Making the data fit the theory

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes in A Scandal in Bohemia

I'll respond to some problems of rational thought in this. He does nail the draw of Catholicism. The social stability is a huge part of it.

https://medium.com/@MatthewSchultz/why-stay-protestant-435b5e1006a0

But first it's worth saying why such a piece interests me.

I grew up Protestant. Specifically in the fairly liturgical Church of England in South Africa (lately renamed to REACH: Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of Southern Africa) that, when my father leads the service at least, still uses the Prayer Book - analogous to a Catholic missal. The type you'll find in the pews is the soft cover variety, but on a book shelf close by is my very own Prayer Book in hard cover form, probably signed by the bishop. (I'm guessing. I don't really care enough to look. These are my confessions.) It's still a pretty Thing, either way. My family at various times have wished I'd go into the ministry.

On the Catholic side, some of my constant friends through childhood (not that religion was ever discussed) were Catholics. Nay, even more: they are SSPX Catholics. Some years later, and through these friends, I got to know a girl who is also SSPX. With a crazy and beautiful sense of humour with whom I could share my latent interest in growing roses and Gilbert & Sullivan and everything else besides, without it being weird. So the Catholic question became important to me. By this time I had already completed my degree in philosophy, and despite that equipping me with good mental tools I was still naïve and uncritical of my religion and loyally Protestant. I literally didn't even know that Catholics think their church was founded on Peter. (As an aside, Catholics catastrophically fail to understand the concept of the Church as Protestants do. For what it's worth, the Protestant doctrine is more biblical. But that's a vacuous truth that amounts to no more than being right about Dickens' use of the Meagles family in Little Dorrit.)

The above link is therefore interesting to me. It's a debate I'm familiar with. I'm curious to see how other Protestants, though I no longer identify as one, deal with Catholicism; and how they rationalize being Christian.

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From the link above, this is what intellectual dishonesty looks like:

... As a Protestant, I have two basic options when informing my study of the Bible. The first is consulting scholars who think the text is inspired and more or less inerrant. This comes with arguments or assumptions about the nature and quality of the Bible’s authorship: Matthew really did write Matthew, the disciples' memory of Jesus’s teachings is entirely or almost entirely accurate, Jesus really did make accurate prophecies, he really did miracles as described, and so forth.

The other option is consulting scholars who doubt or actively disbelieve all of the above propositions. They approach the text with a hermeneutic of suspicion. They doubt Matthew wrote Matthew. They doubt Jesus said and taught everything ascribed to him. Many claim that Jesus’s teachings were issued as a fallible man: given perhaps as a (mostly) good man, but certainly not as a divinely inspired God-man.

When it comes to Catholicism, most or all of the NT Catholic scholars I’m aware of fall somewhere in the second camp. Why would I follow a denomination that approves of or passes over scholars within its own ranks that seem to deny or doubt the reliability and authority of the Bible on such a regular basis? ...

If we look at the comment on the authorship of Matthew, as one example, see how that just begs the question: how does anyone come to this view of the Bible absent any textual criticism? Is it rational to collect all the thousands of religious writings from all ages and all cultures, put a blindfold on, choose one, and then cling to it as "the Truth"? Surely not. So by what principle should anyone believe the authority of the Bible if not through the means here rejected? What if in the structure of the text we see telltale signs that it isn't real history? The mentality quoted above reminds me of Aquinas, and Bertrand Russell's critique of him:

He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. 

Why listen to scholars who question the Bible? Because that's what curiosity is. Because that's the only way to know if you're throwing you life away believing a lie or not. Because if truth matters we don't presume we know everything and stick out fingers in our ears to block out anything that contradicts it. I can assure all believers that groups like the Branch Davidians or the Mormons also said and say among themselves "why would I follow anyone that questions the authority of what I know is true?" It's transparent confirmation bias: I'll only listen to those who agree with me. Yeah, but what if you're wrong?

If we want to believe more right things and fewer wrong things we don't start with the theory, we start with the data. And that's why scholars who don't presume the conclusion at the start are worth listening to.