Big Think

James Mills on March 1, 2008, 1:04 PM

Can you explain to me how the concept of an eternal hell does not blemish god’s omnibenevolence?

Tyler Wittman on March 1, 2008, 2:28 PM

First off, there are a few differing views on hell (namely eternal punishment and annihilationism) within orthodox Christian theology. I’m inclined to the eternal view. Secondly, you appear to be getting at the “problem of evil” so to speak. To flesh out all the details of that particular issue will require more than what I have to say here in response.

Nevertheless, let me ask you two questions. Are you prepared to understand hell from the perspective of God’s justice? Are you also prepared to understand the seriousness of rebellion against God? God’s goodness and justice are just two perspectives we use to try and get at God’s essence.

Now man has rebelled against God, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. With this volitional rebellion against our Lord and Creator, there is death and judgment. Everyone deserves to spend eternity in hell. That is merely God’s justice in action.

BUT, he has a purpose for history, for our being. He has acted within history to bring us back to him and to redeem us. That is the role of Jesus Christ, who lived a sinless life on our behalf and bore the penalty of our sin. Being resurrected from the dead and having bore the full wrath of God on the cross, he has defeated death (hence John Owen’s popular title, “The death of death in the death of Christ”). All that is necessary for us to make this sacrifice effective on our behalves is to confess that Christ is Lord and repent of our sin, at which point God gives us new life in Christ. While God is good and just, he is also merciful with us.

Now that is all quite brief, but the point really relevant to your question is that we could not very well be morally responsible if we weren’t held responsible for our actions. The concept of hell does not diminish God’s goodness, it describes his hate for sin and unrighteousness. It points to his holiness. At the risk of being misheard apart from the contextualization I’ve tried to provide here, hell emphasizes his goodness.

James Mills on March 1, 2008, 4:21 PM

“Are you prepared to understand hell from the perspective of God’s justice?”

I am prepared to understand anything that can be explained to me. So far no one has been able to explain to me what is just about a creator who punishes his imperfect creation for all eternity because that creation is imperfect because the creator made his creation imperfect.

“Are you also prepared to understand the seriousness of rebellion against God?”

The bible sends mixed messages about the seriousness of rebellion against god. The old testament says nothing about hell, you merely are punished in your mortal life by disobeying god. After you die, you are just dead.

“All that is necessary for us to make this sacrifice effective on our behalves is to confess that Christ is Lord and repent of our sin, at which point God gives us new life in Christ.”

This implies that anyone that has died so far in history who was not a christian is doomed for eternal hell. Now, how is that just?

And if your answer is that we cannot understand god’s justice then how can any of us be to blame? If god wants us to understand his justice, it has to be something we CAN UNDERSTAND. I can’t understand how any misdeed, no matter how severe, deserves eternal, unending torture. I have tried but I cannot understand it.

Bruce Allen on March 1, 2008, 8:22 PM

TeddyBear — thanks for your thoughts. If you have been following the thread on the “Definition of God”, you will appreciate that God is something different to just about EVERYONE, and limited only be their imaginations.

I see no harm is detailing how I see the big-picture, and cannot understand why it should be less credible that any of the other submissions.

In your definition, God is the end of the line [ upwards ], but there is no evidence to support that claim. Similarly, I cannot produce evidence that he is not.

Take the Cosmos as an analogy [ as I often do [grin] ], Many people accept that nothing exists outside our Big-Bang; some do not. It all depends on how far outside the square you are willing to go.

Tyler Wittman on March 2, 2008, 12:53 AM

james,

I will address your concerns tomorrow. These are questions that I have wrestled with long and hard, and still do. But some of your questions speak to simple ignorance of what Christianity teaches about salvation, which is very understandable. I’ll flesh this out in more detail later (it’s very late here).

-t

James Mills on March 2, 2008, 11:16 AM

teddybear,

I grew up a Southern Baptist Christian. I wasn’t the most devout but I think I had an understanding of salvation from a Christian viewpoint. There are many different sects of Christianity with differences I do not fully understand and I am curious if you subscribe to any particular one. I do welcome any further insights into the matter.

Tyler Wittman on March 2, 2008, 1:05 PM

James,

I just want to preface all of this by thanking you for being willing to just have a civil conversation about the whole issue. It’s refreshing. I often don’t do online message boards and such because people get so hostile with one another.

I consider myself simply part of the tradition of the reformers, I’m a Protestant in that sense who would subscribe to an evangelical/baptistic Reformed theological tradition (known in popular terminology as a ‘Calvinist’ but I don’t like that term because there are many different forms of calvinism and it’s often so misunderstood that it’s distracting). I associate myself with a Southern Baptist church because I believe strongly in their focus on missions and aid work.

First of all, the Bible doesn’t send mixed messages. Or so I would contend. We only arrive at such a conclusion if we an a priori understanding of Scripture as something other than God’s Word. I presuppose that it is the Word of God. I also look at it as one whole, not 66 books divided into two testaments with contrary emphases. Sure, there are two testaments and 66 books, but they all have one central message: Christ.

Secondly, the OT does mention hell. In fact, Christ uses language from the OT in describing hell as do other NT authors (see Isaiah 66:24 and Mark 9:43-48 for one such example). We must start with the reflections of C.S. Lewis, “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity.” It’s difficult, but it’s there and it’s true. The concepts of Sheol (the abode of the dead) and Gehenna (a site of sacrifice and idolatry referred to often in the Bible where bodies are burned) are fleshed out more clearly in the NT, much like many prophecies are clearly spelled out in the person of Christ. Matt 11:23 and Luke 16:23 make some associations clearer (when word studies are done, links are easily made). Luke 16’s picture of Lazarus, while a parable and not suitable for clearly fleshing out details of theology, does refer to heaven and hell in the sense that one is a place for the righteous and one for the unrighteous.

As far as salvation is concerned . . . before Christ, God worked amongst his people in terms of the Old Covenant, but it was still by faith that they were justified (as Paul mentions time and again in the NT epistles, beginning with Romans). Once Christ came into the world, that was God’s sole means of reconciling his entire creation to himself. So after that, all who have not made Christ the Lord of their lives have gone to hell.

This is difficult if we’re working from our understanding of fairness and justice. Ours is skewered because we don’t properly understand the gravity of our sin. We often downplay it because we have a higher view of ourselves than we should (thank you Gen 3 – the fall – and western individualism). A wholly righteous God is necessarily separate from all unrighteousness. We should all be going to hell, essentially. It’s only by his mercy and love that he sent his Son to reconcile us to himself.

We often think we deserve this or something, but we don’t. So the way I see it, there’s nothing I’ve ever done or ever will do that makes me somehow worthy of salvation. That I know Christ as my savior and Lord is only cause for the deepest humility before God, understanding full well what I have done and what I deserve. This flies in the face of many popular faces of “Christianity” who stump for various political causes, etc. with a certain triumphalism that doesn’t speak to this. The earliest Christians understood how merciful and undeserving their salvation was. Many do today as well, but the real pulse of Christianity isn’t seen on television or the vast majority of megachurches. I long for a return to the piety and deep understanding of salvation that the Puritans grasped so well (though I don’t long for a return to Puritanism).

It’s only when we try to see things from God’s perspective that we understand what is truly just. Like John Calvin said, “it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself. For (such is our innate pride) we always seem to ourselves just, and upright, and wise, and holy, until we are convinced, by clear evidence, of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity.” But, you object, didn’t God do all of this? Why did he bring it upon us?

God created us in his image, so necessarily he created volitional creatures. However, the only way we could be volitional is if indeed we could make choices. God is not the author of sin, we brought sin and wrath upon ourselves with the Fall. By parallel, God does not send people to hell (more on that in a moment). The Fall was essentially a matter of “when” and not “if.” Because to be truly volitional, we have to be able to act apart from God. It’s how we know we are not God. If you have kids, this makes a lot of sense. You know your son is not you because he makes decisions apart from you. Our sin was a result of God creating us in his image with the ability to will.

This isn’t merely some kind of game, though. He created us to know him and fellowship with him. When we stop and reflect upon who God is, how unsearchable his ways are, how holy he is, then we can start to grasp how incredibly awesome his creating us is. We get to know God. To me, this is astonishing.

Now reflect upon what I’ve tried to establish so far. If God created us to know him, we have the choice to know him or not. God created us a volitional creatures to make that choice. He has provided the means to know him in the person and work of Jesus Christ. God wishes that none should perish (2 Peter 3:9), but as C.S. Lewis noted, sin is the human way of telling God to leave us alone. Hell is merely God granting us our wish. Separation from him is the worst thing possibly fathomable, though. However, many choose this route. By necessity, hell is torment because it is the furthest separation from God attainable.

Jesus does teach that there are varying degrees of punishment in hell. Matt 11:21-24 and Luke 12:47-48 seem to indicate that the greater our knowledge of God’s plan, the greater our responsibility. The central question for all of us, and for you right now, is this: What are you going to do with that knowledge?

Tyler Wittman on March 2, 2008, 1:14 PM

Prince, if God had a creator, he wouldn’t be God. The marriage of methodological uniformitarianism and actualism can do us a lot of good in the study of science positively, but to assume their use negatively (going back into history unchecked) is to assume a naturalistic understanding of the universe and thus to preclude even the possibility of God’s existence. Does that make sense?

Notice your statement: “If everything complex requires a creator . . .” If indeed. Certainly by virtue of who he is, though, God would be exempt from any such qualification. Otherwise, he would not be God and we would not describe him as such. If God exists, we must allow him to define himself.

James Mills on March 2, 2008, 2:32 PM

Teddybear, thank you as well for your thoughtful posts. I can tell you have spent a lot of time thinking over these questions and I appreciate that. I will note that I find it a strength for my argument that two human beings supposedly created by the same creator thinking over the same potentially grave notions can come to such different opinions. Why cannot it be simpler?


“This is difficult if we’re working from OUR UNDERSTANDING of fairness and justice. Ours is skewered because we don’t properly UNDERSTAND the gravity of our sin.” (added emphasis by me)

This is a big part of my problem. By definition we cannot understand what we are doing wrong. But we’re punished anyway. Now I know we often have to punish our children for things they do not understand BUT we do it so that they may learn. Hell does not offer such a chance for learning from a mistake. God is often attributed with the source for morality. Well if I feel that hell is immoral (based on my god given sense of morality) then I’m in quite the pickle.

“As far as salvation is concerned . . . before Christ, God worked amongst his people in terms of the Old Covenant, but it was still by faith that they were justified.”

This does not take into account people who never heard about the Old Covenant. Now I ask you what do you think happened to all the people who lived and died outside of the middle east during the time of Moses and Jesus? Millions of people never heard about Yahweh or Jesus for a very long time. The Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, countless African tribes, much of Europe. Were their seperate religions acceptable to god for their salvation? Did god judge them on their good works, because the bible says good works are worthless when it comes to entering heaven. The “revelation” to the world is not concrete or complete enough considering the dire consequences of being wrong.

"The Fall was essentially a matter of “when” and not “if.” Because to be truly volitional, we have to be able to act apart from God."

So god knew from the start he would be creating suffering? It has to follow that by creating volitional creatures who to be volitional would have to rebal against god that god created hell and suffering.

“Hell is merely God granting us our wish. Separation from him is the worst thing possibly fathomable, though. However, many choose this route.”

This makes absolutly no sense to me (again if I can’t understand it using the very moral sense given to me by god, how can I be blamed?). When you say “many choose this route” do you really think anyone would willingly choose eternal torment over say nonexistence? Why eternal punishment? It is the eternal aspect of the torment that I cannot reconcile. I argue that in the end, if what you are saying is true, we really do not have a choice and thus whatever “free-will” was granted to us is void. No one would choose eternal suffering. If people really truly felt in their hearts that it was real they would not choose it. If god is truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent then eternal torment cannot exist. It is easily within his power to simply end their existence yet he chooses (because he has the power to end it) to allow them to suffer. If unrightousness is the absence of god then how can it exist? God is everything according to the bible. Whew ok, enough for now I suppose.

“The central question for all of us, and for you right now, is this: What are you going to do with that knowledge?”

Scrutinize it! I should hope an all loving being would respect intellectual honesty. However he does seems to me to be concerned with being loved. To argue that it is all beyond our understanding to to ask us to shut up, shut down, and wait it out. Then why this life at all?

James Mills on March 2, 2008, 2:37 PM

I really butchered a sentence in my last paragraph. It should read:

“However he does seem to me to be only concerned with being loved.”

My apologies.

Tyler Wittman on March 2, 2008, 4:25 PM

I do not think that our differing opinions are anything more than proof of what Paul speaks about in Romans 1-3. Therefore, I do not find it a strength for your argument. Read Romans 1-3 and you will see what I mean: http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=romans 1-3

I point you to the text of Scripture because that is my authority, nothing else. Reading the beginning of Romans, you will then understand why it is that I reject your notion of us not understanding what we are doing wrong. We have repeated chances in this life to acknowledge God and put our faith in him alone. The choice for us to make is in this life, not the next. The next life is a result of the choices we make now. The choice, as I have discussed earlier is this: to spend eternity with or without God. It is yours to make.

Trusting your intuition alone to be the arbiter between moral and immoral subjects is not a Biblical notion. The Bible is our standard of morality, etc. Not any sense of moral law written on the heart, though that is there to serve a purpose. We are, after all, fallen creatures. The Fall described in Genesis 3 affected all of creation, including our noetic faculties. If you feel that hell is immoral, then you are mistaken for feeling that way (according to a Biblical worldview). There is not pickle as far as God is concerned.

What about those who never heard? Once again, we will be judged according to our knowledge. To whom much is given, much is required. At the same time, no one enters heaven apart from faith in Christ in this life. There are two clear teachings of Scripture to be considered here: 1) God is holy and there is no darkness in him at all. 2) Those mature persons who do not place faith in Christ in this life fall under his judgment. The Bible does not discuss our notions of fairness. Remember that we all deserve eternal punishment, the fact that God saves even one man is cause to attribute to him the greatest sense of mercifulness.

“So god knew from the start he would be creating suffering? It has to follow that by creating volitional creatures who to be volitional would have to rebal against god that god created hell and suffering.”

God did not author of these things as such. “Hell” is a murky concept too. I believe it exists, but I’m not quite sure what it looks like. The Bible doesn’t give us an exhaustive account of what God’s judgment looks like, but it does indicate that it’s something terrible and not to be longed for. He ordains evil, but he does not author it. He is omniscient, so he knew what would happen. Ultimately, the ontological aspect of evil is an enigma. As Moses said, “such things are too great” for us. What we do know is that God is completely good. There is no darkness in him at all. At the same time, he has ordained that evil be known to us because he allowed the fall to take place. All of these things ultimately work together for our good (Rom 8:28), even though we cannot understand how this is the case given our finite perspective.


“This makes absolutly no sense to me (again if I can’t understand it using the very moral sense given to me by god, how can I be blamed?).”

I again refer you to Romans 1-3.

"When you say “many choose this route” do you really think anyone would willingly choose eternal torment over say nonexistence? Why eternal punishment? It is the eternal aspect of the torment that I cannot reconcile.“

I understand that and I would again remind you that there are many who argue that God does simply annihilate the wicked at the final judgment (I believe John R. W. Stott eventually endorsed this view, although I could be mistaken). You don’t have to hold to my understanding of hell to be a Christian, even though I hold to this view because I believe it to be the case.

Concerning free-will: we are free to choose that which we want to do. As a result of the fall, though, we all want to abandon God. It is a fact that mankind’s very nature is antagonistic towards God. We rebel against him at every turn. Yet we are responsible for this. I think I agree with you that no one would choose eternal suffering if they truly believed it, but the problem is that people don’t believe it. It doesn’t sound good to them, so they dismiss it as some pre-modern fear about a sky god.

”If god is truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent then eternal torment cannot exist."

I simply submit that God defines himself, not us. God is completely good and all-powerful, but that doesn’t mean that he can perform logical contradictions. He cannot make a round square. Thus, he cannot create beings who are volitional and morally responsible, as a result of being created in his image, and not hold them responsible for their actions. It would not make sense any other way.

Job wrestled with this question and demands that God answer for himself. But what happens at the end of Job? In Job 38: 2-3, God suddenly comes down and addresses Job after he has been discussing many of these same issues with his friends and says, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me.” This is one of my favorite parts of the entire Bible. God proceeds to ask Job to give an account for many of the “why’s” we often ask, or simply to give an account for nature, creation, etc. He asks Job if Job has control over the world. He basically reveals to Job only part of how truly ignorant he is as a creature.

Job then responds by saying, “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know . . . I had heard of your by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

This response is the same response anyone in the Bible has when they are confronted with the presence of God. They recognize exactly how small they are and they are terrified. Hebrews 10:31 speaks loud and clear, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

James, there is only so far that we can go with our questions. We can ask them, but ultimately it is God who does the asking – not us. We must have the faith of a child. God doesn’t mind us questioning and being curious, but he does condemn Job and his friends for demanding an answer for that which they are ignorant of. They have no right. We have no right. Ours is the responsibility to trust in the sovereign Almighty God and his promises that he works all things together for our good and that he is holy.

We’re not going to be able to make sense of everything, but I find a certain comfort in that. God is beyond understanding exhaustively. If he weren’t, I would have much more difficulty believing that he is truly God.

James Mills on March 3, 2008, 12:31 AM

“What about those who never heard? Once again, we will be judged according to our knowledge. To whom much is given, much is required. At the same time, no one enters heaven apart from faith in Christ in this life.”

I’m sorry but I don’t think this clears up the issue about those who do not know about Christ. Which is it? That we are judged based on our knowledge? Or is Christ the only way? If we are judged based on our knowledge then I relate a question I once read a Christian mother ask about her soon to be born child. It went something like this:

“If those who never know of Christ are not held accountable and avoid damnation then would it not be in the best interests of my child to keep him ignorant of Christianity?”

Not this is a hypothetical. In today’s day and age she would have to raise her child in seclusion but in theory it could be done. Now I take it the mother would be punished but she could also technically keep the knowledge of christianity to herself and ask for forgiveness. This is kind of out there but I find it interesting to think about.

I think we have now reached the point in our argument where the question of the authority and accuracy of the Bible is the only question left. I read the passages you recommended and I see where your train of thought is coming from and as you admit the authority of your argument comes from the Bible. So what makes it authoritative? Why not other holy books? Books that also say that they alone are the one true revelation. As Prince said below there are people of other faiths just as sure as you are about the authority of their holy book.

Bence Vajda on March 3, 2008, 5:57 AM

teddybear, jamesspills
It is nice to witness a civilised discussion about the topic! Thanks, teddybear, for drawing attention to this discussion. (Please feel free to answer here the points I made in the other section, if you wish.)

teddybear,
I would like to expand jamesspills’ last question (the authority of the Bible) a little further, I hope he doesn’t mind.
You write that you “presuppose that it [the Bible] is the word of God”. Can you please describe the reasons (from outside of the scriptures) why it is reasonable to accept this presupposition? Until that the elaborate structure of you arguments is not anchored to the objective reality. It is just a hypothesis that needs to be supported with objective evidence.
On what do you base your a priori assumption that the scripture is a word of a deity?

Tyler Wittman on March 3, 2008, 10:09 AM

Gentlemen,

Thank you for recognizing the obvious endpoint of this entire discussion: the authority of the Bible. I shall turn to that briefly.

