You sit down to eat your lunch and begin peeling your orange, when your lunch buddy makes a strange comment. “Why in the world do they call it an orange if it is green?”
After gaining your composure, you realize your friend is likely color blind and unable to see the difference between orange and green. To him this orb in your hand is green and nothing you say is going to change that “fact”.
He insists that the burden of proof is on you. In order for him to believe that this orange is actually orange you will have to prove it. Secondly, he insists that only six colors exist and every other “color” is just a myth created by the greedy tyrants at Crayola. Lastly, he cares little about what others believe on the issue—he won’t believe it until he sees it with his own eyes.
Apart from the discovery of a cure for color blindness you’ll never win this debate. But what has actually been proven in this debate?
By your inability to win the debate your friend has not disproven that oranges are actually orange. Nor has he shown that oranges are actually green. All that has really happened is that we’ve shown that a fruit that is the color orange cannot and does not exist in your friends view of the world.
When Christians Lose the Debate
The above scenario is played out in lunch rooms every day, but over things far more significant than the color of an orange. There are those who insist that the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales and that God does not exist.
Just as the color-blind dude in the above scenario insisted that the burden of proof was upon you, so also unbelievers insist that we must prove that God exists in order for them to believe. They will say things like “if something is true then it must be scientifically proven” even though such a statement itself cannot be scientifically proven.
Furthermore, they will set the rules and standards for the debate. Things that are supernatural must be considered mythological. If they cannot be scientifically proven then they cannot be counted as evidence. They must be seen and observable over time in order to actually be considered true.
Christians will never win this debate.
But again losing this debate hasn’t really proven anything. Concerning the Bible, James White is correct when he says:
…the testing of Scripture’s claims on the basis of a foreign standard, context, or worldview usually lies behind allegations of error.
If you impose a Western or atheistic standard, context, or worldview on the Bible and it doesn’t pass the muster it doesn’t prove that the Bible is false. You’ve just proven that the Bible isn’t Western and it isn’t compatible with an atheistic worldview.
We’ve got to come to grips with the fact that what must happen to the color-blinded man must happen to the unbelieving mind. The leopard cannot change his spots and an unbeliever cannot be won to the Lord through his atheistic worldview. If the leopards spots will change the Lord must do work.
God must change the heart and the mind of the unbeliever. That is the only hope. And the means that he uses is His powerful Word. And so let us whole-heartedly and confidently proclaim that which is of first importance—the worldview-shattering and life-shaping gospel of Jesus Christ.
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photo credit: Yaisog Bonegnasher via photopin cc
Very good Mike. The presupposition is the truth of scripture before all our arguments. These truths are supernaturally known.
This is the only way religion wins the debate: through obfuscation, confusion, and summarily throwing real evidence out the window while insisting on arbitrary, unsubstantiated standards of truth.
When you change the rules and ignore everything that would ordinarily qualify as evidence, of course it becomes easier to win the debate.
Chris, here is your opportunity. Present your evidence for the non existence of God.
Les,
I’m afraid not quite. The post isn’t on arguments for God, but rather about the argument itself, which is why my comment is what it is.
But I’ll throw you a small bone since you’ve demonstrated one of the Christian’s favorite rule changes: shifting the burden of proof, a tactic Mike takes a jab at in his post.
Here’s what I can and cannot do:
I can show you why science increasingly teaches us that God is not necessary. I can show you that even if you could do the impossible and use science to demonstrate the necessity of God, this still wouldn’t do anything to let us know which of the world’s religions is correct, if any. I can show you that the Bible is rife with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, both OT and NT. I can show you that many claims of the NT are demonstrably false. I can show you that even if you could prove the God of the Bible were real, he would not be worthy of worship due to the many atrocities attributed to him and his followers in both the OT and the NT (not to mention throughout history, and contrary to the weird way people responded to Obama, “we don’t do that anymore” is not an excuse). (Side note: religious people will always condemn atrocity except when committed by their side, in which case it is loving divine justice).
I could do all that, but there is one thing I cannot do: I cannot prove God does not exist. There is a simple reason for this – you cannot prove a negative.
Ordinarily, we all understand this, and its corollary: just because something cannot be proven not to exist doesn’t mean you should believe it. I cannot prove there are no unicorns, no Bigfoot, no Loch Ness Monster, no Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc, etc, and guess what: I don’t believe in any of these things (and I suspect you don’t either) even though we cannot prove they do not exist.
But the burden of proof always lies in the other direction. The person who believes in Bigfoot must prove that he is real. The person who believes in God must prove that he is real. I trust you understand this when it comes to virtually every other issue. You need some sort of proof before you are willing to believe something exists. But when it comes to religion, somehow the religious person thinks he can turn the tables: “Not only do I not have to prove God is real, you have to prove he is not!”
That may be the only way religious people can (think they) win the debate, but that’s not the way the world works.
And that is all I will say about that.
You know, Chris, I think that we have blurred the line so significantly between science and philosophy that a lot of people fail to differentiate clearly between the two. To study physics, for example, is to contemplate Maxwell’s demon, Einstein’s elevator, and Schrödinger’s cat. These clearly belong as much or more to the discipline of philosophy as to science.
Einstein had the brilliance to propose thought experiments that were falsifiable and that have thus far enjoyed some measure of validation. But when you come to Stephen Hawking and Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about the multiverse, what you have there is more philosophy than science—more the imagination of physicists than physics itself. And, as Max Tegmark has observed pretty well, the non-multiverse theories similarly stipulate initial conditions and postulate other items that are equally (more so, Tegmark alleges) idiosyncratic and unobservable.
