You can read all about it in ‘Is “biblical Christianity” the only rational worldview? (And is atheism wicked?)’ and pick up the pieces from there.

But what I particularly want to do here is call out Randal to answer three questions I’ve already put to him, and which he has summarily ignored.

The story so far

Hoping to illustrate how unbelief cannot be necessarily sinful, Randal formulated a story about “Dr Z” (presumably a different fellow to the rather callous fellow in Borderlands) who loses his faith after seeing a great deal of atrocity. He asked what we should say to this fellow given his situation and his new agnosticism. I thought to myself, “Hrmm, sounds like Job was in a worse situation than Dr Z. After all, his whole family was brutally slaughtered. So what did he say?” Thus I replied:

Randal, in your contrived scenario with Dr Z, I believe a sinless and correct response would be:

“You speak as one of the foolish men would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” [cf Job 2:10 —DBT]

But perhaps you don’t believe that the fool says in his heart, “There is no God”? [cf Psalm 14:1 —DTB]

I think this is a reasonable response. After all, Job’s wife wasn’t even suggesting that Job deny God’s existence; only that he deny his goodness. That seems like a lesser denial to me, though of course both are pretty bad. But Job rebukes her as foolish, rightly noting that God is free to give and take as he pleases.

But here’s what Randal has to say:

My jaw dropped to the floor when I read that one. This guy makes Job’s comforters look like rank amateurs. Dr. Z, his shirt still soaked with the blood of the eight year old he labored to save, is a foolish man?

Well, yeah. I’m not impressed by the attempt to divert attention from the actual issue by appealing to the emotion of the situation, because I dare say Job was in a more wretched emotional state—yet managed to “not sin with his lips”. If God is the grounds for all goodness and rationality, then of course denying him—in any situation—is foolish. (Maybe Randal denies that God must be the grounds for all goodness and rationality, but that seems a patently anti-Christian position for a so-called Christian to take.)

However, Randal proved very evasive about his position, so it’s hard to know for sure. To try to clarify where he stands, I asked him:

My questions

1. Do you deny that we have an obligation to believe in God? For example, do you deny that the gospel is a command as well as an invitation; that disobeying God’s commands is sinful; or that God will judge unbelief as sin?

2. Do you deny that it is “the fool” who says in his heart, “There is no God”?

3. Do you deny that a considered disbelief in God is immoral and irrational?

You seem to be saying that provided one has what he thinks is a good excuse for rejecting the source of goodness and rationality, one is not rejecting goodness and rationality (ie, one is not being evil and irrational). That seems like an obvious contradiction. If God is indeed the source of these things, how could there even be a good reason for rejecting him?

So far, no reply. Randal has made some comments on my tone; but not on my content. Curiously, while condemning the tone of his interlocutors, he likened one of them to Edward Norton in American History X—ie, a Nazi skinhead who brutally kills blacks. Nice one Randal. Irenic of you.

Still, you have the chance to set the record straight. You’re welcome to reply here, or of course to create a new post on your own blog.

Anyway, I did some digging online today, and discovered I was wrong about how many men would commit rape if there were no consequences.

It’s not one in four men. It’s one in two. Here’s what I found:

In a study at UCLA, an account of rape was read to male subjects (without the word “rape” included). 53% said there was some likelihood that they would behave in the same fashion as the man described in the story—if they could be sure of getting away with it. (Without this assurance, only 17% said they might emulate the rapist’s behavior.)

In another study, 356 men were asked: “If you could be assured that no one would know and that you could in no way be punished for engaging in the following acts, how likely, if at all, would you be to commit such acts?” Among the sexual acts listed were “forcing a female to do something she really didn’t want to do” and “rape”. 60% of the sample indicated that under the right circumstances, there was some likelihood that they would rape, use force, or do both.

Other interesting facts:

• In a study of high school males, 50% of those interviewed believed it acceptable “for a guy to hold a girl down and force her to have sexual intercourse in instances such as when ‘she gets him sexually excited’ or ‘she says she’s going to have sex with him and then changes her mind’”.
• The self-reported likelihood of raping is correlated with physiological sexual arousal by rape depictions. So it’s not just that these subjects think it’s okay or they’re saying they’d do it; they actually are physiologically wired for it. Male students who say they might rape a woman if they could get away with it are significantly more likely than other male students to be sexually aroused by portrayals of rape. In fact, they were more sexually aroused by depictions of rape than by depictions of mutually consenting sex.
• About 10% of men surveyed were sexually aroused by”very extreme violence” with “a great deal of blood and gore” that “has very little of the sexual element”.
• About 20% to 30% showed substantial sexual arousal by depictions of rape in which the woman never shows signs of arousal, only abhorrence.
• About 50% to 60% showed some degree of sexual arousal by a rape depiction in which the victim is portrayed as becoming sexually aroused at the end.

