The following article is from the current edition of Faith for all of Life, the bi-monthly publication of the Chalcedon Foundation.
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We live in an age of unbelief. Our culture has abandoned its faith in God’s Word and has turned aside to idols. Humanism has replaced Christianity as the established religion. Our churches as well have ingested the toxin of humanism and no longer hold out a viable alternative to the unbelief of our age. This is why Christianity seems to be irrelevant.
There are many ways Christians are called to combat unbelief. Education and political activism are perhaps the most apparent. But the most effective way to combat unbelief is through apologetics. We must confute the gainsayer and establish the truth of Christianity if we expect to once again dominate the institutions and thought of our culture.
But we cannot effectively defend Christianity against unbelief unless we know something about the faith we endeavor to defend. To often, well-intentioned Christians pursue apologetics without considering the issue of methodology. Rather than reflecting upon how Christianity should be defended, they jump right into the fray and are happy to employ any argument that appears to offer some hope of success. This hope is futile. Because Christianity is a complete system of thought, the apologetic method that we use must be organic to it. The defense of the faith must be consistent with the Christian system of thought.
To develop a proper method of apologetics, therefore, we need to consider some basic philosophical and theological issues. After this is done, we will be in a position to develop an argument that will demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion.
Philosophical and Theological Considerations
Many people do not have an interest in philosophy. This is mainly due to a misconception of the subject. It is often thought to be unnecessarily abstract with little or no practical value. Philosophy is a systematic attempt to answer the questions that all of us occasionally ask, “how are claims to knowledge justified?” “What kind of a world do we reside in?” “Are there values and, if so, what are they?” These are not only practical questions, but are the most important questions we can ask. The way we answer them provides the basic perspective from which we lead our lives.
Let us start off by considering the first question, “how are claims to knowledge justified?” This question is perhaps the most fundamental question in the area of philosophy called epistemology. Implied in the question is a distinction between knowledge and belief or opinion. Not everything that is believed is known. Jones may, for example, believe that Cleveland is the capital of Ohio, but he could not know this since Columbus is, in fact, the capital. Knowledge thus requires truth. One cannot know something that is not true. But even if Jones believed that Columbus was the capital of Ohio, he still does not necessarily know this to be the case. Jones may have formed the belief that all state capitals, like his native state, North Carolina, are named after famous explorers. And since Columbus is the only city in Ohio that is named after a great explorer, he concludes that it must be the capital. If this were the only reason he believed Columbus to be the capital of Ohio, we would not say that he had knowledge, but that his erroneous theory just happened to lead him to truth in this instance. What Jones is missing is what philosophers call justification. He has a true belief, but lacks proper justification.
The question of what qualifiies as justification has vexed philosophers for many centuries. Some even maintain that something in addition to justification is necessary for knowledge, but there is no need to add complications here. Sufficient is to understand that when challenged about our claim to know something, one can challenge us on the veracity of our belief or on its justification (or, perhaps, both).
What, then, constitutes justification for a belief? This, of course, depends on the belief. Suppose Jones asks Smith (who recently returned from a trip to Germany) what the population of Saxony is. Smith replies that it is 4.3 million. Surprised at the precision of the answer, Jones asks how he knows this. Smith tells him that he read it in a paper while in Germany. This would likely be sufficient for Jones since, like most people, he believes newspaper are typically reliable when it comes to facts and statistics. But if he wanted, Jones could press the issue and ask Smith how he knows the paper got the figure right. Smith answers that the paper cited the latest census. Next Jones wants to know why Smith thinks the census is reliable. Smith replies that census-takers went through every neighborhood in Saxony and basically ended up counting every resident within a certain degree of accuracy. Undeterred, Jones wants to know why Smith believes they counted accurately. Smith tells him that they are trained to count the number of people residing in each house and, when not possible, to ask the neighbors how many people reside in a certain house. But Jones can press still further. Why, he asks, does Smith believe that counting this way is reliable. Smith answers that counting basically relies on sense perception. The censor asks how many people live in a residence, the housewife counts the members of the household, and the censor jots down the figure. When Jones asks Smith how he knows that sense experience is reliable, Smith may simply say that he just knows it is. If so, Smith has reached his final authority.
The point of this is to show that most of our beliefs are grounded in more basic beliefs. We justify our beliefs in terms of other beliefs. But this process cannot go on indefinitely. Sooner or later one will come to what he considers the bottom line. When this point has been reached, one is said to have reached his ultimate authority. This authority is such that it not only provides justification for beliefs, but also determines what will be counted as true. This entails that ultimate authorities are self-attesting; they do not go outside themselves for justification. The Word of God is, of course, the only true ultimate authority, but fallen man has turned to false surrogates. But whatever is chosen as the final authority, there is no questioning its supremacy. This is why the Christian cannot appeal to some other authority to justify the authority of the Bible. If he did so, then whatever he appealed to would be his actual final authority. The same holds for the unbeliever.
Ultimate authorities reside within a nexus of other beliefs. They are bound up with other fundamental beliefs which together provide a basic framework for understanding the world. This is called a worldview. Since everyone has an ultimate authority, if follows that everyone has a worldview.
For apologetics, it is crucial to realize the significance that ultimate authorities and worldviews play in a person’s belief structure. It is fruitless to reason with unbelievers without taking account of their worldview. Since they adhere to a different authority, there is little point in trying to argue for the truth of Christianity without first shattering their intellectual stronghold. Because they interpret everything, including our apologetic arguments, through their worldview, nothing we say will convince them of the truth of Christianity since their fundamental commitments are antithetical it.
At this point, it seems natural to note that there are different worldviews and move on to the issue of how this will inform our apologetic methodology. But it is important to first consider how these different worldviews arose. The reason for this will become clear in a moment.
When man was created he viewed the world through the perspective of God’s revelation. There were no competing worldviews because man lived in submission to God’s authority. But when the serpent came he asked, “yea, hath God said?” he introduced the possibility of there being another authority. Rather than answering as the second Adam (“it is written . .. “), man chose to reject God’s authority and become his own final authority. And with his new authority he introduced an alternative worldview to compete with the one he rejected.
Man’s choice to reject God’s authority and replace it with his own was not a mistake, but a conscious and deliberate decision. What we often fail to realize about the account is that Adam knew he was choosing a lie. As the children of Adam, we too, apart from grace, choose to believe this same lie. Arguments alone, therefore, will never convince the unbeliever of the truth of Christianity. As a rebellious son of Adam, he knows the truth, but despises it. He hates God and will not bend his knee to his Lord and Maker. If we fail to realize these basic truths of our Religion, our defense of the faith will lack both authority and power. The only effective argument is one that takes account of these biblical truths together with the gospel of Jesus Christ and presents them to the unbeliever in an uncompromising manner. The unbeliever does not need to be convinced of the truth of Christianity, he needs the Spirit of God, working through the proclamation of the gospel, to vivify his dead heart. And it is only presuppositional apologetics that does this.
Before turning to the presuppositional argument, it will be a helpful exercise to first consider two traditional arguments for God’s existence to illustrate the problem of defending the faith without taking account of either the issue of worldviews or the doctrine of sin.
