I’m in a discussion with a guy regarding free will, and in our discussion, we’ve come to a point where he is asking how we know when to interpret Scripture literally or figuratively.  The reason he asks is because he utilizes the argument against “no one is good, not even one” as we see unbelievers doing good all the time.  I’ve tried talking with him about God’s standard of Good as compared to man’s standard, but he says that he sees a verse like that as more metaphoric, in that no man is totally good, but that he can choose to still do good things.  He then asks how I know that we are to take the verse talking about earth’s ‘four corners’ as figurative, wanting me to say that I base it on extra biblical evidence, so that he can prove his point that he sees unbelievers doing good things every day, so a verse like found in Romans 3 can’t be literal.

Any help you can give me would be wonderful.  How do I answer this question well?

Bearing in mind that I’m by no means a trained exegete, there seem to be a few ways to address this:

1. There’s a disparity between empirical and moral extra-biblical evidence

On the one hand, as regards interpreting Scripture in light of extra-biblical evidence, there’s an obvious disanalogy between empirical and moral evidence. We can know that the earth is round in a good number of extra-biblical ways, because God has equipped us with faculties to make these sorts of determinations. In one sense, the same is true of moral judgments: God has equipped us with a conscience to tell between good and evil. But there are two major differences which must be noted:

a. Direct disparity

Whereas Scripture’s purpose is very seldom to describe brute empirical facts, it is very often to describe moral facts. Its chief concern is with the relationship between God and man—and the major problem with that relationship is a moral one. So whereas we may have good warrant for treating as metaphorical empirical descriptions which are prima facie not literally true, the same warrant does not exist to treat prima facie false moral descriptions as metaphorical.

b. The implausibility of interpreting Scripture against our moral intuitions

Expanding on (a), it must be noted that Scripture claims our moral intuitions are fundamentally skewed by the fall. It describes man as totally depraved, and his way of judging good as fundamentally wrong. Rather than judging goodness by looking to God, we naturally judge goodness by looking to man. Thus, if we believe Scripture, we should expect that our prima facie moral judgments will be wrong in many instances—especially with regard to morality in respect to God, as opposed to merely in respect to other people. If Scripture is correct, then fallen man only considers this latter “human-human” morality, and ignores that while one may do good to another man, that same act may still be evil as regards God. I would direct your friend to Paul’s direct statement in Romans 14:23 that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”. For this reason, our moral intuitions do not provide any kind of extra-biblical support for rejecting the literal truth of Scripture’s moral statements. Quite the opposite is true. If Scripture’s statements are literally true, then our moral judgments are most likely false as regards our goodness with relation to God.

c. Assuming the consequent

Building on (b). your friend is flagrantly begging the question against you. He wants to deny the literal truth of Scripture’s moral statements on the basis of his own moral intuitions. But one of the things that Scripture says about his moral intuitions is that they are incapable of providing a reliable basis for these sorts of judgments—thus, if Scripture is literally true in these matters, his moral intuitions provide no kind of useful extra-biblical data. By insisting that they do, he is therefore assuming the very thing he needs to prove: namely, that Scripture’s moral statements are metaphorical.

2. Moral intuitions are subjective and vary between people

Moreover, I do not share your friend’s moral intuitions. On the contrary, one of the things that makes Scripture so plausible to me is how accurately and unashamedly it describes the moral condition of man. To be sure, as an unbeliever I certainly would have agreed with your friend. I would have rejected Scripture’s moral statements on exactly the same basis: I refused to judge goodness as something in relationship to God, and instead recognized only human-human moral relationships. Thus, I judged most people to be relatively good. However, as a believer who knows that all things are rightly judged in relationship to God, it is impossible for me not to see that “no one does good”, since even great acts of charity and self-sacrifice are driven not by a motivation to honor God, but by a desire to honor man. All the moral actions of any unbeliever—and many of believers as well, since we are by no means perfect yet—are basically idolatrous despite whatever benefit they may have to other people. So I would say that:

a. Judging between conflicting intuitions

Your friend’s entire case seems based on the assumption that his moral intuitions in this matter are correct—yet given that his intuitions are by no means universal, this is a highly tendentious assumption. If someone else, like me, finds Scripture’s moral statements intuitively plausible when taken literally, his whole case is undermined. Why should I accept his intuitions over mine?

b. Judging like an unbeliever rather than a Christian

Given what I’ve said about how unbelievers judge moral issues, your friend’s attitude in general constitutes a Big Red Flag. He is judging moral issues exactly as if he were an unbeliever, rather than as a Christian. Mind you, given that he appears to be at best a semi-Pelagian, that doesn’t come as any great surprise.

3. Exegetical deficiencies

On the other hand, his contention is inept on exegetical grounds as well. A phrase like “the four corners of the earth” is not difficult to see as a figure of speech. However, a phrase like “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God”—along with the rest of the three chapters Paul dedicates to describing the moral condition of man, and the umpteen passages he draws from in the Old Testament—are plainly not. There is simply no linguistic warrant for taking all of these passages as metaphorical; so if your friend wishes to do so, the burden of proof rests squarely on his shoulders. Whereas Scripture never repeatedly and explicitly claims that the earth has four corners (it does use the expression once or twice, but that is at best an implicit claim), it does repeatedly and explicitly claim that man is totally depraved, morally corrupt, unable to please God, and so on. It states this fact in any number of different ways, from the hand of any number of different prophets. So your friend needs to have an answer to each of those passages.

4. The slippery slope to hell

Your friend’s avenue of argument leaves the way open to deny basically any doctrine that someone finds personally objectionable:

a. Any doctrine can be denied based on some arbitrary intuition

If it’s reasonable to take depravity as metaphorical because a literal view conflicts with one’s moral intuitions, then it is reasonable to take the Trinity as metaphorical because a literal view conflicts with one’s logical intuitions; or it’s reasonable to take hell as metaphorical because a literal view conflicts with one’s emotional intuitions. Perhaps your friend is thinking of adding unitarian universalisism to his Pelagianism?

b. Many doctrines can be denied even on the basis of purely moral intuitions

But even if we arbitrarily confine the argument to moral intuitions, a great deal can still be denied. Many people find the notion of penal substitution morally abhorrent. Even if your friend does not, how does he propose to convince people of the truth that Jesus died for their sins, when their moral intuitions would lead them to believe that, in fact, the crucifixion was a merely metaphorical event? That would certainly be deeply hypocritical. And denying the doctrine of hell on moral grounds is as old as the hills. Not to mention the goodness of God, and/or the unity of Scripture, since YHVH did some pretty unsettling things back in the day when Israel was still in vogue. No doubt examples can be multiplied.

In conclusion

In short, it seems to me that your friend is taking the approach of subjecting Scripture to his own personal opinions, rather than allowing Scripture to stand in judgment over his opinions. That is not Christianity—it is a religion of his own invention; merely inspired by the Bible.

Related posts:

1. A response to Glenn Peoples’s ‘No, I am not an inerrantist’

I’m sure you are busy these days, but I’ve been reading your book, The Wisdom of God. In the process I have been engaged in a 3 month long debate with Dawson Bethrick over at www.bahnsenburner.blogspot.com

He has challenged my founding worldview proposition—”The Bible is the Word of God”—on several grounds.

I was hoping if you had time, you could offer advice on where to look for responses etc. I will include the substantive portion of his comment below:

Dawson Bethrick said

Well, for one thing, your founding affirmation assumes the truth of mine [he is a Randian objectivist—his founding proposition is "existence exists"]; mine would have to be true before you could chance to propose yours. See for instance my blog Theism and Its Piggyback Starting Point. Also, in tandem with my previous point, the affirmation you propose as your founding truth is not conceptually irreducible, which means that it assumes prior truths which would need to be identified and explored for any prior assumptions they make. Also, the statement “the Bible is the Word of God” does not identify a perceptually self-evident fact. Even if we accept it as true, it would have to be the conclusion of prior inference, which itself would ultimately need to be rooted in the perceptually self-evident. We could spend days and weeks exploring why one might accept it as truth, where as ‘existence exists’ identifies a fact which is perceptually self-evident, undeniable, inescapable. Another concern is that it is not undeniable: I can deny the assertion that “the Bible is the Word of God” and I am in no way undercutting truths which I do affirm or contradicting facts which I accept as facts. Another problem (and I’ll stop with this), is: what exactly is it referring to? It certainly does not have the scope of reference that ‘existence exists’ has (since ‘existence’ is the widest of all concepts, it includes everything which exists), and seems to be irrelevant to pretty much everything. Its applicability is wholly artificial, forced as it is as an interpretative filter on a reality which has no need for such notions. To justify the claim that it has relevance in our world, the one affirming this claim would probably resort to the claim that the universe and everything within it were created by said “God.” But this again is not perceptually self-evident; that the universe was created by an act of consciousness (e.g., “God spoke the universe into existence”) is a claim for which I have certainly seen no good evidence whatsoever.

I respond briefly as follows:

I must confess I don’t really understand Dawson’s argument. He seems to be assuming that any first principle which implicitly presupposes some other self-evident proposition must then defer to that prior proposition. But why? This doesn’t seem different, in principle, to the oft-repeated objection leveled by empiricists: they will say that, since we Christians must first be able to read the Bible before we can formulate the proposition that it is the word of God, we are actually presupposing empiricism to be able to affirm revelational foundationalism. Well, even if this were true, it remains that empiricism does not constitute a viable worldview. Maybe it is true in itself (I don’t think it is since I deny that knowledge comes directly through the senses; I draw a careful distinction between physical and non-physical events in terms of causation); but it doesn’t provide us grounds for believing that it is true in itself, nor for believing pretty much anything. So, at best it is merely part of a larger body of truth, and must be incorporated into that body of truth by way of some overarching, governing principle (like the proposition “the Bible is the word of God”). The same is true of the proposition “existence exists”. That’s a pretty bally meaningless first principle. What useful propositions can be deduced from it without relying on unjustified subjective beliefs or perceptions?

Of course, a Christian certainly believes that existence exists. He incorporates this into his worldview by way of his governing principle. In fact, from this first principle, he is able to discover a far more sublime and useful variant on that proposition, as revealed in Exodus 3:14: “I AM WHO I AM”. That is necessarily presupposed in the proposition “the Bible is the word of God”. But it is not in itself useful for building a framework of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. That is why we take the whole Bible as our starting point; not merely some proposition therein. We need far more than an existential affirmation to build a worldview. We need a great deal of information about existence: including its origin, its essential nature, and our relationship to it. And that is information which can only truthfully and certainly be gleaned from the revelation of God.

It sounds like Dawson wants to require of you that you take only self-evident or properly basic propositions as foundational. I suspect that traditional foundationalism might require this, though I haven’t a clue why (I haven’t read widely on it I’m afraid). I can’t see any non-arbitrary reason for this stipulation; and it’s also obviously self-refuting since no such proposition (or combination thereof) can be used to deduce enough of a worldview to justify the stipulation itself. Remember that first principles must contain enough information to deduce themselves and their context, as well as the rest of the worldview. The whole point of them is to bootstrap our grounds for knowledge. So not only is there no good reason to require first principles to be self-evident or properly basic, but there is very good reason to require that they not be.

An even better reason can also be given: we can trivially show that the only sure justification for knowledge in toto must be based on the revelation of a personal God, because without this we are forced to ground universals in our particular experience. This is formally fallacious, and thus useless for justifying anything. We can therefore exclude any other kind of proposition as a useful foundation for an entire worldview—so on what basis is he making the sorts of claims you quote him making? (Cf The Wisdom of God, 2.4 & 2.5.)

To summarize, I think Dawson is confusing the chronological priority of propositions (what must be true to even formulate the biblical worldview?) with logical priority (how do we logically justify these chronologically prior propositions?) The whole point of revelational foundationalism is that there are a lot of things which are obviously true (”existence exists”; “an external world exists”; “events we perceive are correlated to events in the external world”; etc), but which we cannot rationally justify or give account for without reference to God’s objective revelation. Revelational foundationalism works backward by first assuming these truths, so as to find justification for them; then justifying them with reference to Scripture.

If we accept the Theist’s position, then god chose to create. Choosing instead to not-create would have been a greater good, as it would have necessarily avoided any suffering or evil whatsoever.

I’m going to lay this out properly so that I can examine it properly as an argument. No doubt there are alternative presentations than the chain of inference I offer below; but this is one possible representation of all that’s implied in Stan’s statement:

1. It is a greater good that evil does not exist than that it does.
2. God exists, and always acts toward the greatest good.
3. Therefore, God would not act to create a universe wherein there is evil.
4. God acted to create this universe and everything therein.
5. There is evil in this universe.
6. Therefore, God does not exist.

Note that the argument “accept[s] the Theist’s position”—so it’s an internal critique. It is therefore immune to the common rejoinder that an atheist has no grounds for using the term “evil”. Since the atheist is accepting Christian presuppositions for the sake of argument, and since Christian presuppositions provide the necessary grounds for talking about evil, the atheist is within his rights to try to show that these presuppositions can be used to contradict the larger presupposition of God’s goodness.

As an internal critique, however it is simply inept. Instead of demonstrating a contradiction within Christianity, it just contradicts itself. A Christian ought simply to reject premise (i) as contrary to revelation and sound reason; whereafter premise (iii) does not follow, and the argument fails. As it should, since it’s just a jejune appeal to the problem of evil—sans even any attempt to prove what is asserted. (To be fair to Stan, though, perhaps he has argued for (i) at greater length elsewhere. On the other hand, I’ve argued against it elsewhere as well.)

Without any supporting evidence for the first syllogism—premises (i) to (iii)—the argument is at best speculation. But not only is it not underwritten by Christian presuppositions, as a real internal critique would be, but it is contradicted by those presuppositions. A Christian may soundly counter that the existence of evil ultimately leads to a greater good than its non-existence. For example, Calvinists often and rightly cite Exodus 9:16, Deuteronomy 2:30, Amos 3:6, Romans 9:22, Revelation 17:17 and numerous other passages as evidence that sin is both completely within God’s power and plan, and necessary to fully glorify him—which is the greatest good possible. So a Christian can argue:

1. The existence of evil is a necessary condition for bringing about the greatest good possible.
2. God exists, and always acts toward the greatest good.
3. Therefore, God would act to create a universe wherein there is evil (assuming he were to act to create a universe at all).

But even this amount of precision isn’t necessary. Yes, as Christians we are given some idea of why evil exists; and this sufficiently refutes an argument like Stan’s. But really, it is so incompetent an argument that it fails completely even if we know nothing about God’s purposes in creation, because the conclusion doesn’t follow necessarily. You’d only accept the conclusion (vi) if you were more married to premises (i) and (iii) than to faith in God. But (i) and (iii) have no scriptural support, and if you’re more inclined to believe them than to believe that God exists, then you’re not holding to Christian presuppositions at all, and the critique is not an internal one. Then I can rightly ask: on what grounds are you using the term “evil”? So, if this is really an internal critique, and is genuinely adhering to Christian presuppositions, the argument would actually look like this:

1. It is a greater good that evil does not exist than that it does.
2. God exists, and always acts toward the greatest good.
3. Therefore, God would not act to create a universe wherein there is evil.
4. God acted to create this universe and everything therein.
5. There is evil in this universe.
6. Therefore, premises (i) and (iii) are false.

Conclusion (vi) follows necessarily from premises (ii), (iv) and (v)—the only premises necessarily true under a Christian worldview. It also precludes the possibility of arguing further to the conclusion that God does not exist. Thus, as a critique of Christianity the argument is so bad that it’s non-existent. It’s manifestly valid (there’s no error in the inference and no contradiction has been created) but it leads to the opposite conclusion that the atheist wants. The only grounds he can muster for believing (i) and (iii) over the other premises is the Christian’s natural intuitions—and these lack any argumentative force whatsoever, as well as being very weak in their own right. After all, it’s trivial to invent examples where an evil thing can be a necessary condition for a far better thing; let alone the obvious instances in Scripture. Indeed, the conclusion above is manifestly and thoroughly Christian, for who can conceive of a greater evil than the crucifixion of Christ; yet “he was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23); and we know that this was for a whole host of reasons which all converge into God’s superlatively great and good plan. Thus, under a Christian’s own presuppositions (which is what this argument assumes), the existence of evil in the universe is obviously something which works toward a greater good planned by God, since God always desires the greater good. It doesn’t disprove his existence at all; it presupposes and affirms it.

Under Christian presuppositions, the only even potential difficulty with the existence of evil is an epistemic one, wherein we cannot know exhaustively what the greater good is toward which God is working. But that’s a far cry from the ethical difficulty which Stan’s argument sets out to prove, wherein God is proved unbenevolent. That argument fails completely.

Related posts:

1. “No one is righteous”…metaphorically speaking
2. A bit of proof that men are not basically good

Steve, to close off my side of this debate, there are three particular points to which I’d like to draw close attention. It would be poor form for me to present new arguments at this stage, so I’ll do my best to avoid that—but I want to at least highlight these issues so that anyone following this exchange can consider them carefully and come to their own conclusions. These three points are three different ways in which you have begged the question.

I. Your view of what reasoning can be

This, I think, is the most problematic of all the aspects of your position. You want to deny me the ability to “define reason as something that can’t be performed by physical systems”. This in itself is natural enough, since you hold to a materialistic view of the world. The problem is that you’ve offered no reasons, no justification for saying that we shouldn’t exclude physical systems as reasoning systems. This isn’t merely a matter of definition, as if I’ve simply got a word wrong. It’s a matter of ontology: of what reasoning actually is. I have given arguments, and I think quite good and certainly very respectable arguments, which put very great pressure on this notion that human reason can possibly be a physical process. I have shown that, in principle, reasoning implies something more than the physical. If it is reducible to the physical then it is not actually reasoning as we understand it, in which case any attempt at argumentation self-destructs. But you have tried to short-circuit these arguments by saying that, from the outset, I should not be discounting physical explanations for reason; nor supposing non-physical explanations. It is as if you want to ignore the arguments themselves and say that my conclusion must be wrong because yours is right. But in light of my arguments, the burden of proof is on you; not on me. You have not met that burden.

II. Your view of what reasoning is

Indeed, quite the opposite is true. In trying to defend your belief that reason can be a physical system, you’ve actually shown the opposite. You’ve been willing to go so far as to assert that conclusions are in no way caused by their premises—yet you have not even attempted to disprove the arguments I presented showing that human reasoning, in order to be human reasoning at all, must involve conclusions caused in some way by their premises. Again, you’ve tried to short-circuit my argumentation by saying that it is the logical structure which is important, while the premises and conclusions plugged into this are irrelevant. You would say that we have a simple case of input and output—and you claim that neural networks prove this to be the case. But you’ve given no argument as to why we should accept this assertion. On the face of it, it’s clearly false. Yet even if it’s true, you have still (a) begged the question against meaning, and (b) failed to account for the logical structure itself.

a. Meaning

You say that meaning is a relationship between input and output; but you’ve failed to show that this meaning can become meaning in the first place. As I’ve explained, the relationship between input and output only becomes meaningful if there is a mind to interpret it to begin with. The input and output of neural networks is meaningful because we interpret it. It does not interpret itself. In principle, neural networks are simply mindless physical systems performing mindless physical transactions. That is all they are until we interpret these transactions as logical operations. But that requires our minds to already be more than physical systems performing physical transactions. To say that neural networks show that reasoning occurs in the brain begs the question by assuming that reasoning is occurring in these neural networks, when ipso facto nothing more than basic physical transactions are occurring, and the reasoning about them is actually happening in our minds. The neural network does not reason. It does not have a first person perspective by which it can consider its own input and output.

Now, you allege that a neural network which models itself would have such a perspective—but it’s hard to take such an assertion seriously. Why would this be the case? You’ve once again made no argument to persuade me; you’ve just offered speculation which, in principle, cannot answer the difficulty posed. There is no difference at all between a neural network modeling some other physical system and a neural network modeling itself. Both are still third-person objective physical transactions. You cannot simply assert that the latter kind produces some remarkable, personal, subjective quality. How does a system modeling itself produce a first person perspective? Why does it not just produce a third person objective representation of itself? The bridge of principle remains firmly planted between your assertion and the reality. Although you accuse me of defining what reason is to suit my beliefs, it’s quite clear that in fact it is you who has assumed that the limitations of what is possible must coincide with your beliefs about reality. You then invent arbitrary but fantastical explanations to the problems inherent in those beliefs.

b. Logical structure

Even if your claims regarding input and output are accurate, you have still failed to provide any account for logical structure itself. Logical laws, as I have said, are not physical laws. You have not addressed this problem at all. Neither are logical laws merely useful procedures established by a consensus, as you claim. Again, I have already shown this. If logical laws are merely procedures we’ve agreed upon, then (i) they were not agreed upon when minds first developed, which contradicts your own position anyway since minds can only develop when physical systems perform logical operations; and (ii) these laws could have, in principle at least, looked different. Yet I have already shown that they could not have looked different. That was one of the foundational facts which I used to establish my position over yours in the first place.

III. The castle of science versus the castle of religion

You mention building our castles, our worldviews, from the ground up. Science does this, you say; religion does not. But how so? You talk about how the Copernican Principle; you say that science and reason build on more solid foundations because they are based on humility. How? Again, you present no argument here—you simply ask me to believe that if your worldview is true, then it is true. But what relationship is there between humility and truth? How does assuming that we are not special guarantee better results in understanding reality? What if we are special? So once again you beg the question by assuming the very position you want to prove.

The Trinity

Finally, although you present an argument against the doctrine of the Trinity, you do so at the expense of failing to justify your own worldview in light of the underlying question which only the Trinity answers. Now, I’m not in a position here to refute the argument you present, but I can still say for the record that it is indeed easily refuted. In fact, since it only works against a non-Christian formulation of the Trinity, it isn’t even an argument against my position at all. This being the case, and in lieu of any argumentation against my more basic point about the problem of unity and plurality, that point stands.

In conclusion, it seems to me that you have failed to establish both the falsehood of my position, and the truth of your own. You have failed to refute the arguments I have presented which demonstrate that the Christian God is a necessary precondition for human reason. Indeed, you have only interacted with these arguments in a very limited way at all. The arguments you’ve presented contra mine, and those in favor of your own position, primarily rely on question-begging and speculation—yet even if they do succeed, they are too limited in their scope to adequately refute my position, as I’ve previously shown.

This being the case, I must close as I always do, by pleading with you to reconsider what I have said in this exchange. The incoherence of your naturalistic worldview is clear, as is the obvious coherence and truth of Christianity. Therefore, turn and believe it, for God will not turn away anyone who comes to him for forgiveness and salvation.

Continued in Steve’s closing statement »

I believe I should start this post with an apology. In my previous statement I addressed my audience while referring to you, Steve, in the third person. This strikes me as perhaps a little rude. As much as the audience will benefit from this debate, it is with you that I am debating. Let me then apologize and address you directly now:

I agree that the discussion has wandered somewhat. You’re correct to point out that we aren’t discussing the nature of life or the kind of existence that subjective experiences have. We shouldn’t let these things unduly distract us. Even if they are examples of notions which have been wrong in the past, it is really of little consequence—because, getting back to the point, it is simply impossible that our notion of duality be in error. The mind must be a separate thing from the brain, or our ability to reason simply falls apart. That is the first premise of my overall argument. Let me prove it by focusing, as you rightly suggest, on “what human reasoning consists of”—

The need for a non-physical mind

To look at the process and claim that it simply can’t be reasoning because it is physical is not acceptable. If a physical system is sufficiently powerful to give the appearance of reasoning, then it certainly is reasoning.

Well, the argument I am forwarding is precisely that physical processes cannot in principle constitute reasoning. Therefore, if a physical system gives the appearance of reasoning, either it is an appearance only, or something more is going on than we are able to see using only physical means. There is simply a disconnect, in impassable bridge of principle between what is needed for reasoning to be reasoning, and what is possible given a purely physical world. In other words, if reasoning were indeed a physical process only, then its very nature would not actually be what we understand reasoning to be. And if reasoning is not really reasoning, the person making the assertion has some obvious and very profound epistemic problems.

Although I’ve stated this argument informally in my opening statement, let me explicate it more formally now. The way I’d like to present it is as a demonstration of the tension between two beliefs which you hold to be simultaneously true:

1. We draw conclusions in virtue of what their premises are about. What I mean by this is that, when we see that all men are mortal, and that Socrates is a man, what these premises are about causes us to believe the conclusion that Socrates is mortal. How they do this may not be entirely clear, but we know that the premises really do cause the conclusion in some way. I’m confident you’ll agree that this is self-evidently true. If it were not, we wouldn’t be engaged in debate right now.
2. Human beings are purely physical creatures. What I mean by this is that there is no non-physical soul or mind or spirit—just the body itself. Everything which happens in our minds—including reasoning of any kind—is in fact completely caused by physical objects (such as neurons) with physical properties working according to physical laws.

Now, it’s my contention that these two beliefs contradict each other: such that if (I) is true then (II) is false; and conversely, if (II) is true then (I) is false. But if we conclude that (I) is false we refute ourselves, because we cannot very well draw this conclusion by virtue of any premises without that conclusion relying on its own falsehood in order to be true. So (I) must be true because it actually cannot be false. On the other hand, (II) does not have this luxury. Obviously it could be the case that human beings are not purely physical. We might find this an unreasonable or undesirable conclusion depending on our other beliefs, but it is not intrinsically absurd. It does not refute itself. Therefore, if there is a contradiction between (I) and (II) so that only one of them can be true, we are forced to conclude that it is (I), and that (II) must be false. Let me now defend my contention of this contradiction—it is based on the following assertion:

Human reasoning cannot be described in terms of physical processes: physical objects with physical properties following physical laws

We cannot say “such-and-such a neuron fires, and causes such-and-such an inference.” If we say this, we actually make reasoning impossible. Arguments about representation, such as those forwarded by Mike in the comment stream of your most recent statement, do not help here. Consider the following reductio ad absurdum of (II):

1. Human reasoning is completely caused by physical processes (as per II).
2. It does not make sense to say that anything physical is about something.
3. Therefore, it does not make sense to say that human reasoning has the quality of being about something with respect to causes.
4. But if human reasoning cannot be said to be about something with respect to causes, (I) is disproved because it could not be the case that conclusions are caused by virtue of what their premises are about. This is self-refuting. Therefore, if we do not want to discard (i), (ii) must be false, and it must be sensible to say that something physical can be about something.
5. But it is self-evidently meaningless to say that my kettle is about my dog (or about anything for that matter); or that the law of gravity is about Saturn or anything else; or that the physical neurons firing in my brain are about Socrates. Therefore, (ii) is self-evidently true, and (i) must be false.

