Caleb's response # 2

I want to thank Dan for giving me a few extra days to respond so I could enjoy a few days in the woods this past week.

The main thing I have noticed about this conversation so far is that Dan has a tendency to redefine words to suit his arguments. So far he insist that my faith cannot mean what I say it means. He quotes a few verses out of context such as Matthew 17:20 which has to do with spiritual warfare more than anything else. He then posted a link to some crazy people who refused to take their kid to the hospital because they had faith that god would heal them. Nowhere in scripture are we told to behave in such a way and a clear case could be made to disprove such a theology. I have not tried to connect Dan’s atheism to that of Hitler or Stalin’s beliefs because I can recognize the difference. For a civil conversation to happen you can’t lump all believers in with Westborough Baptist.  

If you notice the verse in Matthew that he quoted, he attempted to define what this meant by saying, “It is clearly the depth of conviction that is paramount, not the quantity or quality of the evidence.” Lets not forget that Jesus said that right after he freed a boy from demon possession that caused him to try and kill himself regularly. For the disciples that would carry some evidential weight don’t you think? I think the point has been well substantiated that a Christian need not have blind faith. However, if Dan needs more proof I simply direct him to Romans 10:17 where Paul writes, “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.” So we see that the faith that it takes to come to God is given to us by Gods revelation through scripture and the person of Christ. This is not the blind faith that Dan just insists I have because he has worked so hard on that part of his argument. If part of his refusal to accept the Christian God is because he thinks he demands blind faith and our beliefs leave no room for doubt, I’m glad to dispel those rumors and bring him one step closer to conversion.

On the issue of morality Dan continues to be his own source for what is moral. He stated, “The same is true of many moral calculations. A decrease of well-being in one area may result in greater well-being somewhere else.” Notice the word “calculation” is used. To make a calculation in math is to follow a set system in order to reach an answer. The same could be said of morality. We all recognize that there are certain moral guidelines that need to be followed. Where does Dan’s set system come from? It simply comes from Dan.

 He brings up the issue in Numbers again where he thinks God is acting cruelly. This is one of those verses that often gets used for its shock value. We see in the Bible a God that often times judges with nature. For example, He decided it would be just and good to send a flood that killed a lot more than just a small army. Sometimes however, he uses people to carry out that judgment as in the verses mentioned. God can bring upon justice any time he wants and still remain good. A God could not be good unless he eventually upheld a standard of justice. It is simply a reflection of His mercy that allows people who breathe hate against him to continue enjoying the sunshine and cool ocean breeze. If God is good then he must judge not according to Dan’s standard but by his own holiness and he is free to enact that judgment anytime he wants. This rubs harshly against all those who want to define morality for themselves.  Dan then injects his own opinions into the verse where he states, “carting away traumatized young girls as sex slaves.” This was not the case at all. Those girls who had not participated in the sexual idolatry that so offended God were spared. Instead of leaving these women in the desert to die they were integrated into the society as an act of mercy. I haven’t tried to appeal to emotions in order to make my case but we can see Dan inserting things into the text that are not there instead of just dealing with what the text says.

We see statistically that couples that wait to have sex before they are married have a much lower rate of divorce. So I could claim that it benefits the well-being of the family structure not to have sex outside of marriage. Of course my grounding goes beyond just what I think, but is rooted in the character and commands of God as an absolute moral standard. I would be interested to see that if I could give Dan enough evidence that abstinence until marriage increases well-being if he would become an advocate for such a cause? When we remove an absolute moral law what we tend to find is each person creates the moral code they are already living by.

I think Dan is getting closer and closer to being a theist. He has accepted a transcendental cause for transcendental laws. He even has redefined atheism to mean, “atheism is the rejection of the positive claim that a theistic God exists, and not the claim that a God cannot (or does not) exist” This slight of hand is becoming more common because atheist have come to see that the very stance that there is no God is self refuting. But the traditional understanding of what atheism is can be found in Webster’s dictionary as “one who believes that there is no deity.” The term atheism originated from the Greek (atheos), meaning "without god(s)”

Dan then goes on to say that “I’m completely open to accepting the proposition that God exists, provided that a coherent definition for God is provided and the evidence is compelling.” I was curious why he wanted a definition so bad when he knew I was a bible believing Christian. Even among different denominations the character attributes of God are fairly consistent. Interestingly enough the God of the Bible doesn’t spend much of his time trying to prove that he exist. When Moses asks for his name God simply says, “I Am” Such an answer would not meet Dan’s standards but if his standard were ultimate as to whether or not such revelations validate a god then Dan himself would be a god. God doesn’t need us to stamp his papers in approval. This is the very position of a presuppositionalist. Evidence is given in a courtroom to a judge and jury but we are neither when it comes to God, he is the “I AM.” We have to presuppose God in order for our logic and reason to mean anything at all.

When it comes to discussions of this nature Dan and I are both limited. If we are to know if a God exist then he must start the conversation. I imagine God explaining his omnipotence to us is like me trying to teach my dog how to program the remote. We reach the limit of our intellect and we reach it really quick. Perhaps this is why I find it strange when a finite being doesn’t fully understand omnipotence. I will freely say I don’t fully understand it because I, just like Dan, only know what God has told us about himself. Saying that God cannot sin does nothing to limit his power just as saying that God cannot make himself not exist would limit him. Limits have to do with obstacles that keep you from completing what you want to do. I didn’t find anything in his rebuttal on the perfect will of God valid. He kept using the example of his dog not being able to open the door, but I could train my dog to open the door.

