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The Plausibility Problem: The Church And Same-Sex Attraction

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By adding prior probability we have changed the width of the columns to reflect the difference in probability of the various outcomes. Remember, the columns on the left represent the possible outcomes of an effective treatment, and the columns on the right represent possible outcomes of an ineffecive treatment. The area of each cell represents the relative likelihood of that result, given the parameters specified. A study with the parameters shown above, if it is fair, and free of bias has a low chance of finding any positive result. If the result is positive, however, the areas of the TP and FP cells are approximately the same size, meaning that they have a similar likelihood. Ed Shaw's book 'The Plausibility Problem' is not simply for those living with same sex attraction, it's for all of us. The 'just say no' approach to human sexuality does not work anymore, it's left the Church sounding like the Jesus way is a poor substitute for a good life. Ed calls us all to a 'better way' as radically inclusive church families, who find our identity first and foremost in Christ and not our sexuality. --Steve Clifford, General Director at Evangelical Alliance Plausibility judgments are important because they come into play in a variety of ways such as comprehension, problem solving, and anomaly detection, as well as sensemaking. Connell and Keane (2004) stated that, “Plausibility has the hallmarks of a phenomenon so pervasive and important that, like air, no one notices it. Time and again, many cognitive accounts appeal to the idea of plausibility without specifying its cognitive basis” (p. 185). In his writings on abductive inference, Charles S. Peirce asserted that the formation of a novel hypothesis leads to a judgment of plausibility to determine what constitutes a “best” explanation ( Hoffman et al., 2022). Ed Shaw is a pastor in the United Kingdom and one who has always experienced same-sex attraction. He does not want to and has tried not to, but, at the end of the day, only feels romantic and sexual attraction for men. Yet he understands that the Bible forbids him from acting on this. While friends, family, and the world around him tell him to go ahead and to indulge, he remains fully committed to what the Bible says about sex and marriage being between only a husband and a wife. He understands that the “full life” Jesus offers must be for him, too, even if it is a life of self-denial in such a foundational way. Ed Shaw writes openly as a man who is attracted to other men. His over-riding aim is to show that a life of celibate singleness is possible and that the world is wrong to assume that it is an implausible expectation. He achieves this by powerfully correcting nine ‘missteps’ the church has made over the years, each being one chapter of the book. With a combination of great honesty, careful exegesis, robust systematic theology, interaction with what others have written, and a pastor’s heart, he shows how we can celebrate and support those whom God calls to celibacy—for whatever reason.

All three of these perspectives (Philosophical/Analytical, Computational/Information Processing, and Linguistic) are interesting and useful. Most of them seem fairly consistent with each other. And we have no blanket disagreement with any of the plausibility criteria suggested by these researchers–logical consistency, credibility of sources, consistency with other information consistency among explanatory causes or concepts, reduced complexity, perception of truthfulness, alignment with prior beliefs, knowledge and understanding, probability, coherence, comprehensibility, ease of recalling similar instances, physical mechanism, and so forth. Connell (2004) and Connell and Keane (2004) proposed a Knowledge-Fitting Theory which identifies two stages of the plausibility judgment process, a comprehension stage (understanding the scenario) and an assessment stage (examining scenario fit to prior knowledge). To make a plausible judgment, people try to create a mental link between what the scenario describes and the previous knowledge they have about the scenario. The core of the KFT is the strength of relationship between the scenario and prior knowledge. Anybody committed to embracing God's model for sexuality and marriage in a faithful way should read The Plausibility Problem. Abendroth and Richter (2020) presented an information processing account of plausibility. They considered the importance of plausibility judgments in identifying fake news–information on social media that is accidentally or, most commonly, deliberately false. The study suggested that when individuals are presented with a plausible explanation for an unfamiliar scientific phenomenon, their comprehension of the topic improves. Abendroth and Richter (2020) argued that people are more likely to accept and retain information that is presented in a plausible manner, as it aligns with their existing knowledge and beliefs. The results highlighted the importance of making scientific information accessible and plausible for the public to enhance their understanding and engagement with science. Story-building continues as a person introduces leverage points and clues into the causal chain and network until the person has an account that satisfies his/her sense of plausibility: “Yes, this makes sense, it could easily have happened this way.” One of the 23 cases we studied is the analysis presented by Gladwell (2014) about David Koresh and the Waco Texas tragedy. The behavior of the Branch Davidians seemed completely irrational at the start, but by the end of Gladwell’s account, their behavior made a lot of sense. It was plausible.