The “first cause” and “Prime Mover” questions are pretty basic ones. The theistic use of these questions come nowhere close to proving theism, to be sure. That fact, however, does not make these questions nonsensical. Science has done precisely nothing to answer them (that is, there exists no empirical evidence to answer these questions).
This state of affairs makes it a bit strange to hear you say that science has increasingly shown that God is not necessary. Science seems to me to be no closer to answering those questions than it was two centuries ago.
Bart,
A distinction is made between experimental physics and theoretical physics. Theoretical physics seeks to push the boundaries to provide more room for experimental physics. Experimental physics does the work of validating the theory. Some theories are currently more hypothesis than theory – the multiverse certainly falls into this category (and Tegmark’s view of the mathematical universe doesn’t get a lot of credence among theoretical physicists with his unique twist to the multiverse view).
A for Einstein, I am puzzled that you speak of his thought experiments. Einstein did not put for thought experiments – he put forth equations. He gave us mathematical models showing that his ideas were, at the very least, logical and consistent. This does not mean they correspond with reality, that’s where experiment comes in. So far, every experiment has validated Einstein’s theories (even his discarded idea of a cosmological constant has come back in the form of dark matter and dark energy). We know relativity is real – it is demonstrable through various experiments and factors into the calculations used to send probes across the solar system as well as the data coming from astronomers.
Schrodinger’s cat is a thought experiment meant to demonstrate the nature of the quantum state. It is not an experiment, nor is it philosophical speculation, it’s more along the lines of an analogy meant to demonstrate something we know about particles due to quantum states, theory that has been verified through the double-slit experiment. Schrodinger’s cat is just a convenient way to think about the issue.
Maxwell’s demon, as I understand it, is meant to challenge certain assumptions regarding the second law of thermodynamics. It’s another analogy that points to a mathematical model, one that has not been accepted up to this point.
So we need to note that the three examples you give are all intended as analogies to actual mathematical models, some of which are known to be true, others of which are not. This is not philosophy, it is not speculation, it is science. Those scientists engaged in devising mathematical models of how the universe might work must then work with the experimentalists to devise ways to either confirm or reject their models. This is much harder for cosmologists due to the nature of their work, and in the case of cosmology experimental evidence comes from looking for evidence predicted by mathematical models. This is one reason we know the big bang happened: the model behind the theory showed that there should be a lot of energy throughout the universe, energy found at a certain wavelength and temperature. Lo and behold, we found it – the Cosmic Microwave Background. Recently in the news has been a theory regarding inflation. That model predicted that if inflation happened a certain way, it should have produced a certain kind of gravity waves. This made the news last year when researchers said they had found the gravity waves. More recently, we know that they did not – there was an error in their data and what they thought to be gravity waves was caused by galactic dust. This does not prove their theory wrong, it just shows they have not yet found the predicted gravity waves.
And this is how science works. Physicists create the models then go looking for evidence that the model corresponds to the universe. As evidence mounts, the model is confirmed. If no evidence is found, the model stays in the realm of uncertain, unless and until it reaches the point that we absolutely should have seen evidence and the lack of evidence means the theory should be discarded (some think string theory has already passed this threshold). If contrary evidence is found, the theory is discarded and scientists keep working on whatever problem they are addressing. In any case, science advances. New work corrects old problems, the system eventually weeds out mistakes, knowledge gets refined and expanded, and our understanding of the universe grows. Philosophy has its place – there is even a philosophy of science – but let’s not confuse the work of theoretical physicists with the work of philosophers.
Einstein didn’t put forth thought experiments?
Now I AM puzzled.
I’m pretty sure that Einstein put forth BOTH thought experiments AND mathematical equations.
My point is simply to challenge your assertion that you can show how science increasingly makes God unnecessary. I’d specifically take issue with the word “increasingly.” Belief in God was NEVER “necessary” in deductive terms (see Atheism, History of), and those items that have seemed compelling to theists in the past are no less compelling today.
My point, which I had hoped to make clear, is that there are no mathematical equations existing at the points where one would make God less “necessary” than before. At precisely those points, all that exists are the thought experiments, naked and alone. Paul Davies has said as much (of course, Paul Davies has said quite a bit that might run counter to what seems to be your present worldview).
Yes, your description of the scientific method is a good one (hypothesize, test, then reject, refine, or embrace the hypothesis), but at the very points at which science encounters the ultimate questions (before I mentioned first causes or prime movers, but this works equally well with Davies’s observations about the fundamental laws of the universe) science has nothing to offer but thought experiments and postulates.
Bart,
There have long been religious claims about why God is necessary. Science has pushed those claims back inch by inch until all that remains is a very thin ledge. Cosmology tells us how the universe came to be, evolution tells us how we came to be, climatology tells us how rain comes to be, virology tells us how disease comes to be, neurology tells us how insanity comes to be, etc. Things once attributed to God’s hand or miracles or demons are now understood scientifically to one degree or another. This is why I say science makes God increasingly unnecessary. The gaps once filled by God are now filled by a scientific understanding of the natural world. There are precious few gaps remaining (there remain many, many gaps in our knowledge, but typically related to finer details of how processes work rather than bigger questions of what the processes are) with the primary hole being cosmology. The nature of the issue makes it very difficult to resolve, providing a convenient gap for theists who want to continue to point to God as prime mover, or the reason for teleological tuning, whatever. But science has set a profound precedent – it has shown that our “god” assumptions have been wrong time and again so we should be cautious before claiming that God fills this last gap. There is much we do not know about the very beginning (though what we do know is enough to disprove the creation account), but scientists will keep working on it and knowledge will keep advancing.
