Epistemology

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February 10, 2012

Prayer is not the (Only) Answer for Doubt

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology
[4] Comments 

Have you ever questioned God’s existence or some point of Christian theology, and when you reached out to someone for help you were greeted with, “You just need to pray about it”?  Is this the proper response?  No, and again I say no!  This sort of response is typically not helpful, and leads many sincere people to eventually abandon the faith.

What if you said “I am hungry” and someone responded by saying “Go pray about it.”  Would you be satisfied with that?  No, because it is eating, not prayer, that is the proper solution to the problem at hand.  So why is it that when someone says “I am doubting my faith” that we think “Go pray about it” is a sufficient response?  Prayer is not the kind of thing to adequately address the problem at hand.  The problem is an intellectual one, and thus it requires an intellectual solution.[1]  Christian theology and apologetics provide an intellectual account and justification for the Christian faith.  While prayer should always be encouraged and never be discouraged, in this case prayer is not the meat and potatoes of the solution.

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January 30, 2012

Demanding the Impossible: Empiricists Demand the Wrong Kind of Evidence for God’s Existence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Philosophy, Science, Theistic Arguments
[30] Comments 

When dealing with an empiricist who wants evidence that God exists, and yet thinks evidence—for it to be considered evidence—must be empirical in nature, ask him the following question: “What kind of empirical evidence could possibly be given for an immaterial being such as God?”  If they say “none,” then point out that they are asking for the impossible.  What would it prove, then, if you cannot deliver?  Nothing.  It just proves that the wrong question is being asked.

Insisting on empirical evidence before one will believe in the existence of God is like insisting on chemical evidence of your wife’s love for you before you’ll believe she loves you.  One cannot supply chemical proof for love, and neither can one supply empirical proof of God’s existence, but that does not mean either is false.  The problem is not a lack of evidence for God’s existence, but an arbitrary restraint on the kind of evidence the atheist is willing to accept as evidence.  That is what needs to be challenged.  Empirical evidence is not the only kind of evidence one can appeal to in support of a claim.

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December 9, 2011

Phenomenon for which Materialism is Clearly not an Adequate Explanation

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Epistemology, Naturalism
[6] Comments 

Materialists believe that material entities exhaust the nature of reality.  This commits them to believing there is a material/physical cause for every physical effect.  Indeed, on a materialistic worldview physical causes determine a physical effect.  If material cause X is present, material effect Y must occur.  Just like falling dominos, when one domino falls on another, the second domino must fall.  There are many things, however, that cannot be explained in terms of material causes.  Consider communication.  When your friend speaks to you, you will respond in kind.  How can this be explained in terms of deterministic, material causation?  How can his words cause you to respond—yea, even determine your response?  Did his words produce molecular changes in the space between you, which in turn caused physical changes in your body that ultimately determined that you say X (as opposed to Y or Z) in response?  While this seems incredulous on its face, let’s grant that it is possible for the sake of argument since there are other forms of communication that are even more difficult to explain from a materialist perspective.

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November 30, 2011

The Spiritual Trump Card

Posted by Jason Dulle under Epistemology, Hermeneutics, Tactics, Theology, Voice of God
[2] Comments 

Frank Beckwith has made the observation that when people cannot refute your argument, they often trump it with spirituality. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about. You state your reasons for believing P rather than Q, and your Christian brother responds by saying, “I know that’s not true because God told me Q is true.”  Or your Christian sister responds, “You only believe that because you are carnal.” Don’t fall for this cheap tactic.

You could respond by saying to your brother, “Actually, God told me P is true, so I know you didn’t hear from God.” And to your sister you can respond, “Ok, I’m carnal. So can you tell this carnal brother of yours why my argument is wrong, and why I should believe your position/interpretation?”

 

November 23, 2011

The question of God’s existence is irrelevant to our quest for moral knowledge, unless you believe God exists, in which case it is relevant to our quest seeing that it interferes with our quest

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Moral Argument
1 Comment 

I just finished reading an article in the Irish Times by Michael Nugent, chairman of Atheist Ireland.  Titled “Atheists and religious alike seek to identify foundation of morality,” Nugent argues that the question of God’s existence is really just a distraction from the social need to determine what is right and wrong.  If there is no God, we must determine what we think is right and wrong.  And if God does exist, we still have to determine what it is that he/they thinks is right and wrong.  Either way, it is a human responsibility to determine right and wrong.