But you might argue, as I think Mike does, that the problem is one of semantics. Maybe we human beings have developed this concept of “aboutness” or intentionality as a way of referring in the first person to what is really just simple representation. So perhaps instead of saying that the physical processes in my brain are about Socrates, which obviously makes no sense, we should say that these brain states represent Socrates. But this gains us nothing, because physical representations must operate according to physical laws. Consider; let’s call the brain state representing “Socrates is a man” S, the state representing “all men are mortal” M, and the third state representing “Socrates is mortal” SM—

6. The physical state SM is caused purely by a conjunction of the physical states S and M acting in virtue of the physical laws which govern all three.
7. Physical laws are inapplicable to, and indifferent about, what a brain state represents. (Even if we could tell that a certain configuration of neurons represented the proposition “Socrates is a man”, we know that physical laws have no bearing whatsoever on this proposition. They only pertain to the physical state itself—not the abstract idea it represents.)
8. But if my belief that Socrates is mortal is caused completely by the conjunction of prior physical states in my brain, then it is not caused in any part by virtue of its premises. But we know from (I) that it is self-refuting to claim that premises have no causal role in forming conclusions.
9. Therefore, (vi) must be false. But if (vi) is false we once find that (II) is false: it cannot be the case that human beings are purely physical creatures, because it would make human reason impossible, which is self-refuting.

Note that this is not an argument that we don’t yet know how to explain human reason in physical terms, as some people mistakenly think. It is rather an argument showing that explaining human reason in physical terms is impossible in principle. It is necessarily the case that the mind cannot be reducible to the physical brain, because the alternative ends in absurdity. What I have shown, in other words, is that mental events occur in a mental thing, which we call the mind. This is a real thing; not just an abstract thing, or what philosophers call an epiphenomenal thing. It is neither physical in nature; nor is it simply of the physical. It is something of a different, but no less real “substance” to the physical. It is a substance to which properties can be applied which cannot be used to describe physical things: such as intentionality and truth. And it is a substance to which properties cannot be applied which can be used to describe physical things: such as mass and size. Two other important things are evident from this which force us to conclude that the Christian God exists: the universality of mental principles; and the internal tension which arises from them. I’ll address each briefly.

The universality of mental principles

It is obvious from internal reflection that there are certain ways of thinking which cannot be altered, and which we can see could not be otherwise. The law of noncontradiction, for example, says that A cannot be not-A at the same time and in the same sense. We can see that this law could never be broken, and it could never be changed, because it is actually a precondition for intelligibility. To speak of it being broken is meaningless, because it is a prerequisite of speaking at all. It is not simply a case of convention, such that we generally agree that it is best that A never be not-A at the same time and in the same sense. Rather, such agreement would rely on the law already being true. Like physical laws, it is something we cannot change; a principle which does not originate in any of us, but which is imposed upon us.

It is equally obvious that the existence of these mental principles implies that some kind of mental realm exists which supersedes any and all individual minds. I have discounted already the possibility that these mental principles could have their origin in the physical world by demonstrating the bridge of principle between mental and physical things. So we must look elsewhere as we consider what this superseding mental realm is like.

Now the fact of the matter is that mental things are mind-related things; mental principles are principles which act upon minds; and minds, whatever their actual substance, are personal, intelligent, aware entities. Therefore, the nature of this superseding mental realm in which mental principles are found cannot be non-personal, non-intelligent, and non-aware. This would violate the very nature of mental things to begin with. It must be the case that the superseding mental realm is itself some kind of a mind. The difference between it and us cannot be a difference of essential nature; it must rather be more like the difference between cause and effect.

What I mean is, we experience reality as it is imposed upon us. We are contingent upon it for our existence, and we have little control over it. We are finite and limited creatures without the capacity to impose laws of the kind under consideration. But there could exist a mind which is infinite and unlimited; who, rather than having reality imposed upon it, imposes itself upon reality, being noncontingent in and of itself. Only this sort of mind could originate mental principles like the law of noncontradiction. And, given the existence—the necessary existence—of these mental principles, it in fact must be the case that such a mind exists. It is as necessary and inviolably existent as mental laws. Indeed, these mental laws would simply be a description of the way in which this mind works.

In other words, mental principles imply a mind which possesses the quality of aseity—one of the two qualities I chose as defining the Christian God in my opening statement. The second is trinity.

The internal tension of mental principles

Something that is less obvious about the mental realm is that there is a strange internal paradox present. On the basis of the fact that there are mental laws which act as unifying principles upon us all, I have argued that the mental realm is ultimately a single mind upon which everything else is contingent. The difficulty with this is that unifying principles require something to unify. But if the mental realm is ultimately contingent upon a single mind, then what is there to unify in the first place? A mind is itself already unified; it contains no parts which must in turn be unified; and neither could it, or it could not act as the origin of a unifying principle in the first place, but rather would rely on some other unifying principle first. (Memories, thoughts, and the like, it should be recognized, are reflections of a pre-existing plurality outside the mind.) But if the aseitic mind I have deduced is ultimately one, then how did plurality come about at all? How can diversity come from what is intrinsically not diverse? The problem is the converse of the question that got us to this aseitic mind in the first place: how can there be unity between things which are intrinsically diverse?

The only evident answer to this question is that the aseitic mind must be both a unity and a plurality. It must be somehow both one mind, and more than one mind. Now you might think that this is a strange way for me to prove my case: to answer a paradox with another paradox. But consider that the alternative is actually not merely paradox, but absurdity. Either the mental realm is ultimately one (in which case plurality is impossible and individual minds could not exist); or the mental realm is ultimately diverse (in which case unity is impossible and logical laws could not exist)—or it is both, in which case we resolve the absurdity at the expense of a fully explicable answer. So this is the only solution which avoids complete incoherence, and is therefore the solution we are compelled to accept. It is the only solution which could be true.

It is also a situation which, due to its very nature as paradoxical and inexplicable, is rejected by religions which nonetheless affirm the existence of an ultimate, aseitic mind. Therefore, when we see that there is just a single religion which claims this paradoxical nature of God—as a trinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit—it starts to become quite unreasonable to discount this religion as just another man-made belief system. Given the nature of this aseitic, many-in-one mind which I have deduced, it is certainly plausible that it not only created us, but has communicated facts about itself to us through interaction with its creation—facts which have been recorded in written documents and compiled into a single compendium. Therefore, in the absence of any alternative religions, in the presence of the overwhelming evidence I have presented above, and in the spirit of impartial and fair-minded investigation, it would constitute unwarranted prejudice to dismiss the trinitarian Christian God as the necessary precondition for human reason. To remind you of your own principle: if the Christian God looks like a necessary, aseitic, many-in-one mind, and walks like a necessary, aseitic, many-in-one mind, then we have a Christian duck!

Continued in Steve’s second rebuttal »

Steve begins his opening statement by describing the mind’s “place of residence” as the brain—an organ of such complexity that he believes it “functions to produce all the workings of the mind”. What is immediately obvious to me, though, is that complexity, in and of itself, is not really at issue. If complexity, qua complexity, were all that was required in a physical system to give rise to a mind, then Steve would surely be faced with some difficult questions about other systems which are not intelligent. For example, even if the human brain is the most complex self-contained physical system in the universe, it remains the the universe itself is a vastly more complex self-contained physical system. Does Steve contend that the universe, like us, is intelligent? If not, what is the distinction between us? What is it about the brain which gives rise to intelligence, when the universe—despite its greater complexity—remains unintelligent? Or, if Steve believes that the universe is intelligent, then what is it which is inherent in complexity itself which gives rise to intelligence? In order to establish his case, Steve really must establish the relationship between complexity and intelligence. To simply assert that some unexplained relationship exists is insufficient.

Steve then moves into a brief description of the distinction between objective and subjective facts. He explains how redness is not an inherent objective quality in substances which causes light to reflect at the wavelength we perceive as red. Unfortunately, this is both a misdirected and an insufficient argument. On the one hand, whether or not Aristotle thought that redness is an objective quality irrelevant to the fact that I do not. On the other hand, the fact remains that the qualia, the perceived sensation, of redness is indeed a subjective event for us. Describing the objective physical events and qualities which appear to cause the perception of redness does nothing to explain that subjective perception itself. So when Steve says that “some apparently universal ‘qualities’ seem to have been more resistant to explanation in material terms”, he is being a little disingenuous. Redness has not actually been explained in material terms either: it is just as resistant to explanation as the universal “qualities” under discussion. What has been explained is the physical characteristics associated with redness. Redness, a subjective perception, remains quite a mystery to naturalists—since science by definition is descriptive of objective facts; not subjective ones. That being said, Steve is correct to note that moral and propositional attitudes are not even explicable to science in terms of their objective properties in the way that redness is. There does not appear to be anything at all physical about goodness or truth in the way there is about redness or hotness.