Traditional Arguments
The Cosmological Argument
Perhaps the most famous of the arguments for God’s existence is the Cosmological Argument. While it comes in many forms, its general thrust is that a world that is constituted by contingent facts (such as there are caused things) must have a sufficient explanation for such facts. In perhaps its most common formulation, the argument contends that since there are caused things and since no caused thing is the cause of itself, any caused thing must be caused by something else. But since there cannot be an infinity of causes (otherwise the causal chain would have never commenced), there must be a first or uncaused cause. And this first cause is God. This is essentially Aquinas’s “Second Way.”
There are several problems with this argument. First, the claim that there cannot be an infinite series of causes is controversial; many philosophers have disputed this. They ask why a series of causes must terminate at some point? No doubt our intuition is that there can be no infinite causal sequence, but intuition often leads us astray. What, after all, forces us to maintain that an infinite series of causes is impossible? There seems to be no a priori reason to deem such a series impossible. Even Aquinas himself thought that an infinite series of temporal causes cannot be ruled out on philosophical grounds alone.
Modern proponents of the Cosmological Argument maintain that there cannot be an actual infinite set of anything including caused events. To hold the contrary seems to lead to absurdity. Bertrand Russell offers the example a man who writes an autobiography. The man is a slow writer and it takes him a year to write about any given day of his life. This, of course, means that he gets further away from completing his project every day that goes by. But given an infinite amount of time he will be able to complete his project. This is because of a paradoxical feature of infinite sets. Since there is an infinity of years as well as days, the two may be mapped out in a one-on-one correspondence. And if they can be so mapped out, they are equal. Hence, there is a year for every day, which gives the writer enough time to complete the book. So despite the fact that given a finite duration of time the writer falls one year behind for every day that goes by, in an infinite duration he would be able to finish. But this seems absurd. For this reason and others, some have maintained that there cannot be an actual infinite sequence of events. And if there are no actual infinites, then there must be a First Cause.
Whether this defense succeeds in the end is beyond the scope of this article. (One typical reply is that this judges infinite sets on the standards of finite ones, which is, of course, question- begging.) Assuming it does, the second objection to this version of the Cosmological Argument reveals a deeper flaw. Since the series of causes in the world are finite, it is not necessary to posit a first cause that is infinite. At best, all one needs is a cause that is a little less finite than the whole series or perhaps a little less finite than the first event in the sequence. In other words, if the series is finite, there is no reason to conclude that the First Cause of the series is itself infinite.
Third, even granting that this argument proves that there must be an uncaused cause, it does not preclude the possibility that there are two or more uncaused causes. And since there seems to be quite divergent series of causes (physical interaction, thoughts, moral decisions, reproduction and so on), it is not unreasonable to conclude that different causal sequences have different uncaused causes. And more than one pagan religion have posited two ultimate causes of the world order: the good and the bad. Given this way of reasoning, there seems to be no adequate ground to reject this possibility.
To press this objection further, why can there not be as many first causes as there are effects? In other words, why is it not possible that every event has its own unique uncaused cause? There seems to be not good answer to this. This tells us that the only reason that this argument concludes with only one uncaused cause is that the rabbit is already in the hat. Christian philosophers believe that there is only one God and so they force belief into their conclusion.
Fourth, even if these objections were overcome, the argument does not necessitate that we identify the First Cause as the God of Christianity. Muslim philosophers, for instance, at one time used this argument to prove the existence of Allah. And even the non-religious philosopher Aristotle appealed to this kind of reasoning to prove his Unmoved Mover. Thus the god that is proved by this argument is compatible with pagan gods. And if it so compatible, this alone indicates that it is not compatible with the living and true God.
The Teleological Argument
The Teleological Argument, as the name indicates, is concerned with the design or purpose of the world. William Paley offered the classical statement of the argument in his famous analogy of the watch. He asks us to suppose we came across a watch on a deserted beach. Unlike finding a pebble or a sea shell which are natural objects that we would expect to see there, we would infer that there must have been a maker of the watch. For the watch, unlike the pebble, has parts such as gears and dials that exhibit planning or design. The parts of the watch function together to keep time. And such things do not come about by random chance. In the same way, Paley argues, when we observe the world, we see that there is design as well. Take the eye with its various parts (iris, cornea, lens, pupil, retina), all functioning together to produce vision. Or the oak tree with is root system, trunk, branches, leaves, and acorns. Like the watch, the parts of the oak all operate in perfect harmony with each other, producing a unified and purposeful organism. But even more than the watch, the eye and the oak tree reveal upon investigation a staggering complexity down to the microscopic level. Since we would infer the existence of a watchmaker if we found a watch, how much more should we infer the existence of a grand designer whose works far surpasses the skill and ingenuity of the greatest of watchmakers. Since nothing in the universe has such power, imagination and skill to make these and the vast number of equally complicated and ordered objects, the designer must transcend the universe. The designer, therefore, must be God.
Like the Cosmological Argument, there is something to be said for this. Creation does indeed display wonderful design. Kant himself (a critic of the traditional arguments) viewed this as the strongest of all the proofs for God’s existence. But as the argument stands several objections can be raised against it. First, the premise that there is design in the world is hotly disputed. Of course there appears to be design, but this does not mean that there really is design. Take the following analogy. It is possible for a toddler to scribble on a piece of paper what appears to be the sentence, the barn is red. Assuming the child is not precocious, we would not say he intended to write such a sentence. It would be accidental. In the same way, the appearance of order and design may be accidental.
But most modern scientist are willing to say that there is design in the world. At least design in the biological realm. The eye, for example, exhibits so much complex order that it could not have come about by random processes. Darwinians have an explanation for this, though. Vision has a great deal of survival value for predators and prey alike. Nature selects for this advantage and culls out those creatures without vision. What this appears to have been designed by an intelligent agent, turns out to be designed by a “blind watchmaker.”
I am not advocating an evolutionary approach to biology, of course. But this Darwinian account of design is enough to debunk the teleological argument as it stands. Of course, Darwinism can be refuted on philosophical grounds, but this requires a presuppositional argument. The teleological argument loses much of its force in the light of modern evolutionary theory.
Second, even if we assume that there is design, this argument gives little reason to conclude that there must be only one designer. This is the same basic objection raised against the previous argument. Perhaps there are two designers or more. To extend Paley’s original analogy, suppose that while walking along the beach I discovered two watches laying in the sand. I would no doubt conclude that they each had a designer, but I would not necessarily conclude that they had the same designer.
Third, the Teleological Argument can be used to prove any number of gods. Any number of religions view their god or gods as the designer of the cosmos. Plato, for example, taught that a god or demiurge fashioned the world by impressing forms upon pre-existent matter. There is not reason given in the argument that we should conclude that the Christian God as opposed to Plato’s God is the designer of the world.
Summary
Apart from the specific criticism of these arguments, the fundamental flaw in both is that they grant that the unbeliever can understand the world on his own terms. The concealed assumption is that man’s intellect is sufficient to stand in judgment over God. If man would simply follow his own reasoning to its logical conclusion, he would realize that God exists. But this autonomous way of reasoning only engenders further rebellion in man. Man’s problem is not that he has failed to consider the implications of the principles that underlie his approach to life. He has done this all too well. Rather, man’s problem is that he refuses to cast aside his man-centered principles and turn to God as his ultimate authority.
