me to deceive myself (Matthew 23:12).

The Second Challenge: How do I imagine the unimaginable?

As I began the thought experiment, I couldn’t imagine what my disconfirmation conditions would look like. If I have not been convinced of the truth of Darwinism by the mountains of evidence laid out in peer-reviewed journals, mainstream media, and popular culture, what could possibly convince me? How can I imagine disconfirmation conditions, when I am unable to imagine a starting point for the thought experiment?

Solution: After more contemplation, I realized the stumbling block was me...again. So, I decided to begin from a perspective that was not my own; I began considering potential candidate’s whose perspectives I respect and also strongly disagree with. Michael Shermer provided a great perspective for me to use as a starting point. I learned some of his thoughts on the topic while listening to a creation/evolution debate between Shermer and philosopher of science, Paul Nelson. Both men were a refreshing surprise, as most creation/evolution debates conclude without the participants sincerely attempting to address questions raised by each other. Shermer and Nelson on the other hand, responded to each other’s questions and responses to the audience’s questions during the Q&A, resulting in the conversation progressing beyond the dead-ends of the typical debate. However, even Shermer and Nelson eventually reached an impasse in their conversation. Shermer claimed that Nelson’s arguments all reduce in some way to the God of the Gaps argument (https://youtu.be/5zXSyBFH6HM?t=2054). Nelson challenges this critique (https://youtu.be/5zXSyBFH6HM?t=4190) and the conversation does not proceed beyond this point. So, I decided to begin my thought experiment using the perspective of a great mind that I strongly disagree with, Michael Shermer. Due to my respectful disagreement with Shermer, this starting point immediately presented me with my third primary challenge in the thought-experiment.

The Third Challenge: How do I proceed from the God of the Gaps Impasse?

With a starting point in mind, I was faced with the third primary challenge of the thought experiment, how to proceed from my starting point. If the two great minds, in Shermer and Nelson, have reached an impasse at this juncture, how could I hope to proceed?

Solution: Boghossian and Lindsay’s book provided a solution to this challenge. The authors suggest the reader be generous in their assumptions regarding the sincerity of their conversation partner. In other words, the stumbling block to meaningful conversations and progressing in my thought experiment, was me...again. If I want to have conversations with people with whom I strongly disagree, it is necessary for my conversation partner to extend me the courtesy of assuming I am participating sincerely for the sake of productive conversation. I will be unable to have productive conversations without extending the same courtesy to my conversation partner. The same principle applied in my thought experiment as well. For the remainder of the thought experiment, I accepted as true, that my hypothetical conversation partner is always sincere. I proceeded to think about the topic assuming Shermer must be sincere and has good reason to make the God of the Gaps criticism.

To help myself conceptualize this, I tried to imagine what would need to be true, for me to believe the God of the Gaps criticism is valid for all relevant “gaps”. I rephrased the God of the Gaps criticism as a statement to more rigorously define my goal. My main criticism of the God of the Gaps criticism is that it assumes too much, specifically that all current gaps in our knowledge about macroevolution will be filled with time. In order for me to consider the criticism valid, I would need to believe that there is already sufficient evidence to reasonably conclude that all relevant gaps in our knowledge with be filled by further scientific inquiry. So, my question narrowed to, “What evidence would be sufficient for me to conclude that all relevant gaps will be filled eventually?” Rephrasing this question as a statement allowed my thought experiment to finally begin to bear fruit. So, my goal became finding a set of evidence E, such that the following statement A is true.

• Statement A: I believe that [E] is sufficient evidence, to assume that the “gaps” in our knowledge of how macro-evolution occurred will eventually be filled by further scientific inquiry.

Analyzing evidence E by applying it to statement A provided a framework for thinking about potential evidence that would merit disconfirming my beliefs. To jump-start the process, I initially ignored the plausibility requirement for obtaining said evidence and focused on any and all hypothetical evidence that would be sufficient to change my mind. Once I defined a starting set of evidence, I began working my way towards more and more plausible sets of evidence. My first iteration of evidence was an experiment that could evolve a human back into its common ancestor with a chimpanzee, then evolve that ancestor into a chimpanzee, to show the transformations are viable. This is clearly not plausible in the lifetime of a single scientist, but it is clear with the same certainty that such evidence would convince me that macroevolution is possible. I then began searching for a different pair of animals to use for the experiment, to increase the plausibility of obtaining the hypothetical evidence. In this manner, I was able to progress beyond my starting point and my thought experiment was moving in a discernible direction.

