Y Safle

In a previous article I wrote about a correspondent, MW, who argued (against the evidence) that most people break the speed limits - relying on anecdotal evidence.

He also wrote:

2) People who don’t break speed limits tend not have accidents

My answer:

Are you sure? I am sure I read an article somewhere that showed that people who tend to drive well below the speed limit are much more likely to have accidents than people who travel at around the speed limit (whether a little below or a little above). This was, I think, in an old issue of Advanced Driving magazine, although unfortunately I have no reference to hand.

Munden (1967), reported some interesting results for drivers in the United Kingdom who habitually drive at deviant speeds (speeds well above or below the average speed for a road.) The speed of selected drivers were observed and compared to the four preceding and four following vehicles. For drivers observed more than once, those traveling more than 1.8 standard deviations above or below the mean traffic speed had significantly higher crash rates. This from:

J. M. Munden, “The Relation Between A Driver’s Speed and His Accident Rate,” Report LR 88, Transport and Road Research Laboratory, Crowthorne, England, 1967.

But that survey was one of a number that discovered an interesting U shaped curve in accident rates against deviation from the mean speed by drivers (when excluding changes of speed for purposes of maneuvering). What is shown quite clearly is that both very slow moving vehicles and very fast moving vehicles are much more likely to have accidents. Strangely we do not see a move towards a simplistic “slowness kills” message, because we understand that other factors are at play here.

What is very interesting was some follow up research [2] by David L. Harkey, H. Douglas Robertson, and Scott E. Davis. “Assessment of Current Speed Zoning Criteria.” Transportation Research Record, 1281 (1990), p. 51.

“Speed at which accident risk is minimized occurred at the 90th percentile of the travel speeds observed.”

Thus those who exceed the speed limit a little are statistically (in that survey) the least likely to have accidents, and in fact all the U curves in all the studies show accident rates at their lowest at about 10% over the mean speed, which is usually a little over the speed limit.

Of course there are other surveys that show those who seek compliance with speeding laws are at less risk of having accidents, and that there is often a direct correlation between excessive speed in a driving situation and higher accident rates. I do not want to excuse habitual or excessive speeding, nor suggest that speeding is really acceptable. What these data do demonstrate, however, is that MW was wrong to say:

“People who don’t break speed limits tend not have accidents.”

Again the evidence shows otherwise. The statement is too simplistic and ignores the real data.

What we can say is that those who habitually and/or excessively speed are statistically more likely to have accidents.

Notes:

[1] The Relation Between a Driver’s Speed and His Accident Rate, Report LR 88 JM Munden - Road Research Laboratory, Crowthorne, England, 1967

[2] Assessment of Current Speed Zoning Criteria DL Harkey, HD Robertson, SE Davis - Transportation Research Record, 1990

I wrote a piece to a correspondent in America with the following snippet:

The west (U.S. and Europe) are systematically denying access to our markets from African nations, which is why we are causing the crushing poverty on that continet.

How a protectionist can sleep at night eludes me. Do you believe American lives are worth more than African lives?

Rather astoundingly I received this response:

Stephen….do I think American lives are worth more than African lives…HELL YES!!!!!

A prime example of what is known as infra-humanisation. The out-group is seen as less than human by members of the in group.

Here was my response:

I am intrigued. How much more is an American worth than an African? Twice as much? Eight times as much? And why do you think so? Certainly Americans cost much more. The average U.S. income must be in the region of 50,000 dollars, whereas more than half of the inhabitants of sub saharan Africa get by on less than a dollar a day. Thus the American income is over 136 times that of most sub saharan Africans.

Why is this? Ultimately it is down to the insidious policies of the EU and the USA - protectionist measures that lock third world countries out of our markets and keep them poor.

So politically it certainly seems that we do value western lives more highly than African ones (or domestic lives more highly than foreign lives). However, I am surprised to hear you come out and openly admit this fact, for surely it is a doctrine of the United States that man is born free, with fundamental rights and freedoms.

