Re: Why is is so difficult to convince devout Christians the value of evidence?[W...
First, if you are as you say, then I appreciate your honesty. Second, I believe that religious people can accept science. The problem comes where religion ends and science starts. What happens if life is discovered on another world? Does that conflict with Christian teaching? What if we were to figure out how to create life from non-life? Will it all just be explained away?
It just seems that when people claim that no amount of evidence will change their faith, then what do you do when matters of science conflict with religion?
How do you determine where faith ends and evidence begins?
We've been over this already. I'm not sure why you still don't get it. I'll try again in a different way.
Let us pretend that we live in the world you made up. The one where Christians have always claimed that the world was created in 6 days 3,000 years ago up until science proved otherwise. Such a world is fictional. We know from the historical record that this is not what happened and Christians have always viewed the creation account allegorically. But let us transport ourselves into that fictional world for a moment.
Most Christians, as with most people, are foundationalists. That is to say that they choose foundationalism, the belief that there are "self-evident" or "properly basic" beliefs that require no further epistemic justification, as the way out of the regress problem and Munchausen's Trilemma. This is the same belief you, and most others hold. Most people accept on faith alone: that their own perception is at least marginally reliable, that the world is rational (adheres to the rule of non-contradiction, etc.) (a belief now on the ropes thanks to quantum physics), that it is possible to know some things, etc... While atheists may have some properly basic beliefs that Christians do not (beliefs in scientism, evidentialism, positivism, etc.), Christians basically have one single belief that differentiates them from Atheists, a belief in God.
Everything else a Christian believes is a consequent belief (unless it is, again, another properly basic belief that they believe just like every non-Christian does). For example, a Christian holds the properly basic belief that there is a God, but the conception of who this God is and what he is like is not a basic belief, it is the result of applying the study of scriptures, history, reason, human intuition, etc.
Now, let's put ourselves back into that fantasy world for a moment. Let us pretend that science came along and disproved the 6 day creation narrative Christians used to believe. Seeing as creation is not a foundational belief, but a consequent one, Christians who react rationally should determine that their belief in a 6 day creation was incorrect. Given the new evidence, they should accept the new narrative and re-evaluate those things that led them to the flawed conclusion. This may lead them to re-evaluate the way they read or interpret the bible, what they believe about what the bible is, etc. They should also re-evaluate all consequent beliefs that relied on that belief in 6 day creation which they now know to be wrong (taking a second look at "original sin" for example).
That is the rational and proper way to react to new evidence. Yet, you seem to have a problem with it. You seem to want Christians to abandon their properly basic belief whenever any consequent belief is proven wrong. This would be akin to demanding that scientists cease believing in science because a conclusion scientists had come to was incorrect. That's not a rational response. A rational response is to go back and figure out what went wrong and adjust your consequent beliefs accordingly, not to discard your basic beliefs. You don't just go "well, the Bohr model of the atom was proven wrong, so let's go ahead and discard our belief in rationality which led us to this wrong conclusion". That's just ridiculous.
It seems that what you see as a problem (Christians adjusting their world view given new evidence) is not a problem at all, but rather the most rational way to shape your world view, and one which we all (except, apparently, you) accept as the most reasonable.