“Cosmology tells us how the universe came to be, evolution tells us how we came to be, climatology tells us how rain comes to be, virology tells us how disease comes to be, neurology tells us how insanity comes to be, etc.”
I think you’ve overreached in every case here.
“Cosmology tells us how the universe came to be.” And yet this is what you later call the “primary hole” and “convenient gap.”
“Evolution tells us how we came to be.” And yet, as you know, (a) a sizable number of Christian theists embrace evolution, (b) there is such a thing as an atheist who rejects evolution, (c) even atheistic evolutionists wind up resorting to things like panspermia precisely because evolution has not told us how we came to be.
“Climatology tells us how rain comes to be.” Which does not, in any way that I can tell, contradict biblical claims about God or about rain. Also, my experience with the local forecast is that climatology actually cannot yet quite tell us precisely how, when, or where rain will come to be. I’d be more impressed by the claims of climatologist about what the weather will be in 2063 if they were a bit better at telling us what it will be next Wednesday. Where climatological predictions are actually falsifiable (“There will be more and more powerful hurricanes because of climate change”), the track record isn’t very good.
“Virology tells us how disease comes to be.” Virology certainly tells us a lot of things we once did not know about how some diseases (viral diseases) come to be. I’m thankful for that. Of course, just as with climatology, only if you choose not to ask whence viruses have come and only if you presume that God had nothing to do with the form and structure of modern life does that pose any sort of a threat to theism or to Christianity.
“Neurology tells us how insanity comes to be.” That’s not at all self-evident. I found that article on schizophrenia after a brief Google search, but the area in which I myself have actually done quite a bit of research is in the field of Alzheimer’s Disease (because of family history). There are theories (plaques and tangles). None of them have been demonstrated to anyone’s satisfaction (although I suspect that they will eventually prove to play some role in the problem). The research has produced no effective treatment. Neurology has not at all told us how dementia comes to be, how schizophrenia comes to be, how multiple personality disorder comes to be, how bipolar disorder comes to be. What an overreach! As an aside, have you ever considered that, having “fallen for” Christianity in the past, perhaps you’ve just fallen for something else now? You sure do seem to look at science through rose-colored glasses.
I hope and pray that someday science will tell us how dementia comes to be, and perhaps that day will come. I may very well need it someday. Indeed, you may think that I need it now. 🙂
When it does make that discovery, if it does, demonstrating “This is how the universe (or the brain) works” is utterly different from demonstrating “This is why it works that way” or even “This is how it came to be as it is.” When I talk about God, I’m speaking about those final two statements, not about the first one.
Of course, if you come to a theistic answer to the final two statements, you wind up modifying the first one a bit: “This is how the universe works…usually.”
Truly (to Davies’s point), I think you have to say that anyway (the “usually” bit). Whether you take the theistic or the atheistic approach, you have no choice but to conclude that something outside the universe exists and explains the universe. Let that be the multiverse for you (perhaps, or if not, some other something involving other dimensions or whatever) or let it be God for me. If the physical laws of the universe are not NECESSARILY that way, but are instead contingent (because God chose to make them as they are, or because the multiversal matrix caused them to be thus in this particular universe), then why should we necessarily conclude that whatever exists outside of the universe and causes the universe can nevermore interfere with it? If that which gave rise to the universe could’ve set the strong atomic force to be something different at the moment of the Big Bang, why couldn’t it alter that value now in some case and then alter it back? Why would it be impossible that it should, for example, generate spontaneous rain somewhere, just once? I can think of no scientific reason why it could not. If something beyond our universe exists and if our physical laws are what they are because this something sets physical laws in universes however it wishes, then by what leap of logic (or faith?) does one conclude that this system that was once open to the influence of such a thing is now closed to it? That multiple universes can never interact with one another with unpredictable results? And if that’s possible at all, then the most you can say is “this is how disease works…usually.” To refine the statement a bit: “This is how disease works when nothing abnormal interferes with it.”
What we’re talking about here is an atheistic concept of the miraculous, basically. Once you conclude that the universe is not a closed system, you open the door to the miraculous (even if you do not necessarily open the door to the divine). Yet the only way to conclude that the universe IS a closed system is to agree not to ask certain questions (What set the initial conditions for the Big Bang? How did those initial conditions just happen to be so fortuitously tuned for the production of life?)
I submit to you that these questions are the truly theological ones. I do not dispute that one could make a religious claim that science could prove to be false (e.g., the Earth rests on the back of a turtle). I simply maintain that my faith does not, to any degree that I recognize, make such claims.
Our differences of opinion, I’m guessing, arise less from the fact that I’m a theist and you are an atheist than they do from the apparent fact that you are a materialist (not used in the economic sense) while I am not (of course, a theist cannot be a materialist, but an atheist can be something other than a materialist). I believe that material reality does not exhaust reality. I’m in no better position to prove that than is Tyson to demonstrate that there is a multiverse nor than is Susskind to demonstrate dimensions of spacetime beyond those that we can perceive. We are left nonetheless with the fact that the material universe does not explain itself and offers no sufficient framework for understanding its past or even its present behavior. Something else, it seems, must exist. Science tells us that. God may not necessarily be a part of that answer, but science makes it necessary that there be some such answer and if offers no evidentiary guidance as to what that answer might be.