It is interesting that ownership of property was dropped from the list, which otherwise comes straight from Locke, but clearly US capitalism is predicated on a concept of property ownership as conferring certain human rights.

That is perhaps part of the problem here. With the concept that one is almost not human if one owns no property comes justification for slave ownership and such like. Further, as Europeans stole the land of Africa and excluded others in the name of their new ownership, all predicated on the empty land premise, it follows that many people will see the disinherited of Africa as somehow less than human.

But as a philosophy this is both inconsistent and detestable.

That Locke is inconsistent is not surprising. His philosophy was first pragmatic, and only occasionally consistent. That the philosophy and attitudes of Locke and his age have so permeated western society that we believe it a forgone conclusion that our system is best is perhaps much more surprising. We call ourselves rational, intelligent and educated - but we still can make statements (or at least secretly believe) that our lives are worth more than the lives of those we persecute?

Education is perhaps part of the problem. We think we are educated in the west, but in fact our critical reasoning capacity is impaired severely. Thus American media spoon feeds the American people stories about that nasty Sadam Hussein, and we believe every one of them - after all, he has proven he is a bad guy, so surely all these other stories must be true.

We are spoon fed political claptrap about how the world will be a better place if only we kill a few more people, and we feel safer when in fact this very thinking should make us tremble and lie awake in our beds.

But are we surprised that there is this uncritical acceptance? Is it perhaps that schools have been encouraged to teach a curriculum that goves us a feeling of being educated, whilst actually knowing nothing? How many Americans can even find their own state on a map? let alone the location of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or any other of these respectable and sovereign nations that you would so happily destroy for your own entertainment and sense of well being?

How many people in the US could tell Malaŵi from Botswana on a map? Or know the new naime for Zaire?

Just so long as it does not affect local jobs, and these people stay well out of our way, then we are happy. We murder them slowly through trade restriction, or we do so quickly with bombs. What is the difference? What does it matter? Apparently not very much, because after all, we can sleep soundly tonight knowing that American lives are worth more than African lives.

Snowball, all animals are born equal, but some are more equal than others - or so I hear.

“For there is one law for rich and poor alike that prevents them equally from sleeping under bridges and begging bread.”

In my last “Mistakes We Make When Thinking” article, I raised the issue of anecdotal evidence being given more credence than data. An example of this is usually raised in the contentious issue of speeding (and what we should do about it). Driving is an issue on which most people seem to have an opinion, but how often is that opinion well formed?

By way of example I offer this part of a conversation I had with someone (MW). He began:

1) Most people break the speed limit This is self evident.

This is neither self evident, nor necessarily right. MW used the term “most” which I would understand to be approaching, but not quite attaining all. Now here are some figures:

“On non-urban roads, more than half the cars on motorways and dual carriageways travelled faster than the speed limit; 18 per cent were travelling in excess of 80 mph on motorways and 13 per cent on dual carriageways. “On urban roads with a 30 mph speed limit 65 per cent of cars exceeded that limit, 32 per cent travelling faster than 35 mph. On 40 mph roads 25 per cent of cars exceeded the limit, with 8 per cent exceeding 45 mph.” [Vehicle Speeds in Great Britain: 2001]

So only on urban roads with a 30mph limit will you find even a clear majority of people breaking the speed limits, and even then it appears that a clear majority only go over by a few miles per hour.

These figures were collected on clear unobstructed sections of road with no road “furniture” or other impediments to progressive travel, so they are indicative of real levels of speeding.

So it is neither self evident, nor even correct, to say most people break the speed limit.

I drive daily and in the past I have driven extensively - 60 to 80k pa. As someone who keeps to the speed limit or just under, I am aware of a considerable amount of traffic passing me.

Yes indeed, but consider how much traffic you pass also.

