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Can God’s
Existence and Natural Law Morality Be Proven by Human Reason Alone?: A Brief Critique of Presuppositional
Apologetics
By Eric V.
Snow
"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 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 complete 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 them 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 agree 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.
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," I think 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
live. 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 HWA
explained them during one evangelistic campaign in Oregon c. 1935.
PRESUPPPOSITIONALISM CONFUSES MAN’S ULTIMATE METAPHYSICAL
DEPENDENCE WITH HIS IMMEDIATE EPISTEMOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE
Presuppositionalism has a certain level
of truth to it, 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 being 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.
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 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 that (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.
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 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, require 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 their 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 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.
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. I don't believe
it's 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, I'm asserting 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.
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).
Here's 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 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, require 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. Here I agree to a degree what what you said
below.
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 I lead 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. I believe
that 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. I would start by showing that their 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 their case, which is
self-refuting. Hence, if you argue that everything you experience may be
a dream, you have to appeal to the listener's belief in people falling asleep
and having dreams. Ayn Rand called this the fallacy of the stolen
concept: Someone argues against a position while using covertly 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!
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 one's own mind.
Descartes, in his "Meditations" 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). I believe this argument to be a bad one, for it
confuses "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.
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 persaude people who are of a contrary
viewpoint: Try to find some common starting point first before leading
them to consider what you as the speaker believe in. It's much
like Paul's differing approaches for dealing with gentiles differently from
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 result in total rejection nearly
always. (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).
In light of this article's arguments, it's worth
some thought about how it explains the reality that an occasional
atheist capitulates. 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 astronomist who
created 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 live. I also believe that the
Intelligent Design people are making at least some agnostics and
atheists in the academic world sweat. For it would be important
to see if 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 most of them will mostly be
hostile against God (re: Romans 8:7, perhaps the verse that HWA cited the
most often in his writings), the occasion one who breaks undermines the presuppositionalist
position explained in this brief essay. HWA 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 John Locke's I believe). One Communist, the local
secretary of the Party, converted to the faith, based
upon prophecies in Daniel being historically fullfilled, when HWA
explained them during one evangelistic campaign in Oregon c. 1935.
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.
When Paul mentions adjusting the presentation of the Gospel for a Jew or
gentile audience that 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. For many are called, but not all are chosen.
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 modernists 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, I don't agree with Francis Shaeffer, who made Aquinas a leading
villan in his "Escape from Reason" and/or "The God Who Is
There," by giving 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.
The problem here in raising immediately with unbelievers any
values based explicitly on Christians 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 it comes to presuppositionalism, I reject it, and agree
with Aquinas' rejection of fideism. The existence of God isn't
self-evident, whether one is called or not. 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 expect them to take you the Christian
believer 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.
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. I
certainly don't believe any of them are "called," even if Behe was
complacent pro-evolutionist Roman Catholic, and Johnson a non-fundamentalist
Christian as well. 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 Afaith@ 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?"
I can give more examples of skeptics who were converted by
evidence, not merely emotional arguments. 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. 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.
Now, I perceive the rebuttal to such reasoning is 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). And, well, it's just tough luck for the rest, they
remain uncalled. I know you believe in a kind of universalism, but I
don't believe that can survive a straightforward interpretation of
Scripture. The obvious text against universalism of any kind is Matt.
25:46, the conclusion to 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.
I do not look upon the existence of God 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.
Notice how
such serious philosophy and theology has important practical
consequences: For example, if you can't trust your 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. I beg to differ: True philosophy is practical, for it helps
give you a paradigm or model for analyzing data correctly.
Above it has
been shown that presuppositionalism and fideism are mistaken Christian
teachings. 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. We should
instead 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.
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