While one might expect for Nugent to go on to discuss how we should determine right and wrong irrespective of what we believe the foundation of morality to be, instead he goes on to critique moral theories that are based on the existence of God or gods!  Apparently he does think it makes a difference as to whether or not you believe morality is real or imagined, and based on God or in human will.  Through one side of his mouth Nugent claims the question of God’s existence is irrelevant to our quest for moral knowledge, but through the other side he says belief in God/gods will interfere with that quest.  How’s that for a self-contradiction!

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November 14, 2011

The difference between a skeptic and a constant questioner

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Logic, Philosophy
[2] Comments 

What is the difference between a skeptic and someone who questions everything?  Barnabas Piper provides a nice distinction: “There’s a fine line…between being someone who questions things and being a skeptic. In fact, many people would call someone who questions everything a skeptic.  Here’s the thing; I don’t think many skeptics actually question anything. They may phrase their challenges as questions, but their heart is set on rejection and disproving. To truly question something is to pose questions to it and about it for the sake of understanding. This may lead to disproving or rejecting, but the heart behind it is in learning.”[1]

I think we could break down the differences between a questioner and a skeptic as follows:

Questioner: Desire to learn
Skeptic: Desire to reject/disprove accepted truth claims

Questioner: Primarily interested in maximizing true beliefs
Skeptic: Primarily interested in avoiding false beliefs

Questioner: Engage thinking
Skeptic: Avoid thinking

HT: STR

[1]Barnabas Piper, “The Unskeptical Questioner”; available from http://www.barnabaspiper.com/2011/11/unskeptical-questioner.html; Internet; accessed 10 November 2011.

 

November 2, 2011

Why Teens Leave Church

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Odds & Ends, Social, Statistics
[3] Comments 

The Barna Research Group has released a report containing six reasons young people leave church after age 15.  This report is a summary of a book by David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group.  You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church and Rethinking Church is based on eight national studies of teens who disengage from the Christian church/faith.  Kinnaman discovered that the six major reasons teens leave church can be summarized under the following umbrellas (3 out of 5 teens disengage from the Christian church/faith for one or more of these reasons):

  • “Reason #1 – Churches seem overprotective.
  • Reason #2 – Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
  • Reason #3 – Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
  • Reason #4 – Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
  • Reason #5 – They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
  • Reason #6 – The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.”

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May 17, 2011

Do Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Philosophy, Thinking
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A popular maxim advanced by naturalists and atheists is that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”  This maxim is often invoked in discussions about the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus.  These are extraordinary claims, they say, and thus require extraordinary evidence.  Not surprisingly, those who advance this maxim think Christian theists have failed to provide the required evidence.

J.W. Wartick wrote a nice article questioning the truth of this maxim.  He notes that on first blush the maxim seems obviously true, but upon further reflection it can be shown to be obviously false.  Consider the claim that I am a giant pink salamander.  This is an extraordinary claim, and yet the claim could be evidenced in rather ordinary ways.  For example, one could come to my home and observe me.  If I appear to be a giant pink salamander (one who talks and types), then the extraordinary claim is justified.  If one is not convinced by their eyes, then perhaps they could take a DNA sample and compare it to other salamanders.  Such evidence is ordinary, but sufficient to verify the rather extraordinary claim that I am a pink salamander.  It is false, then, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  All that is required to justify an extraordinary claim is sufficient evidence.

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April 25, 2011

Anger and Moral Outrage are Incompatible with Determinism

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Logic, Mind, Naturalism, Philosophy
[6] Comments 

Over at Uncommon Descent a good point has been raised about materialists (such as evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne) who deny the existence of free will and yet get angry at others for believing and doing things they (the materialists) do not agree with:

Another inconsistency of atheists who share Professor Coyne’s views on freedom is that they are nearly always angry at someone – be it the Pope or former President George W. Bush or global warming deniers. I have to say that makes absolutely no sense to me…. But please, spare me your moral outrage, your sermonizing, your finger-wagging lectures and your righteous indignation. That I cannot abide. You don’t lecture the PC on your desk when it doesn’t do what you want. If I’m just a glorified version of a desktop PC, then why lecture me?

