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Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 5 of 7
Does the conspiracy require me to think more highly of myself than I ought to think?
The Bible’s “love chapter” indicates that “charity vaunteth not itself” and “is not puffed up.” Scripture warns a man must “not … think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly” (Romans 12:3), a principle applicable to all areas of life. If a conspiracy requires us to believe something that the overwhelming majority of scientists or experts in the relevant field say is impossible, we need to have very strong evidence before we adopt this conclusion. If we think that a conspiracy-backed mechanism for causing disease is correct, although mainstream science strongly affirms the opposite, we need to remember that, unless we are experts, we know far less about biology and medicine than those do with whom we disagree. If we are going to adopt assertions about biology when we would fail an introductory biology course unless we spent lots of time reviewing, we need to be humble enough to recognize that biologists, medical doctors, and others with vast expertise are much more likely than us to avoid mistakes and make correct evaluations in their fields of knowledge. It is not logically impossible for the vast majority of airplane engineers to be wrong about something while we are right about it, even though we know next to nothing about how to design airplanes, but it is highly unlikely, and it would be a much better idea to fly in a plane designed by the airplane engineers rather than one that we designed based on videos we watched on YouTube. It is not logically impossible for the vast majority of cell biologists, professors in medical schools, and infectious disease researchers to be wrong about something pertaining to medicine, while we are right about it as non-experts, but it is likewise highly unlikely, and it is probably very wise and health-promoting to humbly recognize that fact as we evaluate conspiratorial claims about disease or the body, and place what a medical association or a health department advises on a higher level than what a body builder or a rapper on YouTube says is good for us.
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 3 of 7
Part three of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the sentence: “If the conspiracy involves logical contradictions, it cannot be true” to the sentence: “If any and all real or even potential conflicts of interest are not openly and plainly disclosed by the person promoting the conspiracy, a significantly higher level of skepticism is required in evaluating what the proponent of the conspiracy is arguing for.”
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, 2 of 7
Part two of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the sentence: “If we have adopted and are going to share a conspiratorial belief with someone else, we need to have answered these questions ourselves and be ready to explain our answers to the person whom we seek to convince” to the sentence: “They are people who are created in God’s image, and we don’t get to slander them, even if their political persuasions, cultural practices, and other ways of living are different—or objectively far more worse and far more sinful—than ours are, thanks to God’s unmerited grace to us.” Feel free to continue to comment below on this post, if you wish, after reading it at the link below.
–TDR
If “Drinking Any Amount of Alcohol Causes Damage to the Brain,” Is It Permissible for True Believers to Drink Alcohol?
It doesn’t make sense for anyone to drink something that causes damage to the brain. A new study says that drinking any amount of alcohol, even one drink, causes damage to the brain. Both CNN and Fox News reported this. It was an Oxford University study using 25,378 participants. Knowing what alcohol is and how it affects the body, this news doesn’t surprise me. It deprives brain cells of oxygen and they die. This is something people already knew, but it is has been released now as a scientific study.
I already believe the Bible, especially in Proverbs 23, teaches against alcohol consumption or what has been called the teetotalling position, the prohibition of alcohol. I wrote a five part series on it (first, second, third, fourth, and fifth). I show that prohibition of alcohol is a historic and biblical position. This recent study adds another layer, because the Bible would argue that it is wrong to destroy your body and especially your brain or your mind. Indeed, “the mind is a terrible thing to waste.” It would seem that you could not love God with your mind by damaging your mind. Those two thoughts are in contradiction to one another.
An online Christian forum linked to this above article and I was interested in how pro-alcohol professing Christians would deal with it. It seems insurmountable. Proverbs 23 says alcohol is destructive so that someone would be better never even to look at it. This is God’s will. So what were the arguments against the article?
One, the study wasn’t “peer reviewed” yet. The study had been done and yielded it’s results, but apparently peers had not yet offered their review before the study showed up in public. There is a dedication to alcohol among some professing Christians that becomes desperation when they might be required to stop drinking. What hypothetical scientific peers might say is that there is a safe or acceptable level of brain tissue loss. Imagine that conversation.
“This s going to destroy some of your brain tissue if you drink it.” “How much will I lose with one drink? Two?” “Oh, only that amount? Well, that’s a safe and acceptable loss of brains that I will never get back again, so give me that drink.”
So, more study needs to be done to find out what acceptable brain tissue loss is. I know that when we cut our fingernails, they grow back. When we destroy brain cells, do we get those back? In the end, it is the pleasurable feeling of destroying brain cells with alcohol versus the loss of that pleasure. What should a Christian do? I think we all know that a Christian disobeys God by destroying brain cells or brain tissue. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and destroying brain tissue with alcohol moves to an unacceptable level of harm to the temple of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
The other argument was a related argument to the first one, that is, drinking is a calculated risk like “climbing a mountain, exploring a cave, snow or water skiing, scuba diving, buying bitcoin, investing in a stock, driving a motorcycle, seeing how fast your car can go (100 mph plus), ice skating, or driving on a frozen lake.” He included drinking alcohol as parallel to everything else in that list.
Scripture teaches that believers should not tempt God by taking risks, the example of Satan in Matthew 4, tempting Jesus to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. This is not of faith. It’s true that anyone could die doing almost anything, that breathing causes cancer and someone crossing the road could get hit by a car. Alcohol does damage brain tissue. That’s not a calculation according to this study. It’s 100 out of 100. You are destroying your brain. None of the examples of activities in the previous paragraph guarantee destruction. There is an argument for calculating risk, I agree, taking the safer route if possible, but alcohol isn’t safe, so this argument doesn’t work.
There is more to an argument against alcohol. When you drink it, you’re hurting yourself, you’re also disobeying God, and you’re causing others to stumble. None of those are permissible in scripture.
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