In essence these argument assume that one’s worldview plays little or no role in determining whether God exists or not. But as we have seen above, worldviews are the crux of the matter. If his worldview is not challenged at a fundamental level, the unbeliever has no reason to believe in the God of the Bible. This does not preclude the possibility that he will believe that some god may exist. But as long as his basic humanistic principles are left in tact, this will be a god made in his own image – whether it is a god of traditional man-made religion or something of his own devising.
Presuppositonal apologetics avoids the debilitating compromises of the traditional arguments. It does not offer man more of what he already believes, but challenges his view of the world at every single point, contending that without God man is not only lost spiritually, but in every way. Including intellectually.
The Presuppositional Argument
Unlike the traditional arguments for God’s existence, the Presuppositional argument starts where our Faith demands that it start: God’s revelation. It presupposes the truth of God’s word and presents the Christian worldview as a necessary precondition for all knowledge. It refuses to grant that the unbeliever has any knowledge apart from God. And it refuses to answer the skeptic by appealing to principles and philosophies that are congenial to him. Rather, it attacks these principles and demonstrates their failure to provide a foundation for knowledge.
Presuppositionalism maintains that questioning God’s existence is on par with the Satanic question posed to Eve. Eve succumbed to the Seducer because she failed to stand upon God’s Word as her final authority. Presuppositionalism endeavors to answer the Satanic question in the same way our Lord answered him – by appealing to the authority of Scripture.
The presuppositional argument takes any aspect of human experience and reasons that only the Christian worldview can account for or makes sense of such experience. This involves a two-step method. The first step is to answer the fool according to his folly. The fool (one who has denied God in his heart) believes he can understand the world on his own terms and by means of his own philosophy. And so we let him try. We ask him to take any experience and account for it on his own terms. We then proceed to offer an internal critique of his account, showing that his worldview is either contradictory or arbitrary and, thus, unable to account for the experience in question. This process is illustrated as some length below, but a brief example may be helpful at this point.
Empiricism serves as a good example. The empiricist claims that all knowledge is ultimately grounded in sense experience. Aside from the glaring problem that omniscience is necessary to establish this claim (how could one know that all knowledge comes through the senses without knowing all there is to know?), the fundamental error with empiricism is that it is self-contradictory. It claims x is the case, and then at another point denies x. It claims that all knowledge comes through experience. But the knowledge that empiricism is true itself does not come from sense experience. Empiricism is a philosophical theory. And theories cannot be felt, tasted, touched, heard or seen. Thus empiricism is contradictory. And if the empiricist tried to rescue his theory by claiming that all knowledge comes through sense experience except the knowledge that all knowledge comes through sense experience, he would be making an arbitrary and gratuitous claim.
Notice that this internal critique makes no appeal to the Christian worldview. Empiricism, as well as all other non-Christian philosophies, fails on its own terms. It is unable to provide a coherent system of thought.
Refuting a non-Christian worldview does not establish the Christian worldview, though. It may be that both his worldview and ours is false. So to prove the Christian worldview, we demonstrate that it and it alone can account for human experience. This leads to the second step. In this step we do not answer the fool according to his folly. Rather we invite the unbeliever to come inside our worldview in order to show him that Christianity makes sense of our experience. It provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge.
Let us illustrate this method in more detail by taking atheism as our example. In evaluating atheism we will look at his ability to make sense of science and ethics. In the end, we will see that it does not account for either, whereas the Christian worldview does.
Science
Science is the systematic attempt to understand the natural world. Through means of the scientific method it seeks to discover general laws that explain the diverse phenomena of our experience. The scientific method is that the scientist observes the world, notes patterns and formulates generalizations about some aspect of it. These generalizations or hypotheses are then tested by experiments and are either confirmed or disconfirmed. Those that are confirmed become theories or laws. These laws then provide a heuristic for forming new hypotheses and the process begins all over again.
Though overly simplified, both Christians and atheists agree with this conception of science. The atheist, though, often thinks that science and religion are incompatible. Science is rational, but religion is a matter of faith. And faith amounts to irrationality and superstition. Religion, moreover, is dogmatic and dogmatism has not place in science. Thus the atheist thinks we must choose one or the other. If we choose religion we cannot have science and if we choose science we cannot have religion.
As it turns out, science and religion (meaning, of course, the Christian religion) are not incompatible as the atheist claims. In fact, religion provides the necessary preconditions for science. Apart from Christianity, science lacks a foundation. And since the atheist rejects Christianity, he must reject science as well.
To prove this, we will look at the scientific method and ask how we are justified in believing that it leads us to truths about the world. Though we could choose any number of the components of the scientific method, the principle of induction is probably the easiest one to focus on. Induction is often said to be the pattern of reasoning that moves from particulars to generalities. (This is not quite how a logician would define it, but it is sufficient for our purposes.) Today the sun rose in the east, yesterday the sun rose in the east, and every day in recorded history prior to yesterday, the sun rose in the east. We conclude, that the sun (always) rises in the east.
Many philosophers, though, have questioned the propriety of inductive reasoning. Hume was the first, but others, including Karl Popper in the 20th century, have rejected it as a reliable form of argumentation. Why is it reasonable, they ask, to accept the conclusion of inductive arguments? This is called the problem of induction. If the atheist fails to offer a viable solution, he has no basis for his adherence to science.
The atheist typically justifies induction on the grounds that the universe operates in uniform and law-like ways. If nature is uniform – where the future will operate the same as the past – then the atheist does appear to have justification for induction. But this only pushes the problem to another level. How does the atheist know that nature is uniform? Why in a world that is not created by a sovereign Creator does he think that the world behaves in an orderly manner? In so far as the atheist attempts to answer this question (most just take the uniformity of the world as given) his answer is viciously circular.
The atheist typically says that our experience of the world gives us warrant to believe that nature is uniform. He argues that since all of our previous experience of the world has been that the world operates in regular and uniform ways, it is reasonable to conclude that the world has always operated in the same way and will continue to do so. But there are at least two problems with this argument. First, the premise may be called into question. Is it really the case that all of our experience has been that the world operates in a uniform manner? Perhaps most of our experience is like this, but all have experienced what appear to be incongruities. Bertrand Russell notes that the chicken who has been fed every morning expects that this morning is not different. But this morning the farmer comes to wring it neck and serve it up for supper.
Even if the atheist can provide an adequate defense to this objection, a more difficult objection for the atheist to answer is the second problem. His argument that all past futures have been like the past and therefore the future will probably be like the past as well is itself an inductive argument. But this begs the question. We began by asking to atheist to provide an account for induction. He argues that since the world is uniform he has an account. But when asked how he knows that nature is uniform, the atheist makes recourse to an inductive argument. This is no solution at all. The atheist, thus, can provide no account for induction; and without induction, he cannot account for science.
Where the atheist offers a viciously circular defense of induction, the Christian does not. The Christian worldview teaches that God is providentially in control of all events. God has revealed to us that we can count on regularities in the natural world. “He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down.” (Ps. 104:19) He providentially causes the harvest to come in due season. Nature is uniform because God makes it so. And since nature is uniform, the Christian can account for induction. And with induction, he can account for science as well. So while the atheist touts science as being on his side, the reality is that only the Christian worldview provides the precondition for science.
Ethics
Perhaps the easiest way to understand the presuppositional method is in terms of ethics. Ethics is the field of philosophy that is concerned with imperatives. Unlike science, which seeks to know what is the case, ethics seeks to know what ought to be the case. Ought we to give to charity? Should we always tell the truth? Is the taking of human life ever justified? These are ethical questions.