Perhaps materialists would respond that they don’t have a choice but to get angry!  Well, perhaps we don’t have a choice but not to care that they are.

 

April 18, 2011

Bertrand Russell and the Celestial Teapot

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Epistemology
[2] Comments 

Once in a while I hear atheists bring up Bertrand Russell’s comparison of theistic belief to the belief that a teapot is orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars.  Bill Vallicella has a nice post showing why this is a false analogy to theistic belief.

 

March 17, 2011

Science Cannot Prove the Universe is Eternal

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Cosmological Argument, Epistemology, Science, Theistic Arguments
[17] Comments 

In an earlier post I argued that the nature of science is such that it cannot demonstrate an entity/event to be uncaused, and thus scientific discoveries can never inveigh against the causal premise (“whatever begins to exist has a cause”) of the kalam cosmological argument (KCA) for God’s existence.  Here I want to extend the discussion to the cosmological premise (“the universe began to exist”) of the KCA as well.

The contrapositive of the second premise is “the universe is eternal.”  The nature of science, however, renders it incapable of demonstrating the universe to be eternal even if the universe were eternal.  Why?  Science is an empirical discipline based on what can be observed and quantified.  For science to prove that the universe is eternal, it would have to do so empirically.  But this is impossible.  An eternal past cannot be observed or quantified.

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December 8, 2010

Unwarranted Skepticism of Premises in Theistic Arguments

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Cosmological Argument, Epistemology, Logic, Philosophy, Theistic Arguments, Thinking
[18] Comments 

In my experience, most opponents and skeptics of theism reject theistic arguments on less than epistemically justifiable grounds. For example, premise one of the kalam cosmological argument proposes that “everything which begins to exist has a cause” (and concludes that since the universe began to exist, the universe has a cause). Some detractors of the argument will counter that since our only experience with cause and effect is within the spatio-temporal world, we cannot be certain that causation is possible outside the spatio-temporal world. While I think this is a fair point to consider, does it really undermine the premise, and hence the conclusion? It doesn’t seem to me that it does. While it is possible that the principle of cause and effect does not apply beyond the temporal framework of our universe, unless one can demonstrate that non-temporal causality is incoherent/impossible, the mere logically possibility that the principle of causality does not hold outside of the universe does not override the warrant we have for thinking all effects require an antecedent cause (and that contingent things require an external cause).

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October 12, 2010

The Hiddenness of God Objection to Theism, Part II

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheistic objections, Epistemology, Theistic Arguments
[16] Comments 

For the previous installment, click here.

So far I have provided what I consider to be reasonable responses to the HoG objection.  Now I want to discuss a couple of popular responses I find inadequate for the task.  The first is to assert that God has provided enough evidence to convince those who are willing to believe in and submit to a relationship with God, but not so much so as to compel the unwilling.  The idea here is that if God were to provide more evidence of His existence, people would be compelled to believe in Him, and thus be robbed of their free will.  But what exactly would they be compelled to do?  At best, they would be compelled to believe that God exists (a rational obligation); however, such knowledge does not coerce one into a relationship with God.  Rational obligations tell us what we ought to believe given the evidence; they do not coerce us into believing or doing anything in particular.  Our beliefs and actions continue to be free.

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October 11, 2010

The Hiddenness of God Objection to Theism, Part I

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheistic objections, Epistemology, Theistic Arguments
[4] Comments 

Given the inadequacy of so many “old” philosophical arguments against God’s existence, atheists are increasingly turning to the “hiddenness of God” (HoG) to argue that God does not exist (or that His existence is highly improbable).  The essence of this argument is that God’s existence is not as obvious as it should be.  If God existed, we would expect to find more evidence of His existence than we in fact do.  Given the inadequacy of the evidence, rational persons should conclude that God (probably) does not exist.  Some HoG proponents go so far as to argue that if God existed He would prevent unbelief by making His existence obvious and undeniable.  He does not do so, therefore, He does not exist, or if He does exist, the fault of human unbelief is to be laid at His feet.

