{"id":4258,"date":"2007-09-21T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-21T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2007\/09\/facts-and-opinions\/"},"modified":"2007-09-21T09:20:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-21T09:20:00","slug":"facts-and-opinions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2007\/09\/facts-and-opinions.html","title":{"rendered":"Facts and Opinions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I came across a great quote on the Evolving Thoughts<\/a> blog that sums up in a single sentence what I\u2019ve been trying to get across to students for a long time in a less pithy and far wordier fashion. Here\u2019s the quote:<\/p>\n

\u201cyou are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your own
facts\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That just puts it so well \u2013 and fits well with what I\u2019ve said about Hebrews 11:1. It says that faith is the evidence of things not seen \u2013 it does not<\/em> say that faith allows one to pretend evidence doesn\u2019t exist. That is a big difference. What distinguishes the often diverse hypotheses of mainstream science and scholarship from fundamentalism and other fringe movements is an awareness that one has to do justice to the evidence, and not simply rewrite history to suit one\u2019s presuppositions. This is not to say that even among credible scholars our presuppositions don\u2019t get in the way, and clearly it is often possible to interpret evidence in more than one way. But it is the desire to do justice to the available data that separates scholarship from wishful thinking and science from pseudo-science.<\/p>\n

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I came across a great quote on the Evolving Thoughts blog that sums up in a single sentence what I\u2019ve been trying to get across to students for a long time in a less pithy and far wordier fashion. Here\u2019s the quote: \u201cyou are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFacts and Opinions<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I came across a great quote on the Evolving Thoughts blog that sums up in a single sentence what I've been trying to get across to students for a long\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2007\/09\/facts-and-opinions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Facts and Opinions\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I came across a great quote on the Evolving Thoughts blog that sums up in a single sentence what I've been trying to get across to students for a long\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2007\/09\/facts-and-opinions.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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