Every Scientific System has Unproven Postulates

"The world prides itself on "hard" evidence, on objectivity, on the strength of consensus. However, as a philosopher of knowledge, I can only shake my head. For I know and can prove that there is no such thing as evidence apart from a matrix of presuppositions, that objectivity is at best consensus, and that consensus is often but a public relations job. Every scientific system begins with unproven postulates. Every person founds his life on articles of faith." -Dr. Chauncey C. Riddle, philosopher.

When I read Dr. Riddle's article (Ensign, September 1975), I was 20 years old and had completed my first year at a major university under a track scholarship, emerging from the experience fairly beat-up and abused by professors hell-bent on faith-busting.

During that year, taking philosophy, psychology and political science, I marveled as the godless, angry, agenda-driven professors railed on every form of faith, especially Mormonism - their particular favorite along the Wasatch Front mountain range. They prided themselves on their "hard" facts, the truth of their position, the strength of their consensus. After taking so many barrages against religious belief, one gained some consolation at their being knocked down a notch by someone in their own league.

It wasn't till many decades later that I learned what an affront to decency such attacks were. A good friend, whose father had won an Oscar for his lighting designs, told me that she'd recently experienced the same kinds of attacks from professors here in Salt Lake.

But she spoke up - not having been in the Church all her life, and having had no small amount of experience in the world. She raised her hand and told the professor that had he railed on Jews or Catholics anywhere back East, as he had just done to Mormons, he would have been decried, and even shouted down, as a bigot.

"Somehow," she continued, "because it's Mormons, it's okay to do here in Salt Lake?"

I've often mused: Where did they get their license? It must have come from when they were undergraduates, and their Leftist professors told them that it would be a noble thing to dedicate their lives to jumping into the fire of religious bigoty - the last great bastion of backwoods narrow-mindedness - Utah!

Were they told that it would be like voter registration in the South during the 50s and 60s? Come! Come to Utah, and drag these bumbling, fertile, mindless obediatrons into the 20th Century of "enlightened" scientific positivism! How could they equate Mormons with what happened to those heroic young college students at the hands of those over-fed, good-ole-boys, impudently grinning at the photographer at their mock trial?

How is it morally equivalent - the murderers with those fatboy cheeks stuffed with chaw, the corner of their lips dripping in racism, juxtaposed to the Mormon widow fasting each month and giving her small mite, every thing she has, to feed the poor in her neighborhood?

And don't tell me about Mormons being blindly obedient! The simple cross-kite that's anchored to something solid, (and yes, perhaps weighed down with a bit of cumbersome baggage of a tail) flies much higher than the most sophisticated untethered box-kite. But that's another essay.

All of us found our lives on unproven postulates - upon articles of faith. But how wonderful to ground our faith on a rock - on personal revelation, on the Rock of Our Salvation, Jesus Christ!