This is easiest to do on a motorway. Travel at the speed limit on the motorway and count how many vehicles pass you and how many you pass. You will probably be surprised to find the numbers are broadly similar. You are more aware of vehicles moving faster than you than those moving more slowly, but this is an illusion (the same illusion that makes you believe you are always in the slowest moving queue when stuck in traffic on the motorway).

So this anecdotal evidence is unreliable. The statistical surveys show a different picture.

People are wired up to give greater credence to anecdotal evidence than actual statistics. But that does not make the anecdotal evidence right. careful analysis often tells a different story.

This did not satisfy MW, who protested (against the data):

Yes, I know this kind of [visual anecdotal] evidence will not satisfy you, but frankly I don’t care. If you can’t accept the evidence of your own eyes, then fine, you believe what you want to.

I know I cannot accept the evidence of my own eyes quite often. My eyes tell me that the sun falls into the sea each night. They tell me that I am always stuck in the slowest moving traffic queue. They tell me that this keyboard is solid and that the universe is full of things. My eyes and my brain that processes the images coming from my eyes are easily fooled. Evidence for a proposition can come from many sources, but we don’t accept evidence from any source if it is uncorroborated by testimony from other sources.

So it is not me who will “believe what [I] want to”, it is you. You are choosing not to take into account the testimony of carefully crafted statistical analysis yielding verifiable data in a scientific manner, because you prefer to believe the limited and imperfect testimony of your eyes. So it is you who will “believe what you want to”.

Look around, stand on a street corner one day and watch the traffic.

Of course, I have never stood on a street corner and watched traffic in my life!

There was more, which I’ll post in another thread. The point here is that we become quite attached to our anecdotal evidence, even when it is contradicted by hard data. But don’t point the finger at MW on this point. Instead, consider what you believe based on anecdotal evidence only, that might be contradicted by actual data? We all have our blind spots. Let’s search them out, and avoid this mistake in our thinking.

The Western Mail recently reported in slightly hysterical tone that wireless computer networks should be banned from the nation’s classrooms because of fears about their effects on health.

MP Urges Ban in WiFi Technology in Schools

Why should we ban WiFi in schools? The reasons we are being given are that parents are concerned; that we don’t know the effects of WiFi microwave radiation yet; that one teacher claimed to be getting ill whenever teaching in front of a transmitter; and that we should apply the precautionary principle.

The result? Ysgol Pantycelyn in Carmarthern switched off its WiFi network (despite the benefits these networks bring to teaching). A few other schools in England have similarly shut down their wireless networks.

Now all of the reasons above suffer from a failure to consider the scientific basis for the claims being made. They show our penchant for listening to anecdotal evidence and rating it much more highly than scientific evidence. This is a dangerous error in our thinking. We are geared up to accept personal testimony, even though such testimony is necessarily limited and often flawed.

Who can argue that there is a problem if a teacher is feeling ill when teaching in front of WiFi equipment?

Except it turns out that in a controlled experiment when the access point was sometimes off and sometimes on, but the teacher in question did not know when it was off, he continued to claim to be feeling ill when he believed (wrongly) that the access point was on.

But that spoiler won’t be widely reported. No studies have indicated that people can detect WiFi radiation.

Someone will reply that the wavelength of WiFi radiation is in the microwave band is it not? So much so that microwave ovens are one of the largest sources of interference to WiFi equipment. So aren’t we cooking people by emitting this radiation?

Look - there is a clue here in the word “interference” above. If Microwave ovens are causing interference then they have been emitting some microwave radiation (more than from access points) for many years. Have we banned microwave ovens yet?

No, because the levels of emissions are essentially harmless.

How do we know?

Because we are surrounded by microwave radiation wherever we go. I suppose we could go and live at the bottom of a deep shaft mine to avoid it. But then we would probably die of vitamin D deficiency instead.

For people living on the surface of the Earth, we are constantly bombarded by radiation at every wavelength (including plenty of microwave background radiation).

And here is the important point. In the UK at least, WiFi radiation is strictly limited to 100mw (the limit is higher in the US). That limit has a very specific purpose. It means that unless you pretty much swallow the WiFi antenna, you are not going to absorb any more radiation from the WiFi network than from the background radiation.