I asked in my opening statement why would proving anything actually prove something. Perhaps that needs more explanation since Dan wants proof. Unless there is a being that sustains the governing laws of the universe proving something would never actually prove anything since the same experiment could be conducted with different answers every time. Science presupposes universal constants in order for it to work at all. There must be an immaterial, universal, unchanging mind behind such laws.  But why does it need to have a mind? Dan thinks when that when we apply the character traits of the Christian God to what we actually know to be true then that God fails.

Well lets see if that is true.

Logic is a process of the mind, which means it is conceptual by nature. If was the product of a human mind then it would vary from person to person. So unchanging universal laws must have a perfect unchanging mind behind them. A person's thoughts are the product of that person's mind.  A mind that is irrational will produce irrational thoughts.  A mind that is rational will produce rational thoughts.

So we are looking for a God whose nature is such that whatever he created would reflect who He was. This is why we live in a world that has universal laws of logic and reason. I used the word “produce” and Dan has an objection to it, but by no means do I suggest that logic or any other law come before God; they simply reflect who He is. They do not exist outside of him, they are apart of him. We are told this very thing in the gospel of John when Jesus is referred to as the “logos” which means the foundation of order and knowledge.

This being must also be uncreated and eternal or we are left with an infinite regress. This is also a claim made by the Christian God. The fine-tuning of the universe shows intentionality, this would justify the belief that God is personal and interacts with his creation. Moral laws are also universal and a reflection of his character. Dan has agreed that we should care about the well-being of others. Why? He didn’t know. I would suggest it is because we are all created in his image and every person has worth and value. I don’t simply know right from wrong because God told me, he wrote it upon our hearts that we should love and be in community with one another. This means that the God that does exist would need to need to be a good God. If God is good then He has perfect goodness and worthy of worship. Again, this all lines up with the God of the Bible and Him alone.

Dan finished his response by stating why logic is his axiom, “The answer is because it’s all we have. You’ve accused me of giving up the tools to go beyond logic. But to go beyond, you must give up the only tool that allows us to make sense of the world” Yes, logic is what you have because it is what has been given to you. You don’t have to give up logic to look for a source of logic. If poor logic can exist in the human mind then it can follow that the reason for universal logic is a perfect immaterial universal mind. We use the term mind here not to refer to a physical brain but to an intelligent being that exists beyond the physical world. 

Why do we have any of these laws? I think it’s a fair question to ask. Dan says we just do. Scripture tells us that we have these because they are a reflection of God, so much so that they alone are enough evidence for those who are seeking. Romans 1:19 says, “since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” 

         

I wanted to wait until Dan had an opportunity to make his beliefs known before I brought in one of the big difficulties of his worldview. Dan has stated in previous debates that because his knowledge comes from his senses and that his senses could be wrong it’s totally possible that Dan is wrong about everything. If I say I know the sun is shinning outside but I could be wrong, I don’t actually know if the sun is shining. To say he could be wrong is to give up knowledge itself. He insists that logic is the only axiom, but he could be wrong so he doesn’t actually know that at all.

However, we know that logic exists and we can be certain of it. My worldview includes a God who can reveal things to us so that we can know them for certain. We all live in this certainty daily. The Christian God is the necessary starting point for this entire discussion. The Christian God is defined as follows, the all knowing, all loving, all powerful, unchanging and perfectly just creator of the universe who has revealed himself in time, thought, and history and in the person of the God/Man Jesus Christ.

Dan's response # 2

I put an important question at the end of my first response, and it was either overlooked or ignored. So to emphasize the importance of the question I’ll put it here at the beginning: What is God?

Christian Presuppositional Apologetics and its underpinning of the transcendental argument for God (TAG) are (unintentionally) successful in establishing the primacy of existence. So long as the term God simply represents existence, presupposing such a God is the only rational thing to do. To assume that existence is not constrained by space/time is perfectly reasonable. However it is the attempt to impart agency to this existence and assign human-like attributes that send the Christian apologist into the land of irrational speculation. Dissecting the attributes of the Christian God will clearly demonstrate its incoherence.

Regarding Hebrews 11:1 you wrote, “Paul is encouraging a group of people to remember that their hope for what God said would happen would actually happen based upon prior experiences.”

“Faith” as you define it here is inductive inference. There’s no doubt that faith can be used in this way. For example, I have “faith” that the chair I’m sitting in will hold me because it has held me in the past. But I think it is naïve to suggest that “faith” does not carry with it the conceptual baggage of unwarranted confidence. Indeed context is important, and throughout Hebrews 11 the Bible speaks to the power of faith. But as in Hebrews 11:5, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists”, that faith is linked to belief alone. And nothing in the previous response repudiates the notion of faith as unbridled conviction as stated in Matthew 17:20, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.”  It is clearly the depth of conviction that is paramount, not the quantity or quality of the evidence. Sure, you can call rational trust "faith", but religious faith is more than that. There’s a reason why they call an irrational reliance on prayer faith-healing. 

And regardless of whether faith is based on evidence, the initial claim was that Christian doctrine encourages doubt. Faith, trust, inductive inference…whatever you call it… faith is clearly the opposite of doubt. If faith, hope and love are truly the preeminent virtues of Christianity, then promoting doubt would directly contradict what it means to be a good Christian.

Regarding logic you wrote, “…you have no justification to assume that in a world that is constantly expanding and headed towards chaos that such laws will be consistent in the future.” Setting aside the red herrings of cosmic expansion and increasing entropy for a moment, the argument that inductive inferences are invalid after making an argument for inductive inference (faith) is noteworthy.