Most atheists believe in morality. They think there are some things that are right and some that are wrong. But our concern is not whether they believe that there are ethical values, but whether they have any justification for their belief. It turns out that like his belief in science, he has no foundation for this belief.
The atheist has developed a number of systems of ethics to justify his belief in goodness. For sake of brevity, only two will be considered. The two positions concern the nature of the ethical term goodness. What is goodness? What does it mean to say something is good? While a number of philosophers have argued that ethical language has no cognitive meaning, most believe that it does. And if it does have meaning, it must have it in one of two ways. Either ethical words such as good are simple and unanalyzable (much like the words red or hot) or their meanings are analyzable to other words (like bachelor which means an unmarried male over, say, 18 years of age). The former position is known as non-naturalism (ethical terms are not reducible to empirical experience) and the latter, naturalism.
If goodness is unanalyzable then the atheist faces several difficulties. The first is epistemological in nature. Even if good has meaning, how are we to apply the term? How do we know what the good is? What, if any, criteria do we have to distinguish the good from the bad. This typically leads non-naturalist to intuitionism. Intuitionism is the view that humans posses a faculty of intuition that gives them direct access to what is good. It operates much like the faculties of sense perception. When we see a fire truck we see that it is red in color. We do not infer its redness from anything else, but see the color immediately. Intuition works the same way, only it perceives goodness (or the lack of goodness). When we see boy scout help the old lady cross the busy street, we immediately perceive the goodness of the act. Or when we witness a bully stealing lunch money from smaller children, we immediately perceive that the action is wrong.
Intuitionism suffers from problems on many grounds. First, some claim that they have no intuitive sense of right or wrong, but come to ethical judgments on the basis of reflection. The intuitionist’s answer to this is unsatisfactory. Such people, says the intuitionist either are not correctly understanding what is going on inside them or that they lack the faculty altogether, much like the blind man lacks the faculty of vision. This type of reasoning, though, is thoroughly question-begging.
Second, the fact that people have different ethical intuitions provides some evidence against intuitionism. If we all have such a faculty, it would seem that our intuitions would almost always be the same. And even two people have different intuition about an action, how is it to be determined which intuition is the correct one?
Third, another difficulty is that there are some cases where we do not know how to evaluate a specific action. Someone performs a certain moral action and we have no intuition whether it is good or not. Some intuitionists say that in such cases we need to reflect upon the deed in order to judge its goodness. But this seems to place our judgment outside of our intuition and on to another faculty.
Fourth, on the atheistic worldview, how is possible for there to be non-reducible ethical facts? Of course the materialist atheist could not countenance such facts. But even the atheist who is not a materialist must provide some account of the existence of goodness. But no account has been given. For the atheist, the world just is. In an ultimately impersonal world, there is no space for goodness since personhood is the precondition for value.
Despite these failures, non-naturalism has some commendable features. It rightly refuses to reduce ethical terms to empirically verifiable ones. To analyze good down to non-ethical terms violates Bishop Butler’s unobjectionable principle that everything is what it is and not another thing. And it also rightly suggests that men know what is good not by means of abstract reasoning, but by something within us. But this something is not a faculty called intuition, but rather the law of God that he has impressed in all men.
Another answer the atheist may give is naturalism. Naturalism defines goodness in terms of something else. The most prevalent form of naturalism is hedonism. Hedonism reduces goodness to pleasure. To say something is good is to say that it tends to lead toward pleasure. Hedonism may be further broken down to egoism and utilitarianism. The egoistic hedonist asserts that something is good if it brings him pleasure. The utilitarian hedonist says that something is good if it tends to bring about the most pleasure to the most people.
There are epistemological problems with both versions of hedonism. How, for example, does one know that a given action will tend to bring about pleasure? And even if a reasonable answer is given, there is still the question of what pleasure consists in. Some hedonists such as Bentham maintain a relatively crass view of pleasure. The highest quantity of pleasure and least amount of pain constitutes the ultimate good. And with few qualifications, it matters not what kind of pleasure is enjoyed. Other hedonists such as the Epicureans commend the so-called higher pleasures such as good conversation, good food in moderation, leisure, and art as the most desirable. For them, the quality not quantity of the pleasure is most important. But which version of hedonism is correct? There appears to be no non-arbitrary way of adjudication between these two positions. And this being the case, ethics is reduced to a matter of taste.
Naturalism in both its utilitarian and hedonistic forms allows for what we would otherwise consider gross examples of evil in the name of goodness. The egoistic hedonist who finds pleasure in sadistic acts is behaving in an ethically upright manner. The stricture that it is illegitimate to unnecessarily inflict pain on others is incompatible to the theory. If goodness is pleasure then whatever pleases me is, by definition, good. The utilitarian hedonist faces a similar criticism. If inflicting pain on the innocent results in maximizing pleasure for the many, then such an action is morally acceptable.
But the insuperable problem with naturalism in whatever form it takes is that it reasons from what is the case to what ought to be the case. This has been labeled the naturalistic fallacy. As G.E. Moore observed, one can always ask the naturalist who claims a certain action tends toward happiness, “yes, but is it good?” But on the non-naturalist view, good means pleasure. And so the question would really be, “is pleasure pleasurable?” But this a trivial question. And Moore’s question is not trivial. It certainly makes sense to ask the man who is leading a life of debauchery whether he is leading a good life. And because it makes sense, non-naturalism cannot be true.
Summary
Though this is by no means a complete survey, it illustrates the problem that the atheist faces in the realm of ethics. The atheist wants ethics, but denies the only possible grounds for it. He believes he can have morality without God, but all he has is arbitrariness and confusion.
Whereas the unbeliever has no foundation for ethical judgments, the Christian worldview can account for goodness. God himself is the foundation of ethics. Because there is an infinite and personal God, there is absolute truth and goodness. And because man is created in his image and has been given access to God’s standards through revelation, the Christian has justification for his ethical beliefs.
But this does not mean that the unbeliever never behaves in an ethical manner. He often does what is right. He feeds and clothes his children, gives to charity and so on. Though the unbeliever may do what is right in some cases and in some sense of the word, he does not do so in all cases nor does he do so in the robust sense of the word. He never acts ethically in a way that brings glory to God since he has denied God in his heart. He lacks faith in God and so cannot please him (Heb. 11:6). And he does not follow the only standard of good which is, of course, God’s law. This is why the Bible tells us that even the plowing of the wicked is detestable in the Lord’s sight.
Presuppositionalism forces this point on the unbeliever. It not only demonstrates the futility of ethics without God, it demands that the unbeliever repent from his sin and rebellion. Only by turning away from his autonomy will the unbeliever be saved. In the process of defending the faith, it shows the unbeliever that he is destitute of both a theory of goodness and goodness itself. Only through faith in Christ can he find intellectual and spiritual salvation.
Conclusion
The presuppositional argument is not just one more argument to place in our apologetic arsenal. It is fundamentally different than the traditional arguments for God’s existence. Unlike them, it starts with God’s Word. It considers God to be true and all who deny him to be liars. It establishes not only the mere existence of God, but the truth of the entire Christian worldview as revealed in Scripture. It forces the unbeliever to acknowledge the impossibility of knowledge apart from God. And it drives him to repentance from his sin and to submit to the only hope he has for salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Contemporary Christianity is weak because it has abandoned its faith in the authoritative Word of God. The church cannot answer the gainsayers of the day because she has compromised her commitment to Scripture’s authority. If the church would rest upon God’s Word and not lean on its own understanding, she will once again vanquish all her foes.