What is more, the signal itself is deliberately encoded to look just like background radiation. The signal is spread over several wavebands to keep the power down, and “chipped” so that it looks just like microwave “static” unless you know what to look for and how to decode it.

And the power is kept so low so that multiple users of the same wave bands can coexist. Unlike mobile phones, for instance, which use much higher powers because the cell network has exclusive use of the waveband, and does not want to put base stations every 100 metres!

So there is no scientific reason at all to suspect WiFi networks. This is the advice given by government agencies and many local authorities (although some wash their hands of the affair with useless “advice” that it is “up to the individual schools”). We don’t need to worry about the safety of WiFi networks.

But all people hear is the anecdotal story (without refutation), and the words “radiation” and “developing children”, and it won’t be long before we see a wrong headed national campaign by some newspaper to ban this dangerous hazard in our schools.

Radio 4 carried a story today which is also reported in the Daily Mail, that George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, got hold of some scrawled notes from Gordon Brown and presented them to a graphologist who proceeded to “analyse” them in an unflattering manner about Brown.

At the risk of sounding like I may be saying something in support of this Labour government (we wouldn’t want that!) I have to say that I am deeply troubled by Osborne’s lack of capacity for critical thinking, and how poorly this bodes should the Conservatives get into power.

In order that he may score some cheap political points against Borwn, one of the supposedly brightest minds of the conservative party has resorted to quackery on a par with fortune telling, homeopothy and ESP.

Osborne might as well have said that he had received a message from fairies at the bottom of his garden for all the credence we should give it.

The idea that we can tell anything about someone’s character from their handwriting has time and again been demonstrated to be arrant nonsense. Empirical studies repeatedly demonstrate that there is nothing in graphology - and yet supposedly intelligent people continue to use such analysis to make important judgements about people.

Shame on them, and shame on George Osborne for doing the same. If it were not for parliamentary privelege, Brown could probably sue him for libel.

Graphology tells you nothing about the character of someone whose writing is analysed.

But it speaks volumes about the person who commissioned the analysis.

Woolly minded. Lacking in critical thinking skills. A poor judge of character. Not given to consideration of the evidence.

If the Conservatives want to be taken seriously they should sack George Osborne.

When discussing mistakes we make when thinking, at some point or another someone will mention the list of logical fallacies that can be made, using their Latin names. Despite the fact that we use much less Latin these days then previous generations, we continue to use Latin names - perhaps because they make it sound like we know what we are talking about, or maybe in the hope that no-one else will know what we are talking about!

But one Latin term has been so common in disputations, that most people think they know what it means. This term is “ad hominem”, and if someone feels they are being unfairly and maliciously attacked in an argument, accusations of ad hominem arguments will fly.

But what does argumentum ad hominem actually mean? And do we use the term correctly? how do we avoid allowing ad hominem arguments from affecting our thinking?

Literally “argumentum ad hominem” is an argument [carried] to the man. An argument is ad hominem if, instead of arguing against the premises or logic being presented, it attacks the character or beliefs of the person who presented an argument or point of view.

A classic example of an ad hominem can be found in the comments on this blog. In my article on Capital Punishment, I wrote an article on a controversial subject taking a very specific line of argument. A commentator (David) took exception to what I had written, but rather than attempting to refute the line of thought, he instead objected that it was “unfair” that I should argue in that manner because I am a Christian.

Now David argued that his line was not ad hominem, but this is exactly what an ad hominem argument is.

A: I believe that Capital Punishment is wrong because inasmuch as we make a choice to kill for vengeful reasons and self interest, we are no better than the criminal who kills for vengeful reasons and self interest.

B: You are a Christian and it is unfair that you make that argument.

Now the problem with the ad hominem line is that it does not refute the original argument, but it distracts from it. Ad hominem argument is a fallacy of distraction. I could have argued that it is entirely appropriate that Christians take a world view that David saw as deterministic, based perhaps on the philosophy of Jonathan Edwards.