Regarding my comment, “Christians are encouraged at every turn to suppress doubt and believe without evidence, or in spite of the evidence to the contrary.” I had no intention for this to be an ad hominem attack or to dismiss “all believers as willfully ignorant and manipulated.” If you took it that way I apologize. I was simply trying to accurately portray the emphasis on belief as a virtue in itself and the accompanying devaluing of skepticism.

On the issue of morality being tied to well-being you dismissed the idea, writing, “Dan fails to recognize that the well being of one group often requires them to defend against another”.  I won’t deny that moral and ethical questions can be very difficult, and often involve assessing consequences at multiple levels of impact from the individual to larger groups. The best analogy might be to health. When I run long distances I often get blisters. I also sacrifice time with my partner or children. But the payoff of improved fitness, decreased illness and increased longevity are worth the short term sacrifice. The same is true of many moral calculations. A decrease on well-being in one area may result in greater well-being somewhere else. But to assume the position that because such calculations can be difficult that we should give up trying to assess them is folly. If morality is divorced from well-being, then upon what basis can we judge any action moral or immoral? This is precisely the question that needs to be answered regarding my reference to Numbers 31:17.  Even if I take at face value your assertion that the Midianites were a “malicious pursuing army”, how can slaughtering everyone and keeping the virgin girls for themselves be considered moral after the Midianite army was defeated? I can confidently say that hacking to death unarmed women and children, and carting away traumatized young girls as sex slaves is a net decrease of well-being on every level.

In characterizing my statement “Sense information is required for knowledge” as “self-refuting”, you have failed to understand the very first argument I made in my opening statement. I won’t re-argue the point, but only restate the important point that “the justification that cannot be further justified, is not itself a knowledge claim.”

I agree with your statement “Assuming logic as an axiom does not undermine God”, depending on what you mean by “God”. It is the Christian, Biblical definition of God that undermines the concept.  You’ve also stated that I’ve stopped the conversation and come to a conclusion “despite evidence to the contrary.” I’m completely open to accepting the proposition that God exists, provided that a coherent definition for God is provided and the evidence is compelling. Evidence might be interesting, but it would be impossible to determine what amounts to evidence if we don’t know what we’re looking for in the first place. That's why my first question in this response is so important.

I object to your statement “the atheist has already decided, not based upon evidence but upon emotion that God cannot exist” for two reasons. First, to assume to understand my emotional state is problematic, and to state that my position is based solely on my imagined emotions is the type of ad hominem attack that we have both agreed is not acceptable. Second, atheism is the rejection of the positive claim that a theistic God exists, and not the claim that a God cannot (or does not) exist. The best analogy I’ve heard to explain the distinction is the following. Suppose we come upon a large jar of marbles. You glance at the jar and state “the jar contains an even number of marbles”. I don’t accept your conclusion; therefore I’m an “A-even-ist” regarding your claim. This doesn’t mean that I claim that the opposite of your claim is true (that there is an odd number of marbles). Of course we can agree on what marbles are, so we could, at least in principle, determine what constitutes evidence for the claim of an even number of marbles. But the Christian conception of God is logically incoherent, and therefore a coherent definition is required before we can even entertain propositions about such a thing.

Therefore, when you say “According to Dan’s definition of doubt, his atheism is then a lack of conviction and disbelief” you are exactly right!

Let me examine a paragraph in which you claim that I have removed the tools for the justification of logic and arbitrarily stopped.

“This brings us back to his claim that logic is simply an axiom, a foundation that we all just believe that needs no further justification. Of course I would agree that if we start with his worldview it is an axiom because as I said he has removed the necessary tools to go any further. He has arbitrarily chosen to stop his train of thought here, because going any further would give evidence for what he has already decided is false.”

I’m wondering what tool we could use to justify logic? It can’t be faith, because faith has been defined as a part of logic (induction). How do we step outside of logic to find the foundation upon which it rests? The Presuppositionalist claims to have solved this riddle by positing God as that justification. But if God is the source of logic, then logic cannot be said to be transcendent. In other words, there would have been a time when logic didn’t exist. Furthermore, if God pre-existed logic, then He wouldn’t have been bound by logic, and he could have, for example, existed and not existed at the same time and in the same manner. On the other hand if God is (as some have said) “logical by nature”, then logic is transcendent and not a product of anything…including a transcendent mind. So the theist has a choice; 1.either give up the absolute universal nature of logic, and with it an eternally logical God, or 2. agree that logic is universal as a necessary precondition for intelligibility. The second option seems prudent. But unfortunately for the theist, the second option concedes the necessity of anything other than existence itself, including the Christian conception of God.

However, when you wrote that logic is “the product of a being that is perfect and unchanging, the very mind of God”, you chose the less prudent option.  To be a “product”, logic would require a producer and a production process. What tools are used in the manufacture of logic?

You also stated that my belief in logic as an axiom was arbitrary. Far from it. My belief in logic comes from the impossibility of the contrary. However, by attempting to step outside of logic to posit a God as a producer of logic, you are committing the sin of arbitrariness. For without logic (reason), there is no reason in anything, including the production of logic.

You also ask an important question, “why is it impossible to have a transcendent cause of transcendent laws?” Because cause requires an effect. But if logic transcends space/time, then there was never a time or place that logic didn’t exist and it didn't need to be caused. Without a temporal sequence of cause and effect, you cannot even establish a correlation, much less causation.

Regarding omnipotence, by attempting to salvage the concept you’ve committed the same mistake as Sye Ten Bruggencate, and rendered the term meaningless. “Yes, God has the capacity to do anything he wants but because his will is perfect he only does what he wants making the opposite of that impossible.”