The Church and Same-Sex Attraction

Ed Shaw’s book The Plausibility Problemis not simply for those living with same-sex attraction, it’s for all of us. The ‘just say no’ approach to human sexuality does not work anymore; it’s left the church sounding like the Jesus way is a poor substitute for a good life. Ed calls us all to a ‘better way’ as radically inclusive church families who find our identity first and foremost in Christ, not in our sexuality - Steve Clifford Lombardi et al. (2016a) drew on the work of Kahneman and Klein (2009) in claiming that plausibility judgments can be “automatic” and intuitive (System 1) as well as deliberative and analytical (System 2). Further, the authors argued that analogies can be useful in gauging plausibility. In T1329/04 the Board held that even if supplementary post-filed evidence may in the proper circumstances also be taken into consideration, it may not serve as the sole basis to establish that the application solves indeed the problem it purports to solve. In other words, if the technical effect is not plausible at the priority/filing date e.g. if the disclosure in the application as filed did not make it plausible that this problem had been solved, post-filed evidence could not be used to remedy the deficiency. Did you ask the right questions?'Friends have challenged me when buying some of the more expensive and important things in life, from a mobile phone contract to a car to a home. My problem is that I haven’t got a clue what the right questions are in those circumstances, so each time I’ve had to phone a friend to help me out. Only then did I get the questions – and answers – I needed. Few of us need reminding that issues of human sexuality have become increasingly political. From the legalisation of gay marriage without an electoral mandate, to the Church of England’s increasingly open attitude to same-sex relationships in church. All of us however need to remember that this is not simply a divisive political issue—it is a deeply personal one. Of the numerous books published recently on the church and same-sex attraction, this is the most helpful both in its fidelity to Scripture, and its personal pastoral sensitivity.

We would hope that all our results would be True Positives, or True Negatives. If that were the case, all research studies would be conclusive. Unfortunately, science is never that simple. There are ways to reduce, but not eliminate False Negative, and False Positive Results. As we go through the elements of a hypothesis, and study design, we will modify the table above in a way that the area of each of the 4 cells in the grid, is proportional to the likelihood of each particular outcome. The positive predictive value of this study is reflected by the area of TP divided by the area of TP+FP. If we calculate the PPV this study we come up with a value of 0.46. So given a powerful study, and a VERY charitable prior probability for homeopathy, a positive clinical trial result for homeopathy has positive predictive value a little worse than a coin toss. If you lower the prior probability to more accurate .01 (1%) the positive predictive value becomes .14. To identify leverage points for building a story a person has to draw on knowledge of the types of causes for events such as those that triggered the explanation process. This causal set is activated just-in-time in response to surprise or to ignorance. In the course of self-explaining, the causal set will be expanded and deepened, and a person’s mental model will become richer–the overall causal repertoire will be expanded. The leverage points people identify (the causes considered, and the cues noticed) will depend on the sophistication of the person’s mental model and the kinds of stories the person has considered in the past. So, stories determine the leverage points that are identified, and the leverage points identified will activate a set of causes and make certain cues more salient. The process of deepening Consciously or unconsciously, we all consider plausibility in interpreting events in our lives. For example, if one of your coworkers showed up late for work and grumbled about a traffic jam, you would likely accept his story without question. If, instead, the same coworker attributed his tardiness to an alien abduction, you would not be so charitable. In each case, he has provided the same level of evidence: his anecdotal account. You are likely to accept one story and reject the other because of a perceived difference in the plausibility. The skeptic’s mantra “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence” expresses this concept in a qualitative way.You will find that Ed’s book is Scripture-based and uses a rich mix of biblical arguments along with arguments drawn from experience, common sense and cultural analysis. Two appendices deal with the key Bible passages that mention homosexuality. However, there are other books that deal with these in more detail, such as Preston Sprinkle’s People to Be Loved. This book will also be hugely beneficial to those who, whilst not same-sex attracted, are called by Christ to long-term singleness and therefore celibacy. Shaw shows how God’s call to sexual purity and celibacy is not only possible but good. I love the way that he roots his teaching in the deep earth of great doctrines like union with Christ, the centrality of the church, and the reality of eternity. The fact that this is such a great book for all of us links to my only slight quibble with the book. The title may make people think it is exclusively about homosexuality when in fact it is about us all being sexual beings in need of the Holy Spirit's transforming power. Weekes, Robin. Review of Ed Shaw, The Plausibility Problem: The Church and Same–Sex Attraction (Nottingham: IVP, 2015). Churchman 129/2 (2015): 189–191. Although Matsuki et al. (2011) defined plausibility as the acceptability or likelihood of a situation or a sentence describing it, Connell and Keane (2006) defined plausibility as the degree of fit between a given scenario and prior knowledge.