“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” So said the Apostle Paul. If we wish to pull down strongholds, we must take every thought captive to Christ. When we rely upon his authority we are able to close the mouth of anyone who rails against our holy Religion.
Mike,
When you use terms like “justification” wrt knowledge, how is that to be understood? Deontologically? Are you an internalist?
Also, it seems as if many of the charges you leveled against the two “classical arguments” could be used against TAG, e.g., the conclusion/premise is hotly disputed, that TAG doesn’t *prove* the impossibility of the contrary, etc., and so at the end of the day it all looks a bit rigged. Prejudicial.
best,
JC
Impossibility of the contrary of what? And the Christian is defined by what?
Pertaining to the issue of science, what if the atheist presupposed that the uniformity of nature comes from eternal, changeless properties of matter (as his substitute for God)? How would we answer him?
Thanks.
Saint and Sinner,
Where have you found these wonderful eternal, changeless properties of matter?
Jonathon,
S&S said what if the atheist *presupposes* these properties. So, your question treats him as if he’s not *pre*supposing these things. A presupposition is something you *take to* your evidence, not one that is determined or found by the evidence. A presupposition *determines* what counts has “finding something.*
At any rate, one would answer him by (a) pointing out a contradiciton in terms, i.e., changless matter is contradictory, (b) showing that he can’t account for properties, (c) showing that the uniformity of nature is not *absolute,* and so it can’t be *changless,* (d) show that his presupposition undermines human freedom, (e) put his presuppositon together with the rest of his worldview and show the problems of a piecemeal approach to worldviews, (f) show that he’s offering a tautology: i.e., nature opperates in a law-like way because I presuppose that nature is law-like, (g) find out how chance and randomness fit into his worldview, e.g., is he an evolutionist?, (h) ask what it means to say the uniformity of nature “comes from” eternal and changless properties of matter, (i) what are the properties of matter that are eternal and changless, is he being arbitrary?, will he end in a rational/irrational dialectic?, (j) ask if nature being uniform because it “comes from” the eternal and changless properties of matter mean that *tomorrow* nature will be uniform because it comes from eternal and changeless properties of matter: if yes, why would the sun ever go out of extinction?, why assume the sun will always rise?, isn’t it going to blow up?
I don’t know, those are some thoughts….
JC,
I was basically just trying point out with a rhetorical question that there is evidence to the contrary of “changeless matter” as you do in (a) and the later half of (j). I figured he was “*pre*supposing” uniformity not “*pre*supposing” the part about changeless matter from the wording of his question.
If any of you have interacted with atheists lately (or read some of their philosophical comments on the uniformity of nature), you’d know that (some) atheists have moved a long way from “logic, mathematics, ethics, and physical laws are man-made conventions” stuff. Instead, they’ll admit that these things must be objective, necessary truths and actually try to account for them in their worldview.
Similar to the Cosmological Argument, they’ll object to the theist concluding with God, and instead, they will take it one step back and conclude with the material universe. For instance, instead of grounding logic in the mind of God (which is an eternal, changeless attribute of His existence), they will ground it in eternal, changeless properties of matter of an eternal material universe.
Now, I realize that trying to do that with ethics is absurd, but logic, mathematics, and the uniformity of nature are a different thing. How would I refute the assertion that those things are in any way dependent on matter?
JC,
In regards to:
(a) The atheist argument isn’t that matter is changeless, but that its *properties* are changeless.
(b) He presupposes them just as we presuppose God. He could just as easily ask how we account for God.
(c) In a semi-materialist worldview, it is absolute.
(d) That’s actually a pretty good one, and C.S. Lewis and Rushdoony have quoted both J.B.S. Haldane and Darwin (respectively) as saying that. However, this doesn’t address how atheists can account for the uniformity of nature.
(e) and (f) please explain
(g) The Darwinist could always say that randomness is simply human ignorance (i.e. there is no such thing as true randomness). This would be somewhat of a reversion back to a Newtonian mechanistic worldview with the inclusion of quantum mechanics.
(h) The way matter and energy interact depends on these properties. [I guess that would be the response.]
(i) With an eternal universe, he could say all of them.
(j) [Same answer as (a).]
I’m not a philosopher, but according to Greg Bahnsen and other presuppositionalists, a six year-old should be able to use TAG. When I engage an atheist in such a discussion, I want to leave no wiggle room. So, please help.
Saint and Sinner,
It really depends on what atheist you run into. I have met some recently who hold ethics to be a convention and some who are Rand Objectivists and believe ethics or values are objective… Most atheists will speak of logic and physical laws as though they were not conventions… this isn’t some new trend in atheistic philosophy. The point is that they can’t defend them as such.
That the atheist could just presuppose uniformity isn’t a novel approach by atheists today either. If you listen to Bahnsen debate Gorden Stein and George Smith, these issues are brought up in both debates. If you want to hear how a Presuppositionalist deals with this you can listen to the debates. (The question of simply presupposing uniformity is asked by an audience member at the end of the Bahnsen-Stein debate.)
Saint and Sinner:
Now, I realize that trying to do that with ethics is absurd, but logic, mathematics, and the uniformity of nature are a different thing. How would I refute the assertion that those things are in any way dependent on matter?
This isn’t there fundamental problem. Their fundamental problem is that they think they discover and determine truth. But presupposing the things you mentioned doesn’t help that! Sure, you can simply *presuppose* the uniformity of nature, but how do you actually know that it is uniform? Did the uniformity of nature reveal this to you? Is the uniformity of nature an authority?
Saint and Sinner:
Now, I realize that trying to do that with ethics is absurd, but logic, mathematics, and the uniformity of nature are a different thing. How would I refute the assertion that those things are in any way dependent on matter?
This isn’t their fundamental problem. Their fundamental problem is that they think they discover and determine truth. But presupposing the things you mentioned doesn’t help that! Sure, you can simply *presuppose* the uniformity of nature, but how do you actually know that it is uniform? Did the uniformity of nature reveal this to you? Is the uniformity of nature an authority?
Perhaps I have misuderstood TAG from the beginning or am not being clear enough, and again, I’m not a philosopher. So, please correct me if I’m wrong.
The standard TAG sub-argument for uniformity is:
Nature must be uniform (not just a convention) in order to have knowledge of your experiences. Otherwise, knowledge of the world outside your mind would be impossible. The only foundation for the existence of these physical laws throughout time and the entire universe must be that God created the universe and sustains it in a uniform manner. Thus, since we must presuppose uniformity in order to have epistemology, we must also presuppose that it is God who created all things and upholds them in this uniform fashion.
The atheist alternative is:
Nature must be uniform (not just a convention) in order to have knowledge of your experiences. Otherwise, knowledge of the world outside your mind would be impossible. The only foundation for the existence of these physical laws throughout time and the entire universe must be that they are eternal properties of matter in an eternal material universe. Matter may change size, shape, etc. (i.e. contingent), but its properties stay the same. Thus, since we must presuppose uniformity in order to have epistemology, we must also presuppose that the properties of matter don’t change through time in an eternal universe.
