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Can God’s Existence and Natural Law Morality Be Proven by
Human Reason Alone?: A Brief Critique
of Presuppositional Apologetics
"Racism
is immoral in all places at all times."
Skeptical liberals typically claim to be cultural and moral relativists
who are certain of nothing. But can
they deny that statement?
Likewise, feminism is a system of moral absolutes: Chinese
foot-binding, female genital mutilation, and India’s suttee are immoral in all
places at all times, regardless of the "rich heritage" or "long
tradition" of any tribal culture or civilization to the contrary
otherwise. This argument against moral
relativism implicitly upholds natural law theory, which says certain basic
moral absolutes can be discovered by human reason alone, without the use of revelation
from God (i.e., the Bible). But does it
take a fundamentally mistaken approach to dealing with skeptics and
unbelievers? Presuppositionalism, which
is a theological school of Christian apologetics (defense of the Christian
faith) that a number of Calvinist theologians uphold, maintains that human
reason shouldn’t be used to prove natural law morality or God’s existence. This brief essay argues that God’s existence
and natural law can be proven by human reason alone and that
presuppositionalist apologetics uses a fundamentally flawed approach to
defending the Christian faith.
Now
pointing out that even liberals believe in moral absolutes is easy: That is, at
some level, everyone believes in basic minimum standards to human
behavior. But now this is much more difficult: How can we derive
"Thou shalt not murder" from matter in motion? C.S. Lewis,
James Q. Wilson, and Ayn Rand all have different philosophical approaches to
achieve this goal. So theoretically, could God have just
arbitrarily inverted various moral commandments? Could God have made adultery moral and avoiding it immoral?
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), the great Catholic theologian and philosopher,
upheld belief in a natural law that ultimately goes back to God as the Creator
of nature.
By
contrast, presuppositionalist apologetics denies that human reason can discover
moral absolutes while examining human society’s operations, the relationships
among people, and man’s relationship to the natural world. It also denies that God’s existence can be
proven. In contrast, here an
evidentialist approach to apologetics will be upheld. Despite the presently defective state of man's mind, certain
basic laws can be derived to establish a common ground between believers
and unbelievers in our presently pluralistic, general secular public
square. We have to witness to them using arguments derived from
nature that don't immediately reveal God as the Creator of
nature. Then, later on, we can reason back to the Creator as
the cause of it, if the unbelievers listen to and later (most unlikely)
accept what we Christians know from revelation/the Bible.
Hence, a Christian uses the arguments of intelligent design with
intelligent, informed skeptics who believe in evolution. Then,
if they are still granting the Christian a hearing, he or she moves
on to the historical and archeological evidence favoring the inspiration of the
Bible (such as fulfilled prophecy) as opposed to any other alleged holy
book. Of course, the unbelievers' rejection of Christianity may be
for any number of emotional or psychological reasons instead, such as the
desire to have a sex life without any moral rules beyond a
prohibition on using force (i.e., "between consenting adults.")
But it's still a way to leave them "without excuse," as per Romans
1:20.
DID THE FALL DAMAGE MAN’S MIND?
How
badly did the Fall damage man’s mind?
Classical Calvinist theory believes man’s reason, and the general
functioning of his mind, has become seriously and permanently disordered by
what they call the noetic consequences of sin.
But this teaching, as well as the doctrine of total moral depravity, are
both mistaken. Otherwise people could start plausibly reasoning
they aren't responsible for their moral decisions in life, much like someone
judged insane or mentally incompetent when on trial. It's obvious
from the world today and its past history that human nature is terribly
corrupt and evil. But as corrupt as man's mind is, as witnessed by Romans
1:18-32; 3:9-18, we shouldn’t infer total depravity or the complete
destruction of the reliability of man's mind due to the noetic
consequences of sin from these texts. There has to be some level of moral
competence when reasoning on what witness nature and the relationships within
human society give to thinking minds. An explicit Biblical witness for
natural law theory appears in Romans 2:14-16: "When Gentiles who
have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to
themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the
law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears
witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse
them." Such a text shows the all-encompassing view concerning
the noetic consequences of sin in damaging the human mind/heart and/or
the doctrine of total depravity are not correct. People mired in a sinful
lifestyle still can choose to do better or worse morally in the
circumstances they are in, even when they are uncalled to salvation
presently. For example, there are people who give up being alcoholics who
aren't true Christians through the Alcoholics Anonymous program.
Even the sense of "Enlightenment" that supposedly comes in
a pantheistic religion's tradition, such as Buddha's relative to when
he was of royalty and when he had been so stringently ascetic he
was torturing his body, can involve a movement from greater error to
lesser error, even though it doesn't save its adherents for eternal
life spiritually.
EVERYONE ULTIMATELY BELIEVES IN MORAL
ABOSOLUTES
Similarly,
consider C.S. Lewis' at times witty comments that everyone in all cultures
believes in a set of moral absolutes; they just disagree concerning their
extent and application ("Mere Christianity," p. 19):
"There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never
amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the
trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians,
Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans, what will strike him will be
how very like they are to each other and to our own. . . . for our present
purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality
would mean. Think of a county where people were admired for running away
in battle, or where a man felt proud of doublecrossing all the people who had
been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country
where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you
ought to be unselfish to--whether it was only your own family, or your fellow
countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agree that you ought not to
put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have
differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have
always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. But the
most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does
not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on
this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try
breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you
can say Jack Robinson."