Prince, we are talking about God. Some infinite chain of causality is your standard of truth, apparently. But you need to justify that this was always the case. If God is eternal, far beyond your understanding, and the creator and governor of the very rules that you observe in the universe, then he’s not subject to those rules and laws. You’re trying to put God in a box, but he won’t fit. I’m not going to repeat myself at this point as concerns creation and human decision to either spend eternity with God or without God.

James, it’s “both and.” Christ is the only means of God reconciling his creation to himself. There are varying degrees of eternal punishment, assigned according to the knowledge that an individual is accountable to. The entire creation speaks enough knowledge of God to condemn man, but not save him. This is the way it is – I didn’t come up with this stuff. The man on the island receives eternal punishment (justly, mind you – he deserves it just as much as you or I do), but if he never even heard of Christ or God, he’s likely not going to be experiencing the same punishment I expect men like Diocletian, Nero, Vladimir Tepes, Hitler, and Stalin to receive.

Now pay attention right here because this is where my entire argument begins and ends. Presuppositions. My presupposing the existence of God and the truthfulness of the Biblical revelation of him alone is no less valid than any of you believing the world is nothing but a random evolution of natural processes and matter (or that we’re all brains in a vat). All of you keep demanding that I account for evil, etc. but you have not accounted for evil. You have not accounted for good, beauty, truth. You have not accounted for epistemology. Every single one of you holds to various presuppositions about, as Douglas Adams would say, “life, the universe, and everything.”

THE question to be considered in light of this is, can your worldview account for everything? Can it account for the things I mentioned above? How does your worldview account for something as simple as knowledge? How can you know that your cognitive faculties produce true knowledge of your surroundings? How do you know this to be the case? It’s time now for the discussion to produce our presuppositions and lay them bare for scrutiny.

I rest on the authority of Scripture as God’s one revelation to his creation. It is the covenant document between us and our Lord, the only one of its kind.

What about Islam? What about Mormonism? What about Buddhism? How do I know that these religions are false and mine is true? Isn’t that the worst display of hubris possibly imaginable by some crazy fundamentalist who has no interest in reason or ‘objective evidence’?

I contend that the Christian God and worldview account for reality better than any of these worldviews. I believe that it accounts for nature and origins better than naturalistic evolution. I believe atheism is an untenable worldview that cannot ultimately make sense of reality, just the same as Islam or Mormonism.

How do I get to that point? I first start by taking the Bible at its word: as the only revelation of God. I then contest this view against the world and it continually makes sense in light of historical events (the resurrection of Jesus Christ), human nature (basically evil), etc. over against other rival conceptions of the universe.

You may reject this as not rooted in objective evidence or what not, but then I merely turn to you and ask you to account for objectivity. Account for evidence. How does your worldview make sense of these matters? I contend that ultimately you cannot make sense of knowledge, truth, order, or anything without the Christian God. Not Allah, not the “deity” of Mormonism, not Plato’s Demiurge . . . but the God of Jacob.

Quickeye, I hope you’ll begin to see the corollaries here as they relate to your other questions in the last thread (which I will simply address here as the argument unfolds further).

Prince, the Bible does not contradict itself. This is a charge that has been leveled against the Bible for two millenia, yet the thing still stands. Post-Darwin, the 19th century saw many attacks against the inerrancy, inspiration, and authority of Scripture in the form of assaults on various texts. These always produced solid answers when careful reflection was given them by such scholars and defenders of the faith as Louis Berkhof and others. The attacks continue unabated every generation because people wish to see contradictions in Scripture and don’t bother to interact with solid theologians and exegetes. I wasn’t born a Christian. I wrestled with these things, but ultimately discovered that the Bible made sense of reality far better than Islam, or any other religion (including that of naturalism). Just as people have not bothered to read the text of Scripture for themselves, many read it only for themselves and as a consequence, many have perverted the teachings of Scripture throughout the ages to justify a number of evils. That doesn’t make it any less authoritative. It’s an ad hominem argument at best.

Thus, my challenge to you all is this: how does your worldview account for “life, the universe, and everything?” Ultimately, I believe that Christianity makes the most sense. That’s not to say that it doesn’t require faith. Faith is integral to Christianity. But honestly, with all the faith I have, I don’t have enough faith to not be a Christian.

James Mills on March 3, 2008, 6:08 PM

I’m not sure how I define my world view. I do not wish to sound conceited and say my world view is reality but I can’t think of any other way to put it. My world view is based on my and other peoples experiences. So how does this view account for good, evil, beauty and everything else?

I think good and evil are concepts created by sentient beings as a means of categorizing what is fair and what is unfair respectively. These ideas are based on equality. The varying degrees of fair and unfair actions corresponds to where we place them. Either as good or as evil. Murder is the unfair action of taking someone else’s life. Theft is the unfair action of taking what is not yours. Good actions are done in an effort to make things more fair, more equal. We hear of people who need aide and we give it to help bring them up to our level of stability. It centers on equality. Our human history has been one of struggling to achieve greater equality and even now that struggle is beginning to reach out to other species. We have not achieved true equality and never will. I think that is an impossibility because things are ever changing, but it is the struggle for it that defines good. What makes equality good or at least what we want? We all feel pain in some way or another. We also understand that other people feel pain and when we see others in pain we in a way feel their pain in us. I think that humans are actually naturally “good”. What I mean by this is I think most humans wish to undo suffering. People that we call evil are people who do not view others as equal and thus have no wish to end their suffering.

Knowledge is the aggregate of our experience. Through our senses we remember instances that have already happened and based on those memories we can infer as to what may happen next.

Consciousness I admit is still a mystery. Remember though that disease was once a mystery and attributed to god. There are some who say consciousness is the result of the sheer complexity of our brains that causes us to experience something called consciousness. Our brains are far too big for what is necessary to simply run the processes our body demands so there is extra room to store past sensations and then compare and contrast those to new sensations.

Objectivity comes from shared experience (among others AND among ourselves through our memory). It is the
observance of repeatable truths. I can think that if I let go of a ball that it will float in mid air but sure enough every time I let go of the ball it falls to the ground. That is an objective truth and true for every other sentient being. It is not certain though. Life is a collection of probabilities not certainties. I won’t call a belief that gravity will still be working tomorrow faith though because there is proof that it will. It is the entire history of it constantly working that is proof. Beauty is subjective. However I think there is a general consensus among our species about what beauty is because we all generally have the same senses. Light is generally thought to be a beautiful thing because light is good for us. It allows us to see, gives us warmth and energy.

Now accounting for life, the universe, and everything. We don’t know everything thats true but I don’t understand why this is a bad thing. Because I can’t account for the exact way that the universe began doesn’t cause me discomfort. Life is something we have a pretty good handle on though. The basic building materials for life have been generated in a lab and it appears that they can be created quite easily. The problem we have is that there is life already here. So those basic building materials are not given the chance to become life because they are quickly consumed by the life that already exists. Evolution explains how life became complex and does so in a very complete way that does not require intelligent interference. The universe like consciousness is still very mysterious and in my mind are the last two areas where postulating a god is still somewhat viable.

The Bible as an authoritative source is a faith issue to me. I’ve never seen concrete historical evidence to back up it’s supernatural claims. When I read that the dead rose from their graves and walked through the city of Jerusalem the moment after Jesus died on the cross I expect there to me numerous reports of this event. There are no other accounts of any of Jesus’ miracles in history. The feeding of the multitudes is one I think would have spread. The only source for such claims is the Bible. The historical fact of Jesus is in dispute as well but there is some evidence that he was a real person. I’ve got no problem with that. His existence does not then lead to the assumption of his divinity. Again I say that the revelation is not complete or concrete enough considering the dire circumstances.

I’m going to read up a bit on some of the historical records of Jesus and try to get a better understanding of them. I don’t feel like I can put forth a strong enough argument right now with the knowledge that I have. If anyone else who is reading this has already studied these materials please feel free to expand on them.

Bence Vajda on March 3, 2008, 10:28 PM

teddybear,

As usual, you give me plenty to read! :)

As to causality. Our everyday experiences show us the validity of the chain of causality. I couldn’t come up with any exceptions. The light is on because I turned it on. The rain falls to the ground because of gravity. And so on. Thus the chain of causality is the norm, and it is the deviations from it that need to be explained, since they do not conform to what we see all around us. Why would we need to make an exception to the general rule? This is what needs to be justified. So what is the reason as to why we should make an exception? On what evidence?

“If God is… far beyond your understanding”, as you write. You are right. “If” is not a fact. It is a hypothesis until supported by evidence.

How does “creation” (I prefer the universe) speak enough of god? This is the same as revelation in nature I was asking about previously. Please give an example of a natural phenomenon that can be explained by god only.

Presupposition. Actually, no, your presupposition and mine are not of the same validity. Firstly, claiming that your presupposition is valid because mine is – it is not really an argument. Secondly, the scientific claims, like those made by evolution can be verified by observation (like the study made on the beaks of the finches of the Galapagos), experiments, models (like that of the development of the eye). My suppositions are not assumptions, since they could be demonstrated to work. The supposition of the Bible being the word of any deity is not verified. Some consider it that because the Bible itself says so. Hm…
Btw evolution: it is not random. Evolution is “non-random selection of random mutations”. The mutations are random, but the process of selection is not: only those mutations survive and spread that make the individuals better adapted to their environment. This is driven by the environment, not by chance.

I’m not asking you to account for your worldview. I’m trying to understand where you are coming from, and I ask questions to see your undelying beliefs. I would like to get answers to the questions before the ball gets into my court. The burden of proof is on you, as it is you who are making broad, positive claims without giving a hint of evidence that surely exists.
Like for example that the Christian worldview accounts for nature and the origins better, than evolution. Please give an example: apparently the two have been pitted against each other by explaining some natural phenomena by both: please share the details with us.
Another such claim is that theism (or Christianity) makes more sense of the reality than atheism. Again: this claim is presumably backed up with evidence, and I would very much like to see how you arrived at this conclusion. Not least because there could than be a worldview better than mine to which I should switch, but I’m not changing it just because somebody says so.

Taking the Bible at its words. Well, as far as I know (and I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary here either), the Bible is considered to be the word of deity because the Bible says so… Does this mean that claiming something makes it real? Can I claim the winnings of the lottery just because I say that I won it? Certainly a claim even more important than that requires even more rigorous testing!

I think that the resurrection of Jesus is not a historical event. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as Carl Sagan said. Since dead people don’t resurrect (this is our everyday reality), claiming that such an event indeed did occure requires some pretty heavy support. Does a fable passed down at least for decades after the alleged event(s) before writing down from memory than translated between different languages, later compiled into a volume disregarding some accounts of the same events, by people who had vested interest in the contents of the volume and had every opportunity and means to alter texts… pass as robust evidence? How does it amount to “historic event”? People cannot agree on whether Elvis is dead or not, and this is in our own lifetime!

And the questions I asked on the other discussion, that are not answered:
- infinite regress of causality can be stopped (see above)
- if there is a first cause, why would it be a creator and the universe itself, for example?
- does the existence of a creator say anything about its other properties? does being a creator automatically mean that everything else thought of it (commandments, miracles, etc.) is true?
- revelation of god in nature (mentioned above)
- science is unlikely/impossible without God?

Tyler Wittman on March 4, 2008, 5:37 PM

Gentlemen,

Thank you for your engagement. I’m a student at the moment and I get quite busy during the week, but I will try to respond by tomorrow sometime. I don’t need anything more to respond to until I have responded to your comments thus far, but a quick observation: quickeye, I don’t think you have understood what I’m saying. You have not identified your own presuppositions yet. The good news is, I think it’s fair to say that I have identified a few of them. I will demonstrate this when I respond. Don’t fret, I haven’t forgotten the other issues you want addressed. In the interest of not wasting time and (breath?), I will wait to address these issues until they are naturally grafted in to the current course of discussion by way of association (since this is essentially where I was going to take those issues anyway).

James, I will also try to address some of your concerns and continue to plead the case for my worldview. As far as the resurrection of Christ is concerned, the definitive book on this issue is N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God.” It is a tome, but I promise you it will challenge your very assumptions about life.

http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Son-Christian-Origins-Question/dp/0800626796/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204670175&sr=8-1

Bence Vajda on March 4, 2008, 6:43 PM

teddybear,

Good luck with your studies!

My presuppositions (I prefer calling them assumptions) in general are based on verifiable evidence and reason, mostly scientific theories to the best of my knowledge. But I wouldn’t like to veer off your presuppositions at this moment until we have discussed the questions posted.

Tyler Wittman on March 5, 2008, 3:54 PM

Alright gentlemen, perhaps to respond in full to your claims I would need a few days to properly lay out everything, but I promised you I would respond today, so here goes:

As a preface, understand that I will be a tad bit polemical in my language, but I do not wish to become overly polemical with you. I%u2019m not upset, nor will I be. The conversation is simply at the point where I have to start making a claim that you are wrong about certain things, etc. This is perhaps harder for westerners in a pluralistic society these days to swallow and engage with (truth claims, etc.) than it was for pre-modern philosophers. I hope we can all transcend the confines of relativism and for a moment think in terms of who%u2019s right and who%u2019s wrong, in a civil manner (which we%u2019ve accomplished thus far, right?). Everyone involved needs to read the entire response because I address things relevant to both positions in each response.


First, James,

%u201CI can%u2019t think of any other way to put it.%u201D

Precisely, because the way you perceive reality is founded on your presuppositions themselves. I want to stress the need to think through every facet of your worldview because you need to see whether you are not a living paradox. Your worldview is based on experience, you say. Your experience and the experience of others? But how can that possibly be coherent when my experience contradicts yours? What about the experience of the men who wrote the gospel accounts of Christ being crucified one day and then witnessing him resurrected and amongst their midst three days later? What about the experience of people who claim to speak with the dead (something that doesn%u2019t pay very much respect to the scientific method or naturalism)? Obviously, you have to come down to a point where you accept as authoritative only your own experience and perhaps the experience of anyone who agrees with you, thus your assertion that %u201Cknowledge is the aggregate of our experience.%u201D But you need to qualify %u201Cour%u201D don%u2019t you? I simply ask these questions to prod and show you how we need to dig even deeper.

You accept as true only what can be observed and repeated? Correct me if I%u2019m wrong, but you seem to be hinting at a certain kind of logical positivism or naturalism. Either way, you need to clarify on what grounds you believe these assumptions to be true. It is likely that you hold to naturalism because that is the prevalent worldview today. Thus, you would see no merit in the actual metaphysical distinction between the natural and the supernatural. This worldview assumes that matter is all that exists and that everything can be explained in natural terms. Given enough time, information, and technology, science will ultimately explain everything %u2013 even the origin of life and the nonexistence of God. I believe this is largely the presupposition that Quickeye holds to as well (even though he doesn%u2019t seem to be aware that it is a presupposition, actually coming before his assumptions).

I%u2019m guessing that this is your worldview, your presupposition being the existence of the material only, because of how you attempted to reconcile evil, beauty, life, etc. You also have never seen %u201Chistorical evidence%u201D to back up the claims of Scripture. But I don%u2019t think it%u2019s too much of a stretch to say that you don%u2019t anticipate any such evidence cropping up. Or if you did, you likely have confidence that it would show Jesus%u2019 miracles to have been simple illusions and misconceptions, all attributable to natural causes and ultimately explained away by science.

Now Quickeye,

I%u2019m even more certain that in your case you are a naturalist. In your first paragraph, you say %u201Cwhy would we need to make an exception to the general rule?%u201D Presupposed behind that statement is the universal and ultimate authority of causality. You then say that God is a hypothesis in need of verification by evidence (I%u2019m assuming only repeatable, controlled, and observable evidence will suffice for you?). You then proceed to claim, rather mistakenly in my opinion, that my presuppositions are not as valid as yours. The problem with such an assertion is that you are unwilling to peel back the layers and get to the bottom of your own idea of the world %u2013 a naturalistic idea of the world. Ultimately, you make assumptions (that everything can be explained in terms of natural processes) which you circularly justify by asserting that your experience verifies them. However, you have structured your experience entirely on the presupposition that everything can be explained in terms of natural processes. You see how that is circular? I%u2019m not condemning you at this point. All I%u2019m saying is that you have made an assumption that you cannot verify as an absolute truth, a PRE-supposition which structures the rest of your thinking and acting (and assumptions).

EVERYONE has presuppositions quickeye. You cannot escape them, even French postmodernism acknowledges this. So it is on the grounds of our presuppositions that we must do battle because from them spring forth everything else.

By insisting that I leave your worldview alone and account for mine alone, without having drawn out our distinctive presuppositions, you are basically asking me to play according to pre-conditioned rules that you have assumed. This is practically played out in you asking me to offer forth scientific evidence, etc. You are asking me to prove %u2018positive%u2019 statements (the resurrection happened) from the assumption of the %u2018negative%u2019 (bodies cannot be resurrected). I believe you can see how this is logically absurd, akin to asking someone to draw a circle with the stipulation that they must incorporate a 90-degree angle. Thus, I have rejected the burden of proof being solely on me. I think debating from the grounds of our presuppositions makes it only fair and completely honest.

So what I%u2019m asking is that you demonstrate to me how your worldview accounts for reality better than mine. Ultimately, I think only the God of Scripture can make sense of everything. So at every relevant point, I will make the case for the subject we discuss from a Christian worldview and show how the naturalistic worldview does not, indeed cannot make sense of it. It is on these grounds that I claim only a Christian view of the world is ultimately True.

There are so many places we could go from here gentlemen, I will simply start with epistemology because it%u2019s a shared burden for both of your worldviews. I think it is foundational to quickeye%u2019s arguments and implicitly so in james%u2019. Indeed, how can we start with anything other than how we know? I will address this in my next post, but for the moment I am out of time. Regardless, I am sure I have given you enough to read as is and you might have some qualms with the formulations thus far that we might need to address before we move forward. I%u2019m sure you will both let me know if the structure of the debate, being on neutral ground, is acceptable or not.

Tyler Wittman on March 5, 2008, 3:55 PM

sorry about the craziness where simple punctuation should be, i think it has something to do with pasting the post in from word.

Bruce Allen on March 5, 2008, 7:59 PM

TeddyBear — I certainly must admire the enthusiasm with which you defend your faith.

On a careful read of your posts, I note a constant theme where you turn to the Bible as the ultimate reference for ‘truth’. Take that out of the equation, and you will be left with the same ability to judge truth as any ‘non-believer’.

I don’t think you have addressed this issue of the “Circular Argument” raised in the companion thread. Possibly you might argue that there is no such thing as a non-circular argument [ I could probably put that case myself ], but that is purely philosophical-obfuscation that avoids the issue. To convince someone of your point of view, you need to start the play on THEIR turf.

Simple question – “What event or discovery could cause you to revise your belief that the Bible has a special connect to God?”. This question is obviously loaded, as any answer will have serious repercussions for the points you make in the future. I will understand if you choose not to respond [grin].

Tyler Wittman on March 5, 2008, 11:38 PM

cosmos,

at the risk of getting too many conversations going on this one thread, I think there are several ways to defend the Christian faith. Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been several methods used but I simply prefer to employ two methods in consideration of a postmodern world. It would take too long to explain all these things in detail but I think ultimately the hypothetical question you pose really gets to the heart of the issue much the same way as my route has. It’s trying to lay bare the preconditions for intelligibility, ultimately.