Thus, instead of presupposing that God created and sustains the universe in uniformity, the atheist presupposes that the properties of matter (i.e. how material objects and energy interact with each other) are not contingent.
JonathanB,
Greg’s answer to the questioner in the Stein debate was basically, “Matter is constantly changing and is completely contingent. However, logic is unchanging and necessary in all possible worlds.” However, that doesn’t address the argument against TAG that the hypothetical atheist poses. The atheist alternative is that while matter itself may be contingent, its properties aren’t.
Keith,
You said, “Sure, you can simply *presuppose* the uniformity of nature, but how do you actually know that it is uniform? Did the uniformity of nature reveal this to you? Is the uniformity of nature an authority?”
Part of presuppositionalism (including TAG) is that you presuppose that the Scriptures are true. However, instead of presupposing the Scriptures to be true in order to know that nature is uniform, the atheist could simply presuppose that the properties of matter are changeless as his alternative presupposition.
[BTW: I am not an atheist pretending to be a Christian. You can go to my website and see that. Also, for those who know, I frequent Triablogue. Simply put, these are real objections that I'd like an answer to before I use TAG again.]
I suppose that the atheist presupposition above is similar to Aristotelianism. Would that be the best way to answer it?
Sain and sinner,
“(a) The atheist argument isn’t that matter is changeless, but that its *properties* are changeless.
(b) He presupposes them just as we presuppose God. He could just as easily ask how we account for God.
(c) In a semi-materialist worldview, it is absolute.
(d) That’s actually a pretty good one, and C.S. Lewis and Rushdoony have quoted both J.B.S. Haldane and Darwin (respectively) as saying that. However, this doesn’t address how atheists can account for the uniformity of nature.
(e) and (f) please explain
(g) The Darwinist could always say that randomness is simply human ignorance (i.e. there is no such thing as true randomness). This would be somewhat of a reversion back to a Newtonian mechanistic worldview with the inclusion of quantum mechanics.
(h) The way matter and energy interact depends on these properties. [I guess that would be the response.]
(i) With an eternal universe, he could say all of them.
(j) [Same answer as (a).]:
a*) Which properties? All of them? So, the property of being to the left of y does not change? Some of them? One of them? And, when you’ve nailed down which ones, then why are *those* ones that give rise to the uniformity of nature?
b*) You need to tell us more about his worldview so we can see if it is *internally consistent* to presuppose the existence of properties. Just saying you presuppose something doesn’t mean you don’t have to have it be internally consistent with the rest of your worldview.
c*) I don’t know what a “semi materialist” is. But, no, it’s not absolute. If it were, then the sun will never blow up. There is not one atheist philosopher or scientist that presupposes an absolute uniformity of nature that I know of (e.g., see Michael Martin’s exchange with John Frame).
d*) It shows an internal tension. If all of nature is predictable, and absolutely behaves in a law-like way, whence ariseth freedom?
e*) Everyone has a worldview. Presupposition are interconnected. So, (e) is like something I’m doing in (d) or (g).
f*) He’s just saying that nature is regular because I presuppose nature is regular. That’s not helpful. Furthermore, what guarantee does he have that the world outside him is the way he presupposes it is? How does he get from a presupposition to an ontic conclusion? Does he have a God’s-eye point of view?
g*) They could say that, but this would contradict many prominent Darwinists and scientists, and would bring back the design problem. The randomess postulate was offered to show that the design was “apparent” and “random genetic mutation” gives us all the flora and fauna we see. Furthermore, they’d now need to provide a mechanism for evolution.
h*) How does he know that mnatter and energy interact? Is that part of the uniformity of nature? That they interact? And how does he know that they “depend” upon changless properties? Is that just another presupposition?
i*) Well that’s ludacris. I have the property of having a body. Is that a changless property? I think our atheist friend needs to go over his aristotle.
j*) Huh? I just showed that something we have always experienced in our past will someday cease to occur in our future. How so with all this changless business?
John Calvin,
Again, maybe I’m missing something really obvious, but like I said in #12, it would be something like Aristotelianism where the universals are located in the particulars.
a**) For instance, the atheist will assume that Force = mass * acceleration because it is the property of every particle of mass to behave that way.
b**) Again, I guess it would be like Aristotelianism.
c**) See b**
d**) “whence ariseth freedom?” I’ve heard several atheists (e.g. Richard Dawkins) say that there is no freedom. This would obviously be an epistemological self-defeater for atheism, but you don’t have to bring up the uniformity of nature to use this argument. The question is whether the materialist can account for uniformity of physical world.
f**) “He’s just saying that nature is regular because I presuppose nature is regular. That’s not helpful. Furthermore, what guarantee does he have that the world outside him is the way he presupposes it is? How does he get from a presupposition to an ontic conclusion? Does he have a God’s-eye point of view?”
Well, since we, as Christians, presuppose that it’s regular due to God’s providence, the atheist simply presupposes that all matter became the same (i.e. matter acts and reacts with other matter in the same manner) when it was all a “singularity” just before the Big Bang.
g**) I believe that when a Darwinist says “random”, he doesn’t mean true randomness (something that happens without a cause). Think the Newtonian Mechanistic worldview. Think of the way Darwinians viewed “random” before Quantum Mechanics.
h**) Don’t think in philosophical terms. Instead, think in scientific/engineering terms. Say there is a ball of rubber and a plate of iron. If I throw the ball at the plate, the ball and plate will behave in a certain way due to their respective a) modulus of elasticity, b) hardness, c) compressive strength, etc. (i.e. their properties). A thrown ball and plate set on one side of the universe will react in the same way as another thrown ball and plate set on the other side because rubber is rubber (i.e. one piece has the same physical properties as another) and iron is iron.
j**) “Huh? I just showed that something we have always experienced in our past will someday cease to occur in our future. How so with all this changless business?”
God may act in history (i.e. such as the Incarnation), but His attributes remain the same. The hypothetical atheist mentioned above would (in a way similar to the cosmological argument) stop one step short of this to explain the uniformity of the universe. He would say that a piece of iron may change size, shape, form, position in the universe, temperature, etc., but its modulus of elasticity, hardness, tensile strength, density, etc. will remain the same. A star may die out, but it will die out like any other star (e.g. supernovae, black hole, whatever) and new ones will form from coelescing nebulae, but they will always die out and form (respectively) because it is their physical/chemical/nuclear properties of dying stars and coelescing nebulae to act in such a fashion.
What is this atheist’s epistemology?
JonathanB,
I don’t really know what your asking. The discussion is over how an atheist can account for the uniformity of nature. The TAG sub-arguments from logic, mathematics, language, etc. are good and easy to prove since they involve eternal, transcendent, abstract entities which require the existence of an eternal, transcendent mind from which they are instantiated in the realm of the particulars. [Again, I'm not a philosopher. So, please correct me.]
However, the uniformity of the physical realm is a different story. The atheist can simply presuppose that uniformity comes from eternal properties (e.g. hardness, tensile strength, modulus of elasticity, etc.) of matter (in place of the Christian presupposition of God being the Creator and sustainer of the physical realm).
Part of presuppositionalism (including TAG) is that you presuppose that the Scriptures are true. However, instead of presupposing the Scriptures to be true in order to know that nature is uniform, the atheist could simply presuppose that the properties of matter are changeless as his alternative presupposition.