So
a Christian can initially build from this (effectively) irreducible primary,
this moral sense everyone believes in when backed up against the wall and
cross-examined, to erect a crude set of basic minimums for running a secular
society. Then, if skeptical people are still open-minded, still listening
to the gospel, a Christian can go on to make the rational case for believing
that God exists and then that Creator has revealed Himself and His will for
humanity's actions in a particular holy book, the Bible. If they won't
listen, people at least have some moral basics to use as social glue for
the time being for secular law-making purposes before Jesus returns. The utilitarian principle, "the
greatest good for the great number," the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant’s “categorical imperative,” and the Golden Rule “Do unto others as you
would wish them to do to you,” which the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551-479
b.c.) also proclaimed separately long before Jesus (Matt. 7:12) did, are good
examples of secular moral principles that can help hold a society together
socially. In practical terms, a
Christian builds upon the secular liberals' own set of
self-admitted moral absolutes, such as "racism is immoral in all places
and all times." A Christian could then ask: "Well, now
that you've admitted that you think moral relativism is false, could
it not be theoretically possible that adultery is immoral in all places and at
all times? How do you know for certain otherwise?" This line
of reasoning then leads to the Christian having to explain
why nature's existence and complexity proves there is a Creator,
and why it's reasonable to accept in faith that the Bible
is His word rather than (say) the Quran.
CAN A MORAL RELATIVIST CONDEMN GOD FOR
ALLOWING EVIL?
Now
when most atheists and agnostics complain about the problem of evil, a
fundamental contradiction appears in their belief system: If you are a
moral relativist, you can't complain about God's allowing bad things to happen
to people, for you then you don't believe that "bad" even
exists! You can't ask, "Why did God allow the Holocaust to
occur?," thinking that line of reasoning successfully morally
condemns God, if you don't believe genocide is immoral in all places at
all times. So then, an atheist or agnostic has to believe in moral
absolutes to morally condemn God. But one of the main, practical,
psychological/emotional reasons for people becoming atheists and agnostics is
so that no one can tell them what to do, especially concerning their sex
lives. For example, Aldous Huxley, the British atheist
intellectual who wrote the novel "Brave New World," once admitted the
motives behind why he and others rationalized to an skeptical
position: "I have motives for not wanting the world to have meaning;
consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to
find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . For myself, as, no doubt, for
most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an
instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously
liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a
certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it
interfered with our sexual freedom." Atheists have emotions and
self-interested reasons too, and thus will rationalize their own position as
justified. Freud mistakenly believed
this weakness was only a vice of religious believers when atheists and
agnostics have lots of reasons to rationalize into their own positions as well.
Exception
alert: The band of atheists sired
by Ayn Rand, the strict Objectivists, apparently don't use the problem of evil
against belief in God because they believe in a “benevolent universe” to which
evil isn’t fundamentally intrinsic and because they respect and
value man's free will so much they won't complain about God's allowing man
to have it. They are also, in their peculiar if limited way, passionate
moral absolutists despite they reject the moral duty for
self-sacrifice/altruism. But since most atheists/agnostics are moral
relativists who frequently rail against God's allowance of evil, this
fundamental contradiction in their intellectual position should be pointed
out. (That is, unless and until they happen to reveal
themselves to be fans of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas
Shrugged," then a Christian needs to use another approach!)
AYN RAND’S PHILOSOPHICAL CASE FOR MORAL
ABSOLUTES
Ayn
Rand's arguments for natural law theory, for deriving an "ought" from
an "is," are unusually interesting. Her basic argument consists
of noting that only living entities need values to live, that inanimate objects
(like rocks, "matter in motion") don't need values. So then,
man, as the "rational animal" (as per the ancient Greek
philosopher Aristotle's definition), needs certain particular values to
live a rational and successful life, not just merely survive
physically. Let’s briefly quote her own reasonings in this regard
(all emphasis hers): "An ultimate value is that final goal
or end to which all lesser goals are the means--and it sets the standard by
which all lesser goals are evaluated. An organism's life is its standard
of value: that which furthers its life is the good, that
which threatens it is the evil. Without an ultimate goal or end, there
can be no lesser goals or means: a series of means going off into an
infinite progression toward a nonexistent end is a metaphysical and
epistemological impossibility.
[Ironically, a similar denial of an infinite regress is fundamental to
many classical arguments for God’s existence!—EVS] It is only an ultimate
goal, an end in itself, that makes the existence of values
possible. Metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon that is an
end in itself: a value gained and kept by a constant process of
action. [Notice that here, from a Christian viewpoint, she starts
to jump the tracks. For Christians believe this physical life is not
an end in itself, but training for a spiritual afterlife, and that God created
this life for His own purposes rather than our self-chosen ones--EVS]
Epistemologically, the concept of 'value' is genetically dependent upon and
derived from the antecedent concept of 'life.' To speak of 'value' as
apart from 'life' is worse than a contradiction. 'It is only the concept
of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible.' In answer to those
philosophers who claim that no relation can be established between ultimate
ends or values and the facts of reality, let me stress that the fact that
living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values and of
an ultimate value which for any given living entity is its own life.