Bart, good comment. Another scientist put it this way….
“Though highly speculative, the Hawking/Hartle model of the “quantum creation of the universe” is an example of the kind of challenge presented by quantum cosmology to the relation between theology and cosmology. If there is not “t=0” in the Hawking/Hartle model, does this ‘disprove’ the theological claim that the universe is created? Actually the interaction method produces a more nuanced result than this. Recall that, according the Hawking, the universe has a finite past but no past singularity at “t=0;” the universe is temporally past finite but unbounded. If we had too narrowly reduced the theological meaning of creation to the occurrence of “t=0″ in standard cosmology we might well have a problem here! (Certainly not the problem Carl Sagan tries to raise in his Preface to Hawking’s book – namely that there is nothing left for God to do. Deism like this is not even remotely presupposed by those theologians who do take t=0 as direct evidence for God. For them, as for all contemporary theology in one way or another, God acts everywhere in the universe, and not just at its beginning.) Yet if we kept the two worlds separate, we would have nothing to learn either.
But the interaction model provides a surprising new result: The move from the Big Bang to Hawking’s model changes the empirical meaning of the philosophical category of finitude; it does not render it meaningless. With Hawking/Hartle the universe is still temporally finite (in the past) but it does not have an initial singularity. Hence the shift in models changes the form of consonance between theology and science from one of bounded temporal past finitude (found with the Big Bang model) to one of unbounded temporal past finitude (found in the Hawking proposal). Thus, as we theologize about creatio ex nihilo we should separate out the element of past temporal finitude from the additional issue of the boundedness of the past. What the Hawking proposal teaches us is that in principle one need not have a bounded finite past to have a finite past. This result stands whether or not Hawking’s proposal lasts scientifically.”
In a nutshell, circular argumentation is Hawking’s strong point with math, where little science is needed.
Bart,
Forgive me for thinking I could speak in general terms. Of course we don’t know everything about each of those areas – I had already noted that – but perhaps you miss my point: people once thought – even in the New Testament – that madness and epilepsy were cause by demon possession. While we still have a lot to learn about those disorders, we know they are in fact disorders and that they originate in the mind, not from demonic activity. I won’t belabor the point by spelling out each of my examples, but hopefully the point comes across. Things once seen as signs of the gods or the supernatural world are now known to be very natural phenomena.
In the area of cosmology, I should have belabored the point a bit more. We know an awful lot about how the universe came to be (see David Weintraub’s excellent book “How Old is the Universe?” or a book I’m currently reading, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution” – so far excellent but I can’t yet speak for it as a whole). We don’t know what came before the big bang or what triggered the big bang or what happened during the first tiny fractions of a second after the big bang, but we know quite a bit from that point forward. There are still gaps, but it’s amazing what physicists have thus far pieced together – not in the realm of speculation or conjecture but solid science. We know how that initial burst of energy formed into particles and atoms and gas and dust and stars and planets and everything else – we know the stages of cosmic evolution, we know the general timeframes involved, and all the evidence thus far bears it out. We are still missing a few pieces from the first fractions of a second – very important pieces – but most of the story has already been figured out and the process was (1) entirely naturalistic, and (2) runs counter to the biblical account.
Yes, I realize there are Christians who believe in evolution. I also realize that many of the folks around these parts will say that while they might be Christian, they get the Bible wrong. For myself, difficulty reconciling the Bible with science had a powerful impact on my beliefs. When I was a Christian, I trusted that God did it, I just didn’t know how to reconcile the Bible with what we know from science. Theistic evolutionists have taken different approaches which typically boil down to allegorizing the text, an approach which as you know introduces a number of theological complications. So while I acknowledge that Christian evolutionists exist, I also recognize that their evolutionary belief is at odds with their holy book.
“Whether you take the theistic or the atheistic approach, you have no choice but to conclude that something outside the universe exists and explains the universe.”
Perhaps. We don’t know. Some theories hold that the universe has always existed – not in a steady state sense but in the sense that whatever exploded at the big bang had always been around. That raises additional questions, but it’s an option on the table.
As for your “What if’s?” – we could throw out unsubstantiated conjecture all day long. That’s sort of the point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – if we’re allowed to just speculate anything we want, anything goes. But this is not the approach scientists take. Cosmologists working on the origins question develop mathematical models that are consistent with what we know. They aren’t just throwing possibilities around – they have some degree or another of mathematical foundation for their ideas. Sean Carroll (my favorite cosmologist/theoretical physicist) is a good person to read on this subject.
“I believe that material reality does not exhaust reality.”
That’s all well and good, but do note that a significant difference between you and Tyson is Tyson can demonstrate why the things he claims are true, whereas you cannot. Tyson is neither a cosmologist dealing with the problem of the first few fractions of a second of the universe, nor is he a theoretical physicist. His claims about the materialistic universe are backed up by solid science. You can only offer faith claims. Tyson’s position is based on rational science, yours is based on irrational presupposition. Even if your belief system is internally rational and coherent (and I know Christian theology well enough to know this is not the case), its foundation is irrational whereas science is built from the ground up on rational, experimental processes and methods, however much you may want to try and argue around this. You and Tyson are on very different ground. You and Carroll are also on very different ground since even when he remains in the world of the hypothetical about the earliest moments of the universe – or the universe before the big bang – he is able to show through science that his theories are at least consistent with what we currently know about the cosmos.