Tyler Wittman on March 5, 2008, 11:39 PM

“I note a constant theme where you turn to the Bible as the ultimate reference for ‘truth’. Take that out of the equation, and you will be left with the same ability to judge truth as any ‘non-believer’.”

You are absolutely correct. Indeed, apart from Scripture my thoughts run from God.

Bence Vajda on March 6, 2008, 10:05 AM

teddybear,

Validity of presuppositions and causality as a presupposition.
Causality is based on how we experience the world and is verified through everybody’s experience. Experience comes first, then comes the statement based on it. You experience causality, I do, everybody does.
Causality gives valid predictions about the world: “if you do something, it will cause something else” – check, “if something happens, it had a cause” – check.
Anything that challenges it needs to be justified since it contradicts a presupposition that is constantly being validated through experience (a posteriori).
You presupposition (that causality was suspended in one particular case) doesn’t challenge only my presupposition: it challenges everybody’s (I dare say even your) experience of the universe.
So what warrants your presupposition? Until you validated that your presupposition describes the world (that it is allowed to break the chain of causality), it is not of the same validity as a validated statement. Until that it is as valid as the tooth-fairy.


Evidence.
There is no other evidence than repeatable, controlled and observable when it comes to describing the universe – verifiable evidence. The rest is heresay.
Anything assumed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

“Natural processes explain everything.”
They don’t explain the world because I claim so. I accept that they explain the world because they demonstrate their ability to explain the world. Again it is knowledge based on evidence that can be verified by anybody, not just me. You yourself can verify it. I don’t need to prove a priori that naturalistic processes explain everything since it is not based on reasoning only.
If you claim that there is something that can be experienced that is exempt from naturalistic processes – give an example.

Accounting for worldviews.
You started the the topic with a post that drew questions about the validity of your positive statements. It is only fair that you have the opportunity to answer those questions first. Otherwise the exchange is absurd like:
“- There is a tooth-fairy.
- Really? What do you base that on?
- If you challenge my belief in the tooth-fairy, first you explain that your worldview is based on a priori and a posteriori absolute truths, before you ask for my evidence.”
You can challenge my worldview, but not instead of answering the questions your posts call forward.
The burden of proof of my worldview is on me, but we are not debating my worldview – we are discussing your statements.
It was you who claimed that the Christian worldview is a better explanation of the universe than the “naturalistic”. Again: please substantiate this claim before you try to move away from this claim. And again: an assumption without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.


Proving resurrection.
My claim “dead people stay dead” is just as positive as yours “resurrection happened”. Positive statements give a description without judgement.
Again, it is not my claim that you are arguing against: it is a verifiable a posteriori experience independent of me.
Until there is a shred of evidence that a resurrection happened, the only reasonable stance is to stick to what governs our everyday experience of death.
What is more likely: that the laws of the universe were put on hold for a singular event, or that it is a fabrication in the light of the heresay claiming the event?

Going places.
Let’s not go to places before get answers to our questions. Mine are directly linked to your positive statements, and have not been addressed so far.
- infinite regress of causality can be stopped?
- if there is a first cause, why would it be a creator and the universe itself, for example?
- does the existence of a creator say anything about its other properties? does being a creator automatically mean that everything else thought of it (commandments, miracles, etc.) is true?
- revelation of god in nature?
- science is unlikely/impossible without God?


Thanks!

James Mills on March 6, 2008, 3:19 PM

Yes I think a naturalist perspective is a fair description of how I view the world. Why? Because I have never experienced anything that I could call supernatural even when I thought myself a Christian. Also I have not seen anything that has convinced me that anything supernatural exists or has ever occurred. A very large part of the progress of humanity has been one of revealing the natural mechanisms behind things we once called supernatural.


“Either way, you need to clarify on what grounds you believe these assumptions to be true”

Evidence is what I base my understanding on. I said earlier that there are no certainties, only probabilities. However evidence and repeatability help us determine what is probable and what is not. As for me holding a naturalistic perspective because it is the dominant one today I really don’t see how this is a mark against that perspective. It has proven itself numerous times to be viable. The world is a better place today than it was in the past. There are still things wrong with it but overall it is a better place. Many thanks need to go to science and a naturalistic perspective for its improvement.

“Your worldview is based on experience, you say. Your experience and the experience of others? But how can that possibly be coherent when my experience contradicts yours?”

Our interpretations of our experiences contradict each other. Now how do we sort out who is right and who is wrong? Through analysis and experimentation. For example say I get burned by a fire and I feel pain. I thus conclude that being burned is painful. Now someone else comes along and says they were burned by a fire and felt no pain. Who is right? Well we run some tests and find out that the person who felt no pain has an underdeveloped nervous system and cannot feel pain. So the sensations were completely different and there was a reason for that. So the subjective aspect is whether or not being burned is painful. However an objective truth remains. Both individuals were burned. They suffered physical damage to their body. It is that objective truth that I try to find. Religion is a highly subjective entity that at the same time makes some very bold objective claims. These claims require evidence.


“You also have never seen historical evidence to back up the claims of Scripture. But I don’t think it too much of a stretch to say that you don’t anticipate any such evidence cropping up”

I have not seen historical evidence to back up the SUPERNATURAL claims of scripture. The Bible gets it right (and sometimes wrong) on matters of politics, geography, and traditions of the time period and we know this because there are other sources of evidence for those facts. Now in the areas where we should find evidence for the biblical claims of a supernatural order that evidence comes up missing. Every time. There is no record in the Egyptian histories of any of the plagues, the exodus, Jewish slaves, or the flood. Likewise I have seen no evidence for any of Jesus’ miracles. I’ve looked for this evidence. If you know of any please let me know.

I said earlier that a historiical figure with the name Jesus or a similar name who was a radical teacher and social reformer probably existed. However the only evidence I’m aware of for his supernatural abilities comes from the Bible. Again I ask about some of the obvious events that should have caused quite a stir. The feeding of the masses twice and the graves opening up at the moment of his death and the dead walking the streets of Jerusalem (mentioned only in Matthew strangely enough). The only source for these events is the Bible. Thats not strong evidence. To claim that the Bible as an authoritative source requires objective evidence.

At the very least a consensus amongst believers would be a step in this direction. However religion appears to me to be very fractured. This interpretation, that interpretation, this claim, that claim. Christianity itself is split among differing interpretations. Ah but isn’t science also split among differing interpretations? Yes, but it works with evidence and facts towards forming cohesion and consensus. Religion works with faith and there doesn’t seem to be much ground for cohesion or consensus because of that. Somebody has to admit that they are wrong. Religion seems to be working in the opposite direction toward a more fractured future.

I want to lay out now how I see religion. Religion to me is a philosophy. One that finds its strength in the unknown, most notably in death. I understand the feeling that there has to be something more. I understand just how unfair the death of a child is and we hope that there is some vindication for them. Christianity in particular has survived on the fear of this unknown and basically makes the assertion “Believe this and what awaits you after you die is good and eternal, don’t believe it and what awaits you after you die is bad and eternal.” Very concrete and absolute terms there that appeal to our basic instinctual perspectives. Surviving in the wild is easier when things are labeled in absolutes. “Run from the lion, he may look calm but he is a lion and can and will eat you.”

However while residing in the unknown it is a philosophy that still attempts to hold sway in what is known. So in those areas where it makes claims about what we know I require evidence just like I require evidence for everything else.

As a side note please do not feel rushed to respond Teddy. I’m currently on spring break from school so I’ve had a lot of free time to give to this discussion.

Tyler Wittman on March 6, 2008, 7:06 PM

Gentlemen,

I find it unfortunate that neither of you are willing to assent to the fact that you both assume that the universe is all that exists. You cannot prove this. You both constantly appeal to experience, but according to your formulation of reality neither of you have any warrant to believe that what you experience is true (I will demonstrate this in my appeal to epistemology).

Quickeye, I’m not sure how miracles work. I’m inclined to think that instead of suspending natural laws, God has counteracted them in times past. But that is neither here nor there. You keep demanding that I offer evidence for my previous assertions and I can give you my reasons for those points, but you’re not going to be happy with them. I’m trying to save you a step during this whole thing. My answers all appeal to Scripture. I’m trying to fast forward the debate to why Scripture is my final authority.

Your final authority is your assumption that the universe is all that exists. You would like me to demonstrate the validity of my claims within your interpretive framework. When I object, you lay claim to experience, etc. and round and round we go.

I will try to post my critique of naturalism and the entailments that ensue very soon, but I will try to prepare fairly extensive thoughts so that I can cut out a lot of this chaff and get right to the “nitty gritty” as Nacho Libre would say. Guys, I’m trying to tell you not that your view of causality is wrong, not that your view of evolution is wrong, not that your view of history is wrong, but that your view of practically everything is wrong. That’s a pretty outlandish claim, so let’s not get caught up with trying to explain smaller things when I’ve got much bigger fish to fry (however, I will address the science-as-impossible argument, quickeye, rest assured). patience . . . .

Tyler Wittman on March 6, 2008, 7:10 PM

one more thing, I am certainly not a scientist, but have a functional understanding of how science works. I’ve read Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Ruse, Grayling, etc. I say that just to save you both some time.

Bence Vajda on March 6, 2008, 8:19 PM

teddybear,

I certainly was of the view that I will get answer to my questions. But now that you are telling me that my views are wrong… Boy, are you spot on about at least 1 view of mine!

Tyler Wittman on March 7, 2008, 1:28 PM

Quickeye,

I knew you would appreciate the apparent arrogance. In reality, you believe me to be completely wrong as well. Neither of us are displaying arrogance (I would like to think), but rather just being honest about where we’re at and how we view each other’s conceptions of the universe. I’m just trying to draw out these distinctions clearly, between all of us, and then start debating the seeds of our beliefs.

With that in mind, you are correct to be under the impression that you will get answers to your questions – I’ve just had to preface them so that you locate them outside of a naturalistic worldview. That’s the only way you can understand where I’m coming from. But enough of this, let’s get to my two challenges to the both of you:

1) With naturalism, you cannot confidently believe anything.

Charles Darwin: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of a man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

We normally define knowledge as justified true belief. We must hold a belief (Bill believes Fido is in the backyard) that is in fact true (Fido happens to be in the backyard) and has been justified (Bill sees Fido in the backyard) in order to lay claim to knowledge. We would perhaps further agree that in order for justification to take place, then our cognitive faculties must be working (If Bill were a vegetable, he could not verify his beliefs about Fido).

Thus, our cognitive faculties need to be working properly, in accordance with a good design plan, and within an environment that is appropriate for the ways those faculties were meant to function (if indeed that design plan was aimed at obtaining truth). Otherwise, we have no grounds for trusting our “justification” for our beliefs to see whether or not they are indeed true. Thus, we must have warrant for our beliefs before we can justify them.

For our cognitive faculties to be “properly functioning,” I do not mean to simply define the way we see them functioning every day (that must be understood as the “usual function”). Proper function is necessarily normative (the way they ought to function) whereas usual function is not.

If we need warranted belief to ascertain knowledge, and if we need properly functioning cognitive faculties to achieve warrant, and if properly functioning faculties depends on our faculties having been specifically designed to achieve truth, then knowledge presupposes a creator.

This notion of proper function, or the way our cognitive faculties ought to work makes sense from the Christian worldview. God created us to know him and designed our cognitive faculties to function as a means of helping us ascertain truth.

Naturalism offers us no grounds to believe with any confidence that our faculties are interested in truth, rather than survival and reproduction. If our cognitive faculties arose the same way everything else did in a naturalistic understanding of the universe (that is, by natural selection), then the ultimate purpose of our cognitive faculties is to guarantee that we behave in certain ways. Thus, beliefs that are absolutely true have no consideration.

But wouldn’t creatures who have trustworthy faculties be more likely to survive than others? Not really. Naturalistic evolution selects adaptive behavior, but we cannot say the same for our cognitive faculties. Beliefs alone don’t produce behaviors, instead entire sets of beliefs, environments, personalities, will, emotions, etc. all play in to action. Organisms that need to behave certain ways don’t need to believe true things to produce such behavior.

Thus, naturalism leaves us with no ground to trust our cognitive faculties, a consideration that ultimately cannot be removed by more basic considerations (there is nothing more basic than our grounds for intelligibility).

The Christian God made us to know him, he is not a liar and there is no darkness in him at all. Desiring that we know him and not wishing to deceive us, he gives us cognitive faculties that were designed to discern truth in an environment that he created for the use of those faculties. The Christian worldview can account for intelligibility, naturalism cannot. That is my contention.

2) Modern science falsely assumes naturalism and cannot account for origins.

This is where I will address the supposed infinite chain of causality.

Methodological uniformitarianism, as far as I understand, assumes that the world functions in an unchanging and uniform manner. Actualism appeals to known processes rather than unknown processes. Both of these things make sense, yet they produce a problem when we take them too far.

Assume for just a moment that we place a modern scientist on the earth on day 6 of the creation, when it was all done. He is not informed of the fact that the world was nonexistent just six days earlier, but is instead allowed to try and deduce everything he can from the creation before him. He would observe a creation that has cyclical processes so as to sustain itself, then applying methodological uniformitarianism and actualism, he would infer that the world was billions of years old, etc. and eventually come to the conclusions of modern science.

This is because he is using the wrong method. According to Scripture, God used processes that are foreign to common experience in the creation of the universe. The Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, from nothing, indicates that everything around us arose by the power of his authoritative Word. He spoke the universe into existence from his infinite wisdom. Assuming this is all true for a moment, we cannot then suppose that using our modern methods of science that we could ever get to the knowledge of God or miracles.

Thus the need for special revelation – Jesus Christ and the Word of God – in order to ascertain knowledge of God and correct information about the universe (the Bible is not a science textbook, nor does it really predicate things about natural processes other than that they are upheld by the authority of Christ).


Gentlemen, those are not my arguments – I rest on the shoulders of giants before me. I struggled with naturalism and macroevolution before coming down to the point where I rejected naturalism as incoherent and confined my belief in evolution to microevolution. Remember, I’m not trying to be overly polemical here, but I am trying to lay bare why it is that I reject your view of the world and why I think my view makes sense of it.

I leave you with the following quote by a late, great Christian theologian and philosopher: “There are two ways of defending the faith. One of these begins from man as self-sufficient and works up to God, while the other begins from the triune God of the Scriptures and relates all things to him. . . . The traditional ideas of trying to find some neutral, common ground on which the believer and unbeliever can stand are based on the notion that man is autonomous . . . [yet] Paul says, all men, knowing God, hold down this knowledge in unrighteousness. . . . [This knowledge] is the only basis man has on which he can stand, to know himself, to find the facts of his world and learn how to relate them to one another. Without the Creator-God-Redeemer of Scripture the universe would resemble an infinite number of beads with no holes in any of them, yet which must all be strung by an infinitely long string.”

James Mills on March 7, 2008, 6:17 PM

1.) With naturalism, you cannot confidently believe anything.

“Naturalism offers us no grounds to believe with any confidence that our faculties are interested in truth, rather than survival and reproduction. If our cognitive faculties arose the same way everything else did in a naturalistic understanding of the universe (that is, by natural selection), then the ultimate purpose of our cognitive faculties is to guarantee that we behave in certain ways. Thus, beliefs that are absolutely true have no consideration.”

Survival and reproduction in order to occur must rely on truth. A creature isn’t going to survive and reproduce if his cognitive functions are feeding him false information. Thus that creature would die and not pass on his faulty cognitive functions. Evolution is an arms race of sorts. As one species gets better at killing its prey, it’s prey will become better at avoiding being eaten.
So this process goes on for many years all based on true information from the environment. So I say yes, creatures with trustworthy faculties would definitely be more likely to survive.

“Not really. Naturalistic evolution selects adaptive behavior, but we cannot say the same for our cognitive faculties. Beliefs alone don’t produce behaviors, instead entire sets of beliefs, environments, personalities, will, emotions, etc. all play in to action. Organisms that need to behave certain ways don’t need to believe true things to produce such behavior.”

Of course they need to believe true things in order to produce behavior that leads to survival. It may not be an ultimate truth but it is truth enough to survive. As creatures become more complex a greater understanding of the world is required to survive.

“Thus, naturalism leaves us with no ground to trust our cognitive faculties, a consideration that ultimately cannot be removed by more basic considerations (there is nothing more basic than our grounds for intelligibility).”

My grounds for trusting my cognitive abilities are that my cognitive abilities evolved through slow selection over time from pressure from the environment. They evolved to perceive the environment. What good would my cognitive functions be if they detected things that were not in the environment? There are instances where this does happen such as optical illusions. However these illusions are usually rare and not found in nature often. Now because my cognitive functions are not perfect 100% of the time and because there are things that I cannot detect in the environment (such as radio waves and ultraviolet light) does not mean that my cognitive functions are not reliable for truth. They simply do not reveal the entire truth. This is where discipline and science come in. In science we take what we observe and record it. Then we do it again, and again, again and again. If these results match up we can confidently say it is true.

2) Modern science falsely assumes naturalism and cannot account for origins.

Modern science is the culmination of all previous science and has come to the conclusion of naturalism. More on that later. Science also studies the natural world so it makes sense that it holds a naturalistic viewpoint. The issue is has there been any other thing that we can study that does not fall within nature? As for origins the ultimate origin still eludes us. But science is working on it. I know that is an unsatisfying answer but its the truth, science is working to figure it out. If you’re interested at all then research the Large Hadron Collider that will go into operation (hopefully) this summer. I’m not sure what they will find but it will be interesting.

“Assume for just a moment that we place a modern scientist on the earth on day 6 of the creation, when it was all done. He is not informed of the fact that the world was nonexistent just six days earlier, but is instead allowed to try and deduce everything he can from the creation before him. He would observe a creation that has cyclical processes so as to sustain itself, then applying methodological uniformitarianism and actualism, he would infer that the world was billions of years old, etc. and eventually come to the conclusions of modern science.”

Thats fine, but what about fossils that we understand to be millions or even billions of years old? Did god really just create fossils to appear old as well? I ask these questions assuming you believe the earth to be only thousands of years old based on this example you have given. If that is not true please let me know.

Ok, here we are. You believe scripture is the authority and you mold your worldview around that. Everything is accountable to god and scripture.

I do not think scripture is authoritative nor do I believe in god. With that in mind I then look at where else the evidence points to. And it points to natural causes. It points to the universe is all there is. It isn’t some presupposition as you imply. It is a conclusion on my part. A tentative one barring further evidence. You state that for knowledge to exist there must be a creator who gave us knowledge so that we may know him. You then say this creator is the christian god because the bible says so. There is no middle ground here because whatever argument I make you can simply brush aside as coming from our human understanding. This is a central tenant of presuppositional apologetics. You stand by your claim no matter what evidence is presented against it because that evidence comes from a presupposition that isn’t god.

