Epistemological Abuse

You shall have honest scales, an honest ephah, and an honest bath.

(Ezekiel 45:10) NKJV

Hitchens’s razor demonstrates a failure to understand what evidence is and how it’s used. Try Matty’s razor: we all have exactly the same evidence. What we believe it’s evidence of is determined by our choice of paradigm.

We all have the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we think it’s evidence of.

Matty’s Razor

The clearest example is the stratigraphic column.

The Stratigraphic Column is evidence of…

  1. In the popular science paradigm (SciPop) it’s used as evidence for:
    • the Geological Timescale, a contrivance of circular reasoning which is the backbone of Darwinian evolution.
    • It’s divided into sections like Cambrian, Silurian, Ordovician, Devonian etc.
  2. In Matty’s Paradigm it’s evidence for:
    1. the creation of gravity and the core accretion model,
      • Precambrian (Gravitian) fossils were deposited on the second day.
    2. Noah’s flood,
      • Cambrian-Quaternary (Noachian) fossils were deposited in Noah’s flood.

Exactly the same evidence, two different meanings. The meaning isn’t derived from the evidence, the meaning is derived from the choice of paradigm.

When someone like Hitchens’s dismisses a person of faith for believing in Noah’s flood because there’s “no evidence,” and then uses Hitchens’s razor as their justification, they haven’t won the intellectual high ground they’re perpetrating epistemological abuse.

Advertisement

One Reply to “Epistemological Abuse”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: