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.