My dog is still omnipotent per your definition. You might say that my dog can’t open the back door, so he’s not omnipotent. But when he whimpers at the back door what he really wants is for me to come and open the door for him. My dog’s primary goal is to be dog-like, and because his will is perfect, it is impossible for him to do anything that a dog wouldn’t do… no matter how much I wish he would let himself out.

Finally, you ask the question, “why is his reasoning valid?”  This question can be interpreted two ways. First, am I reasoning correctly? And second, why is using reason valid? From the context of your argument I’m assuming you intended the second meaning. The answer is because it’s all we have. You’ve accused me of giving up the tools to go beyond logic. But to go beyond, you must give up the only tool that allows us to make sense of the world. I’m unwilling to go beyond logic, because to do so would be, by definition, irrational. 

Caleb's response # 1

Dan, I appreciate your response.

There is a lot to respond to but my difficulty begins with using some of the definitions you have insinuated for words like faith, doubt, morality, and knowledge. I think we need to examine these before we can move forward.

Let me begin with how you redefined faith. Firstly, context is of great importance. You quoted Hebrews 11:1, which states,
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Paul is not simply trying to describe what faith is, he is showing what faith does. The word in Greek used for substance is “hypostasis” which means “the substance that lies under”. Paul is encouraging a group of people to remember that their hope for what God said would happen would actually happen based upon prior experiences. This is not a blind faith because if you read the rest of the chapter he goes on to give examples of what this faith looks like. Almost all of the examples include people acting on faith because of what they had experienced in the past. Therefore, it was not a faith without some prior knowledge of the person or work of God it is a faith built upon interaction with a God in the past who had revealed himself to such a degree that they trusted he would continue to act in the future. For example God spoke to Abraham and we are told in the same chapter of Hebrews, “Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again.” The God Abraham had come to know had shown his faithfulness in the past, so Abraham reasoned that he would be faithful in the future. Faith allows a Christian to move forward towards what God has already declared will happen even though he has not yet seen it. This faith is only blind because we cannot see the future but it is not totally without evidence because of what God has done in the past. The very idea that we can be confident in the laws of logic and nature are consistent with this type of faith.

          I’m glad to see you affirm that Logic is universal, abstract and unchanging (which I will address shortly) yet you have no justification to assume that in a world that is constantly expanding and headed towards chaos that such laws will be consistent in the future. It is the Christians worldview that allows us to have faith in such things because of what God has done in the past, and it is He who holds the universe together. He is the hypostasis or “the substance that lies under” such universal laws so that we, like Abraham can reason. In this instance it would be Dan that has the blind faith.


          Dan wrote, “Christians are encouraged at every turn to suppress doubt and believe without evidence, or in spite of the evidence to the contrary.” This is simply an ad-hominem attack that simply dismisses all believers as willfully ignorant and manipulated.

Dan defines doubt as “Doubt is the lack of conviction; unbelief.” 

Doubt is very different then unbelief. Oxford dictionary defines it as “to feel uncertain about; or to question.” It has often been the case where doubt is a precursor for certainty.

Dan defines morality as “morality constitutes a set of guides to behavior in order to increase well-being. Therefore a moral act is that which increases well-being”

This is just one of many of the definitions given by atheist to try and figure out how to define morality apart from a moral lawgiver. The problem comes when you try to define whose well-being should be increased. If you see a man being robbed at gunpoint trying to help might lower your well being therefore it could be considered immoral for you to help. Dan fails to recognize that the well being of one group often requires them to defend against another, yet according to his own definition he would be unable to objectively decide which group should prevail. This usually ends with morality being subjective and each group considering their well-being (which is a phrase that he never defined and could mean may things) better than the others.

As for his objection regarding some of the commands of God I recommend reading “Is God a Moral Monster” by Paul Copland. This is another instance where he fails to see that context matters. I might add briefly that by his own definition what happened was not immoral since it increased the well being of the Israelite people from a malicious pursuing army.

In his opening statement Dan wrote, “Sense information is required for knowledge.” This is why he has stopped the train before it arrives at the station. The very statement he claims is a philosophical one, which can not be arrived at merely through the senses so it is a self refuting statement. Furthermore the address of this web page is “undermining god” but if God is spirit then he has literally removed all the tools that would allow him to even engage in a conversation about things that transcend the material observable world.  He has made the discussion about such things irrelevant because they go beyond what he claims is possible to know. Assuming logic as an axiom does not undermine God, it just stops the conversation and shows that the holder of such a worldview has already come to a conclusion despite evidence to the contrary.

This has been a problem often found in the scientific community when discussing things such as the origins of the universe. Because the atheist has already decided, not based upon evidence but upon emotion that God cannot exist. Then, no matter where the evidence leads they refuse to follow. This has just been reflected upon in a new book called “seeking God in Science” where atheist philosopher Bradley Monton from the university of Colorado discusses how the scientific community has disregarded an intelligent designer prematurely. He believes such topics have enough support to be treated seriously in the market place of ideas. He even went so far as to say that it made him “doubt his atheism” According to Dan’s definition of doubt, his atheism is then a lack of conviction and disbelief.

This brings us back to his claim that logic is simply an axiom, a foundation that we all just believe that needs no further justification. Of course I would agree that if we start with his worldview it is an axiom because as I said he has removed the necessary tools to go any further. He has arbitrarily chosen to stop his train of thought here, because going any further would give evidence for what he has already decided is false.