Ed Shaw is well placed to write meaningfully about this topic. He is, according to his own description, an evangelical Christian who experiences same-sex attraction. This book is the product of his own wrestlings. The writing is bravely honest, even raw in places, as Ed explores his life choices, the implications for his relationships, and the truth or otherwise of Christian teaching and practice. What counts as causes for accidents, anomalies, and surprises? We generally know the types of things that come to mind as potential causes. These include events, decisions, forces, missing data, erroneous data, and flawed beliefs. But these factors are too general. For the analysis of the 23 cases of story-building, we found that we were attending to potential causes even as we were constructing the story. The plausibility transition model assumes that people have causal repertoires–their mental models include a capability for generating potential causes for a given outcome. Different people would have different causal repertoires of the types of things they would consider in building a story. What does the plausibility transition model look like when applied to actual instances? We use an example, the Air France Flight 447 accident, to answer this question. Air France flight 447D. J. Wood and D. J. Middleton. A study of assisted problem solving. British Journal of Psychology, 66:181–191, 1975. The Prior Probability is the likelihood, prior to beginning the study, that our premise is true. Prior Probability is a quantitative assessment of plausibility. Like sensitivity and specificity, prior probability can be expressed as a number between 0 and 1. A prior probability of 0 means that there is zero chance that the premise is true. A prior probability of 1 means that the truth of the premise is a certainty. In our table, we can display prior probability as the relative widths of the columns labeled “Treatment effective” and “Treatment ineffective”

Known (plausible) continuation: after she dries herself off she notices that her skin has turned red. Limitations of story-building. Stories generally have a sequential form, a chain of causes, which is often a necessary simplification but sometimes an over-simplification that misses explanations involving multiple intersecting causes.Along this line, Nahari et al. (2010) suggested that instances are judged more plausible if it is easier to recall similar instances, essentially the availability heuristic identified by Tversky and Kahneman (1974). Nahari et al. (2010) explored the factors that influence people’s judgment of the credibility of narratives. The study found that people’s assessment of the credibility of a narrative is influenced by several factors, including the language used, the plausibility of the events described, and the degree of absorption the listener experiences while hearing the story. Nahari et al. (2010) argued that language plays an important role in shaping people’s beliefs about the credibility of a narrative, with certain linguistic cues and patterns being associated with higher credibility. Additionally, the more plausible the events described in a story, the more likely people are to believe it. Finally, the level of absorption a person experiences while hearing a story has a strong impact on their credibility judgment, with highly absorbing stories being seen as more credible. The article highlighted the importance of considering these factors when evaluating the credibility of narratives.

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