[Notice how she slips in, at the base of her system, the case for attacking
self-sacrifice--EVS]. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be
achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living
entity is, determines what it ought to
do. [Despite all her flaws in her general philosophical
position, this is a particularly brilliant observation--EVS] So much
for the issue of the relation between 'is' and 'ought.'" ("The
Virtue of Selfishness," p. 17) It's true she didn't solve as much as
this problem as she thinks here, for one could come back and argue about
"side constraints," that is, why shouldn't men be parasites or
aggressors against other men to get the values they need to survive.
Nevertheless, her general argument for natural law theory deserves
careful examination and consideration before being arbitrarily
rejected. Her brief essay, "The Cult of Moral Grayness," is
particularly striking when one realizes a nearly fanatical atheist wrote
it!
IF PRESUPPOSITIONALISM IS TRUE, WHY DO A FEW
ATHEISTS OCCASIONALLY CAPITULATE?
If
presuppositionalism is true, why does an occasional atheist or agnostic
defect? The most interesting case as of late was Sir Anthony Flew, a
famous philosophical atheist who converted to some kind of theism at the tail
end of his life. Sir Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who conceived of the
"Steady State" theory of the universe, the long-time rival view of
its origins against the "Big Bang" theory, converted to
some kind of pantheism based on his calculations about the unlikelihood that
random chemical reactions would create life. The Intelligent Design
theorists are making at least some agnostics and atheists in the academic
world sweat: Perhaps these harshly
anti-Christian, atheistic polemics by Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens are the
secular intelligentsia’s responses to this sense of unease, like “antibodies”
sent in to attack the “virus” of theism. Examine carefully how the
atheist or agnostic in question personally explains his own change of
mind: Would he give an emotional or rational reason? If it's a
rational one, would it be based upon an empirical argument for God's
existence? So then, if we have an occasional atheist or agnostic who
converts, what does that say about their presuppositions? Aren't then
these people at least partially reachable, even when uncalled in this
life? They don't automatically always rule out in advance empirical
arguments for God's existence based on their own presuppositions or
premises. So although they will hostile against considering arguments for
God’s existence (re: Romans 8:7, perhaps the verse that Herbert W.
Armstrong (HWA) cited the most often in his writings), the occasional one who
breaks undermines the presuppositionalist position explained in this brief
essay. Herbert W. Armstrong, in his “Autobiography,” used the example of
one Communist Party member who was successfully put on the defensive
by him when using an interesting empirical argument for God's existence
(that was like the English philosopher John Locke's I believe). One
Communist, the local secretary of the Party, converted to the faith,
based upon prophecies in Daniel being historically fulfilled, when he
explained them during one evangelistic campaign in Oregon c. 1935.
When one looks at what men like Denton, Behe, and Johnson
have written, one sees how they realized based on the scientific evidence and
the philosophical reasoning on that evidence how shaky Darwinism is. None
of them "called" (John 6:44) to accept God’s full truth doctrinally,
even if Behe was a complacent pro-evolutionist Roman Catholic, and Johnson a
non-fundamentalist Christian as well, before the Intelligent Design movement
began. True, if anyone is intent on disbelieving, he can continue to
disbelieve. But the goal of (for example) intelligent design, and for that
matter Christian apologetics in general, is to put forth a reasonable case to
the general public, and thereby remove intelligent barriers to
faith. Consider, for example, how reluctant C.S. Lewis in embracing
Christianity as being literally true, yet it was an evidentialist approach that
finally broke the back of his unbelief. C.S. Lewis had been an atheist
for many years, but his “faith” had begun to crumble after having read George
MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, and various romantics. Then a key nail in the
coffin of his unbelief was delivered thus: As described in
"Surprised by Joy," he wrote:
"But I hardly remember, for I had not long finished The
Everlasting Man [by G.K. Chesterton which had made Christianity much more
sensible to him] when something far more alarming happened to me. Early
in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on
the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity
of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. 'Rum thing ,' he went
on. 'All that stuff of Frazer=s [author of The Golden Bough] about
the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really
happened once.' To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need
to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in
Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs,
were not--as I would still have put it--'safe,a where could I turn?"
Other examples of skeptics who were converted by evidence,
not merely emotional arguments, exist. Many who became traditional
Christians (who likely were never called by God based upon Acts 5:32 as applied
to Sabbath-keeping) used to be atheists or agnostics. These
traditional Christians were persuaded by the rational evidence for God’s
existence and/or the Bible’s reliability before committing themselves to a
Christian way of life personally. For example, Josh McDowell set out to
refute Christianity based on history and philosophy--and came back a believer.
Frank Morison, a journalist, set out to prove the resurrection of Jesus
was a myth--but came back a believer after carefully investigating the actual
historical facts concerning it in the New Testament. Sir William Ramsay,
the famed archeologist, was an agnostic who totally distrusted the New
Testament, including the writings of Luke. Due to actual field
excavations he oversaw, such as the discovery of the city of Lystra mentioned
in the book of Acts, he became a believer. Lew
Wallace, who wrote Ben Hur, had been an agnostic and intended to portray
Jesus as only a man in this novel, but after his run-in with the famed
unbeliever Robert Ingersoll and further research, became a believer, and so
described Jesus as both God and man in this novel.