Following this introduction, Steve argues that since all the other organs of the body—such as the heart and kidneys—require no “vital essence” or animating force, it follows that the brain has no similar kind of force. He claims that an argument for “mind-ism” is similar in nature to an argument for vitalism; and that since vitalism is clearly fallacious, mind-ism must be also. However, this argument fails on numerous counts. Firstly, Steve has a long way to go in establishing that vitalism even is fallacious. It is far from clear, for example, that there is nothing more to human life than the operations of various organic compounds organized in a certain way. Scientists are certainly not able to build a living human body from scratch. Steve may suppose that, in principle, this is simply a matter of technological limitations—but if I suppose differently there is really no way to be sure.

Secondly, mind-ism (from here on I shall call it by its proper name: dualism) is manifestly not similar to vitalism in the way Steve supposes. Life itself need not necessarily be defined by any non-physical characteristics. Although it often is defined in that way, a scientist might indeed state that life is “an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction” (Merriam-Webster Online, ‘life’). A plant may be alive without entailing an invocation of vitalism, for instance. And a Christian might even agree with this conclusion. The question that vitalism seeks to answer, in other words, is not necessarily one which cannot in principle be answered in purely physical, naturalistic terms. The question that dualism seeks to answer, however, is completely dissimilar. The very point under discussion, and the very argument that dualism makes, is that in principle there can be no cogent physical explanation for the mind. The reason dualism is forwarded as an explanation of the mind is precisely that a purely physical explanation is impossible by its very nature. If the mind can be reduced to physical events, then the very attributes which comprise it either cease to exist entirely, or become irrelevant to its functions. Things like intentionality and inference are either denied ontological existence at all in a naturalistic philosophy of mind, or become what philosophers call “epiphenomenal”—an incidental byproduct of physical events which actually have no causal involvement in what goes on.

This leads into the third point on which Steve’s argument fails: the assertion of mind/body causality. He says that “we know that minds are associated with brains, because of the causal connection between changes in brains and changes in minds.” He mentions brain injuries and genetic traits as examples of this causality. But as an armchair scientist, Steve ought to know that correlation between things does not entail causation; and, if causation is present, its direction or directions still must be established. So the fact that the brain and the mind are correlated does not necessarily entail a causal relationship. Furthermore, even if there is a causal relationship, it is tantamount to begging the question for Steve to assume that the direction of causation is only from the brain to the mind. Unless he assumes his own conclusion, he has no reason to dismiss the possibility that the mind may also causally affect the brain. We know, for example, that when people think of certain things, particular parts of their brains become active. But is that because the brain activity is causing the thoughts, or is it because the thoughts are causing the brain activity?

None of these concerns, though, are ultimately relevant. They do not address the issue at hand—the impossibility of human reason in a purely physical universe—and they never can. None of the additional points Steve raises as he builds his case are actually relevant to this question. The fact that neural networks can analyse certain signals and perform certain transformations on them, for example, does not pertain at all to the fact that reducing the mind to physical phenomena necessitates that we reduce logical inference, reasons, intentions, and decisions to physical phenomena as well—and thus remove their causal role as inference, reasons, intentions, and decisions from events which are clearly caused by these things. Similarly, the fact that the brain is an incredibly sophisticated information processor is really inconsequential to problem that the naturalist faces, that information is meaningful only subjectively, and not objectively. As Steve correctly recognizes, “the question relevant to this debate is whether the workings of a physical brain are sufficient to explain the experiences of a mind in terms of reasoning.” Unfortunately, his reason for believing that they are is simply a reiteration of the irrelevant details listed above, regarding the power of physical systems to perform certain tasks:

I believe they are, and the reason is evolution. Nervous systems evolve to control bodies. They have been selected to process information from the senses and from their internal states in order to help a body survive and reproduce. It is clear that this selection can result in the development of systems that can recognise some truths and usefully process them to obtain correct conclusions, as in Nature mistakes frequently lead to death. Much of this processing is automatic: a fish will catch a fly above a pond correcting for the distortion of light without understanding refraction. A bat will change the tone of its echo-location as it approaches an insect without an understanding of sonar.

In truth, it is really very far from clear that evolution could result in the development of systems which can recognize some truths and usefully process them to obtain correct conclusions. The fact that mistakes (that is, wrong conclusions) frequently lead to death does not mitigate this. For one thing, wrong conclusions don’t necessarily lead to death. For another, true conclusions don’t necessarily offer an evolutionary advantage. Alvin Plantinga has argued persuasively to this effect. However, even if we assume for the sake of argument that natural selection can be relied upon to often favor mechanisms which arrive at correct conclusions, and to often select against mechanisms which arrive at false ones, we are left with the problem of identifying which mechanisms and which conclusions these are. Since we are relying on the very mechanisms themselves to attempt this process of identification, we have to presuppose their reliability—but we have no actual justification for doing so since, if they are faulty, we might never know it.

Additionally, it is obvious that the kinds of conclusions that will be selected for might not have anything to do with the actual nature of things, because they are selected for based on their usefulness to survival, rather than for discovering truth. These are manifestly two completely different categories. Imagine, for example, a creature which evolved to consistently interpret round objects as being square. As long as interpreting roundness as squareness conveyed no particular disadvantage to the creature, how could it ever know that “square” things are actually round? Or, if this development did convey a survival disadvantage, what if interpreting round objects as ovoid was a sufficient evolutionary development to mitigate this disadvantage? Again, while closer to perceiving the actual nature of things, the creature is still in an epistemically hopeless position. How could it ever know that “ovoid” things are actually round? This is the position of any creature which is supposed to have evolved—including human beings. We can also extend this argument further: for even if it can be shown that evolution will select for generally true conclusions about physical reality, what relevance does this have to metaphysical questions? How does the ability to correctly identify a circle or a triangle imply the ability to correctly identify a logical fallacy or formulate a sound argument? What does modus tollens have to do with workable wheels; and what does the law of noncontradiction have to do with strong bridges? Evidently nothing at all. What reason is there, then, to think that faculties which developed to come to useful conclusions about physical, evolutionary pressures are in any way equipped to come to true conclusions about other things?

Having dealt with these problems, though, it is still clear that the argument Steve has forwarded has no explanatory power in terms of solving the main problem inherent in the naturalist philosophy of mind, and which constitutes the thrust of my argument. It is possible to assume everything that Steve has put on the table as true, and still refute him. This is made obvious by Steve himself—when he gets to the point of attempting to explain “why we have these feelings of intentionality and meaning”, he says that

This is because we mentally model minds; this is a necessary part of how we live as an intelligent ape. We need to consider what other people may or may not do, or what they may be thinking. And the natural way to consider that is in terms of what their intent might be, and what may be significant to them.

But it is painfully clear that the idea of “mentally modeling” what someone’s intent may be presupposes the concept of intentionality. It does not explain it—rather, it requires it. Additionally, some of the sorts of intentionality which Steve talks about here are very primitive. A tiger may “intend” to attack; but it is certainly not evident that it entertains the notion of attack in a way which entails the sort of propositional intentionality which we ourselves experience. But if propositional intentionality is not required in Steve’s argument to model other minds, then where did it come from in the first place? If we were once on the same level as tigers in terms of intelligence, what was it that caused this remarkable development, wherein propositional attitudes replaced simple primitive representation? Indeed, once again, there appears to be a chasm in principle between primitive representation and propositional intentionality. The one may be perhaps an entirely physical thing, as in the case of neural networks, and may result in a survival advantage. Yet the other is clearly something more, since it entails not merely physical representation, but mental interpretation. A shift has taken place from the objective to the subjective. A neural network does not have a subjective understanding of anything, for example. Steve needs to explain how our subjective perceptions developed from objective, physical events.

Steve once again correctly identifies that the “question is whether this mental processing implies what many say it does – that the propositional attributes have any reality, a reality which some imply requires the existence of a deity.” Unfortunately, he does not actually interact with either of these questions; choosing to instead merely reiterate again his belief that “without evidence to the contrary, all we have is the experience of truth and meaning when certain processing of information produces results that trigger (based on past experience and training of the mind) our mechanisms for detecting “truth” and “meaning” – just like we have the feeling of a colour when certain neuronal firing patterns occur.” The difficulty he faces is that the evidence to the contrary is now before him in my opening statement: the evidence is that his view is self-refuting, because without there being actual mental events called propositions, which lead to other actual mental events called conclusions, via actual mental laws called inference, Steve’s own argument would be impossible. We could not know it was true; indeed, to speak of it being “true” would be meaningless, since physical states of reality cannot be true or false. Yet that, indeed, is what Steve appears to be suggesting.