So this idea of presuppositions is something I’d like to discuss. When we are born we have no presuppositions. To an infant there is no separation between the world and themselves. When the infant is hungry the world is hungry. It is only when we grow up and our brains enlarge that we become capable of understanding that we are an entity within the world and that there are other entities. It takes a little while longer to understand that these other entities have minds just like we do and can feel just the same as we feel. So where does the presupposition come in? When it comes to matters such as origin and existence we can only learn from others. If we are taught it was god then we invariably believe it is god, if not then the other way. This goes on until we become able to begin thinking for ourselves. Now if through thinking for yourself you come to the conclusion that it was god then ok. But to call either stance a presupposition is I think incorrect. I think they are conclusions. As you’ve stated yourself you have concluded that there is a god. So please do not write off my stance as a mere presupposition. Yes it is true that I cannot prove that the universe is all that there is but neither can you prove that god exists. What I have done is come to a conclusion based on evidence. Just my two cents on that matter, I hope it is clear.

Bruce Allen on March 7, 2008, 7:44 PM

JamesSpills - I agree with most of your comments, except when it comes to the categorization of scientific discipline. What you implied about science being basically observational, was true a hundred years ago. Most of today’s effort in physics is theoretical [ the results from the Collider you mentioned, will send physicists into overdrive ]. With this, I find a strong parallel in the attempt to postulate a god that will fit the unexplored and unexplained. Science has an excellent record at fitting models to things we can stick our fork into; less so when reaching out to the indefinite. However, there is an unending refinement-process which guarantees that we can never be sure of an irrefutable truth. There will ALWAYS be things out of reach to science. Likewise, the same situation applies when we try to shake-hands with our maker.

TeddyBear - I disagree with most of your comments; even worse, I question the logic of many of the conclusions. Since God is a concept, purely of the mind, it is impossible to take a stand on who is absolutely right, and who is absolutely wrong. Such inflexibility will inevitably lead to a contradiction that cannot be avoided, no matter how obscure the philosophical debate becomes. The bottom-line is that you have no greater connect to God than anyone else. If it makes you feel good to believe you have, that’s fine. Just make more accommodation for those who have different gods.

Tyler Wittman on March 8, 2008, 1:59 PM

cosmos,

I don’t presume to able to persuade you or anyone else here that God exists or that he is the God of Scripture. That would be blasphemous because it would devalue the sovereignty of God and falsely presume human autonomy. You have essentially written me off because “god is a concept, purely of the mind.” You have written me off because you disagree with my position, yet you offer no arguments apart from an appeal to pluralistic human experience. I don’t accept Christian truth because it makes me feel better. There’s no persuading you of this either, though. I think we’ve reached a standstill unless you recognize that you cannot definitively prove that god is a concept of the mind.

James,

The following assertion is not so easily defended: “Of course they need to believe true things in order to produce behavior that leads to survival.”

There are four other possibilities which arise, apart from the one I mentioned previously, that cannot be ruled out:

First, beliefs could be nothing more than epiphenomena that merely float on top of physical states, having no bearing on action and thus being invisible to evolution. Furthermore, naturalistic evolution assumes a physicalist view of living organisms. Yet, mental states and like beliefs and our relation to them do not seem to be physical in nature. When we ponder our beliefs or we hold to them, there is not physical reality to these things. Physical secretions of brain matter don’t really account for this.

Secondly, evolution could produce beliefs that are effects of behavior, but not causes. In this case, they would not be part of the causal chain.

Third, evolution could produce beliefs that are part of a causal efficacy, not by virtue of what they are in essence as beliefs, but rather in virtue of the physical characteristics or syntax that are associated with them. Thus, someone could read a poem so loudly that a glass breaks, but this has nothing to do with the content of the poem itself.

Fourth, evolution could actually (as you propose) produce beliefs that are causally efficacious by virtue of their content, yet such beliefs could still be maladaptive in two respects. First, beliefs could be resource-intensive distractions that are not near as efficient as the bypassing of belief altogether would be. Scientifically, the production of information-processing capabilities associated with the central nervous system put the organism at greater risk prenatally and postnatally. Secondly, beliefs could produce maladaptive behavior that is overridden by other factors influencing the decision (once again, beliefs don’t cause action alone).

It is not logically necessary that we obtain true information in order to survive (the ultimate consideration of natural selection). So given naturalistic evolution, the probability that our cognitive faculties would be reliable is very low or something about which we logically must remain agnostic.

Presuppositions are simply realities. You call them conclusions based on evidence, but I think the conclusions you arrive at eventually have to assume the interpretation of the evidence you see in light of a particular lens. When I see the fossil record and an aged earth, I filter it through the Bible and come to the conclusion that an aged earth with fossils in it could very easily fit in with how God created the world to be a self-sustaining cyclical entity. You assume that only that which science can attain to is certain or real because the universe is all there is. You still haven’t escaped this presuppostion. It comes down to a moment where you have to place faith in an interpretive lens. This comes at different moments, with different degrees of wrestling and contemplating, for everyone. Certainly upbringing plays a large role in it, there’s no denying that. But I know Christians who grew up in strictly atheistic households who came to faith in Christ, and vice versa. Everyone eventually has to come to these conclusions.

As the old saying goes, I simply don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Moreover, I don’t see how anyone can logically be an atheist. You do not have all the information possible for human beings to collect at your disposal. Thus, you cannot make certain assertions such as “God does not exist.” Logically, at least – from your perspective.

“There is no middle ground here because whatever argument I make you can simply brush aside as coming from our human understanding. This is a central tenant of presuppositional apologetics. You stand by your claim no matter what evidence is presented against it because that evidence comes from a presupposition that isn’t god.”

I hope I have not brushed aside too much. I do believe I am trying to demonstrate exactly why it is I don’t adopt a naturalistic understanding of the universe – with arguments, not merely an appeal to presuppositions. I merely employ presuppositionalism to show that the debate must take place in light of a confrontation of worldviews, not simply “evidences” (because people interpret evidence differently in light of presuppositions). Ultimately, I’m trying to demonstrate why I think my presuppositions are superior to yours.

cosmos, if I were arguing against a Muslim or a Mormon, I would be discussing how their concept of god does not make sense of everything, how only the triune God of Scripture makes sense. Moreover, I would refute the spiritualist with an appeal to grounds for belief. Where do they get their “idea” of god?? From within? Because they had some unexplainable experience? What kind of authority is that?

Bruce Allen on March 8, 2008, 6:44 PM

TeddyBear — I really must be careful; some of what you say is starting to make sense [grin]. Against my better judgment, I will try to stay the course, as long as the debate remains civil.

My participation in BigThink was originally a coffee-break pastime. Now I need extended breaks, just to come to grips with the thoughts in this one thread. But it would be quite unreasonable for me to visit a site like BigThink, and complain about being forced to think.

There are way too many concepts here to be covered by a blanket response. I will try to focus on the core by restating what I believe, and what I understand you to believe…

You: The Bible provides the unchallengeable word-of-God.
Me: God is an “in-body” experience, i.e. “of the mind”.
Side-Issue: The influence of OOB experiences on evolution.
Another Side-Issue: Science is the ever-changing model to explain the world with which we interact; The Bible is the last word on everything and will never need revision.

In an attempt to justify my claim, let’s start with the following. If an omniknowledge God was behind our creation, he should have been fully aware of the bumble-headed beings that humans would become. Why would he expect that more than the odd few would be able to follow the most obtuse logical path to realize that He existed? Surely he would make it obvious and easy? One explanation is that he really didn’t want us to know. And that creates another problem — why didn’t he do a better job at staying invisible. Although, maybe be did do a good job, and these postulations about his existence are purely a result of the fertile-imaginations he endowed us with.

This actually takes ‘the personification of God’ beyond the normal-limits applied to my discussions. I will await a response before taking this to the next step.

James Mills on March 9, 2008, 3:19 AM

“It is not logically necessary that we obtain true information in order to survive (the ultimate consideration of natural selection).”

For very specific things you are probably right. In fact I’d say you are definitely right. I already mentioned optical illusions as being a form of false information. For this very reason we have the scientific disciple. We go against what seems natural to us to find truths that are not readily apparent. However the mean sum of the information we receive I do think logically requires truth to allow for survival. The real world is out there and in order to navigate it true information is necessary. We have to know for certain that there is a cliff ten feet ahead and that if we walk off the edge of the cliff that falling from a great height is dangerous.

"You do not have all the information possible for human beings to collect at your disposal. Thus, you cannot make certain assertions such as “God does not exist.” Logically, at least – from your perspective.“

I’ve already said before that there are no certainties, only probabilities. So you are right I do not say with 100% certainty that there is no god. I say with 99.9999999% certainty that there is no god. I then go on to say with 99.99999999999999% certainty that there is no Yahweh. I don’t need all the information available to humans in order to come to this conclusion. I only need to see where the idea of a god does not line up with the reality. For what it is worth I came to the conclusion that there is no god based on my own common sense. It wasn’t the knowledge of evolution or the size of the universe that led me to realize this. I sought to learn about those two things only after I gave up religious faith.

”I filter it through the Bible and come to the conclusion that an aged earth with fossils in it could very easily fit in with how God created the world to be a self-sustaining cyclical entity."

Why are fossils that appear to be old necessary for a self-sustaining cyclical entity?

This goes back to what we were discussing earlier about god’s revelation of himself not being complete or concrete and in this case honest enough considering the consequences.

I’d still like to hear if you have any sources for evidence of the miracles in the Bible. I’ve look at a few summaries of

Cosmos, you definitely have more knowledge in the scientific field than I do based on your education so I do defer to you on the point about much of modern physics being theoretical. I think we are in agreement about there not being any irrefutable truths. My understanding of theories in science is that in order to be a good working theory it has to be falsifiable. I think this links up with what I said above about there being no certainties. If that is an oversimplification please let me know.

James Mills on March 9, 2008, 3:24 AM

Whoops, my next to last paragraph should read:

I’ve looked at a few summaries of “The Resurrection of the Son of God” and it seems interesting. I’m going to check if my local library has it.

Faceless Atheist on March 9, 2008, 4:40 AM

“Organisms that need to behave certain ways don’t need to believe true things to produce such behavior.” – teddybear

Religion is the best possible example of this. Yours especially. That is probably a large reason why it has outlasted so many others and is still practiced today.

Bence Vajda on March 9, 2008, 11:46 AM

teddybear,

I see what you want to get to, but as the old joke goes:
“A tourist asks a native Irishman:
- Excuse me, how do I get to Dublin?
- Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

I agree with Cosmos about the logic of your argument. I’m not a philosopher, but lets see if we can play around!


Knowledge = justified and believed truth. We can try to work with that.
You seem to be arguing that knowledge presupposes the divine.
For knowledge to need the divine, at least one of the components (“belief”, “justified” and “true”) needs to depend on the divine.


It seems to be reasonable that we use our cognition to justify statements. If cognition presupposes the divine, than so does justification.
For the sake of discussing knowledge, I would argue that in order to obtain knowledge, all we need to postulate is a cognition working “at least good enough” to be able to justify that particular statement (as opposed to cognition working “properly”).

“At least good enough” is a minimal requirement: worse than that obviously renders that cognitive faculty useless for that particular case. All Bill needs is vision at least good enough to see that it is Fido and it is in the backyard. This is the lower limit of the functionality of a cognitive faculty.
Any requirement above and beyond (like “working properly”, “how they ought to be”, etc) opens a can of worms: what is “proper functioning”? For example if Bill needs perfect vision to check that it is Fido that is in the backyard at that moment, or is a slightly worse vision is ok? How “slightly worse” is still ok? Or why not as sharp as the eagle’s or in the infra-red spectrum, as some snakes? I would argue that a “proper functioning” cannot be defined as there don’t seem to be any justifiable limit as to what is “proper enough”. If “proper functioning” cannot be defined, than there either is no plan (thus no designer) or we cannot know the plan (and cannot know the designer) and thus cannot state anything about the plan or the designer. Not for cognition and thus not for justification either.

“Proper functioning” is not only impossible to define, but even if defined, the deviations from it have serious implications. A person with eyesight less than “proper” will automatically be excluded from the set of people who is “warranted” to justify whether Fido is in the backyard. Creating people with less-than-proper eyesight either makes an alleged creator cruel or a lousy craftsman, or renders our assumption of what is “proper” wrong. A deviation to the better shows that the assumed “proper” can be outdone, and either the “proper” needs to be redefined or we need to justify why do we stick to a lesser standard in the light of the possibility of a better.

In a lack of a known plan and celestial quality-control (“warrant”), we can rely on us actually using our cognitive faculties. If our vision, for example, consistently gives us good enough description of the world around us, than we can reasonably trust it in the cases vision is called upon to verify a statement (until proven otherwise for example through failing to notice a predator and being eaten as a result), and this is all the warrant we get and all the warrant we need.




Belief.
Knowledge implies belief, but it seems to me that the different uses of the word ‘belief’ can cause some mischief. I would argue that in this case belief refers strictly to the statement in question, i.e. to the statement that Fido is in the backyard now. Justifying this statement does not warrant any other belief in general. You don’t seem to be implying this explicitly, but can give rise to misinterpretation as the words “belief” and “believer” are commonly used to describe people of religion, which is a whole system of statements. Saying “you need belief to know” can be expected to be interpreted by some as “prescribing to a particular set of beliefs (religion) in general is required to be able to know that Fido is in the backyard”, which is nonsense.
To put into other words: knowing something requires believing that particular something, but does not require believing anything else.
Also, a belief is not necessarily the starting point: Bill sees Fido in the backyard and he believes what he sees, thus he knows that Fido is in the backyard.
Belief is a cognitive content held as true, and as such is not required to be true in a sense that it corresponds to the world. Bill can believe that Fido is in the kitchen, even though if he would look, he would find Fido in the backyard.


I think that believing a statement does not require any prior reason (or being “warranted”, as you put it), being it the divine or anything else: there is no prerequisite for Bill to believe the statement that “Fido is in the backyard”. Bill is free to believe this if he wishes, regardless of whether his belief is justified and true. Bill can be delusional, too.
God is not required for belief, but even if he was the source of belief, than every belief is his doing, even the unjustified beliefs and the delusions. This questions God’s purpose and/or benevolence.



Truth.
The word is burdened with ambiguous interpretations. Fido might be in the backyard now, but in the kitchen two minutes later, so the statement “Fido is in the backyard” is true only now, not in two minutes time. Since the word “truth” is often associated with absolutes, I would rather use “accurate description of a particular state of the world at a particular time”. Our cognitive faculties give us “truth” in this respect only. And in this sense our cognitive faculties are indeed interested in the truth only.
“Beliefs that are absolutely true”: a belief not “is” true – a belief is “held to be” true. For a belief to be true, it needs to be justified. And it is the job of our cognition to justify a belief, until then we cannot say that it is true. Without justification we are left with belief, which is not required to be true.

So far belief doesn’t need any warrant, truth comes from checking whether a statement corresponds to the world and our cognitive faculties cannot reasonable be assumed to be created according to a plan. This seems to leave very little place to deduce divine creation.


The development of cognitive processes (e.g. eyesight) is governed by evolution. Better spotting prey or predator increases the chances of survival, and the specimens with the worst sight tend to die of starvation or fall prey to predators. As the old joke goes about the two backpackers in the forest who accidentally startle a bear: “- Do you think we can outrun a bear? – I don’t need to outrun a bear, I need only outrun you…” Similar cases can be built for all senses, learning, association, communication and reasoning.
Naturalism, with us using our cognitive faculties, offering experience through justification of statement gives us plenty of opportunity to learn to trust our cognition and improve upon it.

Our cognitive processes demonstrate themselves to be trustworthy: if a predators eyesight is not up to the task, it will starve to death.



In a lack of a reasonably demonstrable and knowable plan, any reference as to the “purpose” of the world or us can be held true (believed), but cannot be known as it cannot be justified. Since it is not demonstrated to correspond to the world, it is less than true. It is but an assumption, which is made weaker and weaker by the evidence to the contrary.
We all are “placed” on Earth without being informed about the the age of the universe. Our best methods of researching the world around us force the conclusions held by the ever evolving science.
What happens if we have evidence to the fact that the universe is billions of years old? It leaves us with the conclusion that it is so, even if “in fact” it was created in 6 days. A universe that looks to be billions of years old de facto is billions of years old to us. That is all the evidence we seem to have and that is the only conclusion we can draw, the only thing we can know. We cannot conclude that contrary to the evidence, the world was created in 6 days. We can assume that it was so, but until proven, it is still an assumption. This assumption is just as valid as the assumption that the universe was created in 241 days, or that it was created by Tinkerbell (or more likely Captain Hook).
Assuming an unjustifiable state of the universe, that raises infinite number of questions, contrary to evidence confirming a different state of the world, is far from reasonable. And God seems to be busy actively creating evidence for us to conclude that his alleged words are completely wrong. This celestial conspiracy theory makes us wonder why would he do this? He would be an obstructionist con artist peddling his scheme.
If he did provide his own words, than he also made sure that all our efforts to justify them will fail. The scientific statements in the Bible that are shown to be irreconcilable with the evidence we find in the world (evidence planted by God himself) makes the case for the Bible weaker. God made sure that the more of his planted evidence we find, the less we can believe the Bible. What’s wrong with this picture?

If God uses a method “foreign to common experience” than he basically made sure that we cannot know or even reasonably assume his existence, let alone that he would correspond to the god described in the Bible. And if he judges us for that, than it is like a con artist suing the victim of his scam for believing his heavily peddled scam. God is the plaintiff, the lawyer for the plaintiff, the judge and the jury. Strangely, though, he is not the executioner. He seems not to mind to get his hands dirty planting evidence against his own existence, but refrains from getting our blood on his hands. Actually, by creating hell he is indirectly the executioner, too, as well as the defendant since he created us.

The problem when taking causality to its logical extreme is not as you describe it. Causality cannot be reconciled with your concept of God. The ways to resolve them are: a.) causality is wrong, b.) God is an exception from causality, c.) God is subject to causality.
Causality per se cannot be assumed to be wrong as it is justified to be true. An assumed exception needs justification, and your justification admittedly goes against all evidence to the contrary, you even state that we could in no way acquire evidence to justify the exception. This leaves no room but to assume that even god is subject to causality.
Stating that the justified causality is wrong because it contradicts an assumption shows bias towards the outcome, and thus questions your previous statement that you have a functional understanding of how science works. Such functional understanding, especially in the light of having read science books, is akin to how much the pot feels the taste of the soup being cooked in it – to paraphrase a giant who’s shoulder it would be an honor to stand on, Obi-van Kenobi, another classic from a long-long time ago (albeit from a galaxy far-far away). Even if you would happen to have a functional understanding of how science works, you certainly don’t use the methods of science, and neither do you seem to show any valid alternative.


The fact that we don’t have answer to the question of the origin of life gives doesn’t mean that we need to jump to conclusions contrary to all the evidence we have. If Bill doesn’t see Fido in the backyard, he doesn’t need to believe that Fido flew home to ET on his spaceship, however worried he might be about the whereabouts of Fido. Bill certainly can believe so. But how would you describe this belief of Bill’s and indeed Bill himself? Especially if he later spots Fido in the kitchen? All that is needed of Bill is to look and wait until he finds and justifies a belief. Bill can still believe that Fido flew home and made it back, but that still amounts to zero evidence and questions Bill’s capabilities to se the difference between white noise (all the infinite hypothetical scenarios) and reasonable assumptions, or assumptions that actually make any difference to the world.