“We are left nonetheless with the fact that the material universe does not explain itself and offers no sufficient framework for understanding its past or even its present behavior.”
I’m not sure how you could write this even just based on the discussion we’ve been having. The material universe has told us a great deal about itself and has given us reason to believe we will be able to learn most of what we want to know. It is possible that we will never be able to figure out the precise details of the universe’s earliest moments, but that is not (necessarily) because “the universe does not explain itself” but because the very process that took place obliterated the evidence. Imagine if a murder took place in a house and then a nuclear bomb was dropped on the house. Police would have a difficult time piecing together evidence about the murder. But even with that, we are given a tremendous amount of detail from the universe around us. It is because the universe explains itself that you are able to type on that shiny gadget in front of you.
“Something else, it seems, must exist. Science tells us that. God may not necessarily be a part of that answer, but science makes it necessary that there be some such answer and if offers no evidentiary guidance as to what that answer might be.”
I’m afraid not. All science tells us thus far is that there are things we do not yet know. The rest of what you say is your speculation, not the findings of science. It may well be that there is something else at work, we just don’t know.
Chris R.,
It is clear to you, that I’m not as smart as you…. 😉
Yet, you have not come to realize that Hawking’s main defense is circular, so you did miss my point, not Russell’s.
Chris, there are some things you seem to get stuck on… One is this “changing the rules thing”. What has made no belief the basis for rules? Is your defense based upon a specific rule set?
Also, just as salvation is not well understood in your faith, ..i.e. your confession that you once were as saved as anyone else that has swooned to that type of belief. What evidence do you have that your new faith of no belief is in fact real?
Adam,
“Mike, I don’t really consider your “kissing” and “mother” analogies as apologetics (at least not in the spirit of 1Peter 3:15)”
Okay. so you don’t. That doesn’t mean they are not.
The whole sentence reads:
“Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”
I think that a good case can be made that honoring Christ in one’s heart, as the holy Lord, is a part of making a defense of the hope that is within you. What is then that hope within Christians? Is it not Christ in me the Lord of glory? Our hope is Christ, and one main reason we know we have this hope in Christ is by the witness of the Spirit to our spirit:
Romans 8: For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.
Now the logical proofs of God do not prove God, nor do they prove the hope that is in us.
Now even though you don’t consider my analogies as apologetics, didn’t you say that because you wee disagreeing with me using them as apologetics? But yet you ask:
“Question: are you one of those folks who thinks apologetics is largely a worthless endeavor on the part of the Christian?”
And thus what do you think my goal was in using those analogies? To stop the mouth of the one who was being obstreperous.
So Adam, how do you show the hope that is in you by logical proofs of God?
Mike. Look, I’m not trying to engage in some argumentative, perpetual shuck-and-jive. That’s not what I come here for. What I attempted was to say that beginning with the premise that “God exists” was a leap-of-faith that bases your argument (to a THIRD party) on faith. You end up requiring faith from someone who doesnt have it to begin with. Putting “faith” in faith is fideism.
Your kissing analogy doesnt really prove anything to a third party. It only proves that you believe it. There have been some really wacky things that people really believed, but that doesnt make them true.
The mother analogy: “But since I was raised by her, I don’t need to use logic since I have personal evidence of her existence.
And as well, Christians don’t presuppose there is a God, they have experienced Him. They have a relationship with Him. He has made Himself known to them.”
But you do use logic here. You may not recognize it, but how else would you determine that what you experienced was not imaginary.
I dont (and not just myself) consider making proofs to YOURSELF through personal experience any type of useful apologetic. It doesnt prove anything to the third party at all…except that YOU believe it. I’m not going to go around in circles with you if we cant even agree on what the purpose of all of this is…or if it even has a purpose out side of “i believe it so it’s true. You must see the truth based on my personal experience”.
I see you consider me obstreperous. Maybe you can say the same about these as well…http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Apologetics-John-H-Gerstner/dp/0310449510
Chris, we probably have different definitions of “proof” when it comes to this subject (direct empirical evidence vs. logical conclusiveness), but I will say this…the presuppositional approach stinks.
Is it presuppositional to presume beforehand that presuppositions are false?
To your question, yes.
Problem isnt with what is presupposed, but the fideistic leap of faith you end up using for a foundation for the rest of your argument.
Adam,
Why do you call it a leap of faith?
Why do you think it is a leap?
When you start with the presupposition that “God exists” then you are essentially starting from that leap. God doesn’t exist because I say he does…nor is the Bible the word of God because the Bible says it is. When you start here you start out with faith, not reason.
God exists because we can reason back logically to his existence based on necessity (law of causality, not “cuz I say so” which is a leap of faith if that is where you start). Then we can reason forward to understand if God’s existence is true based on necessity, then the Bible must be his Word (not “cuz I believe what the Bible says” which is a leap of faith if that is your starting point).
Adam,
Many people, ignorant of Christian faith assume that a Christian’s faith is a leap simply because they themselves see no evidence for having faith.
Consider the show ~Sherlock Holmes~, Sherlock makes what seems like leaps of logic but as he reveals, they are based on evidence that he has acquired or as he has seen, that the onlookers, like we the audience did not see.
That you do not have the evidence Christians have for their faith does not mean that their faith is a “leap”. Of course there is a difference between the evidence Sherlock has obtained and the evidence for Christianity, in that, the evidence Christians have for their faith is internal and personal.