The Final Challenge: Locating, Analyzing, and Committing to the Disconfirmation Threshold

When I started to approach the threshold where I suspected my beliefs would be disconfirmed, I was presented with the fourth challenge, committing to the disconfirmation conditions, which approached the first challenge in difficulty and duration. In this case, I knew the biggest obstacle was going to be me...again. If I refuse to commit to the resulting disconfirmation conditions, the thought experiment would be in vain. For the disconfirmation conditions to be valid, they must disconfirm my beliefs, if the conditions are eventually met. The only way to know in advance if they would, is to sincerely ask myself, “Would this truly disconfirm my beliefs?” In my mind, I was not thinking, “Would this really make me believe in evolution?” Rather, I was thinking, “Would this really convince me that God is not necessary?” That was a chilling question for me to consider and as I approached the threshold, the hypothetical thought experiment unexpectedly began to produce very real cognitive dissonance in my mind. When I knew I had reached the threshold, I still hesitated before committing. All of my doubts about taking on the thought experiment in the beginning started to return to my mind. Am I deceiving myself? (1Corinthians 3:18-19) Have I become vain in my imagination? (Romans 1:21-22) I remembered the psalm:

To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Psalm 19:1

This has always resonated with me because when I look at a house, I know it required a builder. In the same manner, I can look at biological systems and recognize the products of intent or design from everyday experience. I imagined the difficulty in explaining the origin of a house without invoking the design hypothesis. My vocabulary contains words such as, artificial and synthetic, to distinguish from the products of undirected natural processes. For macroevolution to be true, it would require the origin of everything having the appearance of design to be explained by currently unknown natural processes. While we have explanations for how beak sizes change, we do not have explanations for such processes as the evolution of sexual organs from one sexually dimorphic species to another. It is as inconceivable to me as the idea that the ancient monument Stonehenge could come into being without a builder. However, if I were to be convinced the design hypothesis or artificial processes are no longer necessary to explain the many appearances of design that are observed, it would invalidate the premise in Psalm 19:1 and result in a concept of God and design that is currently unrecognizable to me. Even thinking the thoughts filled me with a sense of dread and I was troubled by my reaction to this portion of the thought experiment. How can I commit to conditions that seem so wrong and counter-intuitive? Why am I feeling sensations of fear and dread, and should that concern me?

Solution: I eventually realized the source of my discomfort with the implications of the hypothetical conclusion was due to cognitive dissonance. I was troubled by my reaction to approaching the threshold because I didn’t expect a thought experiment to cause the discomfort I was experiencing, and I was trying to make sense of it. I was uncertain whether my feelings are the way I would feel in this hypothetical scenario, or if I is afraid of an alternative truth, or if this is what it feels like to protect one’s delusion? Eventually, I began to think of what would need to be true for me to be experiencing discomfort and feelings of dread. It seems reasonable to me that completely immersing myself in a hypothetical situation requires my subconscious to get more involved in processing the information. It also seems reasonable, if emotions are generated by the subconscious and the subconscious operates and generates emotions based on one’s currently held paradigm, that this could explain why I experienced cognitive dissonance or discomfort while trying to temporarily “hold” paradigm shifting views. In other words, feeling the implications of a potentially different truth against a currently held paradigm is not the same as fearing the truth itself (if one’s paradigm changes, the paradigm-driven emotions will change accordingly). If God is truth, then a sincere relentless pursuit of truth could only lead one to God (Deuteronomy 4:29). If God is not truth, then there is no reason to fear believing a different truth because believing the truth is good. If God is true, then believing in God is good. If God is not true, then not believing in God is good. If my paradigm actually changes, then my subconscious will begin to operate off of the new paradigm, so the discomfort I am feeling under my current paradigm can be considered a false-positive of sorts. This gave me enough of a reason to successfully disregard the discomfort and commit to my disconfirmation conditions. Of course, my expectation is that science will progress in a direction further away from them, rather than towards them, as our understanding increases. If not, I will gladly jettison a belief I know to be false.

This was the most difficult article to write because it was difficult for me to unpack and concisely express my thoughts and why I was thinking those particular thoughts. I hope the reader can benefit from knowing the challenges I faced and will find them less surprising and difficult to overcome than I did. Thank you for reading my thoughts on the greatest challenges of the thought experiment. I would love to hear any thoughts you have in the comments section below!