In Search of Evidence

Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Seeing is Believing
Of all the saints, Doubting Thomas is my favorite. The Gospel of John tells us how
Jesus appeared three days after his death before his disciples when Thomas is not
there. When his fellow disciples enthusiastically declare, ‘We have seen the Lord,’
Thomas reacts with disbelief, wanting to see concrete evidence of his former master’s
resurrection. About a week later, Jesus appears again, this time before all of his
disciples, and says to Thomas, ‘reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be
not faithless, but believing.’ Thomas, still not convinced, initially refuses. In the painting
by Caravaggio that is on the cover of this thesis, it is suggested that Jesus has to take
Thomas’s hand and force his doubting disciple to put his finger into his wounds. Only
when he sees as well as feels the evidence that Jesus is alive and not the product of a
collective hallucination does Thomas exclaim, ‘My Lord and my God.’ Jesus, unamused
by Thomas’s apparent lack of faith, then declares, ‘Because you have seen me, you
have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’ (John
20:24—29).
As an evidence-based practitioner, I have every sympathy with Thomas. After all,
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and a claim that a person is
resurrected from the dead therefore needs more compelling evidence than the
eyewitness testimony of close friends who are still shocked and grieving over his loss.
When confronted with a dilemma or problem, many people ask themselves, ‘What
would Jesus do?’ In their book Doubting Thomas has a Point, Johan Braeckman and
Maarten Boudry argue that one should ask instead, ‘What would Thomas do?’ I agree.
Asking for evidence to back up claims, especially when made in a professional context,
is the first and possibly most important step to evidence-based practice. And here’s the
good news: asking critical questions does not require a Harvard degree; everyone can
do it. Thomas was just a poor fisherman born in Galilee from a poor family and was
therefore most likely uneducated, but his lack of formal knowledge was more than
compensated for by his evidence-based approach.
Seeing is Believing — Or is it?
‘Seeing is believing’ is the essence of Thomas’s approach to Jesus’s resurrection
miracle. Seeing, however, is not enough, because what people see is often what they
want to see: we are inclined to interpret evidence in ways that confirm our existing
beliefs, and to ignore evidence to the contrary. This is not because we are stupid or
ignorant, but because this is the way the human brain works.