So basically knowledge does not seem to require the divine. We are actively made to believe even by “God” himself that the world is how science describes it to be and we have no reason to postulate any other state of the world, let alone one particular different state of the world. The only alleged evidence itself is actively being made less and less reliable by the alleged perpetrator. Would you call that making sense of the world? Fido flew home to ET on his spaceship and made it back to the kitchen a bit later?

You are right that we cannot get to know God. All we can do is believe in him, but we also know that even delusions are allowed…



Being blinded by the light does not make blindness any more virtuous or desirable – it is just blindness nonetheless. Not even standing on the shoulder of giants helps blindness.
As for me, I don’t claim these thoughts to be mine or even to make any sense. Hopefully they do, and if so, then they most likely were already formulated in a much better way by people much smarter than me. Having said that, I wouldn’t want to stand on the shoulders of giants, especially if it involves digging them up from their graves.

Finally I would like to thank you (sincerely, no sarcasm or pun intended), teddybear. Provoking me to think even deeper about the worldview you seem to be suggesting and about my own, I got further assurances as to why I’m sticking with mine.

Tyler Wittman on March 9, 2008, 2:50 PM

thanks for responding guys, i’m taking the day off, but I’ll try to respond briefly tomorrow as I believe there are around two central hang-ups in the present discussion that are easily answered (namely, the god-as-deceiver motif). quickeye, i’ve thought long and hard about these issues and i always appreciate discussing the issue with those who vehemently disagree, so thank you for forcing me to try and focus my thoughts in a cogent manner (however successful that has or has not been). I will refine some of the points for you and reconcile a few things that will not only smooth out some misunderstandings for you, but also for cosmos and james. your argument is essentially the same as michael ruse’s and i shall explain my objection there – it is rather brief.

have a good day guys.

Bence Vajda on March 10, 2008, 7:18 AM

teddybear,
glad to have contributed to your thoughts even if through opposing them! (no sarcasm)
:)

Tyler Wittman on March 10, 2008, 1:25 PM

Cosmos:

"You: The Bible provides the unchallengeable word-of-God.
Me: God is an “in-body” experience, i.e. “of the mind”.“

Challenge the Bible all you please. I believe it holds up to scrutiny, the gospel is sufficient for our doubts.

”Side-Issue: The influence of OOB experiences on evolution.
Another Side-Issue: Science is the ever-changing model to explain the world with which we interact; The Bible is the last word on everything and will never need revision.“

Being that the Bible is the Word of God, it is final and authoritative, containing sufficient revelation of God to accomplish its purposes. Assuming that it is God’s Word, how could humans possibly revise it? That would be rather absurd.

”In an attempt to justify my claim, let’s start with the following. If an omniknowledge God was behind our creation, he should have been fully aware of the bumble-headed beings that humans would become. Why would he expect that more than the odd few would be able to follow the most obtuse logical path to realize that He existed?"

This is a great question and one that has caused a tad bit of dissension today amongst theologians. Some have postulated that God does not have perfect knowledge of the future, though these (we call them open theists and process philosophers) have been roundly condemned for being far removed from orthodoxy.

God knew full well what was going to happen when he created the world, as I’ve mentioned before the Fall was not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’ Since we are created in God’s image, we are volitional beings who are capable of choosing not to know God. This is our choice. After the Fall, man has all kinds of ways of distorting the truth and suppressing the knowledge of God (Rom 1:25, Prov 16:2, Ps 14:1). We will always seek ways to justify our own paths and understanding. What’s more, we actively rebel against God and do not understand his ways because we don’t believe (1 Cor 2:14-16). Augustine said “credo ut intelligam,” or “I believe in order to understand.” This is a very biblical concept, faith seeking understanding. That’s why Christ says that we must have the faith of a child to inherit the kingdom of God (Mark 10:15). This is not easy for creatures who prize autonomy.

Indeed, autonomy was the heart of our original rebellion against God. It started in the garden of Eden when Satan told Eve that if she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she would “be like God” (Gen 3:5). We don’t want God, we want to be our own gods. I think this is the main reason for atheism. I don’t believe people, at the very core of their being, are sufficiently convinced by the mere prospect of macroevolution or what have you that there is no God. I believe if they are honest with themselves, in the dark recesses of their own hearts, in private, that they do not wish to have an authority other than the self. I believe this is true not simply because the Bible tells me so (although that would be enough), but because it fits in concert with my own heart’s rebellion. I believe it’s true for others because it’s true with my own experience. I don’t want to be answerable to anyone other than myself. It’s a horrifying prospect to know that you will be answerable to someone and judged for this life. But it’s the truth.

We can’t project our own ignorance on God. He didn’t ‘expect’ anything, he knew. He knew what was going to happen. Ephesians 1:3-10 makes plan that God’s purpose and the mystery of his will are set forth in his actions. We know that he is infinitely wise and just, so his creating the world knowing full well what was going to happen is ultimately good.

When we complain that God hasn’t made it easier for us to understand, we diminish the corruption of our minds and the corruption of everything from our intentions to the way we do science. When it’s not theocentric, it’s necessarily a-theistic. It’s not that he’s made it so difficult on us, we make it difficult on ourselves, “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness,” as Paul says. Likewise, God doesn’t send us to hell (a concept, BTW, widely misconstrued), we choose volitionally to be separated from God for eternity. Hell is depicted by many different descriptions in Scripture, but part of it is essentially the recognition upon death that you were created for fellowship with God and you have chosen to do the opposite.

“Surely he would make it obvious and easy? One explanation is that he really didn’t want us to know. And that creates another problem — why didn’t he do a better job at staying invisible. Although, maybe be did do a good job, and these postulations about his existence are purely a result of the fertile-imaginations he endowed us with.”

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” – Romans 1:19-20

God has made it plain to us in the created order (general revelation) and in his Word (special revelation). These are the means that God has deemed it good and sufficient to reveal himself to us. If that’s not enough, then we are once again coming back to the position where we assert (falsely) our autonomy and try to make God answerable to us by saying, “That’s not enough for me.” If that’s the case, then that’s the case, at which point I am reminded of the voice of God coming from the whirlwind and asking Job, “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” Or my favorite line, “Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?”

God made us to know him and he set forth a plan in history to redeem us from sin in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So any postulations about him not wanting us to know him are foreign to Scripture and not fruitful for discussion.

Quickeye, I’m running low on time so I will have to be brief. Mainly, you are dismissing the concept of warrant out of hand much like Michael Ruse does when he asserts that such metaphysical head games are ultimately useless; for the birds. He then proceeds to appeal to experience, much like you do when you say, “Our cognitive processes demonstrate themselves to be trustworthy: if a predators eyesight is not up to the task, it will starve to death.”

That’s all fine and dandy, but it still doesn’t provide the epistemic foundations for that experience. It’s narrow circularity. All arguments eventually have to have a broad circularity, which is acceptable. But narrow circularity is not admissible. So, if you are convinced, I must say that I fail to see on what grounds. Your experience? Why? You still haven’t addressed the specific instances in which natural selection could lead to false information in concert with survival. I still contend that you must remain agnostic about the trustworthiness of your cognitive faculties in the absence of a design fit for the specific production of reliable information.

Your bifurcation of proper function into minimal and post-minimal functioning makes too much of the matter. Such considerations are not primary to the concern between normative and statistically usual function. Minimal and post-minimal function could be lumped under the umbrella of normative function. The larger branch of normative function is what you have to contend with, which I believe you failed to do.

"In a lack of a reasonably demonstrable and knowable plan, any reference as to the “purpose” of the world or us can be held true (believed), but cannot be known as it cannot be justified. Since it is not demonstrated to correspond to the world, it is less than true. It is but an assumption, which is made weaker and weaker by the evidence to the contrary."

Reasonably demonstrable within a metaphysically naturalistic scientific scheme? “Evidence to the contrary?” Once again, you’re asking me to conform to your lens. You are still asserting your presuppositions rather than justifying them over against mine. What’s more, you’re doing this through an appeal mainly to experience within the confines that I have addressed previously.

I further have problems with empiricism, in that it assumes: 1) the reliability of the senses (which I believe I have rationally questioned sufficiently), 2) the objectivity of the world, and 3) inductive generalizations and uniformity.

There are many things we cannot empirically verify like propositions about ancient history, nuclear particles, or (more importantly) the very criterion of verification! The inductive principle is not known observationally, yet empiricism requires it, but cannot justify it by its own criterion (a self-destructive criterion). Further, numbers and laws of logic as well as moral integrity are known known observationally to us. Personal identity over time, substances, categorization, and on and on and on. Empiricism does violence to science too (something I%u2019ve alluded to previously): Scientists do not check out brute facts by means of sense experience alone, do they? They use instruments, they collect and analyze data. What we experience with our senses is influenced by our expectations. Science depends on presuppositions which it cannot verify. Thus, objective fact is a mythical thing. Science is then rendered impossible.

Michale Ruse would rather not have any of this. I sense it makes him uncomfortable. He rejects it as the singing of birds. I submit that it is a cop-out. His own presuppositions destroy themselves. So instead of addressing this problem, he simply bypasses it. Naturalism is incoherent as a worldview because it violates its own principles. It is the ultimate lunch lady %u2013 willing to dish it out, but won%u2019t dare eat it herself.

Tyler Wittman on March 10, 2008, 6:15 PM

james,

I believe I demonstrated why science is incapable of examining miracles.

“Why are fossils that appear to be old necessary for a self-sustaining cyclical entity?”

Perhaps not necessary, but in concert with such an entity. To quote one theologian on this matter:

“But what about dead stuff? Did the soil [during the creation week] have decaying organic matter in it? Well if it was real soil, the kind that plants can grow in, it must have had. Yet the decaying matter in that original soil was simply put there by God. Soil is a living thing, and it lives through decaying matter. When Adam dug into the ground, he found pieces of dead vegetation.

”This brings us to the question of ‘fossils’ and ‘fossil fuels,’ like oil and coal. Mature creationists have no problem believing that God created birds and fish and animals and plants as living things, but we often quail at the thought that God also created ‘dead’ birds and fish and animals and plants in the ground. But as we have just seen, there is every reason to believe that God created decaying organic matter in the soil. If this point is granted, and I don’t see how it can be gainsaid, then in principle there is no problem with God’s having put fossils in the ground as well. Such fossils are, in principle, no more deceptive on God’s part than anything else created with the appearance of age."

If you think about it, Adam and Eve wouldn’t have been perplexed by rings in the trunk of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil should they have chopped it down. Yet in order to bear fruit, a tree needs to be at a certain stage of maturity. Furthermore, Adam and Eve were soon creating offspring. We have every indication that they were created as full adults.

Therefore, apparent age doesn’t necessarily entail deception. Our conclusions of age that reach back beyond the biblical account could very well be indications of self-deceit, though. Again, these are just postulations that are rather outside the consideration of the biblical text. But I do believe they serve to show that there’s no insurmountable problem here.

Faceless Atheist on March 11, 2008, 6:24 AM

teddybear-
You are all about presuppositions. You challenge others, but don’t challenge your own. I understand your arguements, but they do not support your worldview.

“My presupposing the existence of God and the truthfulness of the Biblical revelation of him alone is no less valid than any of you believing the world is nothing but a random evolution of natural processes and matter (or that we’re all brains in a vat).”

This might be true, but if you take this line of reasoning to its conclusion you would be forced to say that we can ultimately know nothing, that our understanding of causality is false, that our senses can not be trusted. This would be true for everyone and everything, even you and the bible. How can we even know the bible exists? because we see it? Since our senses can not be trusted then this is not a valid arguement. This line of reasoning removes all sense of understanding from every theory, it is does not bolster your opinion since it too is equally void of knowledge. An insane person’s view of the world is worth as much as that of every Christian combined, both are worth nothing. By attacking how all humans acquire knowledge you are not making a case for a Christian god.


“then the ultimate purpose of our cognitive faculties is to guarantee that we behave in certain ways. Thus, beliefs that are absolutely true have no consideration”.

Your own beliefs would be under this veil as well. Just because you don’t want to believe in evolution does not mean you are not a product of it. It does not matter if the god you worship exists as long as the belief gets you to act in moral, socially acceptable ways. You can not reject the arguements in the way you have, because your arguement can be rejected in the same way.


“I contend that the Christian God and worldview account for reality better than any of these worldviews. I believe that it accounts for nature and origins better than naturalistic evolution. I believe atheism is an untenable worldview that cannot ultimately make sense of reality, just the same as Islam or Mormonism. How do I get to that point? I first start by taking the Bible at its word: as the only revelation of God. I then contest this view against the world and it continually makes sense in light of historical events (the resurrection of Jesus Christ), human nature (basically evil), etc. over against other rival conceptions of the universe.”

This is ridiculous. Here is what you are saying: ‘I believe the bible. Why? Because it says I should. I considered other religions, and an atheistic worldview, but these did not fit with the bible, so they are false.’ One can not examine other ideas fairly if one “takes the bible at its word, as the only reveltatoin of god.” And you attempt to lecture others about presuppositions. Your beliefs boil down to small circular logic regarding the validity of the bible.


"Moreover, I would refute the spiritualist with an appeal to grounds for belief. Where do they get their “idea” of god?? From within? Because they had some unexplainable experience? What kind of authority is that?"

Your beliefs are also, then, at a loss for authority. The person who heard god, and was able to write down what he said (which is what you propose to believe, that genesis is literally true) would be a person of this kind of authority. You believe what someone else, thousands of years ago, wrote because he thought god spoke to him, yet you don%u2019t let anyone else make that claim. If people who claim special “unexplainable experience” are not to be believed, then you are not to be believed.

If you want to strike at knowledge then you are striking at your own ideas as well.

Faceless Atheist on March 11, 2008, 6:55 AM

No matter what set of presuppositions you allow, christianity can be refuted; EXCEPT if you “take the bible at its word.” If one does this there is no reason why other books that claim to be word of god should not be believed. One is left with multiple mutually exclusive religions that all claim to possess the only truth. It is more likely that they are all wrong then any one of them is right.

Tyler Wittman on March 11, 2008, 8:59 AM

Faceless,

I believe a closer examination of my arguments and the specific form of reasoning that I’m using would be rewarding for your understanding. I think you’ve missed the whole axis of the debate because many of your complaints are somewhat incoherent if you’ve been following the debate thus far.

I won’t spend too much time here because it’s clear that you have not read the debate seeking understanding, but I will clarify a few things. Like I said earlier, you would do well to take another look at the debate thus far. It would be rather silly of me not to address my own presuppositions, but thank you for pointing that out. I have thus far proposed that my worldview makes sense of reality better than naturalism, or any other worldview for that matter. Yes, I presuppose the authority of Scripture but that is corroborated by being consistent with an entire worldview package (as opposed to other religions). Should another worldview prove more consistent in accounting for reality and existence, etc. then my arguments would start to lose weight. I’m having a rather pleasant debate with naturalistic atheists here, not Muslims for example. So my arguments are structured against naturalism, not Islam.

Because of this, I have argued that naturalism does not account for the reliability of our cognitive faculties. I do not believe in naturalism. I believe my cognitive faculties were designed by the Christian God. Therefore, according to my worldview, I can account for the reliability of my cognitive faculties producing true information. Thus, I’m not constrained by the fatal problems posed by a naturalistic account of epistemology. You seem to have missed this point entirely. My attack on naturalistic epistemology does not undermine my own epistemology precisely because I reject a naturalistic epistemology as utterly irrational.

Additionally, my arguments against naturalism are not dependent on Scripture so I fail to see how I have engaged in narrow circularity. I hope that helps clear up any confusion.

One side note:
"No matter what set of presuppositions you allow, christianity can be refuted; EXCEPT if you “take the bible at its word.” If one does this there is no reason why other books that claim to be word of god should not be believed."

Not if you understand exactly what’s going on in this debate. We are pitting worldviews against one another (which is basically what most disagreements come down to). Once again, if I were debating with a Mormon, I would contend with the inconsistencies of LDS revelation and their conception of god, anthropology, cosmology, etc. Eventually, even if we’re both wrong about everything, one of our worldviews is more consistent and thorough than the other which gives us reason to dismiss the weaker worldview as irrational.

Faceless Atheist on March 11, 2008, 5:34 PM

I actually have been following the thread from the beginning and your arguements are no more rewarding upon rereading then they were on first viewing.

You challenge others to produce a reason why our senses can be trusted, but if they can or can not be, it will be true for everyone (even you), regardless of their opinions on such matters. Our senses can not be reliable if we believe in god but unreliable if we don’t. If your view is correct, and our senses can be trusted, then they can be used to support any argument, even those that challenge the presuppositions that the worldview is based on (validity of the bilbe). If you would like to contend that our senses are not reliable, then this too would be true for everyone, and every argument becomes equally worthless.

We all have to start with some presuppositions in order to construct a worldview, but saying that our senses are valid because they support a biblical outlook which would make them valid is circular logic. If we want to start with the presupposition that our senses are valid, then we can work from there, but I highly doubt that a orthodox Christian outlook would prevail as the most logical.

Tyler Wittman on March 11, 2008, 7:41 PM

Faceless,

I personally think you’ve already made up your mind here, but I don’t know what I can do to help ease your confusion any more.

“Our senses can not be reliable if we believe in god but unreliable if we don’t. If your view is correct, and our senses can be trusted, then they can be used to support any argument, even those that challenge the presuppositions that the worldview is based on (validity of the bilbe). If you would like to contend that our senses are not reliable, then this too would be true for everyone, and every argument becomes equally worthless.”

My worldview can account for the reliability of senses. Naturalistic evolution cannot. So if God did create our senses to be reliable and we misuse them to come to the radical postulations of macroevolution, it does not mean that the gospel of naturalism is to be dogmatically upheld (because in that case it would be utterly false). Indeed, in this case it would be highly irrational to believe in naturalistic evolution.

I think your main hang up is trying to evaluate an argument apart from your own presuppositions. Reflect on what you said for a moment, “If your view is correct, and our senses can be trusted, then they can be used to support any argument, even those that challenge the presuppositions that the worldview is based on (validity of the bilbe).” Obviously, but then what’s the use in believing anything other than my view? I fail to see the force of your critique.

You seem to be understanding the radical implications (dialectical loop) of a naturalistic epistemology, but you somehow think that I must be subject to this if this is so. But what I’m telling you is that you must either recognize the self-destructing nature (via the dialectical loop of skepticism) of your own worldview and abandon it, or decide that you have no qualms being irrational. My worldview does not have any problems accounting for warrant. Furthermore, you have completely misunderstood my view: “saying that our senses are valid because they support a biblical outlook which would make them valid is circular logic.”

No, that would just be stupid. Fortunately, I have made no such argument. I instead have argued that the Bible affords us (as humans) coherent pre-conditions for intelligibility whereas naturalistic evolution does not.

I do not mean to be sarcastic or overly polemical with you faceless, but you are not making any sense. I’m happy to go over something that I perhaps have not addressed earlier, but I don’t see any sense in repeating the prolegomena. Everyone else here seems to be able to grasp the force and structure of the arguments.

One further comment: "No matter what set of presuppositions you allow, christianity can be refuted; EXCEPT if you “take the bible at its word.”

Thinking in terms of simple syllogistic logic, this statement makes absolutely no sense. How could you possibly verify Christianity if you didn’t take the Bible at its word? Moreover, how would you even know what Christianity is? If you must believe in order to understand, and if authentic faith requires trusting in propositions found in Scripture, then you could not. Certainly you could arrive at something, but it would not be Christianity.