Dan quoted Ludwig Wittgenstein saying, “If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.” For Dan logic is something he just does and to try and go back another step would be pointless. But are the justifications exhausted? Far from it. I’m glad to see that he has agreed that logic is universal, immaterial and constant. Simply because he can not account for things from his worldview does not mean they can not be accounted for. He convienintly told us that we don’t need to explain it any further than that. I would disagree, his world view can not account for immaterial, unchanging universal laws and to just call it an axiom is begging the question. Dan realizes that he has to affirm them or all dialouge is meaningliness which is where once again he borrows from my world view.

I should have been more clear in my opening statement about Logic not being the product of the mind, because my reffrence was to finite, fallable minds. Such minds could not create unchanging and universal laws. Such a law would be the product of a being that is perfect and unchanging, the very mind of God. 

            Dan further writes, “When it comes to the axioms, I believe them because the opposite is impossible” You might ask why is it impossible to have a transcendent cause of transcendent laws? Dan doesn’t mention why they are impossible, he just makes that assumption. To say it is impossible is the same as saying “god can not exist” For Dan to know this he would have to have perfect knowledge in order to say that a being with perfect knowledge can not exist. I think we can see the problem with such a statement.

          Dan asked if I would be willing to address Gods omnipotence since for him, this is final nail in the coffin of my argument. He wrote,  “ (omnipotence) means that He can do anything within His nature. Furthermore, God’s nature excludes the possibility of lying, and therefore lying is not a constituent of omnipotence.” The key to understanding this has to do with Gods will. Yes, God has the capacity to do anything he wants but because his will is perfect he only does what he wants making the opposite of that impossible. Let me give you an example. I have a will that can be broken. I would never consider harming myself in a violent way but suppose, I was kidnapped and tortured for weeks and I was told I would be released if I would just cut off my left hand. It could be said that I have always had the capacity to amputate myself but my nature and character is such that I would never even give it a thought. But under dire stress my will could be broken and I could go against my nature and do what once was unimaginable. If God has perfect will then it can never be broken. This means he has the capacity to do whatever he wants but his will and character is perfect making something that he does not want to do infinitely unlikely to such a degree that we would call it impossible.         

Dan wrote in his opening statement, “The Christian Presuppositionalist intends to argue for the specific God of Christianity, and therefore he must employ additional arguments to rescue his god from being a mere metaphor for existence. He typically does this by appealing to such things as the uniformity of nature, love and morality.”        

We argue from, (not for) the Christian God because he is the only one that exist. Not only is He the best explanation for reality, but He is the necessary being in order for logic and reason and truth to have any grounding. If Dan gets converted to another god and would like to argue from that position, I would be glad to show how that worldview fails as well. Dan has tried to rescue his atheism while acknowledging transcendental truths by making the assertion that any claim to knowledge apart from the senses in a necessary truth and needs no further justification.

He wrote, “I come to a belief that I arrive at by reason alone, then I (if I am reasoning properly) have illuminated a necessary truth; an axiom.” The question must be raised, why is his reasoning valid? If we are nothing more than chemical reactions interacting with our environment how can he possibly account for his reasoning? The two sodas illustration still stands because if there is a standard of reason by which we can examine if something has been “reasoned properly” then it means that our thinking is more than just a chemical reaction-taking place inside our brain. It assumes that there is something transcendental or spiritual about us. The very statement that such reasoning needs no justification is unjustified and circular. He is asserting that his reasoning is valid about logic as an axiom because of his reasoning.       
  
My worldview can account for such reasoning, and the foundation is consistent with how we live and interact with the world on a daily basis. Dan stands on the foundation of the Christian God but then quickly removes any possibility for his existence not based upon the data, but because of his own faith that such a being could not exist. It appears to be the case that Dan has more faith that I do.  

Dan's response #1

Caleb wrote, “I would like to remind him at the outset, that Christians are actually encouraged to doubt by our belief system.”

I applaud Caleb if in fact he is embracing doubt and encouraging skepticism in his fellow Christians.  This, however, would be contrary to mainstream Christian teaching.  [Hebrews 11: 1  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.] According to bible.org, the three primary virtues of Christians are faith, hope and love. Faith, and its cousin hope are the very antithesis of doubt. Christians are encouraged at every turn to suppress doubt and believe without evidence, or in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

Matthew 17:20  And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Doubt is the lack of conviction; unbelief. This is the very state of mind which Jesus (according to the Bible) dismisses as impotent compared to the immense power available through even a small portion of faith. The verse Caleb is referencing, 1 Thessalonians 5, contains the advice, “But let us [put] on the breastplate of faith and love; and for a helmet, the hope of salvation.”  

That a verse can be plucked from the Bible to support skeptical inquiry amongst the sea of verses exhorting believers to have faith is just one example of the many contradictions contained in the Christian Bible. Again, if such pleas to faith can be dismissed by the Christian for their obvious folly, then I agree with Caleb that to “test everything” based on an objective assessment of the evidence is the only basis for knowledge.

Caleb posed the question “why would proving anything actually prove something?” Unfortunately this question seems to embody a contradiction that makes it unintelligible to me.

The argument being put forward for God appears to be similar to the traditional Presuppositional argument, in which all worldviews except for Christianity lead to absurdity, while the Christian God is said to provide the basis for logical absolutes. Caleb specifically states “My argument is a version of the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG).” So I will provide here one of many possible refutations of TAG.

First though, let me address a false assumption. Caleb wrote, “For the atheist the laws of logic are not necessary, universal, unchanging, abstract truths; they are simply the product of the mind, or an agreed upon system conceived through some sort of sensory input in order to make society work.”