Another analogy would be if a young lady gave you a kiss, that no one else saw. You would have internal and personal evidence that she actually kissed you, but no evidence that you could ‘prove’ the event actually happened. Because you can’t prove it to others, does that mean it didn’t happen? Of course not.
Likewise, Christians can’t prove that they have had an experience with God, but neither can you prove they did not.
Adam,
Gosh Adam, logically we can figure out that I indeed had a mother. But since I was raised by her, I don’t need to use logic since I have personal evidence of her existence.
And as well, Christians don’t presuppose there is a God, they have experienced Him. They have a relationship with Him. He has made Himself known to them.
Which is why when someone, say like Chris R., leaves the faith and declare that there is no God, we know that he never was a true Christian, for one doesn’t meet God and forget about it.
Mike, I don’t really consider your “kissing” and “mother” analogies as apologetics (at least not in the spirit of 1Peter 3:15). I’m not concerned with a Christian convincing himself of God’s existence by his own experience. That is what you offered. I am only talking about logical proofs of the existence of God based on logic and presented to a non-believer. That is in the spirit of 1Peter 3:15.
Question: are you one of those folks who thinks apologetics is largely a worthless endeavor on the part of the Christian?
I know/believe that we cannot reason someone to Christ. It’s not the head that converts, but the heart…but you cant get to the heart without going through the head first.
My opinion is the primary purpose of apologetics would be (as Calvin put it) “to stop the mouths of the obstreperous”, not convince someone to become a christian. That is the Holy Spirit’s job. Nor is the purpose of apologetics to make proof to yourself based on personal experience.
Chris R.,
I do get a little tickled when I read stuff like this….
“We know how that initial burst of energy formed into particles and atoms and gas and dust and stars and planets and everything else – we know the stages of cosmic evolution, we know the general timeframes involved, and all the evidence thus far bears it out. We are still missing a few pieces from the first fractions of a second – very important pieces – but most of the story has already been figured out and the process was (1) entirely naturalistic, and (2) runs counter to the biblical account.”
It was just in September of last year that scientists continue to question the math and theories around the theories, formation and existence of black holes,…and some have demonstrated that they may not even exist. At least in a form that has “scientifically” been constructed, and “observed”. Maybe what is being observed is not even what is possible in the theory.
I love to read about this stuff, but you have to admit that there is a great deal of “finger in the wind” observations being positioned as scientific these days. Maybe the math in getting in the way of what is described as science.
“and some have demonstrated that they may not even exist”
Care to name names? There was a bit of a kerfuffle when media outlets jumped in to report that Hawking had said black holes may not exist. Lo and behold, it turns out they had rather misunderstood what Hawking was saying. I seem to recall a PhD student coming along later and saying she (I think it was a she) could disprove black holes, but her claims were shown to be full of holes.
Chris R,. yet again you prove my point. In your own land of rules, science seems to make the most sense. I love science. It is fun to experiment and put forth theories, and even see some appear to be sound. My experiments are rather simple and mundane when compared to finite or apparent event horizons. So, I think I understand to some degree your fascination with science.
That’s the same spirit that Laura Mersini-Houghton and Harald Pfeiffer had when they were working with the theories that may or may not disprove the various characteristics that Hawking speaks of at the apparent horizon. Just because you may be able come closer to counting a particle and its behavior, does not move one to substantiate a creative moment. That is where folks like Hawking get all excited and steer off the tracks a bit. These guys are brilliant math guys, and have done some cool work, but as they continue to discover,…there is much more to particles than what the eye can see, or math can calculate…some things require the real event.
When Hawking tries to comment on things out of his capability to comprehend, he seems to fall flat and become the town idiot. Such as, “I believe the simplest explanation is, there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization that there probably is no heaven and no afterlife either.” Such “profound” realization from someone that is yet to see past the particle. He does well to stick with math and continue to foist theories of how it applies to science. That is when he is at his best.
Chris J, I think you make a very good point about a “finger in the wind.” Many, many scientific theories have been verified, and others debunked, by a scientist starting with that very method.
Serendipity is as much a part of scientific progress as the scientific method. I think even a casual reading of the history of science would support this proposition.
I did not Master’s Thesis on “Understanding the Existence of God In Light of New Developments in Quantum Physics–God As The Theory of Everything.” My professors loved long titles.
When you investigate what physicists say about cosmology you get a very, very wide range of propositions. Most are not what we would call, “Christian,” though many top shelf physicists are Christians and do science from that perspective. I’m talking about “top shelf” physicists.
The alternatives when you boil down the cosmological propositions of non-theistic scientists you will discover that they merely change the name of God. They exchange one singularity for another.
Recently, some physicists have returned to the pre-Thalian days in which the cosmos was considered eternal. You see this in some of Hawkings later musings. This, however, simply replaces God with the Cosmos (capital “C”).
This may fly for physicists, but it creates enormous problems for philosophers. Cosmological mathematics recognizes that “infinities” may solve equations, but not without troubling consequences.
In my studies I have always taken the statement, “sciences says, or science has proven” with a grain of salt–sometimes a whole salt-shaker.
Thanks for your point of view.
Jack, you are correct my friend when you say…”Cosmological mathematics recognizes that “infinities” may solve equations, but not without troubling consequences.” That is where the fun is for burgeoning scientists these days.