PRESUPPPOSITIONALISM CONFUSES MAN’S ULTIMATE METAPHYSICAL
DEPENDENCE WITH HIS IMMEDIATE EPISTEMOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE
Presuppositionalism
has a certain level of truth, since there's no way for atheists to escape
metaphysically the reality that God caused and created everything around
us. But proving this to them by a
readily verifiable means epistemologically is quite another story.
(Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with how humans gain
knowledge. It deals with the question, "How do you know that you
know?" Metaphysics is the branch that deals with what
fundamental types of beings and entities exist in the universe and how
they relate to each other. For example it deals with such questions
as: Is there just one kind of "stuff" in the universe,
monism," or are there two kinds of "stuff," dualism? Does
God exist? Is the universe fundamentally orderly or chaotic?
Do human beings have free will?)
There
is common ground, not just a point of contact, between Christians and
unbelievers. Let’s use this analogy: Our natural moral
knowledge is like the seen part of an iceberg. About 10% of
floats above water’s surface, 90% below. The 90% would be the much
greater, more certain moral knowledge we have from supernatural revelation,
from the Bible and from the Holy Spirit. The Christian and skeptic (of
whatever other faith, including atheism) can agree on a good amount of
the 10%. For example, both sides could agree that genocide is
immoral in all places at all times, as part of this crude minimum. This
moral foundation is based on the limited knowledge available by human
reason alone that both sides can agree on by consensus.
Then the Christian can defend the faith by
working from the truths both sides hold in common (based on human reason
and sense experience alone) to show the folly of atheism.
It's necessary to make a distinction between what a believer
knows is true about the world based on the Bible versus what the unbeliever
thinks he knows about the world, based on his limited human reason and emotion
alone. To the extent the unbeliever believes in a truth that the Bible
also teaches, such as the reality of the material external world outside our
consciousnesses, that's also God's truth. But the unbeliever doesn't
recognize it as such until and until such time as he accepts the total package
of the Christian worldview. Hence, natural theology is also part of
Biblically-based truth (at least when done correctly, for believers certainly
can push it too far), but an unbeliever who is (say) a Deist based on such arguments
doesn't recognize or accept how such truths are based on the Christian
worldview. Hence, the metaphysical dependence of the unbeliever on God
and the Christian worldview need not be accepted mentally by the unbeliever for
him to believe in various scattered truths that are part of the Christian
worldview.
A Christian and an
atheist can have a common meeting ground epistemologically at the
starting point of a debate concerning the reliability of sense experience and
inferences drawn from it, even though the atheist's foundation for the
reliability of generalizations from his sense experience isn't fully sound metaphysically.
That is, the atheist can have a weak or inadequate reason for
believing in the rationality assumption that excludes God metaphysically (or
ontologically) as the cause of that natural order he asserts to
exist. Of course, if instead the atheist or agnostic is an all-out
skeptic (ala Hume or Feyerbend) who strongly denies the rationality
assumption, then he's just signed over human reason to the Christian! I
don't consider it coincidence that the German philosopher Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) attacked both the traditional proofs for God's existence and
undermined the reliability of human reason concerning sense experience in
"The Critique of Pure Reason." This makes his worldview the
exact opposite of Thomas Aquinas: Instead of having both faith and
reason, Kant had neither faith nor reason! (Admittedly, this is somewhat
unfair to Kant). It’s not a coincidence
that in the centuries since Kant’s work intellectually terminated the
Enlightenment that Western civilization has increasingly become more irrational
and less Christian at the same time.
Now,
it's true that the presuppositionalist position has a certain foundational truth
to it concerning the implications of God's being the Creator. That
is, all His handiwork, including humanity’s innate mental and
psychological nature, reflects inescapably at some level His character and
His power (cf. Genesis 1:26-27), even in its present generally damaged and
fallen state before its restoration (Romans 8:19-21): "For the
creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the
creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him
who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its
bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of
God." Therefore, if one reasons far enough back, any
attempt to deny God's existence ultimately boomerangs back at the denier,
much like a metaphysical axiom. (An axiom is a philosophical statement
that is so universally true that to deny it proves it. For example, the
French philosopher Descartes' famous statement, "I think, therefore I
am," is an axiom. Any total skeptic who doubts his own
existence ironically proves it since he has to exist in order to
have a mind that doubts!)
Nevertheless,
perhaps the foundational mistake of presuppositionalism is its need to do
so much reasoning beyond immediately verifiable statements, which undercuts its
effectiveness to persuade unbelievers. It's indeed true that
only the fool says there is no God (Ps. 14:1). But since we can't see God
directly, like the sun during the daytime, proving that the
atheist ultimately contradicts himself is a long, difficult,
tedious process. Here presuppositionalism indeed ultimately becomes
a giant version of begging the question, or reasoning in a circle: The
atheist can evade being caught by that circle if we Christians choose to
discard meeting him on commonly agreed epistemological ground (i.e., the
basic reliability of human reason and sense experience, such as shown by the
technological achievement that put men on the moon).