Continued in Steve’s first rebuttal »

Rather than confronting sin and rebellion with the news that our debt was nailed to the cross (Col 2:14) and if we believe we will be saved (Rom 10:9), we too try to accommodate reason and rationality by tearing apart world views at an intellectual, philosophical and scientific level – which incidentally does not convert people, but generally just sets them more firmly against our views. In other words we try to fight them on their (our?) level, rather than taking the discussion to their soul and letting the word of God do its work through the spirit of God.

Not only this, but to do this, we must spend time taking in the information to be able to do this effectively (which it can never be anyway) rather than spending our time in prayer and reading the word to prepare us to share the simple gospel of Christ.

As well as responding in the combox of the article, I felt it worthwhile to reply here.

Darryl, while I agree with the general sentiment you’ve expressed, there are some scriptural principles, examples, and commands which warrant consideration, and which somewhat counter-balance your arguments.

In 2 Corinthians 5:11-6:13, Paul speaks of the “ministry of reconciliation”, which is the preaching of the gospel. He describes us as “ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. ‘We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’” (2 Cor 5:21,22). However, Paul prefaces this comment with the statement that, because we know the fear of the Lord, “we persuade others” (v 11).

With that in mind, let me turn to chapter 6. Paul speaks about putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry. By this, I take him to mean that if fault is to be found, it ought to be with the foolishness of the cross, and not with the actions or attitude of the person preaching it. Along with endurance, he lists in verse 6 some other elements of successful evangelism: purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love. He then seems to expand on two elements in verse 7: knowledge and the Holy Spirit; saying that we evangelize “by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left”. The reason I say that this expands on the element of knowledge is that Paul elsewhere describes “weapons of righteousness” in more detail. Later on, he expands the concept, saying, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). In Ephesians 6, describing the “armor of God”, he speaks of “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (v 17), and of the “shield of faith” (v 16). (I include the shield because in most armed martial arts it is more than just a static defense, and it seems to me our faith is indeed a spiritual weapon.) And in Acts, we see Paul putting these weapons to use, by “persuading people to worship God” (18:13) through “reasoning” (18:19; 19:8), wherein he “confounded the Jews [...] by proving that Jesus was the Christ” (9:22), speaking “in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed” (14:1). We know that he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead”, and that this was indeed his custom (17:2,3). And we know that Apollos is commended similarly, “for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus” (18:28).

Obviously, proving and reasoning from Scripture is something that was specifically effective with the Jews, because they already accepted its authority. However, since the word of God is our “sword”—and not just ours, but in fact the sword of the Spirit—and since it is the very basis for the gospel itself and for the entire Christian religion through which, and only through which, all reality is properly understood, it is certain that we must rely on it even when facing those who do not accept its authority. There is no other authority to which we can appeal. However, in a highly pluralistic society, or a highly skeptical society, or in a society which is very relativistic, the authority of Scripture is automatically precluded in the minds of those whom we seek to save. I can think of only one way to demonstrate the power of Christianity intellectually—that is, as opposed to doing so through signs and wonders—in that sort of situation. It is the situation in which we generally find ourselves when evangelizing to the average New Zealander, and it is the situation in which Paul founds himself in Athens. Look at the method he employs to show the power of Christianity in Acts 17:

1. He appeals to the inherent religious knowledge of man (vv 22,23a; cf Rom 1);
2. then immediately contrasts it to his listeners’ lack of epistemic assurance in religious matters (v 23);
3. then proclaims the basic elements of spiritual truth;
4. and uses this as a basis for an internal critique of their own beliefs to show their absurdity (vv 23b-27);
5. but then comes back to point (1) to show that these beliefs do still reflect the truth he is proclaiming (v 28);
6. then uses this common element of truth as an argument for God’s authority (v 29);
7. on which basis he proclaims the gospel of repentance, in light of the coming judgment (vv 30-32).

Aside from the fact that this is obviously a rational defense of Christianity, there are a couple of particularly interesting things in this presentation Paul gives. Firstly, he is mocked only when he appeals to the resurrection of Christ. The implication is that the rest of his argument is at least considered reasonable. But of course, the resurrection is at the heart of the cross, which is folly to unbelievers (1 Cor 1:18), and so we ought to expect it to be mocked. However, secondly, Paul does not declare here the central tenet of the gospel that Christ died for our sins. Rather, he simply declares God’s command that all people repent, and appeals to the resurrection as proof of the coming judgment. This is interesting, because in Acts 2, Peter does the exact same thing. In preaching to the Jews, he makes a long argument in which declares the power and authority of God in raising Jesus from the dead; yet he does not explain the atonement. Like Paul, he presents his argument, then declares a message of repentance—but does not focus on the details of the mechanism of that repentance: Christ himself. When the people are “cut to the heart” (v 37) and ask what they must do, he simply says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins” (v 38). Similarly, Paul in Acts 13:16-41 names Christ as the means of salvation through repentance, but does not explicate further regarding the atonement itself.

There are some conclusions that I think can be drawn from this. Firstly, the preaching of the cross does not require a full description of soteriology. Rather, it requires an appeal to the power of God over death, through Christ, so as to establish both his authority and pending judgment, and his ability to save. This is actually quite startling to me, because it is not an appeal to the saving work of Christ per se, but rather is simply a presentation of a dichotomy: “Whose side do you want to be on when the judgment comes?” It implies or assumes the saving work of Christ without necessarily explicating it. Repentance, and not an understanding of the mechanism which makes it possible, is the focus. The implication of this is that the theology of the atonement is not so much “spiritual milk”, but more “solid food” (cf Heb 5:12-14; 6:1-2), and that it is not necessarily preached in evangelism, but rather is taught afterward to those already confirmed in the faith. This is not to say that it cannot be preached in evangelism; merely that the pattern in Scripture is to preach repentance, making an appeal to the listener to join himself to Christ in order to have peace with God. Christ is therefore still absolutely central, and so is the cross—but the full meaning of the cross is not necessarily explained right away.

Secondly, the preaching of the cross and of salvation through Christ, in the examples we have, always concludes a lengthy prior argument which relies on only the simplest scriptural propositions, along with much extra-scriptural commentary. In other words, the vast majority of the evangelism we see in Scripture is argumentative discourse which seeks to prove the conclusion that repentance is necessary through Christ Jesus.

This must be kept in mind when we read passages such as 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. When Paul says in chapter 1 verse 17 that he was sent to preach the gospel “not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power”, and that he decided to know nothing except Christ crucified (2:2), he cannot mean that the only thing he preached was the cross. It is certainly true that the hope within us is centered on the saving work of Christ, and that this is foolishness to unbelievers—but we see in Acts, and in 2 Corinthians, that to “give an answer” (Gk apologia) for our hope, as Peter puts it, does not simply entail reiterating that hope, but in “destroying arguments”, in “reasoning” about and “refuting” the beliefs and philosophies which are “raised against the knowledge of God”, and “explaining”, “proving”, and “defending” the truth which is revealed in God’s word, “persuading” our listeners about it. So Paul’s statement that he did not preach with words of eloquent wisdom ought not to be interpreted as being an indictment of wisdom, per se, but rather, as the NASB puts it, of “cleverness of speech”. It is not wisdom which empties the cross of its power, because the cross in fact is wisdom—it is “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). For “among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away” (1 Cor 2:6). So wisdom is not under attack, but rather a specific kind—that is, the wisdom demanded by the Greeks. It is “clever words” (HCSB) which empty the cross of Christ; not genuine wisdom, which begins with the fear of the Lord (Pr 9:10). It cannot be that Paul is reminding the Corinthians that he never used rational argumentation to persuade them. We know that it was in fact his “custom” to do so. It cannot be that he never preached anything except the cross. Rather, anything he preached must have concluded in the cross. His argumentation rested upon the wisdom and power of God, rather than the sophistry of the Greeks.

What is assumed by Paul’s rejection of Greek wisdom, and his exultation of God’s wisdom is that his evangelism always rested on the revelation of Christ. Similarly, what is evidenced in the examples of apologetic encounters which we find in Scripture is that no reasoned defense of the faith is possible without presupposing God’s word as the foundation for our arguments. So, again, when Paul speaks against the wisdom demanded by Greeks, he is not speaking against rational argumentation itself, but rather against argumentation made from the foundation of human autonomy—argumentation, that is, which rests ultimately upon man’s authority, rather than God’s. This is why I reject classical apologetics, or apologetics which rely solely on an historical approach which assumes that man can discover and arbitrate truth. It is also why I strongly defend the presuppositional approach, which starts from Scripture and ends with Scripture.