I don’t understand where Caleb got this impression, but speaking for myself, logic is an unchanging, universal, necessary truth. To state that for the atheist logic must be “simply the product of the mind” is ironic, because the traditional formulation of TAG states that regarding logical absolutes, “it must be an absolute transcendent mind that is authoring them.” (ref. http://carm.org/transcendental-argument)

The confusion comes from taking just one aspect of the chain of events that leads from logic being an aspect of reality, to expression of logic through language. It starts from some deduced aspect of reality (eg. the law of non-contradiction) that, the comprehension of which, alters our brains in such a way that we form a concept that is then expressed metaphorically using letters or sounds (aka a statement). To claim that logic is “simply the product of the mind” is to focus solely on the mental process of cognition and language formation, and to ignore the reality upon which the cognition is dependent.

While speaking from a hypothetical atheist’s perspective, Caleb posits a sociopath that has flown a plane into a building and concludes that the sociopath’s “logic and morality differ greatly from the rest of society but they are not in themselves evil or universally wrong.”

To re-state, I agree that logic is universal. However the scenario Caleb constructs suggests a misapplication of logic on the part of the sociopath, and not a different logic as he suggests.

An argument for absolute moral standards was put forward with. “For anything to be evil there would have to be an absolute standard of good and for it to be wrong there would have to be a universal standard of rightness. Things like rape and murder are not evil by atheistic standards they are just socially unacceptable.”

Caleb does not define morality, but I will define it as follows: morality constitutes a set of guides to behavior in order to increase well-being. Therefore a moral act is that which increases well-being. From this definition we can objectively assess whether an act will increase or decrease well-being. The problem with the use of terms such as rape and murder, is that the terms already carry with them a moral judgment. Rape, for example, is the act of intercourse without the consent of one party. Intercourse in itself does not necessarily decrease well-being, but under the circumstances of force or coercion it can objectively be seen to decrease well-being.

As an atheist I have no problem comprehending an objective view of morality. However, for the theist that posits God as the source of morality, their view is necessarily a subjective view. Morality for this theist is subject to God’s whim and is divorced from the consequences of the act. Such a view leads to rationalizations as moral such behaviors as described in Numbers 31:17 “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.”

An error regarding the concept of truth was committed by Caleb in his opening statement. He wrote about shaking bottles of soda and removing the caps. He stated that “there is no truth to their fizzing.” This is a common presuppositional error. Truth, of course, applies to propositions and not to reality itself. If I were to say that the sky is blue, my statement could be assessed to either correspond with reality or not. If the statement corresponds, it is said to be true. But to ask whether the sky is true is nonsensical. By attempting to apply truth directly to fizzing sodas, as opposed to a statement about the fizzing sodas, Caleb is making the same error.

Caleb makes an argument that "Something cannot bring itself into existence" is an absolute truth. I agree that something coming from nothing seems contradictory.

Near the end of Caleb’s opening statement, in speaking about logical absolutes, we get to the nub of the presuppositional argument, “Naturalism cannot account for such universal abstract constants.”  Depending on what is meant by “accounts” I would agree. Logic is axiomatic; necessarily true based on the contrary being incoherent. As Caleb implies, the very act of debating requires that we accept the truth of logic. To go further and attempt to construct an “account” (a justification or cause) for logic is the Achilles heel of TAG, which I can explore in future posts.

The conclusion presented that God must exist as creator (presumably of logic) does not follow from the arguments presented. However, the most important question that needs to be addressed is “What is God?”

Caleb Moore's opening statement

As a brief reminder, even if you don't respect the arguments that are made, I insist that we respect the people  making the argument. Please keep any comments civil, and on topic. Thank you.

I would like to thank Caleb Moore for agreeing to debate. Caleb is stepping in where other Theists have declined, so I respect his willingness to express his views publicly. He has provided a brief statement about himself, followed by his opening argument.

My name is Caleb Moore I am the pastor of Logos Church in Tulsa, Ok. I barely made it out of high school and I have no college degree. I have never taken a class in philosophy I just enjoy reading and thinking. If my grammar and punctuation are poor please don’t let it take away from the argument. Me no school much so me bad egwish.

I would like to thank Dan for giving me an opportunity to express why I think the worldview of a Christian theist is more plausible, consistent and accurate then any other worldview, especially the view that he affirms which is atheism. I watched several of his videos today and I noticed that he often mentions a recent study that shows a large number of Christians struggle with doubt. From his perspective this is a sign of the weakness of their argument and he shows a sincere desire to free them from their cognitive dissonance.

I would like to remind him at the outset, that Christians are actually encouraged to doubt by our belief system. We are told in scripture to “test everything.” In discussions such as these we bring two competing worldviews together and test them against each other to see which one best describes the world we find ourselves in.

               I will be defending theism not based upon evidential claims such as the Kalam cosmological argument, or the fine-tuning argument, although I think these are solid and valid points. Instead I would like to ask the question, why would proving anything actually prove something? Instead of starting with the axiom that he believes to be the foundation I think we can take one more step back. My argument is a version of the Transcendental Argument for God (TAG).

It goes as follows
1. If there is no God then logic is relative

2. Logic is not relative

3. Therefore God exists

I am reasoning from the absurdity of the contrary.