But then we would be discussing Christian approaches to determinism (and before you know it, Calvinism and predestination) rather than capital punishment. The argument would be unrefuted, but entirely forgotten.

So an ad hominem line is a dangerous fallacy - because it distracts.

Note however, that what many people mean by an ad hominem argument is more approprioately called an “abusive ad hominem”.

For instance, on another forum in the last month or so, I was in disputation with an individual over some point of Christian doctrine. I expressed my belief in the inerrancy of scripture, and the sufficiency of the Bible, and my faith In Jesus Christ but then challenged the view of the other party on separationism. His reply:

“You are a classic liberal”, and “You lie when the truth will not help your position!” (He later apologised for calling me a liar, but never managed to see me as anything but a theological liberal!)

This was the abusive ad hominem. An attack on the integrity and character of the other party in the argument. It is not only distracting and fallacious, but it also raises the temperature of debate and makes constructive progress almost impossible.

People spot an abusive ad hominem easily enough, and such lines can be rightly ignored. But spotting other ad hominem arguments is also important. If we start answering ad hominem lines, then our original arguments get forgotten.

Don’t let people distract you with ad hominem lines. Argue a case on its own merits, not on the merits of the person who holds the argument.

You are in a game show, and at the end of the show you are allowed to choose one of three possible doors. Behind two of the doors are goats, and behind the third is a cash prize (which is what you want to win!). You choose a door, but instead of opening the door, the game show host will always open one of the remaining two doors, showing you a goat.

You now have two doors remaining, and the game show host offers you the chance to switch doors. The question is: is there any advantage to switching?

Yesterday I wrote about an error in Thomas Kida’s book over probability. Probability is a tricky thing, and the question above is a rephrasing of what has come to be called the “Monty Hall Problem” (after an American game show, which had a slightly different version of this problem on it).

This problem was quite famously presented by Marilyn Vos Savant in “Parade” magazine - a syndicated magazine found in many American newspapers. She presented the right answer to the problem above, and received a barrage of letters from some very clever people (including professors of Mathematics) arguing she was wrong. Eventually many of these professors wrote back to apologise for their mistake, but the experience shows that even the brightest minds can be fooled by the tricks of probability.

Because against all intuition, you should indeed switch.

Why?

There are three doors. The probability of the cash prize being behind the door you choose is 1/3. You choose door A, and there is a 1/3 chance that you have now won, and a 2/3 chance that you have chosen a goat.

The presenter shows your door C has a goat. What is the probability that door B has the cash prize?

Because the presenter must always reveal one goat or another, the scenario is still the same scenario. He has shown you a goat from one of the two remaining doors, but the chance that you have chosen the prize is still 1/3. Nothing has changed. The presenter would show you a goat if you had chosen the cash prize or not.

So against all instinct (especially for anyone who would not be fooled by the gambler’s fallacy), you should change to door B. Your chances of winning are now 2/3.

I bought Thomas Kida’s book, “Don’t believe everything you think (The 6 basic mistakes we make in thinking)”, in part because the title was similar to my occasional “Mistakes we Make in Thinking” series.

There is some good stuff in the book. But there is also a rather worrying example of exactly the kind of sloppy thinking Kida is supposed to be warning us against. He spends considerable space on the gambler’s fallacy, and then launches into a discussion of the unpredictability of the Stock Market, and how research has shown that there is no evidence that highly paid fund managers add any value to an investment fund, and that over the long haul, no funds significantly beat the index.

All this may well be right, but Kida’s error lies in what he does with these data:

Oftentimes investors move their money into a fund that has experienced good recent performance. However, statistcs tell us that we have regression to the mean. That is, if a fund is currently outperforming the market, its performance is likely to drop in the future to bring it back to average. And so, if we buy into a fund right after it has posted recent gains, we’re likely to be in for a fall. In effect, going after strong past performance often means we take money out of funds that are likely to rebound, and put it into funds that are ready to drop.