You merely repeated yourself. So once again, I’ll repeat myself: you can presuppose that the properties of matter are changeless, but this doesn’t help you in any way. YOU still decided that the properties of matter are changeless based on your OWN authority. So actually you haven’t chosen matter as your ultimate presupposition. Matter cannot reveal truth. It has no authority.
By the way, Saint and Sinner, those properties are not “eternal”—they are measured. Hardness, tensile strength, Young’s modulus, stress, strain, and any other property of a material is measured in a laboratory. And who performs these measurements? Man—who is already presupposing the uniformity of nature in order to do the measurements.
Keith,
You said, “YOU still decided that the properties of matter are changeless based on your OWN authority. So actually you haven’t chosen matter as your ultimate presupposition. Matter cannot reveal truth. It has no authority.”
Couldn’t an atheist simply reply that the Christian has similarly presupposed the truth of Scripture based on his own authority?
You said, “By the way, Saint and Sinner, those properties are not “eternal”—they are measured. Hardness, tensile strength, Young’s modulus, stress, strain, and any other property of a material is measured in a laboratory. And who performs these measurements? Man—who is already presupposing the uniformity of nature in order to do the measurements.”
I realize that. However, the atheist (or anyone for that matter [pardon the pun]) could reply that the hardness of iron is the same for all iron particles across the universe and was that way long before man arrived on the scene to measure it.
Couldn’t an atheist simply reply that the Christian has similarly presupposed the truth of Scripture based on his own authority?
If I were to presuppose scripture based on my own authority then I’d be in the same self-defeating mess as the atheist. To even argue that I would able to do this would be to argue for autonomy, which is ultimately self-defeating. I take God’s word on faith—I take Him as the authority. I “chose” to do this (hopefully the determinists here don’t freak out), but that doesn’t make me an authority.
I realize that. However, the atheist (or anyone for that matter [pardon the pun]) could reply that the hardness of iron is the same for all iron particles across the universe and was that way long before man arrived on the scene to measure it.
Well of course they could SAY this, but once again your neglecting to consider the heart of TAG: how does the atheist actually account for this?!?
Keith,
“I take God’s word on faith—I take Him as the authority. I “chose” to do this (hopefully the determinists here don’t freak out), but that doesn’t make me an authority.”
Couldn’t the atheist simply take his presupposition on faith as well?
“how does the atheist actually account for this?!?”
This is probably where I have misunderstood TAG. What do you mean by “account for”?
On the Cosmological Argument, Mike Butler says, “There are several problems with this argument. First, the claim that there cannot be an infinite series of causes is controversial; many philosophers have disputed this.”
I don’t understand this and am not sure why this should be a ‘problem’ with the cosmo arg. Are you saying that one of the problems with the cosmological argument is because it is controversial (and that some philosophers have disputed the impossibility of an infinite series of events)? If that’s the case, then I don’t see how that would not apply to TAG as well. As a matter of fact, *all* professional philosophers that I know of object to the strong claim made by VTs.
I’m not sure of any philosophical position that has not been disputed.
Bill
I think what Mike means is that in order for a causal argument to work you should at least be able to show that there cannot be an infinite regress. Apparently Mike thinks this has yet to be done. Perhaps you disagree. I think we could all agree that this is an area that perhaps needs work in the Cosm. argument?
Obviously, Mike was not saying that some philsophers reject/dispute the Cosm. argument and thefore it must be bad… so why would you act like this is the case?
I find it interesting that Mr. Butler seems to be more concerned with defending his political views than his apologetic/theological views. Everytime I see some post on Presuppositionalism I feel like its a baby being left by the side of a well.
JonathanB said, “Obviously, Mike was not saying that some philsophers reject/dispute the Cosm. argument and thefore it must be bad… so why would you act like this is the case?”
Mike said, “There are several problems with this argument. *First,* the claim that there cannot be an infinite series of causes is controversial; many philosophers have disputed this.”
I know what he says by what he writes. And it’s apparent that he includes as a problem the fact that philosophers don’t agree on the possibility of an actual infinite. This is separate from other objections that he has listed. After he lists this first ‘problem’, he discusses intuition, Russell, and the absurdity of an actual infinite. He then leaves it to the reader to decide whether the defenses of a First Cause are valid. He then moves to other objections.
But my point is so what? Why should that be a problem? And if it is a problem for the Cosmo Arg., then it’s a bigger problem for TAG; however, I didn’t see it included in his article as a problem for TAG.
I’m not aware of any argument has been proven so that it can only be rejected on pain of irrationality.
Bill,
If I say, “I don’t know about that Cosmological argument… people dispute whether or not an infinite regress is possible.” are you seriously going to assume that my problem is with the fact that there are different opinions on the subject? Surely this isn’t the limit of our interpretive skills. Poeple, and philosophers in particular, don’t agree on anything so why would the mere fact of disagreement matter to me?
Isn’t it more likely that I am saying there are *good arguments* on both sides of the issue and that this is the reason for my inconclusive remark?
Yeah, you’re right, I didn’t say “good arguments” I just said “people dispute” but hopefully we can use our critical-thinking caps to decide which interpretation of what I’m saying makes more sense.
Sorry if I’m being curt or rude Bill. I don’t have any problems with you and if you don’t like the presuppositional argument then that is fine. If you don’t like Mike then that is fine. But if we are going to critique either I prefer to make sure we understand what they are saying and it just seemed obvious that Butler wasn’t faulting the CosmArg. simply because there was difference of opinion–at least that seems obvious when you try to cast his point in the best possible light.
But maybe I’m wrong, maybe Butler really did think that the mere fact of difference of opinion is enough to create a problem with an idea. We may never know… looks like I’m the fool who picked up Butler’s baby.
JB said, “are you seriously going to assume that my problem is with the fact that there are different opinions on the subject? Surely this isn’t the limit of our interpretive skills. Poeple, and philosophers in particular, don’t agree on anything so why would the mere fact of disagreement matter to me?”
Actually I don’t know what your problem would be, only Mike’s. I am not sure of how else to take what he said other than *as a problem*. If you’ll note in my first comment I was asking questions directed at Mike about what he meant.
JB said, “Isn’t it more likely that I am saying there are *good arguments* on both sides of the issue and that this is the reason for my inconclusive remark?”
But Mike listed this inconclusiveness as a *problem*.
I don’t know how this turns into me not ‘liking the presuppositional argument’, but whatever. I also don’t know why you would say that ‘maybe you don’t like mike”?
JB said, “But if we are going to critique either I prefer to make sure we understand what they are saying and it just seemed obvious that Butler wasn’t faulting the CosmArg. simply because there was difference of opinion–at least that seems obvious when you try to cast his point in the best possible light.”
Well I don’t know how else to take it and is why I asked to begin with. Unfortunately, you have not done anything to clear the matter up. Given the structure of his article (as stated above), it still *seems* obvious that what he’s saying is that it’s a problem that people disagree.
Like I said before, if it’s not a problem, then so what (and why list it as a problem)? If it is, then TAG has the bigger problem.
So either:
a- it’s trivial, or
b- it’s not trivial but bites a bigger chunk out of TAGs butt.
Jonathon, it’s simple.
If the fact that people disagree about an infinite series of causes is a “problem,” then is it a “problem” that people disagree about TAG being able to prove the strong modal claim?
I thought Bill’s requests were rather simple. We should overreact, even when our pet arguments are being challenged.