There are a number of ways to respond to the HoG argument.  One could agree with the HoG advocate that God’s existence is not as obvious as we might think it should be, but deny that the conclusion—“God (probably) does not exist”—follows from such an observation.  After all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Perhaps there is insufficient evidence on which to conclude that God exists, but God may exist nonetheless.  At best, an insufficient amount of evidence for God’s existence should result in agnosticism, not atheism.  To conclude that God does not exist one needs positive evidence against His existence, not a mere lack of evidence for it.

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July 14, 2010

Ignorance and Confidence

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Thinking
[4] Comments 

Charles Darwin wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much who positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

While Chuck and I don’t see eye-to-eye on much, this quote resonated with me.  I have experienced the truth of what he said both in my own life, and observed it in others’.  Indeed, the truth Darwin captured here reaches farther than the sciences; it extends to virtually all areas of knowledge.

While not original to me, I have often said that the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know.  Sometimes this means the solving of one problem leads to other problems I was previously unaware of—winning one battle only to start five more.  Other times this means that in my attempt to solve a problem, the problem is exacerbated, because I come to realize that the question is much more difficult and the answer much less apparent than I had originally thought.

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June 15, 2010

Apologetics Don’t Work

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Hamartiology, Sin, Theology
[7] Comments 

One of the objections against studying and using apologetics I often hear from fellow Christians is, “It doesn’t work.”  Why do they think this?  Because they learned a few evidences for the Christian faith, tried them out on unbelievers, and discovered that it didn’t make everyone immediately fall down on their face in repentance.  So, they concluded apologetics do not work.  If by “work” they mean successful 100% of the time in causing conversion, I would agree.  But surely this can’t be the standard by which we judge success.  If it is, then we would also have to deem the simple Gospel presentation a failure as well since the majority of people who hear it do not convert to Christianity.  Even Jesus failed to persuade the vast majority of all those He encountered.

The problem is not with the message/method/evidence, but with the heart of man.  According to Paul, unbelievers suppress the knowledge of God so they can continue in their moral rebellion (Romans 1).  Unbelief is primarily moral and volitional in nature, and only secondarily intellectual.  It should be no surprise, then, that intellectual arguments fail to persuade some people: they do not want to be persuaded.  As Winston Churchill once said, “Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”  And yet, rational arguments for the Christian faith can be instrumental in leading the open-hearted to faith in Christ.  Indeed, many former atheists can testify to the fact that apologetics “worked” to bring them to a belief in Jesus Christ.  Apologetics is no magic bullet, but it is a valuable tool in our evangelistic tool box.

 

March 31, 2010

Belief in God is not Akin to Belief in Santa

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Atheism, Epistemology
[17] Comments 

Atheists are fond of comparing belief in God to belief in Santa Clause, claiming that belief in one is as justified as the other.  But the two beliefs are not analogous at all.  There are plenty of positive rational reasons to believe God exists (the origin of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life, the origin of life, consciousness, the existence of objective moral values, etc.), but the same cannot be said of Santa.  Indeed, when it comes to Santa’s existence, not only are there no good reasons that favor his existence, but there is plenty of evidence against his existence.  If Santa exists we would expect to find his home in the North Pole, or have empirical evidence of flying reindeers or elves, and yet despite all the expeditions of the North Pole, we find none.  Furthermore, we have widespread evidence from both credit card receipts and personal testimony that the gifts appearing under millions of Christmas trees were purchased by regular human beings from retail stores, not made by elves in Santa’s workshop.  Finally, our knowledge of physics proves it impossible for one man to travel the globe in the amount of time allotted to Santa, carrying the number of gifts he would have to carry to supply gifts to all those .