USING INITIALLY LIMITED KNOWLEDGE TO CATCH
ATHEISTS IN AN ULTIMATE EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRAP
The
atheist doesn't know in advance where the facts he knows may lead once the
Christian points out their implications. For example, intelligent design
theory does this by pitting the concept of irreducible complexity up
against the theory of evolution's claim (in the gradualistic neo-Darwinist
version) that each small step of development gives a living creature
a selective advantage in its struggle to survive as part of a species.
The atheist, at his starting point, isn't aware of (for example)
scientific statements that he would assent to ultimately prove God's
existence. The Christian's job, when defending the faith, is to show by
inference, demonstration (like geometry's theorems), and dialog that what
the atheist knows or believes contradicts his own belief system once the
ultimate implications of those facts are known. The
philosophical goal also is to show to atheists and agnostics that
they are loading the dice metaphysically: They assume a priori
(before experience) when interpreting all biological and other
scientific facts that God didn't create nature. Indeed, they arbitrarily define “science” in
this manner that all its explanations must exclude any recourse to the
miraculous or supernatural. Therefore, having ruled out God in advance in the
premises of all their arguments, they shouldn’t be surprised that He can't
possibly come out as a conclusion. The GIGO principle rules:
Garbage in, garbage out. Hence, they end up "explaining"
everything natural came to be via evolution with "just-so"
stories that are little better than Greek and Roman myths. The
basic response to them here should always be, "Nature
cannot always explain nature." Why should God be ruled out in
advance a priori? Doesn’t that rig the contest to benefit skeptics? “Science” shouldn’t be defined in a way
arbitrarily to exclude any possibility of the supernatural: When an evolutionist does this, he or she is
engaged in philosophy, not science. Now, this version of evidentialist
apologetics shouldn't be confused with getting any particular atheist or
agnostic to believe in God and/or the Bible, for many will continue to reject
God for emotional/psychological reasons. Furthermore, the
spiritually uncalled are more likely to persist in unbelief than the
called, for the Holy Spirit hasn't opened their minds to belief (John 6:44,
65). But the goal is to tear down at least the intellectual defenses that
they erect to protect their unbelief, and put them on the defensive.
PRESUPPOSITIONALISM CONFUSES MAN’S METAPHYSICAL AND
EPISTEMOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE ON GOD
It's
necessary to make a distinction between the ultimate ontological dependence of
all humanity on God and the immediate sense experience and rational processes
of any individual's mind. God is the ground of being (the "ens
realissimum" for Kant), the ultimate reality, since He's the Creator and
caused the universe to be created out of nothing by an act of
will. As a subset of the created universe, the human mind has
its origins in God's creative act, thus allowing us to be able to think or
reason at all. Therefore, any supposed "fact" that seems to
conflict with that Truth (God as the Creator), such as the kinds of evidence
cited to favor evolution, requires some human being to be misinterpreting his
or her sense experience. All correct interpretations of our sense
experience lead back to God ultimately, directly or indirectly.
But
it's another matter when discussing the truth with any given individual.
He may deny God's existence or some truth about Him without knowing
immediately the contradiction involved. To adequately deal with such
people, we have to start with the minimal sense data they will
affirm, their limited "circle of knowledge," and then
reason outwards from it towards God's truth step-by-step to show their
errors. (True, at any step on the way, they can emotionally reject going
along, but let’s leave that issue to the side presently). In this limited
circle of knowledge, they may believe in the rational knowability of the
universe for inadequate reasons and/or ones that take for granted the
cultural inheritance they got from centuries of believing Christian scientists
and scholars. But that's good enough for a Christian's
initial apologetic purposes. Even the minimal amount that an atheist
will affirm as being true metaphysically, even if the atheist is
a skeptic, will lead to contradictions that can undermine their faith
in skepticism and atheism. A Christian then starts by showing that atheists’
denials of certain axioms (philosophical statements about fundamental
realities) boomerang against them. For example, anyone denying the
reality of the material world outside of their own minds (solipsism) has
to use some fact drawn from the outside world to argue his or her
case, which is self-refuting. Hence, if someone argues that everything he
experiences may be a dream, he has to appeal to the listener's belief in people
falling asleep and having dreams to make his argument work. Ayn Rand
called this the fallacy of the stolen concept: Someone argues against a
position while covertly using some fact drawn from it. This is how
many philosophers ironically have used human reason (which they
assume to be reliable when making these arguments) to undercut human
reason's reliability!
The existence of God isn’t as axiomatically provable in
the way that (say) Objectivism proves the external real world to
exist, by saying any rejection of it uses some kind of evidence taken
from it to cast doubt on it. (This is what Ayn Rand called the
fallacy of the stolen concept). For example, if the skeptic
says, "Everything could be a dream," this statement assumes that
people fall asleep and have dreams, which are facts about the eternal real
world. Similarly axiomatic, there's Descartes' (or
Augustine's) argument about a person can't deny his own existence:
"I think, therefore, I am." The one who doubts has to exist in
order to doubt. A denial of God's existence isn't clearly immediately
absurd as the denier of such philosophical axioms are: They don't
immediately boomerang back and hit the one denying them with the self-evident
absurdity of his position.