While I Pastor, the work I do to make money is involved in technology. I’ve spent over 30 years in the field of electro-magnetics and have seen that field eclipsed by some pretty cool photonic transmission devices that have benefited from the work done by Mr. Hawking. I used to joke about how many photons it took to accurately deliver wavelengths in some of our underground cabling systems in the Atlantic… I mean, really,..whose counting?
But you are right,… some scientist are pretty hell bent on replacement theology of their own with the Cosmos. And to my earlier point about Hawking; he will be much more successful at sticking to something he is actually able to perform.
Mike, you’ve illustrated in a very simple way, the real argument.
Sweet breakfast reading!
Ouch Mike, it looks like Chris R. is accusing you of “changing the rules”.
Tis okay. I’m fine with that charge. In some ways that is my point in this article. Christians will never win the debate on naturalistic presuppositions. Duh. We weren’t meant to. But at the end of the day that doesn’t disprove the gospel–it just means you cannot prove it using the scientific method.
By faith a naturalist uses the scientific method as his/her grid for determining truth.
By faith I use the Scriptures as my grid for determining truth.
I’m okay with that.
I agree with you Mike – I am fine with that too.
Well put.
Mike, that’s the heart of the matter.
” … he won’t believe it until he sees it …”
It’s amazing how many things are turned upside down in the Kingdom of God. When it comes to Truth, you see it when you believe it!
While this piece is directed primarily at the unbeliever and his worldview, I continue to be amazed at folks in church who sit under the Word year after year but never seem to really get it. This also goes for some preachers! The best preachers I’ve known became such after spending years in the ministry to forget most of what they had learned in seminary! Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have a problem with education … I even have some! But, education does not produce one ounce of revelation. For truths to become Truth, the Word (Truth) needs to be connected with the Spirit of Truth (Holy Spirit) to become Revealed Truth. The Kingdom is built on revealed knowledge, not just a compilation of Biblical facts. The natural mind will never understand this … these things are spiritually discerned.
Excellent comment Max! Information is great to have, yet it is the Holy Spirit, the true teacher, that leads us into all truth. The substance and evidence of the faith that God gives becomes much more clear at that point!
Amen Chris. The bummer is that most Christian debate in social media and blogs is intellect vs. Spirit. It’s the stuff that you know in your knower that counts … everything else is just information revolving around the teachings and traditions of men. In that world, orange will always be green. It’s by the Spirit, thus saith the Lord.
Chris R,
I haven’t been a reader of this blogsite for very long(a few months) but from what I gather you are an atheist who frequents it. I have read your comments and am really curious about you. Why does an atheist peruse a conservative Christian blogsite? Why does he engage in the conversation? Why does he pushback when the site puts forth Christian ideas? It’s kinda fascinating to me. I’m not sure what the answer is. I have two guesses. One is that you just like to poke people with sticks. But, hey, that’s what the internet is for. Or, could there be a hint of doubt in the back of your mind? Maybe there is still hope that the heart has not solidified beyond the possibility of softening. I really don’t know the answer, but I pray for you and the salvation of soul by surrendering to Christ.
I ate a few green oranges in Africa a few weeks back. Sometimes oranges actually ARE green.
Which, of course, totally misses the point of the post.
I once ate an orange watermelon after the guy told me it tasted the same. In my mind, I was thinking it wouldn’t; thus, it didn’t. The power of the intellect can overcome your senses.
I was surprised too, that in Dioher and Nyassia, ripe oranges are green.
The fruit we get here is highly manipulated. They transport it to us in containers pumped full of ethylene gas.
I’m not someone who gets creeped out by that—ethylene gas is harmless, I’m pretty sure…certainly it isn’t in the top 25 harmful things to which we willingly subject ourselves—but the fact remains that our experience of the world is usually at least one step removed from natural reality.
I think you guys are killing my analogy. LOL.
That was the point.
They’re just packing it in ethylene, which is mostly harmless.
I gave up discussing such things with the lost. Except, that is, the things the lost person can, or may be able to, understand.
God is. Romans 1:20.
Sin, righteousness and judgment. John 16:8. And that, if he has been convicted by the Holy Spirit.
Stuff beyond that, he can’t comprehend. 1 Corinthians 2:14.
“Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. […] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis.”
? Richard Dawkins, The Town Idiot
Proof?
I was called to salvation, I was called to preach, both callings were irresistible, I wanted to run from them but I could not resist. My freewill did not matter, God is not concerned about my freewill, I cannot even stop my tooth from hurting with my will, much less straiten up my sinful soul with my freewill. God took care of both situations.
If you knew me before I got saved, you would say God is real and there is no doubt about it. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone as to the existence of God, my lifestyle takes care of that for me because of his Holy Spirit abiding in me.
An orange grown in nature is not orange in color, but an old rusty color that has the best taste of any orange in the world. A spray used by farmers will cause an orange to be orange in color. So whether an orange is green or orange really doesn’t matter. The taste of an orange is where the truth lies.
If we are in Christ we are new creatures, that’s the proof that counts. The goodness that I have doesn’t come from me, but the Holy Spirit abiding in me. I don’t have to prove anything although I try to persuade others with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The disproving is up to others, all I can do is preach that which I know is real beyond any shadow of doubt.
It’s natural for unbelievers to say, there is no God. Even unbelievers have to feel a sense of justification, except theirs is not of God.
