By adapting the philosophical method to the data of faith, theology attempts to "confound the adversaries of the faith," "strengthen those weak in their faith," and "delight those whose faith is complete".
An industry of scholarship has grown up around debating the pros and cons of collecting quantitative data on faith; much of it points to the deeply unreliable nature of such facts and figures, and "surveyitis" more generally.
John Ewing, who served as the executive director of the American Mathematical Society for fifteen years, told me that he is perplexed by educators' "infatuation with data," their faith that it is more authoritative than using their own judgment.
According to www.adherents.com, a site which gathers data on faith from many sources, that honour goes to juche, the national ideology of North Korea, which is credited with 19m followers.
Wikis are eventually self-correcting by nature, but tell that to the investor who takes an erroneous piece of data on faith in the middle of an edit war and buys or sells a stock because of it.
Issues around recruitment & retention, improving data, engaging faith communities, training, challenging stigma, impact assessing policies and systems were ongoing.
To fight back against that kind of lie, Duncan like many education reformers resolved to put his faith in "data". Data may not always give the whole picture, he concluded, but it can "be counted on not to lie". Or can it?
These moments are the data for which faith must supply a hypothesis.
My husband and a shop managed to retrieve the data but my faith in his computer was forever lost.