               For the atheist the laws of logic are not necessary, universal, unchanging, abstract truths; they are simply the product of the mind, or an agreed upon system conceived through some sort of sensory input in order to make society work. This means that essentially the laws of logic are not laws that must be obeyed to do this kind of debate, they are merely suggestions that are somehow so universally accepted and exercised that it would be consistent to put them in a category of thinking called “might makes right” The sociopath who believes to have for himself a logical reason to fly planes into a building is not thinking illogically it is just that his version of logic does not conform to the patterns agreed upon by the majority of present and past. Since his logic is different (not wrong) it also gives him a different set of moral values. Now his logic and morality differ greatly from the rest of society but they are not in themselves evil or universally wrong.

For anything to be evil there would have to be an absolute standard of good and for it to be wrong there would have to be a universal standard of rightness. Things like rape and murder are not evil by atheistic standards they are just socially unacceptable. So it is neither wrong or evil it is just different than what one bag of protoplasm might prefer over another bag of protoplasm. Logic has been reduced to majority rules since there is  no absolute standard one can appeal to and when a person acts outside of this majority he is declared foolish and perhaps even dangerous.

Given atheistic naturalism the human mind is just atoms banging around. If we were to take two sodas and shake them up really well, then simultaneously twisting off the tops of both sodas, we would see them begin to fizz. Here is the point of such an exercise, nobody would see such a feat and ask which Soda is winning the debate. There is no debate because there is no truth to their fizzing; it’s just what those chemicals do in that environment under pressure…they fizz. Following atheism all we are is Sodas fizzing, sure we are more complex but at the core we are chemical reactions interacting with our environment.  If this is so, then logic, reasoning and truth are all relative and debating is pointless. I fizz Christianity and my opponent fizzes atheism. 

               The atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg was correct in carrying his worldview to it’s logical conclusions when he pointed out in his book The Atheist Guide to reality that words have no real meaning and there are no real truths and the self doesn’t exist. Strangely enough he used words and logic to make that case and then put his name on the book.

We regularly encounter logical absolutes that are not created but rather conformed to. Without a universal standard of logic, we cannot expose what is illogical. Whether or not someone recognizes this presupposition is irrelevant to the fact that the foundation of rationality is built upon absolute truth and logical absolutes. There is no point in debating if truth is relative.

               There are logical absolutes. They are always true, everywhere, all the time. An example would be, "Something cannot bring itself into existence." We know this is true because if something does not exist, it cannot have any attributes and would not be able to perform any action. If something does not exist, it does not have any attribute by which it might perform an action. If it can't perform an action, nothing can be accomplished and it could not bring itself in the existence. We can then see that the statement "something cannot bring itself into existence" is an absolute logical truth.

We live in a world with universal abstract constants. Logic in the US is the same as the logic used in China. If logic was a social construct then we would find that different societies has completely different rules of logic. Naturalism cannot account for such universal abstract constants. The atheist thinker Hume stated that it is a fallacy to assume regularity in the future simply based upon regularity in the past so an appeal to past experiences for living by the rules in the future is not a justification in and of itself. Since the word is chaos, and the universe is spinning out of control there is not reason to believe that words or truth have any constant universal meaning. You must appeal to a universal, unchanging, immaterial creator in order to live in the world that we live in on a daily basis. Therefor God exists.

               I am sure my opponent will disagree but if does so by arguing logically then he is standing on my presupposition while denying it’s conclusion. 

Dan's opening argument

As I had prepared material based on John Laun’s promise to debate, and our subsequent agreement, I will be defending the premises:

1.     Sense information is required for knowledge.

2.     The Christian God fails as a precondition for intelligibility.

The Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.”

Wittgenstein, like most contemporary philosophers, recognized that knowledge requires justification, and that there is a limit to the justifications that one can provide for any knowledge claim. Like each story of a skyscraper rests on the story below, a knowledge claim rests on the justification for the claim. For example, we know the earth is approximately 25,000 miles in circumference. This knowledge rests on a number of justifications, including the length of a shadow cast by a vertical stick at different points on the earth. In turn, we know that the varying shadow lengths indicate the curvature of the earth by using Euclidean geometry, etc., etc. Eventually we descend the justification skyscraper and reach bedrock. Bedrock, in this case, is a justification which itself cannot be further justified, in a philosophical sense.

The critical point to understand is that the “bedrock”, the justification that cannot be further justified, is not itself a knowledge claim. Because knowledge is a justified belief, the point at which no further justification is possible cannot be knowledge, and is instead a belief. These foundational beliefs I call axioms. To avoid stopping our descent down the justification skyscraper prematurely and arbitrarily declaring a justification axiomatic, we need to apply a simple test. The test is to ask whether accepting the opposite of the justification is conceptually coherent. If the opposite is conceptually coherent, then we will require a justification for not accepting the alternative. Using our example, having two vertical sticks of the same length projecting shadows of the same length at different latitudes at the same time of day (the opposite of what we actually find) is conceptually coherent. In other words, the opposite of differing shadow lengths is, at least in principle, possible. Therefore accepting the differing shadow lengths (what we do find) is not axiomatic, and must be further justified.

This understanding that our foundational beliefs (axioms / bedrock) are themselves not knowledge claims is critical to the defense of premise #1, “Sense information is required for knowledge.” In my experience this point (underlined above) is intentionally ignored by Presuppositionalists because is nullifies their most effective rhetorical attack, “How do you know?” When it comes to the axioms, I believe them because the opposite is impossible, not because I claim them as knowledge.