THE APOSTLE PAUL’S USE OF COMMON RELIGIOUS
GROUND BETWEEN PAGANS AND CHRISTIANS
Because
of this common ground, Paul could go up onto Mars Hill in
Athens, mention the altar erected by pagans to the unknown God
(Acts 17:23), and then say its God was the true God, the Creator.
After citing the pagan poet who said (Acts 17:28-29), "For we are indeed
his offspring," he then drew the conclusion, "Being God's offspring,
we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a
representation by the art and imagination of man." He couldn’t do this without admitting implicitly
that this pagan poet's religious reasoning was
valid. Paul here was doing some natural
theology, much like how he reasoned that the creation witnesses to God's
existence and eternal power (Romans 1:19-20).
But presuppositionalism and natural theology are in intrinsic
opposition. Ultimately
presuppositionalism amounts to a type of fideism (the belief that God's
existence should not be proven by believers, but only accepted in
faith). By contrast, unlike what Thomas Aquinas (and Herbert W.
Armstrong) believed, natural theology maintains God's existence (and
some of His attributes) could be proven by human reason. The
anthropic principle of intelligent design theory, for example, is
a contemporary version of natural theology: If the
physical universe’s attributes and characteristics, as described by
mathematical equations and variables, were every so slightly changed, humanity
couldn't exist. Therefore, the world was designed specially for us, for
we aren't the chance product of slime oozing over rocks for eons of
time. The contemporary way atheists and
agnostics often try to duck this reality is to assert that many universes
exist. Of course, these are
unverifiable and unprovable, which ironically puts them into the camp of
fideist Christians. Instead of
believing in a God that they can’t prove to exist, they believe in many
universes which they can’t prove to exist.
A good Christian response is that it’s easier to believe in a personal
almighty God than in multiple universes.
WHY SHOULD CHRISTIANS SAY THE BIBLE IS THE
WORD OF GOD INSTEAD OF THE QURAN?
We
have to say why we believe the Bible is the inspired word of God instead of
(say) the Quran. Any reason given (other than, "just
because") involves giving some opinion or reason that
the skeptic or infidel might consider. As R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and
Arthur Lindsley say (their emphasis, "Classical Apologetics: A
Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional
Apologetics," p. 139): "This first point--that we know the
Bible is the Word of God because it says so--has a glaring weakness as an
argument. The argument would seem to take two forms. First the Bible
is the Word of God because it, the Bible, says that it is the Word of
God. Not any book that says it is the Word of God is the Word of
God, but only this particular book. Suppose we ask, 'Why is that
true only of this book"? [Again, consider the claims Muslims
would advance on behalf of the Quran in this context--EVS]. One cannot
simply answer, 'Because.' There must be some reason. But whatever
reason is given is fatal to the [presuppositionalist's] case, because then one
is not believing the Bible is the Word of God because it says so; but for some other
reason. Suppose, second, that the argument is the general formula that any
religious book that claims to be the Word of God must be so. Even
that would be fatal for the specific case of the Bible. Even then, we
would not be believing the Bible because it says it is the Word of God
but because that is a characteristic of a certain class. That argument
would be fatal for another reason. It would prove that there are many
Words of God, all of them differing from, conflicting with, and contradicting
one another. This would make God the author of confusion. So the
notion that the Bible is the Word of God because it says so is simply not
true. It would make no difference it is said so three million times--not
merely three thousand--for such assertions do not prove what is asserted."
DOES THE RATIONALITY ASSUMPTION ABOUT THE
UNIVERSE HAVE AN EMPIRICAL FOUNDATION?
The
rationality assumption about the universe has a certain empirical basis to
start with. It isn’t purely subjective, although it may be a matter of
selective perception (i.e., is the glass half full or half empty?)
Otherwise, even primitive peoples wouldn't have perceived the cyclical
aspects of nature, such as for planting and harvest, birth and death, winter
and summer, day and night, etc. Furthermore, educated ancient
Greeks influenced by Aristotle and certain other Greek philosophers at
some level had to believe the universe was scientifically knowable. Here, of course, it’s being asserted that
the scientific method of induction (or generalization from sense experience)
has relevance even when doing metaphysics, for I don't perceive myself that the
universe is merely chaotic, especially the non-animate part! I'm not a Humean
skeptic concerning regularities not proving the law of cause and effect,
since I believe making an inference from observation to an object's essence
is a sound procedure. (David Hume, the skeptical 18th century
Scottish philosopher, famously claimed that seeing two billiard balls hit each
other doesn't prove one actually causes the other to move, since “cause” has to
be inferred into the observed event).
But here Ayn Rand has a better argument: The law of cause and effect is merely the law of identity
("A is A," a thing is always itself, the most basic law of
logic) over time: What a thing DOES is based on what it IS. Hence, the different effects from dropping a
bowling bowl and a feather result because of the different essences,
characteristics, and attributes of these two entities.
WHY DESCARTES’ DOUBTS ULTIMATELY LEAD TO GOD
Descartes, in his "Meditations" skeptically used
doubt against his senses and belief in God, but then worked his way back out of
this skeptical hole. From the viewpoint
of the debate between presuppositionalism and evidentialism, it’s an
interesting example of how the human mind can’t escape from God if human reason
is used correctly. Ironically,
Descartes used the ontological argument for God's existence to show the sense
data that his mind received was reliable. (After all, he argued that
theoretically a "malignant demon," which is really a stand-in
for an all-powerful Satan, could be deceiving him about all he
saw, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled, not just some of
it). This argument for God’s existence is ultimately flawed by
confusing "existence" as an idea with existence as an
actual reality. But it goes like this (in Descartes' version, which
isn't as clever as Anselm's original version): 1. All
perfections are found in God. 2. Existence is a perfection.