Comparing belief in God to belief in Santa Clause may be rhetorically effective, but it is logically fallacious.  As Paul Copan wrote, “To place belief in Santa Claus or mermaids and belief in God on the same level is mistaken. The issue is not that we have no good evidence for these mythical entities; rather, we have strong evidence that they do not exist. Absence of evidence is not at all the same as evidence of absence, which some atheists fail to see.”[1]

I think it is also worth pointing out that while virtually everyone abandons their belief in Santa Clause even prior to reaching adulthood, the same cannot be said of belief in the existence of God(s).  The vast majority of people continue to believe in God(s).  Why is that?  Apparently they recognize that the grounds for believing in the one are not at all comparable to the grounds for believing in the other.  Belief in God’s existence is rationally justified, while belief in Santa is not.

[1]Paul Copan, “The Presumption of Atheism”; available from http://www.gospelcom.net/rzim/publications/essay_arttext.php?id=3; Internet; accessed 13 February 2005.

 

November 17, 2009

Are our Senses Reliable?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Philosophy
[5] Comments 

A young skeptic once called into Greg Koukl’s radio show, Stand to Reason, and asked why we should believe our senses are reliable.  Why shouldn’t we believe we are in some computer program like the Matrix, which has fooled us into believing we are experiencing reality when in fact we are not?

Greg’s answer was ingenious: because we’re alive!  Survival in the real world depends on our ability to accurately perceive the real world and maneuver safely within it.  If our perception was off even a little, the effects would be disastrous.  That’s why people who drive cars while intoxicated often end up in fatal accidents: their ability to accurately perceive the outside world is impaired.  The fact that we are still alive demonstrates that our senses allow us to perceive reality in a fairly accurate manner.

But couldn’t it be the case that the outside world we think our senses are accurately perceiving isn’t really the outside world at all (like the Matrix)?  Yes it’s possible, but why should I believe that to be the case?  Just because it’s possible that we could be mistaken in what we perceive about reality does not mean we are mistaken, or should think we might be mistaken.  Possibility and probability are not the same things.  We are prima facie justified in trusting our senses that what we perceive to be the real world is the real world, until evidence arises to the contrary that would falsify this properly basic belief.

See J.P. Moreland’s short article entitled “Answering the Skeptic” for further reading.

 

November 16, 2009

Who’s asking?

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Mind, Tactics
[8] Comments 

I am reading Antony Flew’s book, There is a God.  In an appendix written by Roy Varghese, he relates what appears to be an apocryphal, but nevertheless insightful exchange between a skeptical student and his wise professor.  The student asks his teacher, “How can I be sure I even exist,” to which his teacher responded, “Who’s asking?”  Classic!

 

November 4, 2009

Christians are not Objective?: Two Kinds of Objectivity

Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Epistemology, Thinking
1 Comment 

It’s common to hear people say Christians are biased, not objective.  How can we respond to this charge?  J.P. Moreland makes a distinction that I find helpful.  He notes that there are two ways to be objective: (1) psychological objectivity: the absence of bias (2) rational objectivity: the ability to tell the difference between good and bad reasons for a belief, whether or not you accept that belief.[1]

Humans are psychologically objective (50/50) only in areas we know nothing, or care nothing about.  Once we come to know something about a topic we typically go from being psychologically objective to psychologically biased, even if the degree of our bias is minimal.  Such bias is to be expected, and is good.  After all, what would be the use of studying out an issue/topic if after having studied it you could not draw a conclusion?  We should expect informed people to be psychologically biased.

But does the presence of psychological bias eliminate the possibility of being rationally objective?  Are we locked into our own culturally relevant way of viewing the world?  Is reason and argumentation useless for the person who is no longer psychologically objective?  No.  We all know this to be true because we have all had experiences in which we changed our beliefs on an issue because they were challenged by good arguments.  It should be clear, then, that our psychological bias (lack of psychological objectivity) does not eliminate our ability to be rationally objective.  Postmodernists understand this.  That’s why they try to reason with the modernists to change their worldview, while at the same time denying the validity of reason and argumentation!

[1]J.P. Moreland, “Truth, Contemporary Philosophy, and the Postmodern Turn,” a paper presented at the November 2004 Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Antonio, TX.

 

 

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