Why are religions exempt from demonstrating their veracity?
Ronald Reagan's oft-quoted maxim, "Trust, but verify," actually works in the real world. There is a place for trust, and there is a place for seeking verification. A phone call out of the blue from someone who purports to be a representative of your car company, warning you that your warranty is about to expire, and pressing you to pay (by credit card, over the phone) one thousand dollars to renew it, should not be taken at face value. Although thousands apparently do just that.
Trusting your spouse or loved one is good, but such trust has been earned over a period of time during which they have demonstrated trustworthyness. Trusting that your medical practitioner knows her business is based on a set of regulations that are meant to separate the wheat from the chaff.
And so on.
So why is it that we give religion a pass?
Religions inoculate themselves against such demands quite handily, to whit:
A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. And there shall no sign be given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah. And He left them and went away (Matthew 16:4).
And he said, I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham said to him, They have Moses and the Prophets, let them hear them. And he said, No, father Abraham, but if one should go to them from the dead, they would repent. And he said to him, If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded, even though one rose from the dead (Luke 16:27-31).
Asking for some scrap of proof before I go and commit my life to a set of beliefs is, to my mind, a reasonable request. But religions not only provide no proof of their veracity, they tend to slap you down for even asking.
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July 19, 2009 at 3:40 PM
I think the existence of a long tradition of apologetics and debate shows that by and large Christianity has not considered itself exempt from demonstrating its veracity... speaking of which, exempted by whom? In any case the verse you cited doesn't "exempt" Christianity from legitimate requests for evidence or from the demonstration of trustworthiness over time. It is possible that some requests for demonstration are not sincere and that some people resist trusting even when they have more than enough evidence. That is what the passage in question clearly describes.