Standards of Evidence

It looks like I have a few minutes before I run out to Supercomputing 2008, so I guess I'll raise one of the "big problems" for which I first started this blog: the need for faith.

Depending on whether you're primarily Reformed or Methodist in your soteriology, we may disagree to the extent to which free will plays a role in our decision to follow Christ, but I think it is generally agreed that at some point it is just that: a decision. The problem I have is not with the decision, which I think is correct, but the quantity of evidence we find necessary to make that decision.

In business, I teach Six Sigma, and generally expect my students to demand a 95% confidence in the evidence used to back up any improvement efforts they make. This level of confidence is certainly not a universal requirement; in Physics, I understand that 99%+ confidence levels are typically required.

My "beef", however, is that confidence levels like that aren't generally available to me in real life. Whether we're talking about the origins of man, the reality of miracles, or some other question of faith, we find that the evidence is is never sufficient to give me that elegant 95% confidence level.

Saying this is probably going to irritate some of my fellow believers. I hear from people all the time about a sequence of events that persuades the speaker beyond a shadow of a doubt that what they say is true. Generally, I will often agree. Despite this, however, I find an annoying lack of hard proof; if someone really doesn't want to believe, they aren't forced to do so.

More and more I'm finding this to be true: that God goes out of his way to not force us to believe. Think about it: how hard would it be for Him to raise a dead man again like he did for Lazarus? I'm not talking about someone drowning in icy water for a few hours: I mean well and truly dead. He did it in a time when people would be impressed, but not overwhelmed; and today, when real proof would overwhelm skeptics, he doesn't do it.

This is just a brief thought for now, as I have to fly (literally); but as I find more examples of God's frustrating decision not to prove things absolutely, I'll send them your way. Stay tuned.