Here is some of his work taken from his website http://www.vincentcheung.com “First, its adherents embrace intellectual tools and ideas that are inherently irrational, so that even if they first hold to divine revelation as their foundation, they still cannot justify or account for them. Thus it remains that these tools and ideas will permit and produce false conclusion no matter what. And it follows that to introduce them into their world view is to poison the entire system.

For example, while confronting the unbelievers and even the evidentialists, they marshal all kinds of arguments against the certainty of empirical investigations. Although they do not say that sensations cannot provide knowledge at all, they do insist that the unbelievers cannot account for their reliance on their sensations, and that their sensations at least sometimes deceive them.

But after they have asserted divine revelation as the necessary precondition for all knowledge, they never proceed to offer a precise demonstration on how it accounts for a reliance on sensations or the belief that our sensations provide a basically reliable way to obtain knowledge. They simply assert that it is so, and at times they would even throw around several biblical passages that they claim to support their view without actually showing their relevance or showing that they indeed prove what they claim that they prove. They likewise fail to account for or justify intuition, induction, and science, among other things.

Second, not only do they fail just as miserably as the unbelievers in justifying or accounting for their reliance on sensation, intuition, induction, and science, they even admit that these irrational ways of knowing and reasoning are necessary in order to discover the contents of divine revelation. In other words, although they claim that it is revelation that accounts for, say, our sensations, our sensations are what allow us to access revelation in the first place.

The result is not just one vicious circle disintegrating into a mess of confusion and nonsense, but worse than that, they have placed themselves in the exact position of the unbelievers – they make themselves and their own human investigation the center and precondition of all knowledge. They explicitly place revelation under sensation, intuition, induction, and science. And in many ways, this is even worse than even an explicitly anti-Christian philosophy that has enough sense to question irrational epistemologies.”

I would ask the atheist how does he or she know their memory is reliable? How does he or she know their five senses are reliable? As a Christian I believe faith is the foundation for reason. Like Augustine said “I believe in order to understand.”

These questions I have asked our first principles of Philosophy that one must presuppose for anything to be intelligible. However, I am curious given the atheism world-life-view in a general form, how does one justify presupposing the reliability of ones memory or five senses? Also, how does one account for the reliability?

Given the Christian worldview the Bible says humans were created in the image of God (Gen 1:26) by the reliable triune God, thus Christians can justify the reliability of their five senses and memory. Furthermore, Christians can account for the reliability of their memory and five senses because God is the one that created us.

Common Objections

One common objection is this does not answer a thing because there is supposable no coherent definition of the Christian God(I disagree, my definition would be found in the Baptist confession of faith of 1689 or the Westminster Confession of Faith)

Christians are appealing to authority. Absolutely if God testifies of himself (in special revelation specifically the Bible) or says something, we would have to believe it on his authority because there is no higher.

Our five senses and memory are not always reliable, so your belief of being made in God’s image and justifying the reliability of your memory is false. I would respond by saying we were made in God’s image, but once the fall of Adam and Eve occurred sin tainted our cognitive faculties (Total Depravity or Radical Corruption) causing our memories and five senses to be no longer reliable all the time.

The last time I checked my memory and five senses were reliable. This is circular reasoning (or begs the question) to say I know my memory and five senses are reliable because I used them and they were reliable. One must have an objective foundation, which given the Christian worldview is the Bible that accounts and justifies for the reliability of one’s memory and five senses. However, both the Christian and Atheist does circular reasoning concerning the relability of one’s memory and five senses, but the Christian worldview gives justification for believing it and can account for it. The Atheist given his worldview and his or her belief in a random, chance universe cannot.

What about other religions? I am not arguing for any other religion because I do not believe any other religion is true. All other religions fall short either they are incoherent, self-contradictory or do not provide the necessary preconditions of intelligability (Isaiah 43:10, John 4:16, Acts 4:12, Phil 2:10-11).

If our senses and memory weren’t reliable, we all would have died at a very young age.” This also begs the question one cannot assume the very thing we are debating about unless he or she has a foundation that gives justification for the relability of one’s memory and five senses that does not change like the Bible, not science.

Regarding Clark: Even if he has written more than anyone else on epistemology, it does not follow that quantity translates into quality. Clarkamentalists, of course, think he is the greatest philosopher who ever breathed. My colleague and I don’t take that position. In fact, I don’t think he was even a very good philosopher. You will find out why soon.

Larry — MB does discuss GC extensively in his Apologetics curriculum. Here, we have also begun and will continue. You may see my reflections on his view of science here. Soon, MB will be doing a dissection of Clark’s view of logic. His whole project of propositionalism will be slowly undermined by the discussion of Wittgenstein which will soon be picking up steam. And so forth.

Sometimes one feels like a better man for having overcome Clark. Conversely, we hope that even those that remain Clarkian after our discussion may have improved their thinking in some respect — may have become better Clarkians!

I was recently talking to a philosophy professor at my school concerning TAG. He presented an objection that I had not heard before. He says that TAG “goes too far” in that tries to attach an epistemological claim to a metaphysical claim, since TAG claims that all knowledge (the epistemological aspect) is grounded in God’s existence (the metaphysical aspect). I basically responded with, So what? How would one separate the two? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Keith

When you say that the Holy Spirit is the foundation of our assurance you are referring to our psychological assurance, correct?

I have been thinking that Christians can have logical certainty in the midst of psychological certainty. I don’t know if this amounts to anything meaningful. (That’s was the topic of my last blog post, if you’re interested.)