Kida has misunderstood regression towards the mean, and has committed an error known as the gambler’s fallacy (which he had already discussed in an earlier chapter).

Let us suppose that fund manager’s are indeed irrelevent, and that a fund has a 50/50 chance of underperforming or overperforming the market each year. If this assumption is indeed correct - and this is indeed Kida’s argument, then whether the fund will outperform or underperform the market this year is entirely unconnected with whether the fund outperformed or underperfomed the market last year.

If Kida is correct, then it makes no difference in the long run whether we leave the money where it is or move it (except for dealing charges incurred of course), because all funds will eventually do equally well.

If we buy into a fund right after it has posted gains then it is wrong to expect that we are in for a big fall. We are just as likely to do well (or badly) as if we buy into a fund that recently posted very poor gains.

But what is regression towards the mean then?

If we take the whole “population” of funds, and we measure all their respective gains each year, we come up with a mean (average) gain for all funds. Now, suppose we choose the 100 best performing funds and measure their gains - because these are the best perfroming funds, their mean gain will, of course, be higher than the mean for all funds.

Let us suppose that their mean gain was twice that of all funds.

Now next year we measure these means again. The mean gain for all funds and the mean for what were last year’s 100 best funds. What we find is that the mean for the 100 best funds of last year is now much closer to the mean of all funds. If fund performance is entirely random then that mean may be less than the mean for all funds, or more - but it will almost certainly be less than twice that of all funds.

Why does this happen? Because there was nothing special about the 100 best funds, and there is no guarantee that the funds that did well last year will do well this year. Thus their average should approach the population average.

But any individual fund could still be in the top 100 - and we would expect that to be the case. Regression towards the mean is only concerned with averages.

Still not convinced?

By Kida’s principle - moving money into an outperforming fund sets you up for a fall. Thus it would follow that moving money into an underperforming fund will set you up for a gain. Therefore, one should put money into the underperforming funds as the best strategy for success.

But it doesn’t work. Because Kida is wrong.

If the performance of a fund is random, the best strategy for success is to buy the fund with the lowest charges and leave your money where it is (or better still - just buy the shares that all the funds hold, and hold the shares).

October 12th is Columbus day, but what is the real deal with Columbus? I am frequently presented with arguments such as this:

This sort of thing goes back to Ptolomy’s opinion that Earth is flat, such is “peer review” that all evidence to the contrary was rejected for about one and a half thousand years until Columbus sailed to the West Indies.

 

The issue with Columbus was not whether the Earth was round, but whether one could find a shorter passage to India by sailing west. You see, there had been some rather accurate measurements of the circumference of the Earth. The Greek philospher Erastothenes had measured the circumference of the Earth in 230BC by looking into wells on the summer solstice to measure shadow lengths at two locations at the same time.

The locations were Syene and Alexandria, some 500 miles apart, and the difference in shadow lengths allowed him to calculate the circumference of the Earth using some clever trigonometry.

His first figure wasn’t at all bad. Indeed, whilst he underestimated the circumference of the Earth somewhat, he was as close as experimental error might allow.

Now Ptolemy, who the above quoted writer incorrectly tells us posited the flat earth, had an estimate of his own for the circumference of the Earth. His estimate made the Earth much smaller than it is. King Ferdinand knew of the estimate of Erastothenes and others, and when Columbus told him that he knew a shorter westward way to India, Ferdinand turned him down on the basis of Erastothenes’ estimates.

Imagine if you replaced the continents of America with water, and you wanted to travel directly westward to India - your journey would involve crossing the Atlantic, the breadth of America and the Pacific ocean before you could make landfall.

As you can see, Ferdinand was right to reject Columbus’s mistaken calculations, and Columbus was lucky that America was where it was, to break his journey, or else he would have surely died. This mistake made by Columbus is why he named the place he made landfall as the “West Indies”. He mistakenly thought he had proven his calculation correct, and that he was in the west of India!