3. Therefore, God exists. He also assumed that the perfect God
would then never deceive him or allow his mind when working correctly to
produce error: "Since it is impossible that he should will to
deceive me, it is likewise certain that he has not given me a faculty that will
ever lead me into error, provided I use it aright." (Descartes,
"Meditations" in "The Rationalists," p. 145). Notice
that he's conscious of the problem of evil and rejecting it when drawing
this conclusion. He believes God is
good, so God isn’t a trickster.
Descartes' reasoning in "The
Meditations" that descends into skepticism and doubt and ascends
back into faith and reason is still by no means fully flawed. To
adequately deal with atheists and skeptics, a Christian has to start from their
starting point in practical terms to lead them to see the contradictions in
their worldview. To start from premises (or presuppositions) far
outside their experience or purported knowledge immediately loses the
battle to convert them rationally. Remember the old practical approach of
effective public speaking when aiming to persuade people who are of a contrary
viewpoint: The speaker tries to find some common starting point first
before leading them to accept the speaker’s beliefs. It's much like
Paul's differing approaches for dealing with gentiles and Jews, and aiming to be
all things to all men when initially sharing the gospel with them (I
Cor. 9:19-23). Presuppositionalism just tries to throw much too much at
them all at once from outside their circle of knowledge, which will nearly
always result in total rejection. (This principle is also why
Intelligent Design, as opposed to standard brand young earth
model Scientific Creationism, is much more likely to get an initial
hearing and some respectful consideration in academic circles). It's
better to start out small, from the skeptical atheists' own more limited
sense experience, and then move outwards towards God and the truth of the Bible
that the Christian already knows is true, but the skeptical atheist
denies. (True, anyone uncalled won't convert fully to true Christianity,
but that's a largely separate issue).
Descartes' formula always had a key flaw in it, which is
known as the "prior certainty of consciousness." The rival
school, which Aristotle affirmed, maintained "the intentionality of
consciousness." That is, to be conscious you automatically have
to be aware of something outside of your own mind. Ayn Rand
explained the philosophical reasoning behind this
approach in "Atlas Shrugged" (p. 942): "If nothing
exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be
conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of
nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify
itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that
which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not
consciousness." Hence, it's an axiom (a fundamental philosophical
statement that when denied is proven) that consciousness can't have its
awareness limited to just its own mind.
DON’T TRY TO PROVE TOO MUCH AT ONCE OR REJECTION
AUTOMATICALLY OCCURS
The problem here in raising immediately with unbelievers any
values based explicitly on Christian values is that they will often
automatically ignore that believer. One can say that's the wrong response
all we wish, but that often doesn't open any of their minds even a crack.
From the viewpoint of practical persuasive techniques, it better to operate
like Paul did on Mars Hill in Athens, who cited a pagan poet, in order to find
common ground with the audience he was preaching to. On the other hand,
when he entered a synagogue, he could start right away in citing Old Testament
Scripture before preaching about Christ as the Savior and Messiah. He
could adapt the beginning of his message to his audience while still leading them
to the end point of full Biblical truth.
Hence, if someone attempts to discuss the six days of creation and the Flood,
let alone the young earth model, when criticizing the theory of evolution,
normally someone committed to the other side will totally discount the
creationist. It's simply asking them to change their minds too much too
quickly on subjects that are so fundamental to someone's worldview.
However, when the intelligent design people leave the Bible out of their
initial statements of criticism of the theory of evolution, they can get
hearings from secular academics that someone starting out using Genesis could
never get. Phillip Johnson, the author
of “Darwin on Trial, has had personal success in this regard, so this isn’t a
theoretical discussion merely. We can agree that we have to lead skeptics
to the truth, but we have to use Paul's technique of being all things to all
men when we start out with unbelievers when trying to persuade them to
believe. Hence, if we (Christians) can use secular logic with otherwise
close-minded skeptics who are willing to listen to a non-religious presentation
of arguments against abortion and against legalizing sex with pre-menstrual
girls in order to influence government policy, why not? Later on, if they
show themselves to be somewhat open-minded, we can come back, and chip away at
their skepticism some more, and hope that God is calling them.
When Paul mentions adjusting the presentation of the Gospel
for a Jew or gentile audience, that shows we Christians today should carefully
present our faith as well to make it easier for called skeptics to
repent. For it's surely possible, at least from an Arminian viewpoint,
for a badly presented gospel message to keep some called people from accepting
the truth. If we believe that people
have free will, and aren’t predestined to the lake of fire, then we should aim
to use the best persuasive methods possible. For many are called, but not
all are chosen (Matthew 20:16, KJV).