Faceless Atheist on March 11, 2008, 8:08 PM

Evolution does provide a reason for us to trust our senses, this has already been discussed. You are right in saying that the ideas that we hold may not be “true” as long as they get us to act in a certain way, but evolution does provide reason for us to trust our senses. If we can trust our senses then we can use logic (assuming it is valid, if not then all arguements are again equally void of worth) and math to deduce truths about the world we live in. This gives rise to the natural sciences.

You are also right in saying that if we don’t trust the bible then there is no reason to believe in christianity. I think this is a big reason why so many people find it hard to take a hard line view of christianity (or any other dogmatic religion) because all arguments are based on the infalibility of a book written thousands of years ago. It is just another example of someone suggesting they have “unexplainable evidence” of a diety, which you said earlier was not to be believed (in the case of mormons and muslims, but apparently not for christianity).

Tyler Wittman on March 12, 2008, 11:34 AM

faceless,

I have yet to see anyone respond to my challenge against naturalistic epistemology. No one has yet provided sufficient grounds for empirical reliability or even the basis for warrant, from naturalistic grounds. Quickeye responded by trying to go after the concept of proper function, but he only managed to create and attack a straw man, as I pointed out (no offense quickeye). This is not surprising since even in the realm of the academe this argument has stood its ground (thus people simply choosing to ignore it and dismiss it as silly philosophizing, like Michael Ruse).

So the reliability of our senses from a naturalistic viewpoint has not been demonstrated at all. Simply because we use logic doesn’t mean that our senses are reliable, thus the five scenarios I presented that cannot be ruled out. Even then, using such logic, I’ve demonstrated why we must be completely agnostic or skeptical in the extreme that our senses are reliable given naturalistic evolution.

Faceless, I’m a Christian because I believe the Bible makes more sense than anything else. I used to be an agnostic. I did not see any point in religion, but I investigated it thoroughly (an endeavor that continues to this day). I evaluated the teachings of Mormonism and Islam especially. I then compared their holy texts against the Bible. The Koran has insurmountable problems that I can’t even start to get into here. Suffice to say that most of Islamic practice comes from outside of the Koran. The writings of Joseph Smith are quite silly and have history going against them. Additionally, Joseph Smith made prophecies that failed to come to pass (like that the Civil War would turn into a global conflagration). Even more troubling is the tight reign that the LDS church keeps on its own historians – as if they’ve got something to hide. It’s not like I think the Bible gets some special “get out of jail free” card. I simply think that it is irrefutable when taken at its word, whereas other “holy books” are refutable when taken at their word.

Faceless Atheist on March 12, 2008, 4:15 PM

Space and time can be known a priori, along with a few other things. Matter provides the sensations which our senses gather. Evolution provides reason why we can trust our senses, since those living beings who received false sensory data, either data that wasn’t there or did not receive data that was there, would be at a huge disadvantage compared to those who received correct, reliable, sensory data. Math is a study of the things we know a priori. Arithmetic and geometry, and all the other higher forms of math derived from such basic forms, need not be challenged, since our understanding of such things derives from a priori knowledge. Logic arose as more complex beings started to exist on earth. As brain function increased, choice over actions became a reality. Logic is the basis on which decisions were made. If the logic that led to the decisions was valid, it was more likely to produce a correct decision, and more likely to result in a fitness advantage. Not to say that inconsistent logic can not also lead to correct decisions, but it will not do so consistently. Other adaptations developed, like language and long term forethought, in humans, allowing them to take the logic they were endowed with and use it towards things not of this world (what happens after death, how did we get here in the first place). The beliefs that arose to quell such troubling thoughts did not need to be right, but merely needed to pacify the thinker, assure him that this life mattered, produce the best action, and get him to start thinking about more pressing things as quickly as possible. This, in my opinion, was the catalyst to religion. Our ability to know comes from our senses, our memory, and our logic. Once math was discovered, it also provided a path to more knowledge, and that knowledge was more definitely correct. None of us can be sure that what we think we know is 100% correct, but some knowledge is closer to “perfectly true” than others. While skepticism must remain, since we can not know things to be u201Cperfectly true%u201D, we do not have to be skeptical of our senses. Sensory data has been selected for since it came into existence on earth, and it is very unlikely that our senses give us a false picture of the world (again we can only be about 99.9 sure, but this is no reason to question their validity). Logic can produce higher truths, but the logic used to produce them needs to be examined closely since it is more likely to be inconsistant. The combination of sense data, memory (past experience), logic (cognitive function), and math have given rise to everything we consider knowledge in our world (religion excluded since it does not appeal to any of those).

All this metaphysical talk, while interesting, really is unimportant. Try to live your life while questioning your senses for 5 minutes. Try walking around in a room with your eyes closed, or eat food regardless of how it tastes. We all know that our senses can be trusted, and to construct a valid worldview we do not need to account for why. I think evolution can actually account for why, but it is not necessary that everyone understand why for most to accept evolution as true. As for the arguments that god could have created everything the way it was (trees already with rings inside in the garden) leads to a picture of reality that most would find ridiculous. He would then have the power to have created the world not but 5 minutes ago. Everything, even your memories, could have been put there by an all powerful creator, and we would have no way of knowing. For the same reason I can know that I have lived for more than 5 minutes, I can know that the dinosaurs existed, all the required evidence is there.

Bruce Allen on March 12, 2008, 6:53 PM

TeddyBear — If the purpose of this thread is to convey what you believe, then it has been entirely successful. However, if it was intended to divulge the logic to justify that your beliefs have any relationship to reality, you may have been less successful. Try as I might, the simple processes of logic that have served me well thus far in life, fail to fit around what you are suggesting. I take a very simplistic and practical approach in deciding if an argument is valid. One of my favourite techniques is to take a point that is reasonably absurd, and drive it, with small, very logical steps, until it becomes obviously true, or COMPLETELY absurd.

Let me tackle a couple of the many candidates you have submitted…

“Fossil records were created so that man would think the Earth was older than it was” [ I think this is what you put ]. One of the magnificent Laws-of-Nature that we all obey, is, basically, everything has a purpose. What possible reason could you suggest that God would go to all that trouble, just to fool mankind about its existence? No other creatures on Earth will be overly fussed about the fossils. He must also be thorough in the extreme. If he accidentally created a dinosaur-bone several kilometers below the surface of Mars, and we discovered it, the whole plot would fall apart. Again, why bother with this ridiculous complexity?

And I still have a HUGE problem with this “Word of God” business. It occurs to me that English [ or Hebrew, or whatever ], is not the natural language of God. The guy who actually wrote this stuff down, must have been heavily reliant on interpretation, much like all language translators. Surely you must concede that there is a possibility that this individual got it wrong. What I suggest here is that God is probably right, but the message could have been written down incorrectly. Even if you accept the total infallibility of God, once you introduce humans into the equation, then you also introduce “human-error”.

Tyler Wittman on March 12, 2008, 7:36 PM

Faceless,

I had typed up a true response, but Safari freaked on me and it’s forever lost. Oh well, the following must suffice as I’m pressed for time:

The following statement of yours, from which the rest of your argument flows, completely ignores the scenarios I presented earlier: “Evolution provides reason why we can trust our senses, since those living beings who received false sensory data, either data that wasn’t there or did not receive data that was there, would be at a huge disadvantage compared to those who received correct, reliable, sensory data.” Naturalism has yet to prove this to necessarily be the case.

What’s more, we still haven’t addressed why naturalistic evolution and the scientific method are necessary for the acquisition of true beliefs. These processes assume that they are reliable and many an atheist or naturalist/materialist/physicalist assume (illogically) their necessity for obtaining knowledge. I could grant sufficiency, but not necessity. I digress . . .

“As for the arguments that god could have created everything the way it was (trees already with rings inside in the garden) leads to a picture of reality that most would find ridiculous. He would then have the power to have created the world not but 5 minutes ago. Everything, even your memories, could have been put there by an all powerful creator, and we would have no way of knowing. For the same reason I can know that I have lived for more than 5 minutes, I can know that the dinosaurs existed, all the required evidence is there.”

Well now you’re postulating about the possibilities of God doing something that Scripture doesn’t speak to, so it really doesn’t concern me. The Christian God (YHWH) does not force upon us an insurmountable dialectical loop of skepticism. All the required evidence? Really? By your account, we really don’t have any way of knowing since we weren’t there.

I’ve got all sorts of problems with an understanding of the world that says, “the universe is all there is.” It doesn’t account for the universe itself.

I won’t shy away from the fact that it does all come down to faith. Will you place your faith in the sole existence of the universe or a God who makes speaking about that universe possible in the first place? Naturalism simply cannot account for the existence of everything. So in my view, it doesn’t account for anything.

As I see it this debate has reached a standstill, though. I must tend to midterms and writing, as this discussion will not help my grades. I also do not believe any further amount of debating will change anyone’s mind. I might revisit this again in light of a serious response, but it will be with significantly decreased frequency. It’s been a pleasure discussing these matters with you all, I hope they have challenged you to think and reflect upon not only why you believe what you believe, but also how.

It is my firm belief that God loves each and every one of us, and has acted decisively in history by sending his son Jesus Christ to die as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. This atonement is made effective upon our placing faith in him and confessing in this life that he is Lord and Savior. It does sound, as Richard Dawkins has put it, “barking mad.”

But long ago, Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Gents, all the knowledge in the world and the best intellect cannot attain to the knowledge of God. It is acquired through faith. What Paul told Corinth 2,000 years ago is still true today. Just as the rich man placed his hope in his wealth and could not accept what Jesus demanded of him (Matthew 19:16-30), the intellectual who places his hope in his knowledge will both be unable to “know” God or accept the demands of Christ.

Christianity puts you in the uncomfortable position of realizing you aren’t autonomous and your knowledge and good deeds are worthless to God. I’m sure this is well attested to in my feeble attempts to reason with you all here. But I leave you with the admission and honest warning that my arguments, nor anyone’s, will ever do the job.

May your faith be placed in Christ alone.

Soli Deo gloria.

Tyler Wittman on March 12, 2008, 7:48 PM

Cosmos,

I’m sorry I did not see your post before I basically posted my “bowing out.” I will quickly address this, but I encourage you to revisit the post I made on the fossils (how it is perfectly consistent with God having created an aged Adam, Eve, tree, lemur, mountain, etc. – he made living things, he could have just as logically made dead things with no infringement on his honesty).

"And I still have a HUGE problem with this “Word of God” business." Kevin Vanhoozer has an excellent book entitled, “Is There a Meaning in This Text?” In it, he sufficiently (in my estimation) answers the best of deconstruction and French postmodern critical theory (which your question might have some relation to). My general response to this type of objection would be: God is completely sovereign, so much so that he could, in spite of the inadequacies and imperfections of human authors and language, oversee the infallible and inerrant transmission of his Word to us in the form of Scripture. God is bigger than language and perfectly capable of telling us about himself through it.

Tyler Wittman on March 12, 2008, 7:52 PM

Cosmos, if you really are interested in this whole discussion of God’s Word, I will happily revisit the site at the end of my semester and discuss it thoroughly with you.

Unfortunately, the demands of grad school are quite, well, demanding and I must unfortunately see a significant drop off in my activity on this site for the moment.

Bruce Allen on March 12, 2008, 8:06 PM

Thanks TeddyBear. I hope it has been apparent in my posts that I do not take an unchangeable view of anything [ even Science ]. And I do appreciate attempts made to challenge my thinking [grin].

Faceless Atheist on March 12, 2008, 8:08 PM

“Naturalism has yet to prove this to necessarily be the case.”

When you think nothing can be proven except through scripture it is no wonder that you dont believe that this has been, or can be, proven. You say that your god is good, but then say he condems people to eternal torment for having no knowledge of jesus. You may see this as a just act of a good god, but good luck convincing anyone else. Life will show you that scripture is fallible, and when it does your entire worldview will crumble. When you are rebuilding it all the arguments on this thread will be the ones you will use to make sense of your life, unless you grasp on to one of the religions you now consider inferior. I say again that catholicism can be refuted no matter what set of presuppositions you allow, except if you “take the bible at its word”, and even that outlook has problems (like a just god condeming seemingly innocent people). We take the universe as a given, you take god as a given. We have all experience to lend credence to our propositions, you have one book. Though you might not be convinced now, I honestly think naturalistic arguments are much more convincing. You may come around in the future.

Faceless Atheist on March 12, 2008, 8:34 PM

you also never seemed to respond to the fact that genesis would have had to have been related to one individual who would claim it was an “unexplainable experience”. You claim this provides a lack of authority for other holy texts, but dont question the authority of genesis. When i brought this up in a previous post you reverted to your fallback “naturalism can not sufficiently prove anything” argument. before your gone for good i was wondering if you had a response. either way good luck in grad school (an adventure i will be embarking upon in a few months), and i look forward to many more good debates upon your return to bigthink.

Bence Vajda on March 12, 2008, 11:07 PM

teddybear,


I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t see any force in your arguments. All I see is that your worldview is compelling to you, but that is no merit.


You are stating a conditional statement (“if there is warrant, than there is god”), but you don’t argue for the condition to be true. Postulating your need for warrant doesn’t conjure up such a warrant. You don’t argue that our senses are reliable. In fact, you adamantly argue that they aren’t, and you don’t seem to realize that nobody says otherwise!



You conveniently claim to run low on time, and skip challenging any of the points I made, even the a priori that point to the weakness of your assumptions and how you misinterpret your chosen definition of knowledge to argue for something it has nothing to do with. You might want to reply to those (about belief, truth, the arbitrary nature of creation in exactly 6 days, the necessity of us seeing the world being billions of years old the evidence point to that, how can we possibly use a method foreign to experience, breaking loose of causality).
And since this is the only one you seem to come back to: how would you differentiate between “usual” and “proper” functioning? You claimed something, and I pointed out the difficulties of that claim. And the best you mustered was that my argument is “not primary” to something the argument points out to be impossible. You never said anything in favor of your point.
And “can be lumped under” something which I just showed to be impossible to define? You don’t argue that it would be possible, you simply twist my words into a trivial tautology (minimal everything above it = everything, by definition) and using that as a straw-man to sneak your impossible assumptions (the necessity and existence of “proper” or “normative” functioning) back into play. And this seems to be the only point of mine you even tried to “counter”.



BTW, what is the radius of a sufficiently broad circularity (in metric, if possible, me being European and all)?



I’m sorry if the lack of an almighty babysitter is scary, but that is not an argument to assume anything beyond the universe. You point out that we need to be agnostic about so many things, yet in regards to the existence of anything beyond the universe you don’t seem to dare being agnostic. The fact that we don’t see what’s beyond the horizon does not justify any assumptions as to what might be there. Not knowing is ignorance, but it can be remedied through inquiry. Not even trying to know is ignorance laziness. Making up something out of thin air is self-deceit to justify ignorance and laziness. Refusing to believe somebody else’s similarly made up self-deceit is self-righteous. And trying to hold people to one’s own self-righteous, lazy and ignorant self-deceit is desperately seeking confirmation.


Naturalism not accounting for the existence of everything is no reason to arbitrarily pick a particular one of the infinite number of imaginable fantasies. That’s just admitting being scared of the unknown. What’s so scary about that? What is so scary about our provincial brain adopted to make sense of the savanna, food, shelter and mating and not being able to fathom something it never had to deal with until a couple of thousands of years ago? The progress of science (the one you claim to be impossible yet providing you with the means of writing your posts) cleared questions we thought we would never know.
And anyway: who says that there has to be an answer?


It all comes down to faith, you are right about that one. But something you hold to be true does not make it true generally and irrefutably. Only in your head…


The argument from the bible is the same as “everything exists because an illiterate, sexually frustrated and oppressed, desert-dwelling shepherd says so”. Your worldview does not account for the existence of everything. It cuts the inquiry into it the existence short at an arbitrary point.


Give an example of how natural selection leads to false information, and I will start working on an explanation.



Well, I realize that I’m autonomous in all the senses Christianity is trying to put a straight-jacket on humanity. So I don’t experience my position to be uncomfortable. And a being I don’t believe to exist is free to consider whatever he wants within the confines of other peoples minds.



Good luck with your studies! May the Schwarz be with you!

Tyler Wittman on March 13, 2008, 8:14 PM

Gentlemen,

I really must be off the site for a while, so this must be my last post for a while. Contrary to what anyone does or does not believe, I really am busy and I believe you can all attest to this site taking time to be involved in. Surely you all have jobs, if not school, if not both (in which case, I sympathize).

Quickeye, thank you for the candid vitriol. I will try my best, but you will have to pardon the presence of any sarcasm in this post, understandably. I don%u2019t want you to feel left out or slighted so I will briefly address your complaints before making my closing comments to you in this discussion, after which I will cede the last word to you.

"I would argue that in order to obtain knowledge, all we need to postulate is a cognition working “at least good enough” to be able to justify that particular statement (as opposed to cognition working “properly”)."

In the above quotation you start debating the meaning of %u201Cis,%u201D essentially. The literature on warrant is lengthy and copious, so I don%u2019t see how I could (or should) possibly summarize it all for you. Nor do I believe I should be able to satisfy you were I to perform any such feat. You could start by reading Alvin Plantinga (where the lion%u2019s share of the entire warrant argument comes from) and then proceed to read naturalists like Ruth Millikan (who try to offer naturalist accounts of warrant).

You miss the point that proper function doesn%u2019t need to be defined other than normative for the sake of our discussion, then vilify me for ignoring your would-be pedantry. One example: "Creating people with less-than-proper eyesight either makes an alleged creator cruel or a lousy craftsman, or renders our assumption of what is “proper” wrong."

Well, you have not accounted for the role of the fall in Christian theology (which you cannot be faulted for). The Bible teaches us that the fall affected the entirety of the created order, our noetic structure included. So the existence of some people who need to wear reading glasses does no violence to my crazy delusions of God. Proper function = functioning in a way that is geared towards the acquisition of truth. Usual/statistical function = anything else. If this doesn%u2019t clear up the confusion, then I cannot help.

Let me try one last time to put your focus on the loci of this debate. What I%u2019ve been trying to point out the entire time is that even a naturalistic worldview assumes mine in order to build a different account of the world. My worldview, being founded on the Christian God, can account for uniformity, the reliability of the senses, and the objectivity of the world. Naturalism cannot account for these things by itself, but assumes them and moves on. On this construction, naturalism depends on a view of the world that it rejects.

You%u2019re complicit in this: “Our cognitive processes demonstrate themselves to be trustworthy . . .”

Well of course they do, but why and how? According to a purely naturalistic account of this question, it is impossible. This isn%u2019t merely a god-of-the-gaps type of objection, either. Naturalism negatively accounts for them. It%u2019s not a matter of more time and inquiry, it%u2019s a matter of ontological necessity. THAT is why if naturalism cannot account for them, we must abandon it. It therefore assumes what only my worldview can ultimately account for in order to construct a complete farce. And yes, I do reject that ultimately any other theistic worldview can account for these things because they all fall apart (but that is another debate entirely).

