Who's An Expert?

I’ve been reading a debate on the historical evidences of Jesus’ resurrection between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman, and man is it good! (See Craig’s website: www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/)

A debate between two scholars of such renown on a subject of such extreme importance brings to mind something I think about often: how we know what we claim to know (AKA epistemology). Loving academic pursuits as much as I do, in the past, without realizing it, I’ve gravitated toward what could be called the fallacy of doctoral authority. Many of my professors in seminary were so knowledgeable, so well credentialed and accomplished, that subconsciously the idea would develop that at the moment one earns a doctorate, a type of over-arching, ultimate epiphany occurs and the Ph. D. becomes an almost infallible authority on the given subject. I say all this developed subconsciously because the reality we’re all quite conscious of shows this to be totally wrong.

I can remember a professor I had for an intro to New Testament class at my very secular undergraduate school who proposed as a plausible explanation for Jesus’ walking on water that perhaps, because it was night, the disciples were disoriented, and though they thought they were in the middle of the lake, they had unknowingly drifted close to the shore. Then, of course, Jesus comes, un-miraculously, walking up on the shore and the disciples perceive a miracle. I can’t remember if the professor personally believed this or not, but he did pose it as one possibly plausible explanation—and this from a man we were supposed to call “Doctor.” I also remember attending a debate on Creation vs. Evolution at that same university. One of the philosophy profs on the evolution side said at one point something very close to (and I’m not making this up) “Truth is such a heavy word. Is there really any such thing as truth?” “Yes…” I wanted so badly to shout from the back, “and within the sphere of truth is the fact that you should not be teaching philosophy.”

An even better (rather worse) example of what I mean is Peter Singer, one of the most renown “ethics” professors in the world, who teaches at prestigious Princeton University. Singer is an ardent animal rights advocate, and also holds the view that if a new born baby is severely handicapped, the parents should have the right to kill the child. (I think Singer is from Australia, but it sounds like he would fit best in Germany about 65 years ago). When people who propose this kind of thinking hold a Ph. D., it seems to take all the credential out of the credential.

But this raises a poignant question: If we can’t trust the experts who can we trust? The striking thing in the Craig vs. Ehrman debate, like so many others, is that, as far as academic credentials are concerned, both opponents are of equal weight, and yet they come down on many of the issues they study with completely opposing views. How is one to know who is right?

This topic is probably one sufficient for many books. But for the sake of blog discussion, I briefly suggest the answer to the question is desire and honesty. Those who don’t want to know the truth never will, and those who are more committed to their philosophical agenda or emotional allegiances or personal gratifications than they are to what’s actually true will never know the Truth. Very often people have a lot of incentive not to believe something. I often receive essays from high school students in which they comment that the problem with a certain book’s character is that he wasn’t being “true to himself,” and to this I always remark in the margin, “It’s better to be true to the Truth.”

If we are willing and honest, we can know which of the experts really are.

MM