Christians should reject presuppositionalism today, much as
Aquinas rejected fideism in the High
Middle Ages. The existence of God isn't
self-evident to people in today’s world before the millennium. He cannot
be directly observed presently, like the sun. So instead the existence of
God is inferred from nature, much in the way that astronomers predicted and
later discovered Neptune by perceiving the effects that its gravitational
pull on Uranus. Presuppositionalism is a kind of cosmic theological
Catch-22: "Since you, the unbelievers, aren't persuaded, I the
believer can ignore anything you say. Only we the believers can possibly
know the truth since we're the only ones whose minds God has opened to receive
it." Paul did not use this approach on Mars Hill, but referred
to an altar with the inscription, "To an unknown God," and also to a
poet's statement, "for we also are His offspring," as philosophical
common ground with his gentile audience. (If this can be
explained as "presuppositional," then the term is beginning to lose
its meaning). But, of course, this is no way to deal with
Muslims or agnostics/atheists and to expect them to take the Christian believer
proclaiming his belief seriously. They will reply, such as with the
Quran or the problem of evil, and say, "How do you explain this or
that?" Thomas Woodward's book about the history of the intelligent
design movement, "Doubts about Darwin," shows how those few scholars
in the secular academic world have been quite successful in getting a hearing
and working out rules of engagement with a number of their secular
opponents. True, it's a minimalist position, since they deliberately put
aside matters like the young earth issue and the worldwide flood, for to raise
those issues involves going too far, too fast: One gets total rejection,
when if one acts as Paul did in being all things to all men (i.e., stating
one's position in words that the other side can agree with to degree), one can
win a hearing.
Now a Calvinist, believing in predestination, may say that
God will only let those who become converted be those He chose in advance to
become converts, after He uses whatever persuasive process that He put
into motion (John 6:44; 65; Romans 8:29-30; 10:14-18). And, well, it's
just tough luck for the rest, since they remain uncalled and will end up in the
lake of fire. The obvious text against
universalism of any kind, which is sometimes used to escape this conclusion, is
Matt. 25:46, the end of the parable of the sheep and goats: "And
these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal
life." Just as long as eternal life lasts for the righteous,
so too does eternal punishment (not eternal punishing) for the
wicked.
Notice how such serious philosophy and
theology has important practical consequences: For example, if man can’t
trust his senses, then any and all scientific and engineering work is folly
from the get-go. We Americans tend to be ruthlessly pragmatic, and to
dismiss such thinking as a waste of time. However, true philosophy is practical,
for it helps give you a paradigm or model for analyzing data correctly.
CHRISTIANS SHOULD LEARN FROM NON-CHRISTIANS WHILE
MAINTAINING THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE
There's also a difference between what an apologist like
Thomas Aquinas generally advocated and what the modernist liberal Protestants
that Machen debated did. The modernist liberals compromised and moved
away from the historical Biblical beliefs of the Protestant church in order to
look better to skeptical humanists, such as by denying the miracles of the
Bible. But someone like Aquinas generally looked over pagan philosophy,
especially Aristotle's, in order to find arguments favoring Catholic teachings
and doctrines. A good example of this would be the impossibility of an
infinite regress as proof of an uncaused cause, who is God. True, there
might be a few areas in which Aquinas compromised excessively with pagan
philosophy, but in this regard he did much better than the Islamic philosophers
who were heavily influenced by Aristotle as well (such as ibn-Rushid,
etc.) In this regard, Francis Shaeffer is mistaken, who made Aquinas a
leading villain in his "Escape from Reason" and/or "The God Who
Is There," by giving human reason some independence from
revelation/Biblical faith. In this regard, I side with Aquinas. The
problem with human reason mainly arises when it decides to contradict some
clear truth of Scripture, such as by proclaiming the theory of evolution.
Otherwise, philosophy can be a very useful if limited handmaiden to theology.
Above it has been shown that
presuppositionalism and fideism are mistaken Christian teachings. Instead, we should accept the general
approach of Thomas Aquinas and Herbert W. Armstrong, that God’s existence and
the Bible can be proven to be the Word of God, even though such evidence will
never be so overwhelming in this age before Jesus’ return to necessarily
persuade the uncalled to salvation.
Since man can’t know immediately by his own sense experience and logic
that God exists in his present fallen state, it’s necessary to use reason as
well as faith to persuade him to accept the Gospel. Christians need to start with the beliefs that they have in
common with skeptics in order to persuade them of God’s truth, should they be
called or at least willing to change their basic worldview. In this light,
Christians should (I Peter 3:15) “always [be] ready to make a defense to
everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you.”
Click here to access essays that defend Christianity: /apologetics.html
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Is the theory of evolution true? /Apologeticshtml/Darwins God Review.htm
Is the Bible God’s Word? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Is the Bible the Word of God.htm
Why does God Allow Evil? Click here: /Apologeticshtml/Why Does God Allow Evil 0908.htm
Is Christian teaching from ancient paganism? /Bookhtml/Paganism influence issue article Journal 013003.htm
Which is right?: Judaism or Christianity? /Apologeticshtml/Is Christianity a Fraud vs Conder Round 1.htm
/Apologeticshtml/Is Christianity a Fraud vs Conder Round 2.htm
Should God’s existence be proven? /Apologeticshtml/Should the Bible and God Be Proven Fideism vs WCG.htm
Does the Bible teach blind faith? Click here: /doctrinalhtml/Gospel of John Theory of Knowledge.htm
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