With that in mind, evaluate your discussion of truth: You start off by saying that truth is ambiguous. I didn%u2019t know you were a postmodern critical theorist, as well as a naturalistic evolutionist (the two are odd bedfellows). So truth is ambiguous? Should we make an exception for that assertion? I don%u2019t need to comment on how silly this argument is. It seems here like you would rather take us on a detour with a discussion over the nature of truth. Of course saying %u201CFido is in the backyard%u201D is ambiguous if you TAKE IT OUT OF CONTEXT.

I really don%u2019t see what point you were trying to make with that. Nevertheless, you saw something that I did not and then concluded:

“So far belief doesn’t need any warrant, truth comes from checking whether a statement corresponds to the world and our cognitive faculties cannot reasonable be assumed to be created according to a plan.”

Let me summarize what you are saying: So far we don%u2019t need warrant because we can just assume it.

Right, but I%u2019m still at a loss as to what account NATURALISTIC evolution offers us as to why we can rely on our %u201Cchecking%u201D? You do agree that we must rely on our senses first, do you not?

Another one: "What happens if we have evidence to the fact that the universe is billions of years old? It leaves us with the conclusion that it is so, even if “in fact” it was created in 6 days. A universe that looks to be billions of years old de facto is billions of years old to us. That is all the evidence we seem to have and that is the only conclusion we can draw, the only thing we can know . . . If God uses a method “foreign to common experience” than he basically made sure that we cannot know or even reasonably assume his existence, let alone that he would correspond to the god described in the Bible.“

I discussed already how the scientific method is inadequate for evaluating miracles, using the example of a literal, 6-day creation. My reference to 1 Cor 1:21 in what should have been my final post is instructive here. God has ordained it, in his infinite wisdom, that he cannot be learned of with human wisdom. Our own methods and stores of knowledge are woefully inadequate to arrive at the knowledge of God. Why? %u201CSo that no human being might boast in the presence of God%u201D (1 Cor 1:29). You seem to be speaking a little bit of truth unwittingly, although it is perfectly reasonable to believe in God. Your argument also seems to be implying the necessity of the scientific method for knowledge. Now, that would be quite a claim. If this were true, then how could we possibly know that this is the case? Can the scientific method be known via the scientific method? See my previous post on this subject for further thoughts. Certainly the scientific method is sufficient for knowledge, but necessary? To make such a claim, if you are doing such a thing, is to open a can of worms.

”We cannot conclude that contrary to the evidence, the world was created in 6 days. We can assume that it was so, but until proven, it is still an assumption.“

Indeed, we could not conclude that the world was created in 6 days unless we had an authoritative source that told us so. Of course, if our authoritative source was the scientific method alone, we could not conclude any such things without being on par with a man who claims to be a disembodied mushroom. But then we come right back to our discussion of presuppositions. On my account, God is lord over everything – even science. So our findings in science are always held accountable to what he%u2019s told us. Much of the history of science is fine under this view. Indeed, much of microevolution is fine under this view. It%u2019s just when we start getting overzealous and pontificating about macroevolution and origins (what have to be the most specious and conjectural areas) that we end up off course.

”God seems to be busy actively creating evidence for us to conclude that his alleged words are completely wrong."

Or we seem to be overly preoccupied with dismissing Him when he has faithfully revealed Himself in Scripture (a view fully consonant with the Bible, see Genesis 3 and Romans 1-3 for just two examples). I suppose it all depends on how you look at it.

On causality: “An assumed exception needs justification, and your justification admittedly goes against all evidence to the contrary, you even state that we could in no way acquire evidence to justify the exception. This leaves no room but to assume that even god is subject to causality.”

Does it? According to a dogmatic view of the necessity of the scientific method for establishing knowledge, perhaps so. I think I%u2019ve demonstrated why this is untenable. If God is God, then he must by necessity be an exception to causality. Otherwise, we would not speak of him as God. John Frame is helpful here when we says, “Strictly speaking it is improper to speak of something occurring before time, because before is primarily a temporal expression.” Scripture says that God is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End. God having a cause would create a myriad of fatal problems. Of course on a naturalistic account, causality being infinitely traceable back in to time (assuming we could see that far) creates a strange assumption. My authority is Scripture, so understand why I believe God is an exception to causality.

“The fact that we don’t have answer to the question of the origin of life gives doesn’t mean that we need to jump to conclusions contrary to all the evidence we have. If Bill doesn’t see Fido in the backyard, he doesn’t need to believe that Fido flew home to ET on his spaceship, however worried he might be about the whereabouts of Fido.”

I%u2019m not playing the god-of-the-gaps card. I am simply asking you to account for the reliability of senses on your own terms, which I do not see naturalistic evolution even capable of doing by necessity of what it is. With all your would-be sophistry, you failed miserably to accomplish this. The ironic thing is that my position willingly admits to not being able to convince by reason alone (1 Cor 1:21), whereas yours depends on it.

If you were a theistic evolutionist, you might be able to start accounting for the reliability of your senses %u2013 but naturalism offers you nothing to stand on. Carl Sagan%u2019s dictum that the universe was it just does not substantiate itself. I%u2019m not jumping to conclusions about ET, I rest on the conviction that God has revealed Himself to us through Scripture. That%u2019s where my account comes from. You can spend as much time as you like demeaning this belief and condemning it to the pages of pre-modern history as an old skin that needs shedding, but slander is never really an adequate substitute for proper argumentation, is it? Being that the debate has taken an unfortunate tone, it is all the more appropriate that it comes to an end.

I wish only to have spoken the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). I hope those that had discerning eyes were able to step outside their preconceived ideas and biases for but a moment to consider the %u2018impossible.%u2019

P.S. %u2013 Faceless,

You asked: "you also never seemed to respond to the fact that genesis would have had to have been related to one individual who would claim it was an “unexplainable experience”. You claim this provides a lack of authority for other holy texts, but dont question the authority of genesis. When i brought this up in a previous post you reverted to your fallback “naturalism can not sufficiently prove anything” argument. before your gone for good i was wondering if you had a response."

With the Genesis account, you must consider it as part of the Torah (the first five books of the OT). This was written as an account of origins for mankind, but also the Israelite nation, likely by Moses and also likely as a corrective to many similar creation accounts in the Ancient Near East. The covenant nation of Israel likely understood this account as part of a long oral tradition that was merely formalized in the form of writing. There%u2019s so much more to this that entire books have been written on it (the nature of oral tradition in the ANE, similarities/dissimilarities, etc.). Essentially, when you examine the entire corpus of the Bible and understand it as a unified whole (66 books written over a span of thousands of years by roughly 40-plus authors on different continents, from different backgrounds, cultures, and languages, yet one unified story), then Genesis is very evident to be part of Scripture. Its structural integrity with the entire Bible (especially in light of biblical theology and typology) is then strong evidence for its inclusion in the whole of Scripture. As to the specific historical and archaeological proofs, there%u2019s much to be said and I cannot even begin to start that discussion as my expertise doesn%u2019t even approximate to OT archaeology. Essentially, it comes down to this: Genesis began a story and history has played it out successfully. That%u2019s how I understand the rest of Scripture to attest to it and I ultimately place my faith in the fact that it is the revealed word of God. This is likely not satisfactory for you and I understand, it wouldn%u2019t be for me if I were looking for the evidence you%u2019re looking for. I%u2019m basically going to have to defer you to the literature on this one.

Gentlemen, I must now attend to my convenient business. Peace.

Faceless Atheist on March 13, 2008, 10:20 PM

Your outlook would also make this the “best of all possible worlds”. Why would god, with all the powers you give him, make a world that was anything less? Are you a modern day Dr. Pangloss? I find it hard to believe that this world, with all the suffering in it, is the best of all possible. If it is not, then why would god have created this world when he could have made a better one? And yes, you are right, that explanation concerning the origin of genesis is not sufficient for me. Even if it was a story first, there had to be someone who told it initially. If it was just a story then it has no accountability. Saying it was spoken before it was written does nothing to help your arguement that it is “true” as to the creation of the world.

Faceless Atheist on March 13, 2008, 10:20 PM

Your outlook would also make this the “best of all possible worlds”. Why would god, with all the powers you give him, make a world that was anything less? Are you a modern day Dr. Pangloss? I find it hard to believe that this world, with all the suffering in it, is the best of all possible. If it is not, then why would god have created this world when he could have made a better one? And yes, you are right, that explanation concerning the origin of genesis is not sufficient for me. Even if it was a story first, there had to be someone who told it initially. If it was just a story then it has no accountability. Saying it was spoken before it was written does nothing to help your arguement that it is “true” as to the creation of the world.

Faceless Atheist on March 13, 2008, 10:21 PM

ooops, sorry, i dont even know how that happened

Faceless Atheist on March 14, 2008, 6:27 AM

I know I wrote a book here and that you don’t plan on revisiting bigthink till the pressures of grad school temporarily lessen, so I will wait patiently for a response.

This thread has been bothering me. I had a lot of time to think about it today (between Jury Duty for 7 hours and 2 hours of driving), and the more I did the more I saw that both our worldviews draw on one presupposition.

I tried to boil this thread down to a possible conversation between me and you (teddybear), or between any two who hold our worldviews (henceforth referred to as WV).


Your argument: If one presupposes the bible to be the word of god, then he is able to create a cohesive WV that adequately explains all experience to him.

My argument: If one presupposes that evolution produces senses that are reliable, then he too can create a cohesive WV that adequately explains to him all experience, and can do so with no need for a god.

Your argument: There is no proof evolution provides us with senses that can be relied upon to produce an accurate portrayal of reality and, thus, one can not trust proofs based in them to produce “true knowledge”. One can onl build a WV around such ideas by keeping “our senses are valid” as a presupposition.

My argument: There is no proof the bible should be thought of as infallible that isn’t found in the words of the bible itself.

Your argument: Once we “take the bible at its word” (as infallible), we can make sense of everything else in the universe, leading us to believe it is a correct presumption.

My argument: If we presuppose that reliable senses would be produced by the process of evolution, we can make sense of everything else in the universe, leading us to believe that it is a correct presupposition.

Your argument: My WV provides reason for what your worldview presupposes making mine WV superior to yours.

My argument: My WV provides reasons for why you believe in your WV, making my WV superior.


Your (possible) objection: But where did the universe come from?

My response: The big bang

Your (possible) response: But what caused the big bang?

My response: What caused god?

Your response: God has no cause; god always was (your initial idea)

My response: If god can be without a cause then why does the big bang (the universe) need a cause?

Q When was the universe created?

You: God created everything we know in six days, he rested on the 7th.

Me: The universe was created billions of years ago in the big bang.

Q How did everything we know come into being?

You: God created each body in the universe separately. He put them in motion (all moving away from each other (for some unknown reason)). He also put all the planets in orbit around the sun (in elliptical, not circular, orbits (also for unknown reason)). He also created each species on this earth separately, and gave man dominion over all the plants and animals.

Me: Physical laws have dictated how matter interacts with matter in boundless space. Matter controlled by these laws has produced everything we see in the heavens, and on earth. Every galaxy is moving away from every other because all matter is still being propelled outward from the big bang. Elliptical orbits can be explained by the theory of relativity which accurately predicts it and other occurrences (though the question of why is still unanswered, we have no reasons why the natural laws are the way they are, similar to theists who don’t know why god created things the way he did). All life on this planet can be traced back to an initial organism that was able to produce copies of itself, though necessarily not always perfect copies. Natural selection has since determined which organisms prospered at the expense of the others; and this process has led to the diversity of species we see on this earth.

Q How did humans come to be the predominant species on earth?

You: God gave man dominion over the plants and animals because we were the created in god’s image and are his favored creation.

Me: Man is the current result of evolution. We occupy the highest level on the food chain because the random selections of our ancestors gave them fitness benefits, namely a larger brain, enabling further advantages like forethought, logic, and an imagination.


Q How are fossils to be explained?
Your answer: God put them there, not to confuse us, but for some reason that we don’t understand (fossil fuel, but then why not just put the fuel down there?).

Me: They are the preserved remains of previous species.


Q On what authority do you believe what you do?

Your answer: The bible and personal experiences.

My answer: The great men of science and philosophy who have lived before me, and the totality of my experience as well as everyone else’s (unexplainable experiences in the WV are usually written off as trick of the mind).




The question, to me, then becomes which presupposition is more likely. Though everyone will probably assign different levels of likelihood to the presuppositions, in my mind the christian WV can only be as likely as all other religions that, when believed in, produce a valid WV. This would give us a very large number if we were to look back throughout history, but only using current religions we can still name many. But we will take out those without a religious document because, as you said, "Where do they get their “idea” of god?? From within? Because they had some unexplainable experience? What kind of authority is that?" (we will ignore that every religion must have started with such an “unexplainable experience” that was after explained by the religion, and no longer seen by its adherents as unexplainable). We still have a multitude of such religions today, and they are all mutually exclusive toward each other, even the most closely related of them (you can not be a jew and a christian, nor can you be a hindu and a buddhist). Lets say we have 9 such religions (a LOW estimate), and also give an equal chance to the possibility of them all being wrong. We would be left with a 10% probability for each religion. On the other hand, it is harder to give a probability of correctness to “naturalism”. If we consider that either it is right or a divinely revelation (any one of the many) is real, we can give it a 50% chance. If we also give an equal chance to the possibility of both being incorrect, then it goes down to 33%. There would be many ways to obtain such estimates, but the probability that my outlook is correct is higher than that of any particular religious outlook. Both outlooks are able to produce valid, relatively comprehensive and cohesive, worldviews. My WV also has Ockham’s razor on its side. My WV is able to explain the universe as well as yours can, without need of god. Presupposing the validity of the bible presupposes the existence of god in the first place. Of course without god the idea of the bibles infallibility would be ridiculous, but one can presuppose there is a god without the subsequent presumption that the bible is infallible.

Plus the lack of sense reliability seems to be the only attack you can level against a “naturalist” WV, whereas we have many questions for the religious. Why would god put so many things in our world that are unexplained by the bible (like fossils) if not to deceive us? How could such a beneficent god allow so much seemingly needless suffering? Why would god make intimate knowledge of one man necessary for salvation if he knew that the majority would always remain ignorant, and also knew that, even of those who heard, few would believe? (Your answers failed to portray a loving god in my opinion) Why wouldn’t god create a better world with less suffering? If he is unable he is not all powerful, if he was able but unwilling he is not beneficent, if he is both willing and able then this must be the best of all possible worlds (a seemingly ridiculous statement since everyone can imagine a better world).

I know I wrote a book here and that you don%u2019t plan on revisiting bigthink till the pressures of grad school temporarily lessen, so I will wait patiently for a response.

Tyler Wittman on March 16, 2008, 1:42 PM

Guys, a quick plug:

A friend showed me this clip and I must recommend it to you because Dr. Keller is a much better spokesman for Christianity than I may ever be: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379760306431796019&hl=en

That is a question and answer session at Stanford that he gave after a lecture on his new book, the video for which can also be found on google video. There’s another Q&A from UC Berkeley right here that may help as well (it’s the latter half of the video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9fmKSwuoDE
In that video, he answers a good question on the fact/value distinction that I believe is important to think about for scientism-minded naturalists like yourself (and he also mentions the late Michael Polanyi’s influence on his own epistemology).

And faceless (I’m cheating here), you cannot presuppose that evolution created reliable senses, because you’ve assumed that based ON your presuppositions . . . I hope that makes sense, keep thinking about those things. Listen to Tim Keller and if you have the chance, read his new book “The Reason for God” because I hear it’s a very good response to the new atheists (I’m waiting for my copy from Amazon).

Bruce Allen on March 16, 2008, 5:23 PM

TeddyBear — Did I hear that right? You are accusing Faceless of mounting a CIRCULAR ARGUMENT. Hmmmm.

Tyler Wittman on March 16, 2008, 11:45 PM

no, I’m trying to get him to recognize the nature of presuppositions. not getting back into it! lol

Faceless Atheist on March 17, 2008, 4:41 PM

“And faceless (I’m cheating here), you cannot presuppose that evolution created reliable senses, because you’ve assumed that based ON your presuppositions”

what presuppositions is that based on?

Faceless Atheist on March 17, 2008, 4:56 PM

don’t read that book, read “Why I’m not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell, or at least give it a look also. Russell is a great philosopher and author(i can give plugs too).

Bence Vajda on March 22, 2008, 10:26 PM

I was off on a business trip…
Sarcasm is fine, teddybear. :)
It’s a shame that you feel you want to end the discussion, you might have misunderstood me. I’m glad you are still around (having seen you still posting a bit), and hope your studies are not suffering because of it! We all have other parts of our existence to attend to.
I find your thoughts to be completely “out-of-this-world” ;) for me, and thus very thought provoking. That is why I value the discussion with you!


A warrant beyond what is explained by evolution needs to be defined only if we need to justify your worldview. There still is no necessity to postulate anything beyond the natural world. Anything can be postulated, but “can be” is not the same as “has to be”.

Unless you argue that the natural world does not exist independently of us individually, both your worldview and mine need to allow for something objective (i.e. not just our imagination). This objective world around us (as opposed to just being a fantasy in our heads) is the natural world. I suppose that your reality of the natural world is not different from the reality according to me. Grass is green, sky is blue to you and to me, and not because you say so or I say so – it is independent from both of us.
An explanation using only this necessity seems to be stronger than an other explanation that needs to introduce the existence of other entities which cannot be demonstrated to exist with the same level of evidence as nature does. What would justify anything else outside of nature? Can it be demonstrated on the same level of certainty than the natural world (testability, disprovability)?

The naturalistic worldview and evolution gives an account of a number of phenomena without resorting to anything outside of the natural world. It neatly explains itself. There certainly still are questions. Fine by me: more and more questions are being answered, as history shows. Not even new questions surfacing trouble me: I can go about my life as before, the phenomena in question has been there even before the questions have been formulated. Not even questions beyond our comprehension trouble me: our minds seem to have been shaped by our existence on this planet, so practically nothing required us to train our minds to the concept of the infinite, for example. This is till within the boundaries of evolutionary logic.
It seems to me that your “usual” functioning of the senses is relevant to the natural world I describe above? Do I follow your logic right?

Any functioning of the senses is geared towards acquiring truth in the natural world (as described above). This part of the functioning does not require the divine. It is towards survival – if I read you correctly, we are on the same page on this one, and it doesn’t go against your arguments.
If there were “higher truths from beyond this world” that require a specific type of cognition, than our everyday cognition could possibly be a deteriorated version of the “proper” cognition which is aimed at acquiring these “higher truths”. Maybe, but still its existence need be shown. Until that, we don’t have much else to go by than our everyday senses, which both you and I agree to exist and function.



The question seems to be whether there is a necessity to postulate anything beyond the natural world. (The argument is not whether such a thing could be postulated: this ability is completely within the naturalistic worldview.) I would argue that there is no need, although one can.
As far as I know the merit (in the natural world) of any belief is whether it contributes to the survival, or not. They might lead to actions that prompt to act to the benefit of survival in the natural world, even if it is based on completely wrong or unfounded reasons. As far as I know, evolution requires only the beneficial outcome, and not understanding the correct reason. This is the way how evolution accounts for the existence of even unreasonable beliefs. If I know correctly, evolution might even suggest which type of beliefs can possibly benefit survival, but evolutions is not required to justify the contents, as not even the existence of unreasonable beliefs destroy the evolutionary logic itself. What would destroy the evolutionary logic is if a belief were found that makes the believer to act to the detriment of itself and its own species according to evolution, and still the species would thrive. For example, if we were to find a tribe in complete isolation, which believes that all newborns have to be killed immediately after birth and they acted according to this belief, but the tribe still would grow in population.