This myth about Columbus seems to have been put out by one or two atheists. Particularly the French historian Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848) and the American satirist Washington Irving (1783-1859). Apologists - particularly for Letronne - argue that he was simply working from questionable sources, but the prevalence of the Columbus myth is a good example of how atheists will abandon critical thinking and good scholarship when it comes to pushing an anti Christian view (something they often accuse Christians of doing in the other direction. Of course, no one is immune from this. That is how our brains are wired up).

So what do we see from this?

1. Columbus rejected peer review, was completely wrong, but was spared from death by pure fluke, and the gift of the gab (he pretended - against all evidence - that the West Indies were fabulously rich with Gold, in an attempt to justify his trip).
2. Academic study can reveal remarkably accurate and useful results, but peer review is essential to the process. All but Columbus rejected Ptolomy’s measure, because Erastothenes’ method was superior (indeed we are not told Ptolomy’s method at all).
3. The quoted writer above, like far too many people, are willing to accept information they are told uncritically. Such facts are blithely quoted about Columbus et al., but are just plain wrong. Like so many things, people like to think they know a lot because they learned facts about such things, whereas a lack of critical thinking shows that they really understand very little.
4. Atheists do not have a monopoly on good critical thinking skills.
5. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than right!

When should we separate over theology? When is it right for Christians to say that they will not work with another Church because their theology is so mixed up that it would compromise our testimony to do so? When should we say that there will be no platform in our church for Christians who hold to certain views, because they are not our views?

I don’t have all the answers here, but the question has come up in a few places lately so I wanted to try and address it. One person told me that he would no longer be welcomed to preach in the churches of his youth because he no longer holds to a position of pre-millennialism and the secret rapture.

When we start dividing over such issues of theology, we are (I think) guilty of party spirit. I am quite happy to tell you that my own position is amillennialist - I don’t think we can do away with such labels, but I don’t want to stand proud in my position and my belief in the superiority of my doctrine. That would be the Corinthian error: One follows Paul, another Apollos…

I don’t want to divide over this issue, and I have very great respect for Bible teachers and scholars who are both post-millennialist and classical pre-millennialist (and I don’t exclude the possibility of such respect for dispensationalist pre-millennialists either - I just can’t think of any as I write this!)

The experience recounted above is exactly the kind of thing I think we should avoid. An honest and searching Bible teacher should not be excluded from a position in the Church because they do not agree with the party line of the Church. I think our faith should be more honest and open to questions.

I deliberately worship in a Church that does not match my views, despite the existence of a Church that does more closely match my beliefs nearby. I do this because the security one receives from confirmation behaviour is a false one. If we surround ourselves with those who agree with us, then how do we differ from Rehoboam, who surrounded himself with yes-men to tell him what he wanted to hear, and ignored the cries of his people?

So I deliberately worship in a Church that teaches things with which I disagree, I read a paper whose politics are opposed to mine and I prefer Bible studies, discussions etc. with people whose ideas challenge my own. But the question then must be asked, how do we allow people to teach in our churches if we believe that the teachers are occasionally unorthodox? The answer to that comes in two parts:

1. Insist on the fundamentals. For instance, any teacher who doubts that God raised Christ from the dead has no place teaching in a Church.
2. On the grey areas, recognise the legitimacy of other opinions and try to teach less “fact” and more critical thought.

On the second point, a Bible study on Revelation 20:1-3 would probably involve describing all views regarding the Millennium, using the sources of those who agree with them.

Thus we would quote Wayne Grudem in favour of classical premillennialism for instance. We would then encourage people to consider the question in the light of other Biblical evidence, and in the context of a much fuller exegesis of Revelation as a book. We would then leave people to make up their own mind on the topic.

The end result? A church full of people with differing opinions, yes - but an honest Church of people who agree to disagree except on the fundamentals. People who do not stress what divides them, but agree on Who unites them.