That said, it is clear from 1 Corinthians 2 that argumentation was not the only, or ultimate weapon which Paul employed in his preaching. For he declared the gospel “not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”, for the purpose of their faith resting not in wisdom of men but the power of God (vv 4,5). Evidently, some kind of miracles accompanied his message. This is not to say that he did not preach any message whatsoever, since miracles cannot in and of themselves prove anything. They must be interpreted or explained. Rather, his message and argumentation were proved not by persuasive reasoning, but by actual demonstrations of the power of the Spirit, as we see many times in Acts as well. Miracles are, indeed, the standard accompaniment to the gospel when it first goes out—which is why I am critical of the Reformed penchant for sneering at the very concept of spiritual gifts, and of being skeptical of any reports of miracles in the mission work of evangelists to countries which do not yet have the gospel.

Ultimately, it is the power of God which must be the fundamental assumption behind our apologetics—not simply in terms of taking God’s word as our ultimate authority, but also in presupposing that God’s Spirit is active when his word is preached (cf 1 Thess 1:5). Although our arguments are indeed rational and true, the futile, darkened mind of the unbeliever, set against God in hostility, will not accept or believe them in its natural state (Rom 8:7), as you so rightly say. Indeed, since the truth we preach is spiritually discerned, a spiritually dead person cannot understand it (1 Cor 2:14). In order to believe the truth of the gospel, one must first have the Spirit of Christ, so that one may know the mind of Christ (cf 1 Cor 2:10ff). That is to say that our attempts to persuade and reason and prove and argue are utterly impotent in and of themselves. They attempt to prove a conclusion which must be revealed by God through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:10). We cannot reveal them to the unbeliever through any means of our own. Only the Spirit can do this.

Therefore, if we engage in apologetics with the supposition that, simply by presenting a good enough argument we can win over our opponent, we are wasting our time. It is futile. Thus, apologetics simply for its own sake is pointless; and also surely indicative of a poor spiritual condition on the part of the apologist. Christians do not seek out arguments just for the sake of arguing, as if our mission in the world is to prove that we’re right. Neither do we think that our mission is to defend the truth of God, as if God needs us to this for him any more than the sun needs the moon to light the earth. This, I think, is at the heart of your concern regarding the place of apologetics. Rather, apologetics is the means by which we understand God may sovereignly convert the heart of the unbeliever to accept the truth of Christianity. Apologetics is a reasoned explanation of the truth which we are charged to relay to all people (Matt 28:19). Apologetics is a tool in the great commission. It is not simply about argument, but about obeying God’s command to save souls. It is an effort by which we “work together with Christ”, appealing to the world not to receive the grace of God in vain (2 Cor 6:1). It is not simply an intellectual battle. It is not a cold, philosophical discipline. It is, quite literally, the preaching of the word, lovingly, patiently, kindly with the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 6:6), in the hope that he will work with us to save the lost.

But it is precisely for this reason that we must be prepared to defend our beliefs. When we preach the word it is usually rejected at first. It is not enough simply to declare the truth of Scripture if those to whom we are witnessing have numerous objections to that truth—objections which they believe insurmountable. We must be prepared to show that they are baseless. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to be familiar with all the latest apologetics arguments. It doesn’t mean that we must be great philosophers or theologians. As I have said in The Wisdom Of God, apologetics is so easy that there is no need to study it further once you have learned the basics (provided you continue to systematically conform your thinking to God’s word). There’s no need to harbor doubt as to your abilities, or to prepare yourself in advance, or to brush up on your skills every now and then; because you will always be ready. As long as you are thinking biblically, you will find that utterly confuting unbiblical thinking happens naturally. Invincible argumentation flows easily and inevitably out of a knowledge of God, so that destroying the arguments of any unbeliever is so simple that it is boring. If you have even a meager understanding of God’s word, and of the basic, necessary truths regarding the ultimate questions of reality, you are already so much more intellectually competent than any unbeliever that failing to take decisive victory in any apologetic encounter is impossible. Now, we must be careful to recognize that it is not we ourselves who are intellectually superior to the unbeliever. On the contrary, it is the mind of Christ within us. Nor is it to say that our victory will necessarily be recognized; or that apologetic encounters are to be hostile. Quite the opposite on both counts: very often, the Holy Spirit will not work, and our victory will be unrecognized; and similarly, as a rule we ought to show the love of God within us, and the deep, genuine concern we have for the spiritual state of the unbeliever. It is only in unusual cases that our great love for God and his truth should cause us to show hostility (cf Acts 13:8-10).

So I would say, Darryl, that it would be wrong to think that apologetics is not necessary at all. It would be wrong to think that we must only preach the word, without also defending it in the various ways necessary. The difficulty is not whether to defend the word, but how to do it, and how much. We can see from Scripture that because apologetics is actually just a natural element of evangelism, it must always begin with and end with the gospel itself. We don’t do it for its own sake, but for the sake of evangelism. And, in this regard, it is of great importance. It is not a game. It is unequivocally not a sophistic exercise using clever words and cunning arguments by which we test our intellectual mettle. Unfortunately, that is often how it is treated; and it is easy to treat it thus, because it is the natural inclination we have as sinners. It is also often easy to perceive it this way, even when it is being done correctly (I think, for example, of how James White is sometimes seen by other Christians). Apologetics is a presentation of the truth for the urgent purpose of saving souls. And that is certainly something which every Christian is called to do, and so inasmuch as this is the case, every Christian ought to learn how to conduct apologetics. As I say, this doesn’t necessarily require continual study, or a grasp of intricate arguments. But it does require some basic understanding of philosophy and argumentation. We cannot simply assert the gospel and think that that is the extent of our duty as Christians.

Regards,
Bnonn

I am charged with defending the moot that the Christian God is a necessary precondition for human reason. JC, my opponent, takes a physicalist approach; meaning that he believes everything about reality can be ultimately reduced to the physical universe; that the supernatural does not exist, and does not need to exist. While his particular view is, I think, trivial to refute, I am faced with a particularly challenging task in going further and proving that the specific supernaturalism taught by the Bible is the only kind which makes human reason possible.

Definitions

Lest we find ourselves arguing at cross purposes because of some ambiguity, it seems to me that the meaning of the entire moot ought to be briefly considered—

The Christian God

I affirm, of course, the God of the Bible; but to exhaustively prove all of his attributes as necessary to human reason would require an argument from biblical rationalism. Since I have agreed to present an argument from reason instead, I must settle upon some attributes which are both useful to that argument, and unique to God himself. I am going to select aseity and trinity.

Aseity is the condition of being underived, noncontingent, and necessarily existent. This is in contrast to the material universe, which is derived from, contingent upon, and coincidentally existent because of God. Trinity is the state of being one single, united, indivisible substance comprised of three distinct persons.

Given the attributes chosen, and the limitation I face in having to prove the Christian God as necessary without an epistemological appeal to his Scripture, I would like to preclude speculative deities. It seems unreasonable to place such a burden of proof upon me that I must not only show that the physicalist worldview lacks the preconditions for reason, and show that an aseitic and trinitarian God is necessary; but also show that no counterfactual deity fulfilling these criteria is adequate. If I can show that an aseitic and trinitarian deity must exist, then, given the existence of such a deity in Christianity and his absence from any other religion, I consider that sufficient to persuade the unprejudiced intellect.

A Necessary Precondition

A necessary precondition is simply something which must be the case in order for something else to be the case. In this example, I contend that if the Christian God did not exist, then human reason could not exist. In one sense, the word necessary is superfluous; however, I wished to include it so that the moot was as clear as possible. Note that I am arguing that the Christian God is a necessary precondition. I have not chosen to defend the moot that he is the necessary precondition. This is simply because there may be other preconditions which are also necessary, but are not God. For example, JC may argue that the human brain is a necessary precondition for human reasoning. Since it may be beyond the scope of my own presentation to say whether or not this is so, and whether or not God is the necessary precondition for human brains also, it seemed best to simply leave the moot open to these possibilities.

Human Reason

I take human reason, broadly, to mean any process of the mind; for example, the process that you are going through at the moment in seeing these words, apprehending their individual meanings, relating them into propositions, and reflecting upon those propositions. I include qualia (subjective, first person experiences of objective, third-person phenomena) within the scope of human reason, since they are often integral to it despite not being rational per se. However, I will be focusing on what we might call the “core” of human reason: logical inference itself. I include the ancillary items of qualia and apprehension and the like because they seem, in a functional sense, to be inseparable from this core rational process.

The Argument

I contend that God is the precondition for reason. Although it is trivial to argue that physicalism makes human reason impossible, I have spent a lot of time pondering precisely how to develop this argument from a negative one into a positive one in defense of Christian theism specifically. I have come to the conclusion that the best way to attempt this is to focus on the heart of the topic: logical inference.