With that distinction, we can look at why sense information is required for knowledge. Knowledge is a justified belief about some aspect of reality. We interact with reality through our senses, record the sensory information in our brains as memories, and conceptualize and integrate the concepts using reason. To have the knowledge that my dog is a mammal, for example, I need to at some point have sensed (saw, felt, smelled, etc.) what a dog is. On the other hand, if I come to a belief that I arrive at by reason alone, then I (if I am reasoning properly) have illuminated a necessary truth; an axiom. This truth, because the opposite is impossible, would neither have, nor require a justification, and would therefore not be knowledge.

Therefore, sense information is required for knowledge.

On the second premise, The Christian God fails as a precondition for intelligibility, a book could be written. However for my opening remarks I’ll simply chose one reason why the core Christian Presuppositional position is fallacious.

Much effort is expended by the Presuppositionalist to establish a necessary transcendent being. I’ll forgive them for a moment for rendering the term “being” meaningless, but the idea that something must exist without temporal or spatial limitations is not new (ref. ontological argument by Anselm of Canterbury, 1078). The problem with this view is that a necessary transcendent something is indistinguishable from existence itself. The Christian Presuppositionalist intends to argue for the specific God of Christianity, and therefore he must employ additional arguments to rescue his god from being a mere metaphor for existence. He typically does this by appealing to such things as the uniformity of nature, love and morality. There are whole lists of attributes you could deduce from the Bible, including some that contradict each other. But one that you don’t typically hear being brought up the Presuppositionalist is omnipotence. Although Presuppositionalists seem to universally agree that it is an attribute of God, they don’t seem eager to volunteer it up front, and instead they hope that it gets carried along with the other arguments such as the necessity of a transcendent being and a Trinitarian self-loving threesome.

Omnipotence is avoided by Presuppositionalists for a good reason…it’s totally devoid of meaning. I don’t want to straw-man John’s [any Presuppositionalist’s] position, so I’ll note here that this understanding of the Presuppositionalist view of omnipotence I get from my discussion with Sye Ten Bruggencate. If John [any Presuppositionalist] disagrees with Sye’s position, then he [she] is free to clarify his [her] own position, and I will respond accordingly. Sye claims that God is omnipotent, and that this means that He can do anything within His nature. Furthermore, God’s nature excludes the possibility of lying, and therefore lying is not a constituent of omnipotence.

At this point I shouldn’t need to say anything more, because in as much as omnipotence is meant to be the capacity to do anything, Sye has provided a directly contradictory definition of an attribute he claims for his god. But I do need to say more, because Sye has dangled the concept of unlimited capability and then immediately negated its meaning. When Sye qualifies omnipotence as being the ability to do anything “within His nature” he erases any content the concept might carry. Lying is not a desirable concept to have stuck on God (despite God’s deception described in the Bible), so the Christian simply excludes it from God’s nature. Being irrational is another un-Godly idea, so voila, it’s not in his nature. Cruel? Nope, not is his nature. God ends up being whatever the Christian wants Him to be, while still claiming him to be omnipotent.

Using this same line of reasoning, my dog is also omnipotent. Can he read the newspaper? No, but that’s not in his nature. Can he bark at the neighbor’s cat? Sure, he’s good at that. Can he calculate the circumference of the earth? Nope, not in his nature. So barking at a cat is a constituent of my dog’s omnipotence, and reading and math are not. He is not especially smart, but I love my omnipotent dog. In fact you can make the same argument for everything. A rock, for example, is capable of doing everything within its nature. A table; bird; coffee cup…everything is omnipotent. As long as the Christian clings to omnipotence as an attribute of their God, they are claiming a God that is not rationally justified. And a concept with no rational foundation cannot be the precondition for intelligibility.

OK John [Presuppositionalist], your turn.

Debate background

Background: In response my YouTube video (http://youtu.be/fSWqvGXTgaw) in which I speculate about the reasons why Presuppositionalists have avoided debating me, John Laun proclaimed in his comment that he would be willing to debate. After much back and forth, I gave up my request for an in-person debate, and agreed to conduct the debate in writing. I established this blog for the purposes of making our arguments public as they were made, and encourage readers to comment.

Again, after much back and forth, John selected as his premise to defend “The Bible is the Word of God and precondition for intelligibility.” I chose to defend the premise “The Christian God fails as a precondition for intelligibility.” In addition, John insisted that I defend a premise that included a connection between knowledge and our senses, so I agree to defend a second premise “Sense information is required for knowledge.”

We also agreed that responses from each party would be posted within 3 days of the opponent’s posting unless special circumstances prevented this, in which case the opponent would be notified. We have not limited the number of responses, and either party may terminate the discussion at will.

Today (April 17, 2013) John informed me that he did not wish to debate. I’m disappointed, but not surprised. If any other Presuppositionalist would like to jump into the void please contact me by e-mail (dc14522@gmail.com). Thanks.

About me:

I am the President of the Freethinkers of Upstate New York, and I have been an atheist my entire adult life. I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University, and have enjoyed discussing and debating issues including morality, Biblical authenticity, Presuppositionalism and evolution. Approximately one year ago I was introduced to Christian Presuppositional Apologetics, and I have written and given talks on this subject since that time. I have no special training in philosophy or counter apologetics, but feel that the counter arguments to Presuppositionalism are easily accessible to the layman, and very compelling. I am fifty years old and live near Rochester, NY with my fiancé.

Welcome to my blog. I've created this blog in hopes of having a written debate with a Presuppositionalist Christian. I prefer in-person debates that we can video and put up on YouTube, but so far I have yet to find a willing opponent since I debated Sye Ten Bruggencate in June 2012.

Hopefully we'll get this written debate started on this blog very soon, and post the format and the rules followed by the actual arguments as they're made. Stay tuned.

Dan