Evolution acts in the natural world around us with us being part of it and thus with us being under the effect of its principles. Or are we not part of the natural world? Our beliefs, ideas, on the other hand, have a compelling power only to our minds, but not on the natural world – this in effect is another way of saying that that nature is objective. This inequality is why I think we need to show how our ideas about the objective world relate to the objective world around us. Any idea about the natural world needs to be shown to actually describe the natural world. If an idea wants to oust evolution, all it needs to do is be a better explanation on the turf of evolution: the natural world. (One of my childhood’s favorite books wrote about a character in the book: “At the age of 22 he was the youngest winner of the Nobel-prize in physics. It tarnishes the glory of the achievement somewhat that he won the prize in a game of poker…” :))

Your worldview postulates something beyond the natural world and seem to delegate the explanation for the natural world to this realm. Cool. Could it be a better explanation for the world? It is possible, if it is shown to be objectively part of the natural world (not supernatural anymore: it puts it immediately on the same footing as the naturalistic worldview). Then/or it needs to correspond to the natural world better than the explanation provided by evolution on the same premises, and slip past Ockham’s razor. This would establish a new worldview instead of the naturalistic (of course, if the definition of nature was broadened in the process than this would be naturalistic, just in wider sense).
This has not been accomplished: the supernatural is still supernatural thus not self evidently objectively controllable. Even if such an explanation gives account of the natural world, the fact that it requires something not demonstrated (and not demonstrable) makes it weaker than an explanation that explains the same phenomena with fewer assumptions. If evolution didn’t exist, your worldview could be the best available.
On the other hand, even if it was demonstrated that the naturalistic worldview cannot give an answer, it wouldn’t in itself make any other worldview valid. This last bit is not accomplished by you (or anybody else) not believing the evolutionary explanation of the cognition (or any other evolutionary explanation): a person’s disbelief doesn’t make somebody else’s knowledge invalid, nor does an idea in our heads trump the observable natural world on its own turf. No philosophical argument to the contrary makes science to be doing worse than it appears. The fact that the scientific worldview seems to be doing just fine (measured through advance in technology or medicine, for example), it is not sufficiently demonstrated to be invalid.

For your worldview to be correct, evolution and the naturalistic worldview need to be wrong. But for evolution to be correct, your worldview can remain as it is. That is the reason why the burden of proof is not evenly distributed.

It is fine by me to play “put on these green glasses and I’ll show you that this is Emerald City.” But why would the city need to be made of emerald? And why the glasses? And you make a further argument that we shouldn’t put on red glasses (any other religion) so that we could show that we are in Ruby City, because… and there is no reason. It is just colored glasses that change the “natural” colors to a particular color of your liking.



I don’t need to account for “the fall”, as I don’t believe such thing ever occured. I don’t need to argue against any tenets of any religion as they are assumptions proposed without evidence – one doesn’t need to argue against the validity of fantasies. I could argue against proposed evidence, and that it is what happening in regards to the Bible.




We also need to bypass confirmation bias, which compels everyone to seek justification to their decisions, to believe that our belief is correct. As far as I know, this as well is well within the powers of evolution to explain.
We seek confirmation from the outside world, and when it comes to statements about the natural world, we can turn to nature directly, and check if a hypothesis describes the world or not. If the natural world is objective, than the amount of people supporting a particular hypothesis does not make it correct. The correspondence to the world is what makes it correct. One might stick to a disproved hypothesis, but the objective world wouldn’t.
And it is the objective world that is the subject of science, so luckily the confirmation can be done by observing the world. The scientific method handles confirmation bias by the theories being opened to disproval by anyone on the merits of the theory itself, and not on the quantity of people subscribing to it. Once disproved, the new and improved theory becomes the prevalent, regardless of the personal feelings of the supporters of one particular theory. This method of exposing every theory to challenges and letting them earn their title in championship bouts as opposed to being defined champions and dismissing any challengers by default is the core of scientific thinking (as far as I know). The scientific worldview has an ally in the observable natural world around us that removes the human confirmation bias.

How do we remove the confirmation bias from a hypothesis that does not depend on anything objective? From something that depends on somebody saying that it is so? How can we be sure that there is more than just confirmation bias, if there are no means to check against the natural world, or against the alleged source of the information, especially if any such testing is expressly prohibited by the hypothesis?
This is especially pertinent to arguing the Bible to be authoritative. There is nothing that establishes its truthfulness beyond it saying so. And that doesn’t cut the mustard in itself until confirmation bias is removed. If there were more evidence to corroborate… But all the other evidence goes against it. Of course, we are not required to have any evidence in order to believe anything (as explained by evolution).
The notion of accepting the Bible as the only evidence (so evidence in needed, right?) for God and completely stop finding any other evidence in his own work that we live in everyday seems… hm… wanting in reason, to say the least. If we are supposed to have evidence, than let us have evidence. Why stop gathering more evidence if it contradicts another? Nothing (apart from confirmation bias) warrants NOT looking for further evidence than the Bible. Like the green glasses in the Emerald City. Also, if we cannot know God’s mind, than we cannot say that he didn’t put the evidence there so that we actually disprove him.
I understand that your views are compelling to you, and I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be. You just don’t seem to have any reason for accepting the Bible as your authority apart from the fact that you accept the Bible as your authority.


Your worldview has a get-out-of-jail card: we cannot know God’s mind. Doesn’t this allow to justify everything and anything? Is it not a weakness for this worldview? If not everything can be justified, than how does one decide which things can and which cannot be justified?
I think it’s a double-edged sword you wield only in defense of your stance. Any statement as to the purposes of God falls under this category. Claiming that “God ordained so that we cannot learn of with human wisdom” is a positive statement about the mind of God – which you state we cannot know. Your argument is flawed the same way you claim science is flawed. Your argument implies the necessity of God for the knowledge of God. You seem to introduce a lot of assumptions about what God is like despite your statement that we cannot know God.

You seem to come back to “if God is God, than he must by necessity be an exception to causality”. Exactly: “if”. And yes, God having a cause would create a myriad of fatal problems. But “if” doesn’t become an objective certainty via wishful thinking. And there still doesn’t seem to be anything more exempting God from causality than defining it as an exception.


Scientific methodology is more than inadequate to evaluate miracles. Science has shown that there are no miracles. It took away any reason to believe that there are miracles.


And I obviously question the validity of knowledge, even that the naturalistic worldview is the most reasonable description of the world, and if evolution is a reasonable description of natural processes. It is not being promoted to an absolute truth. The whole scientific endavour is about trying to disprove theories. Evolution has not been disproved yet and is being confirmed through experiments and other evidence. Until disproved, the reasonable is to believe it (to the extent of its claims and not as absolute truth). This is as good as it gets, and it is good enough.


The naturalistic worldview does not assume yours. The same way as me behaving the same way as a devout Christian would doesn’t assume me following Christianity. It assumes something that is common to both, without assigning the ownership to either. It prompts further investigation to the reasons behind.


You also argue that your worldview accounts for uniformity, the reliability of senses and the objectiveness of the world. Are you saying then that causality (you argued against through arguing against uniformism) is allowed than by your worldview?


It seems to be perfectly reasonable (explained by evolution) to hold even unreasonable beliefs. Nobody argues this fact. Nobody argues against reasonable beliefs. All the argument is against the unreasonable nature of the unreasonable beliefs.


I don’t think we are busy trying to debunk God. Firstly because he is doing a good job himself by not just obscuring his existence, but forcing us to conclude that he doesn’t exist. Secondly, his diminishing probability is an epiphenomenon of science and doesn’t seem to require any conscious effort.



If you don’t see how evolution through natural selection account for the reliability of senses within the natural world, than there is not much I can do for you. There is plenty of literature about it (and no debunking that has not been de-debunked), it’s nothing that I have to demonstrate myself. It doesn’t claim anything beyond the natural world, and it explains our senses and cognition. It doesn’t account for your “proper” functionality (as it is not required), so you probably wouldn’t find it satisfactory on your grounds.
Your notion of God and creation depends on the Bible, but (as expected) you couldn’t promote any argument why anyone reasonably, beyond confirmation bias, should accept the Bible. The best given are the “if”-s but they were never turned into certainty.
Having said that, if I were to accept your premises, than I probably would come to the same conclusions as you, but there is absolutely nothing that compels me to accept the premises. My convictions can be changed if they are demonstrated to be faulty. I gladly change them, since I assume that there is always room for improvement. The one thing I require from any other “improved” conviction is that it remains open to even further improvements – until proven that this openness is bad. I believe that is what science is about. So far, the openness of science demonstrated it’s value through a more and more refined understanding of the world, demonstrated in better and better utilization of the results of science. Switching to a more closed worldview can be better, but I’m waiting to see any indication as to why it would be the case.

Musycks on March 25, 2008, 12:47 AM

Grad school teddy? primary school more like.
Someone who takes a biblical world view has no capacity for critical thinking… unless you don’t believe the following…
we are created in the Xtian God’s image?
therefore a guy with a brain the size of a mango created the Universe? what?… sitting around in the void, a bit bored, 6 thousand years ago according to your book, thinking ‘bit quiet round here.. I might conjure up a Universe!’
Hey Presto… ‘and I’ll put a man in the most tiny corner of it, and watch him for a while… even though I know how it will all go..’
you think the entire Universe was a bit of overkill, just for us? I mean, we’re barely out of the Milky Way now, and according to your team-mates we’re in end times.. he could have saved himself a lot of construction effort.
Then just for fun, Mango brain God sent contradictory instructions via voices in the head communication to his most beloved creatures? Deuteronomy says kill anyone who tells you to follow another God.. which lines up beautifully with the first commandment but not so well with the one about killing!
and then even though a couple of other monotheistic faiths follow your God… the jews, who got there first, and the Mussies, who came a bit later… neither will find a place in your heaven (an Egyptian rip-off) because they deny the divinity of a Jew who possibly didn’t exist?
You claim intimate knowledge of the mind of this Dog… don’t eat this, cut the skin off the end of your you-know-what, don’t have sex with this or that.. et al..
Your ‘holy’ book tells you nothing except that JC will be back ‘soon’.. it’s apparent to a brain dead moron that they meant within the lifetime of his immediate followers.. and the gullible have managed to stretch that for a couple of thousand years!
And you are condemned to an eternity in hell for not even coming in contact with gentle Jesus… the same fate that awaits mass-murderers I assume!
it’s insulting to push this drivel.

So tell me where I’m wrong, where you and the 40% of Xtians that are Bible literalists don’t agree with the last points? mount a credible argument to tempt me towards the beautiful lie…
or stick to scaring the kiddies… it’s what you and your ilk do so well.
Pathetic.

Tyler Wittman on March 25, 2008, 6:32 PM

quickeye,

Glad to see you responded. I am out of this debate because we are only going around in circles at this point (and I have around 45 pages of research due in 4 weeks).

“For your worldview to be correct, evolution and the naturalistic worldview need to be wrong. But for evolution to be correct, your worldview can remain as it is. That is the reason why the burden of proof is not evenly distributed.”

Just for clarification so you know what I’ve argued against this entire time: I’ve never argued that evolution is 110% wrong. I’ve only ever asserted that naturalistic evolution is untenable. I even recommended to you all a great book on all these issues by a theistic evolutionist himself, Timothy Keller. I fully embrace microevolution. No problem there. I personally find macroevolution to be quite a leap. I know you all believe the same about my personal view of creation. I have said all I think I need to about these things.

One further point of clarification and I really will cede the floor to you: We can only know God to the extent that he has revealed himself to us in Scripture. Beyond that, we cannot know anything of him. Apart from Scripture, we can only know that there is a God and he created everything. God is self-disclosing, independent, and self-contained. He has to come to us, it’s impossible to do otherwise.

I50 years ago, if you looked up “Hittites” in the encyclopedia, you would find something to the effect of, “A mythological culture spoken of only in the Bible.” Excuse the creative license, but if you look them up today, you’ll find the Biblical record vindicated in what it claims.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761563583

This has been the pattern throughout history. The Bible is not a science textbook, it uses phenomenological language, expressions, and literary genres, etc. just like we do. But when all the facts are know, the Bible will be shown to be inerrant. That’s just one piece of evidence, there’s plenty more out there. Go pick up a book on OT archaeology. You can look for all the evidence you want, but the Bible makes it plain that it is through faith that we are justified. Not logic, reason, or sensory experience. That’s just how the cow ate the cabbage.

I’m glad it’s helped you all to think, it certainly has helped me iron some things out and struggle with my own doubts a bit more forcefully. I’m currently planning on picking up a copy of Nature as soon as school is out for the semester.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have an insatiable itch to go force my religion on people and close my mind some more. :D

Bruce Allen on March 25, 2008, 10:53 PM

TeddyBear — I welcome the fact you finally conceded that your argument was going around in circles. I sensed this might be the outcome when, a while back, you inferred that the validity of a circular-argument was somehow dependent upon its radius — there was an ‘event-horizon’ attached to each argument, outside which the circular-argument suddenly became logical. I have wanted to challenge this notion, and your departure may deny me the opportunity [grin].

Back to my original proposition which you branded “absurd”. I would hope that the discussion here has made you more flexible in your approach to developing a God-model. And let’s be honest — your Christian faith is only one of many religious-models, all of which have equal credibility. The “Tiered model”, where God [ the Creator ] is separate from various forms of religious implementation, makes every bit as much sense to me as your model does.

Faceless Atheist on March 26, 2008, 4:19 AM

There is no way that “in time the bible will be seen to be inerrant”. There are so many claims that are impossible. The flood and the sun stopping in the sky are two examples that readily spring to mind (not to mention the alledged miracles of JC). To those who believe the bible infallible such silly questions can be brushed aside by ingrained phrases like “nothing is impossible for god”; but outside the religious worldview, where only the rules of physics are innerrant, such proposed adages offer no solace. I think that someday you will find the faults in your godly book, the ones you seem to have already found in other such presumptuous texts.


Just because some parts of the bible are not made up does not mean that the whole thing is true. I agree with you that it contains a plethora of “phenomenological language, expressions, and literary genres, etc.”, but this should lead one to embrace that it is NOT inerrant. It is part fiction and part non, some language is to be taken literally and some is to be understood as hyperbole. But once this is granted it is left to the reader to decide which parts are which, and this is a slippery slope. This is what has led to the multitude of beliefs, often contradictory, supported by the same book (for and against violent jihads in the Koran, for and against slavery in the bible).

In the end I think evolution is more likely to be shown to be correct “when all the facts are known”(though i dont think humans will ever know ALL the facts). This is largely because the theory of evolution will be altered as new evidence comes to light. The bible will not. It will continue to be unmasked as a mere mythology book with no inerrant truth.

Faceless Atheist on March 26, 2008, 4:26 AM

I have one more question for you if you should ever venture back to this thread. Does the evolution from chimpanzee to man fall under micro or macro evolution for you?

Tyler Wittman on March 26, 2008, 11:55 PM

Cosmos, I didn’t make a concession in the way you might think. I only fully admit that my arguments are no more circular than any other arguments, including the ones made against mine. All arguments are ultimately circular insofar as they rest on presuppositions. I know several people in this discussion refuse to believe they have presuppositions. I think they either don’t know what a presupposition is or they have very myopic vision.

When I said that we’re going around in circles, I meant that I continually have to repeat myself. For anyone who’s seeking truth, I’ve said enough.

Christianity requires faith. This doesn’t settle well with most of the people here, yet they fail to see how much faith they are putting in their own worldviews.

I disagree with your assertion that Christianity is an equally valid conception of God amongst many conceptions. This is completely illogical and somewhat patronizing, although that may not be your intention.

Jesus Christ claimed to be the Son of God, the Word made flesh. He claimed to be God. He claimed that there was no salvation outside of him. Give me two minutes with any member of any other faith and we can quickly agree that our views are not equally valid. Either mine is right and all others are wrong, or mine is simply wrong. There is no in between, cosmos. The only people who think they are equally “valid” are those who stand outside of these faiths and think that they are really equally useless.

This discussion has not made me more flexible in my construction of a “god model.” I derive my doctrine of God from Scripture and my doctrine of Scripture from God. I affirm the reformation cry of ‘sola scriptura.’ Anything else is vain speculation on par with spaghetti monster musings and the like.

If God exists, he has to make himself known to us. I believe all this postmodern pluralism and panentheism is without a foundation. If you have an idea of God, where did you get it from and why should that be trusted? I hope that this conversation has made you NOT as flexible in your definition of God and much more cautious.

Faceless, we could have an extended discussion about why you’ve really missed the boat on pretty much all hermeneutical considerations. You cannot distinguish between a history book and a poem? I’m sorry.

You all essentially have to wrestle with this: 2,000 years ago a man named Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and reportedly rose from the dead, sparking a faith that spread like wildfire under the most inhospitable of circumstances. Did he raise from the dead? Answer that question and you’ve answered the most important question ever posed to you.

But before you do, read these two books and see if you really honestly believe without a doubt that he didn’t raise from the dead:

1. A book detailing everything we know about Jesus that comes to us outside the pages of Scripture, “Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Evidence”

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802843689/ref=wl_it_dp?ie=UTF8&coliid=IUINWSZ1WZG9V&colid=22Q1BX8000O9

2. A book considering the merit of all the historical options we have before us concerning the resurrection and the rise of Christianity, “The Resurrection of the Son of God”

http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Son-Christian-Origins-Question/dp/0800626796/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206589986&sr=1-1

I think that’s it (this is like my fifth post after I said I’d stop, right?).

Faceless Atheist on March 27, 2008, 2:20 AM

If how fast a religion spreads can be related to its truth than Islam is the true religion. It spread faster than any other.

your idea that if god exists he has to make himself known to us is false. there is no reason for us to believe that he would make himself known, and, if he wanted to, why not do so in a more convincing manner?

Getting your concept of god from a book does not make it any more trustworthy (this has already been discussed). you are just another follower like members of every religion who for some reason thinks there religion is more likely “true” then any other. Your beliefs are rediculous and your idea of god is just as unfounded as that of anyone else.

Tyler Wittman on March 27, 2008, 7:54 PM

faceless,

I admit that a debate encompassing all these things necessitates formal logical fallacies by the mere nature of the topics discussed, but for someone who commits as many red herrings as you do, you sure do suppose a great deal of confidence. I could go on listing all the different red herrings you’ve used, but I would be wasting my time. I’m done here, I hope you’re satisfied with your self-assurance.

Sad fact is, I’ve read Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitches, Sam Harris, etc. etc. etc. and I doubt you’ve once engaged the other side’s best. I could be wrong, but I doubt I’m the closed-minded one here.

Faceless Atheist on March 28, 2008, 7:40 PM

I grew up on the other side. I was immersed in christian theology and teleology until I was a senior in college. I had to open my mind in order to see how wrong all those who sincerely believed in the biblical worldview were. I viewed the world through god goggles for 22 years, but I was only able to see the world for what it was when i took them off. You can try to justify your biblical inspired world view to yourself by claiming I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I’m closed minded and dont understand the arguments you make, but your wrong. I sincerely believe that anyone who serches for truth must eventually remove the god goggles and see the world for what it is.