We would all agree that, if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. We believe that we apprehend this conclusion in view of the two premises, and the relationship we perceive between them. Now, it is evident that this relationship is not a physical one; and the premises are not physical things; and the properties they have of being about something (which is called intentionality) and of being true or false are not physical properties. In every way, this is a non-physical situation. A physical person named Socrates may be at the center of it, but the actual argument is clearly not a physical thing. Neither is the mind in which the argument is apprehended; but rather it is a real, but immaterial, non-physical entity. We might say that it is made of mental substance, as opposed to the brain which is made of physical substance. If you’re unconvinced about this, consider that a mental state can be about something, or that it can be true—and now try to say the same thing of physical brain states. We know that it doesn’t make sense to say that one state of the brain is about another, any more than that an electron is about a photon. Truth and intentionality are not physical properties. They are mental ones.

We know, because we are immediately aware of it through introspection, that we believe Socrates is mortal because of the premises: that all men are mortal, and that he is a man. When we say because of, we are acknowledging a causal relationship between the premises and the conclusion. The relationship is real; believing the premises really does cause the belief in the conclusion. We therefore conclude that our mental state in which we apprehend that Socrates is a man, and our mental state in which we apprehend that all men are mortal, are both causally linked in some way to our mental state in which we apprehend that Socrates is therefore mortal. There is a real, non-physical relationship between these premises and the conclusion.

None of this denies that our mental states may correlate to physical states in our brains. But we cannot reduce the mental states to these physical states, because we would then remove truth and intentionality completely, since they are non-physical things. Similarly, we cannot say that the mental states are caused by physical states, because then the only real causation would be physical causation while the mental states are just along for the ride, having no actual influence on what happens. But we have just established that mental states do really have causal influence on other mental states. If they don’t, then logical inference does not actually take place, and the relationship between premises and conclusions does not really exist.

But we agree that this relationship does exist. What is interesting about it, however, is that, although it entails a mind (because it is a mental relationship), it does not entail our minds. We could none of us exist, and yet we must acknowledge that this mental relationship would still hold. We perceive that it is a necessary one, and that it could not be otherwise; that it applies to everyone, and it is not a matter of convention, but of necessity. It is what we might call a mental law—or, really, mental laws, since there are several discrete relationships which we apprehend. We give them names, like noncontradiction and identity.

But mental laws do imply a mind. By definition, the mental entails a mind; and so universal, necessary mental laws therefore must imply a universal, necessary mental mind. We could otherwise phrase this by saying that such laws must imply an aseitic God. A necessarily existent, noncontingent, underived, and immaterial Mind exists. To the best of my knowledge, this formulation of God applies to only a very few deities. In fact, it seems only to describe YHVH—whether that be the Jewish, Muslim, or Christian understanding of him. However, I am not an expert on comparative religion, and so JC is welcome to dispute this point.

Now Judaism and Islam believe, and strongly affirm, that God ultimately is one. That is to say, he is a unity, and is also unary. They deny that he is several persons in one substance. While this does permit them to claim a unifying principle between propositions, since God, being one, is ultimately unity, it denies them the ability to have propositions themselves in any meaningful way. This is because propositions tend to describe things which are different—and if God, ultimately, is one, then how could plurality come about? This problem is only satisfactorily resolved by the Christian God; who, being three in one, represents an equal ultimacy of unity and plurality. Therefore, of the three religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), only Christianity remains viable, because God has revealed perspicuously in the New Testament that he is a trinity.

This, basically, is the position I will defend as we proceed: that there must be a real mental substance and real mental laws in order for argumentation to be possible (including argumentation against a real mental substance); that these mental laws entail an aseitic Mind; and that this aseitic mind must be a unity and a plurality, which implies the Christian God.

Continued in Steve’s opening statement »

In the comments of that post, a great deal of interaction took place between atheists and Christians, with a lengthy dialog being established between my friend Jim Cateno and a poster named “JC”. This dialog focused largely on the difficulty the atheist has accounting for logic in a physicalist worldview—that is: how does a non-rational universe give rise to rational thinkers? Jim had asked for my own thoughts on this dialog, and so I joined the discussion and spent some time expanding certain aspects of the arguments he had made. The core of my presentation focused on the conceptual dissonance between the materialist worldview, and what we know about thinking. This is a somewhat different approach than I would normally take, since it is not a presuppositional argument in the typical sense of the term—it focuses on a particular aspect of metaphysics (philosophy of mind) rather than on epistemology. It therefore supposes certain knowledge on the part of the non-Christian, in order to demonstrate how this knowledge is incongruent with his worldview; whereas the presuppositional method I generally advocate would focus on denying this knowledge altogether. That is not to say that we are conceding any knowledge to the atheist in this alternate approach; rather, we assume it only for the sake of argument. This is simply the direction the conversation took; while I did briefly present epistemological reasons to deny the materialist worldview at a more fundamental level, these reasons were not engaged in the discussion, since the central topic was already centered around logic and human reasoning.

JC eventually requested that we continue the discussion via email, since it seemed to him to have outgrown the comments area of the post to which it was attached. Since I see little value in a discussion confined to two people, because it is generally the audience who most benefits and there is no audience, I requested that, if he would like to continue, then we should do so in a more formal and open capacity. Therefore, we agreed that we would publicly debate the matter, and decided upon the following moot:

The Christian God is a necessary precondition for human reason.

This can, in my view, be reduced to the more succinct title which I have given to this entry; but the above proposition is the full moot under debate. We will present an opening statement (maximum 1500 words), then a first and second rebuttal (maximum 3000 words each), and then a closing statement (maximum 1500 words). Before I began my opening statement, however, I wished to here make some preliminary remarks which seem important to the general debate, but which do not contribute to my actual defense.

I will be presenting a version of what is known as the argument from reason, popularized in print by C S Lewis in his book Miracles, and more recently online by Victor Reppert, who authored C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason. Victor runs two philosophical blogs, ‘Dangerous Idea’ and ‘Dangerous Idea 2′, which I commend to anyone interested in the issues surrounding the philosophy of mind. It ought to be evident to anyone familiar with my own work that this is not an argument I have presented before; and neither is it one which I would favor in most apologetic encounters, since I believe the properly presuppositional method is more basic and more powerful. However, it is my view that the argument (or, really, arguments) from reason can be used, following a presuppositional presentation, as a further vector for investigating the Christian’s claim that the biblical worldview properly explains reality while the atheist’s does not. This is achieved by focusing on various aspects of human reasoning, showing them to be impossible within a physicalist worldview.

The closest I have come to a presentation of an argument from reason would be in my brief comments regarding the immaterial and material in The Wisdom Of God. Specifically, in the appendix on science I challenge the empiricist to prove that there is anything except the immaterial mind—to show me, if logic is indeed a part of the physical universe, the logic carrier particle, the “logitron”. Since many thinking Christians are in a position where they must defend their faith to entrenched atheists who really do believe only in the physical universe, it seems to me a valuable exercise to expand on the problems inherent to such a view when we come to explain human reason itself. This is not to say that the epistemological problems which I present in The Wisdom Of God are not both logically prior and sufficient—rather, that another vector for demonstrating the absurdity of atheism may be useful.

In regard to this, it should then be evident that an argument from reason is ancillary to a presuppositional apologetic. It augments it, but it does not aim to replace it. It seems to me that only the presuppositional apologetic can both destroy an unbelieving worldview and also prove Christianity. Most proponents of the argument from reason would seem to agree—certainly it is Victor’s view that arguments from reason are not intended to establish the necessary truth of Christianity itself, but rather show merely that supernaturalism is a better alternative for interpreting reality than naturalism is.

I mention this because I have, despite these limitations, agreed to defend the moot that not merely is a god necessary to human reason; but the God. Please bear in mind the limitations of the argument from reason as I defend this moot. In order to properly win the debate, I must not merely show—as I will—that naturalism is unable to account for human reason. That much is relatively trivial. But I have taken a full burden of proof in this debate, and confined that proof to deductions from human reason itself. I must not merely disprove my opponent’s worldview, but prove the biblical one. I must not merely show that a worldview which denies the supernatural is untenable, nor even that the worldview which affirms the specific supernatural claims made by the Bible is tenable; rather, I must show that this worldview is necessary.

I am not convinced that this is possible. However, I have agreed to defend the moot in question for several reasons. Firstly, I enjoy a challenge. Having to defend a moot which seems, to me, inherently indefensible will force me to seek new ways to employ or expand the arguments from reason. This, secondly, will hopefully offer other Christian apologists new perspectives or insights into these arguments. And thirdly, I believe it is important to explore and demonstrate the limitations of various arguments used in defense of Christianity, so as to emphasize their correct place.

Update: February 19, 2008

As detailed in my general invitation to debate, JC has dropped out by default after becoming unreachable. Steve Zara has therefore kindly agreed to take his place in defending the negative position.

Continued in my opening statement »