Speaking of analogies,
This little mini-debate reminded me of the recent OSU-Wisconsin game for the BIG championship. Wisconsin, representing the non-believers, gained some yardage, but the OSU, representing the Christians, not only gained more yards, but all the points. BTW it was OSU 59, Wisconsin 0.
Dave,
I would appreciate an email [bygrace4012@yahoo.com]with an explanation.
Thank you,
mike
Chris, here is Mike’s email. If you two wish to carry on your debate, please feel free to do so by email.
I’m not interested in hosting it here.
(The original version of this comment got caught in moderation due to links; hopefully my reposting it with reduced links doesn’t lead to duplication.)
This is rather aside from any argument about God one way or another (per se), but makes for an interesting side note and is relevant to a few of the items that came up on here. Just yesterday there was a paper put out discussing the possibility of an eternal universe: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html
I’m seeing physicists on twitter offering correctives about this article: they are saying the paper this article is based on does not challenge the big bang, despite the article’s somewhat sensationalist headlines. The big bang, they say, is established science, proven in part by the cosmic background radiation. But whether or not there was an infinitely dense point of singularity is still under debate. I defended the singularity earlier and pointed to where Hawking had accepted it, but it appears the jury is still very much out. The singularity is not required for the big bang, it is just the best known among various models. As I noted earlier, we know what happened very soon after the big bang but we haven’t yet been able to pierce through the noise to figure out exactly what happened during or before.
So to summarize: the big bang remains intact. The singularity of the big bang is still uncertain.
See @AstroKatie on Twitter for an astrophysicist tweeting about the paper and the article. One of her tweets: “There are articles going around promoting a paper saying ‘the big bang never happened!’ Hugely misleading. And the work is very preliminary.” So as we see too often, science headlines have a tendency to be sensationalized and go beyond the actual science paper.
Actually, the Big Bang is not intact. They are currently working on quantum models that do not require a “beginning” of any kind.
But, then again, I can describe all kinds of features for a unicorn but that doesn’t mean I can buy one for my grand daughter.
I am not suggesting that we should not “be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within you”…but I have a couple of questions based on several dialogs taking place in this comment stream.
Is it really our “job” to prove the existence of God to the skeptic or scoffer?
Doesn’t God prove Himself as the Spirit calls people from death and darkness into light and life?
Couple more:
Have we become so arrogant that we think that if we can just logically/scientifically “prove” that God is – that rebellion and rejection will cease?
What is it that draws the lost to the Savior? Our ability to convince or the Spirit’s power?
My personal thinking is that the proclamation of the gospel as revealed in Scripture is our “job”, our “role” – it not our job/role to convince or draw people to faith – that is above our rank and pay-grade.
Tarheel,
The whole idea of “proof” is filled with difficulties. You cannot prove to a blind man that a sunset is beautiful.
Agreed. Nor can you convince a deaf man that music is beautiful or that airplanes taking off are loud.
They can be taught the “facts” but they cannot understand the reality – they are utterly and completely incapable of understanding.
Just as the natural man is utterly and completely incapable of understanding the spiritual (regardless of attempts to “prove it”) – to him it is and shall be foolishness….unless and until his heart is enlightened….I think I read about that someplace…Hmmmm….
You probably read it in the same book that documents talking donkeys and people walking on water.
If you could make donkeys talk and could make people walk on water, you’d totally do that.
Tarheel, you are correct, we cannot reason someone to
Christ. That is the Holy Spirit’s job. It is above our pay-grade.
Two things:
1. We CAN show that the claim “there is no God” is not an absolute truth. We can use reason/logic to show this even apart from Scripture. We do not allow those who would argue against the existence of God to control the entire conversation.
2. Nobody has ever come to Christ without the leading of the Holy Spirit. But also no one has ever known Christ without first having a logical belief in God’s existence. They may not have analyzed it in their minds, but they did use some form of logic and reason to determine that God exists (causality?).
I believe that we must speak to the world that we do not have a faith based on absurdity, but a reasonable faith. It’s important especially today in our post-modern, society that is bent toward relative truth. One cannot say “there is no God” and “God exists” at the same time and both statements be true (non-contradiction). We must not cede any ground on this. Pointing to the Bible will not shut up a relativist without reasoning first that God does in fact exist, even if the Bible was never written.
This is a sloppy and hurried response, but I would hate to see anyone throw their hands up at apologetics and claim it worthless in today’s context.
(By the way, sorry for your loss. As a State fan, I hope you can find it in your heart to be sorry for our many losses).
I am typically sorry when NC State loses unless of course it’s to UNC.
😉
I’m not throwing my hands up on apologetics – I did not mean to convey that.
Interestingly, I just saw something on FaceBook in regard to how our eyes deceive us. One optical illusion showed a series of green, pink, and orange spirals.
The Green and Orange spirals were actually both green.
I’m too lazy to go back and find where in the thread this belongs. I apologize for dropping out earlier. I had three writing assignments due.
The universe has not explained itself. It has given a partial explanation of itself. That explanation is sufficiently insufficient to force people like you, not just people like me, to postulate things outside the universe that are necessary in order to make something like the Standard Theory coherent.
Right.
All the evidence is not in yet.
This we know.
But what we don’t know is how much evidence or how key that missing evidence is or will be in solidifying or changing dramatically the theories already put forth.
Science is incomplete, and those who get their worldview based on incomplete science, or even part of their worldview, show an unjustified bias against the Bible.
Mike, you’re right. Biased against the bible – They hold a presuppositional position, if you will.
😉