JC
Couldn’t the atheist simply take his presupposition on faith as well?
The atheist DOES take his presupposition on faith. EVERYONE has a faith that they accept presuppositionally. This results in circular reasoning in every case.
This is probably where I have misunderstood TAG. What do you mean by “account for”?
How does he justify it? How does it make sense of it? What are his reasons for holding that position? Every business has accountants to “account for” funds and transactions. If $5000 disappears from a business’ bank account under someone’s watch, that person has to answer for that loss of funds—they have to ACCOUNT for the loss of funds. They can’t just say, “Well it doesn’t matter… it just happened and that’s all that matters!” Likewise, the atheist accepts all sorts of transcendentals like logic, truth, causation, the reliability of their cognitive faculties, the reliability of the senses, etc. But how do they ACCOUNT for such transcendentals? Can the atheist just say, “Well… it doesn’t matter where they came from or how I know that I have them… I just have them and that’s all that matters!” Ummm, no. That doesn’t justify his use of them. It only tells us that he’s borrowing from the Christian worldview, because the Christian worldview is the only world that can account for them.
Can every other worldview claim to account for them? Yes, of course they can CLAIM this, but that doesn’t make it so. This is where the rubber really meets in the road in apologetics: demonstrating through internal critiques that worldviews can NOT account for the transcendentals, and then demonstrating that Christianity can.
Here’s some more writing I’ve done that might help:
TAG
Internal critiques (applying TAG)
Keith
I have been looking for some place in Van Til or Bahnsen that breaks down, step by step, why it is that, unless you presuppose Christianity, you cannot assert ANYTHING about anything, or words to that effect. You know, “predication becomes impossible,” there is “an infinite number of beads with no holes,” etc. Perhaps these are three different kind of statements; the point is that I have only seen them stated in a conclusory form.
I understand & appreciate the presuppositional arguments with respect to science, ethics, and a few other particular niches, but have not seen the more sweeping statements supported step-by-step. Can anyone direct me to a resource that does this?
The Ontological argument is what Bahnsen calls it, if I remember correctly. It seemed quite tidy last time I heard the lecture.
I agree, mkm—that is definitely a weakness in Bahnsen’s argumentation. Van Til was even worse in this regard—TAG itself he would only state in its conclusory form.
In Always Ready he does present some arguments in slightly detailed fashion, although not nearly as detailed as I would like. The standard, in my opinion, is what Plantinga did with his internal critique of naturalism in ‘Naturalism Defeated?’ An excellent piece of work.
Thanks, razz.
I have just bought a book by Plantinga and am looking forward to plowing through it.
What is the standard view of Plantinga vis a vis Van Til? Complementary? Clashing? Did they ever interact directly?
I heard that Plantinga studied Van Til very little. However, Plantinga is reformed so you will find a lot of similarities between the two men, although in my opinion Van Til’s system is far more robust and practical. And calling Van Til “practical” compared to someone is quite a statement because Van Til was almost purely a philosopher. Even his exchanges with hypothetical unbelievers (such as in his book “Why I Believe In God”) leaves you with the impression that Van Til didn’t have a whole lot of actual one-on-one apologetics experience with the typical guy on the street.
That being said, Plantinga is even more purely philosophical. Whereas Van Til’s system is actually an apologetic methodology built on top of an epistemology (derived from the reformed view of scripture), Plantinga’s system is almost nothing more than an epistemology, and its sort of up to you to figure out how to apply it.
This is probably the best comparison of Van Til and Plantinga, as far as I know:
http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/papers/IfKnowledgeThenGod.pdf
Thank you, Keith. I found that article and it is impressively clear.
In Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief he mentions Van Til once, and that mention reveals that he knows little about him. Plantinga says something like “If Van Til and Calvin believe unbelievers don’t know anything, then they are wrong.” For someone as learned as Plantinga – and someone who quotes Calvin as often as he does – I found that quote to be shockingly ignorant. Van Til freely admits that nonChristians make most of the great discoveries, etc.; “nonchristians can count, they just can’t account for their accounting.” Calvin even says that nonchristians have the Holy Spirit to enable their intellectual and cultural endeavors (not in His sanctifying work), and pronounces one of his characteristic denunciations on those who despise the intellectual contributions of nonchristians.
PS, here is the relevant quote from Plantinga:
“perhaps he [Calvin] means that those who don’t know God suffer much wider ranging cognitive deprivation and, in fact, don’t really have any knowledge at all. This view is attributed to some of his followers, for example, Cornelius Van Til. This seems a shade harsh, particularly because many who don’t believe in God seem to know a great deal more about some topics than most believers do.” Chapter 7, IV B in Warranted Christian Belief.
OK, one more contribution today…
I am encouraged to hear someone else say that Van Til was more of a philosopher than an apolegetician (wrd?). IMO Van Til lays down some very persuasive ground work in his analysis of the believer’s position and the unbeliever’s position. This,IMO, is what has contributed most to his popularity. When he really does apologetics – sweeping idealist-inspired statements about Christianity (not just theism) being the only possible system of beliefs, and all other beliefs falling in a TAG way, he presents something the the average literate Christian does not understand and cannot use with his neighbor.
As a partial defense of what I have stated here, I ask you how many college-educated Christians say they STARTED a Van Til book and liked him, but didn’t finish the book and couldn’t really speak intelligibly about Van Til’s apologetic per se.
You have made several very good points. Plantinga’s quote on Van Til is disappointing.
You are also correct that Van Til’s writing consists of one too many grandiose intellectual flourishes that sound great on paper but have little applicability. Of course, Van Til’s system is applicable, but one must go to someone else like Greg Bahnsen or Michael Butler before really understanding how to apply it. Indeed, it took me almost a year before I really had a meaningful grasp of presuppositionalism, and even now I would say that I am unable to present TAG in an eloquent, understandable fashion.
No one has really done a lot of work in applying TAG in a debate setting. Sure, Bahnsen is known for using it in his debate against Gordon Stein, but people need to realize that Stein was caught totally off guard. (Not that the prepared atheists do much better—Dan Barker demonstrated this in his debate against Paul Manata.) Anyway, my point is that nothing is really available for the laymen at this point. Francis Schaeffer is about as close as you can get to learning how to apply internal critiques.
By the way, someone who does apologetics is called an ‘apologete.’ :)
If I may offer what appears to be a real world interchange between several atheists and a Christian presuppositional apologete. See “Conversations with Atheists,” by Dr. Alan Myatt at http://www.myatts.net/articles/atheists1. Or do a search under the title and author’s name. The text is over one hundred pages in a Word document. The exchange I found very helpful especially from the atheists who represent a fairly broad level of depth. I also thought Dr. Myatt did a good job in the exchange.
Hope this helps.
“I heard that Plantinga studied Van Til very little. However, Plantinga is reformed so you will find a lot of similarities between the two men, although in my opinion Van Til’s system is far more robust and practical.”
1. It is true that Plantinga did not “study” VT. Had he, he would not have said to me in person that VT thought that unbelievers can’t know anything.
2. Plantinga is not Reformed.
3. Their similarities are in internal critiques of opposing worldvies. The presuppositional challenge, however, goes way beyond refutations.
Ron
1. Intriguing. I’d like to hear more about your conversation.
2. I suppose you write this since Plantinga is a Molinist and therefore not a “true” Calvinist?
3. I agree.