These figures are comparable to another finding that 44% of a sample of 930 adult women reported having been the victim of one or more rapes or attempted rapes over the course of their lives. This is all from a book published in the eighties called Pornography as a Cause of Rape, by Diana Russell, PhD. It draws on several prior studies in the US and Canada. You can read the whole thing online in a format that will make your eyes bleed. But there are more recent statistics from One in Four USA:

• One in four American college women report being the victims of rape or attempted rape since their fourteenth birthdays.
• One in five, according to another survey across 100 colleges, has actually been raped at some point in her life.
• Another study indicates that one in five female high school students has also been raped.
• More than one in five men report “becoming so sexually aroused that they could not stop themselves from having sex, even though the woman did not consent.”
• Of those rapes reported to the police (which is between one third and one sixth of the total number), only 16% result in prison sentences. Therefore, approximately 2.5–5% of the time, a man who rapes ends up in prison; 95–97.5% of the time he does not.
• These statistics seem to be relatively similar worldwide, though there are discrepancies (for example, in South Africa one in four men admit to rape, presumably because of beliefs about AIDS).

In summary, I realize that this is hardly a robust defense of the doctrine of total depravity. However, it lends a great deal of credence—in a straightforwardly shocking way—to the Christian claim that men are sinners by nature; that the desires of their hearts are inclined toward evil continually, and that only the grace of God restrains them from gross wickedness (in this life). I’ll get around to proving the same about women some other time.

Related posts:

1. Gandhi: Saint or Sinner?

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.

Damian over at ‘And Slaters Go Plop’ has recently written on Dogma, arguing against its intellectual legitimacy, and asking how we can avoid it. He says,

By ‘dogmatic’ I am describing an absolutist kind of belief that, if I could summarise in my own words, boils down to the fact that you would really rather hold to what you believe than accept an alternative even if the alternative is true. Dogma is the belief you refuse to interrogate.

Dogma in Christianity

I’d like to note, for the record, that this is not how dogmatism is typically perceived in Christianity. Dogma is a mainstay of biblical Christianity, and where it is rejected the religion crumbles. Dogma is there whenever a doctrine is taken as authoritative, or presupposed as true—such as when we treat the Bible as the word of God. So, for the sake of avoiding confusion, let it be noted that Christians do not define dogma in such a negative way. That is not the primary meaning of the word, as most dictionaries reflect. William Shedd’s Dogmatic Theology, for instance, is a seminal and highly positive dissertation on the theoretical truths of faith concerning God and his works.

Why is dogmatism bad anyway?

As regards this colloquial, negative view of dogmatism, however, some questions need to be asked. Damian seems to be taking absolutism in one’s beliefs as inherently undesirable, assuming we do want truth. But this doesn’t seem a very sustainable attitude if he wishes to be consistent and avoid special pleading.

A dogma, he says, is the belief you refuse to interrogate. But what of beliefs which are not readily interrogatable? Presumably, for instance, we all believe that our sense perception correlates accurately to a real, external world. Is that belief undesirable or unlikely merely because it cannot be readily interrogated? In fact, since we resist attempts to interrogate that belief, and don’t take them seriously, are we acting in a poor or intellectually shoddy manner? It certainly doesn’t seem so. Thus, there look to be at least some beliefs we may hold quite rightly and properly as being basically unquestionable, without shirking our philosophical responsibilities. Why is it, then, that Christians should not take the divine inspiration of Scripture as such a belief? Damian needs to make a better case as regards the negative nature of dogmatism, spell out just when it does and does not apply, and why.

Similarly, what of beliefs which are held on good grounds? Damian presumably thinks he has good grounds for believing that I am a real person and not, say, an advanced computer program writing posts in a convincingly human way. Should he be condemned for resisting the compulsion to interrogate his belief in my existence as a real person on every possible occasion? Were someone to say to him: Your belief in that chap Bnonn Tennant is dogmatic because you refuse to interrogate it! should he jump up in dismay and hire a private detective to find me and stake out my home to verify that, indeed, I am a real person who makes real blog posts? In fact, is he not being entirely rational to refuse to interrogate this belief, in the absence of any good evidence that it is false? If so, why should a Christian be criticized for refusing to interrogate his belief in God, when he has no good reasons to think that it’s false?

Good reasons

And what, indeed, would constitute a good reason for thinking that God doesn’t exist? No doubt Damian believes there are many. But on the other hand, a delusional out-patient from the halfway house down the road might think that there are good reasons for believing I don’t exist and am in fact a complicated artificial intelligence. He could probably find all sorts of evidences which, if looked at the right way and with the right mindset, seem quite compelling; and he might produce all sorts of arguments showing that Damian really has the burden of proof. Should Damian be persuaded—should he even look at these evidences or accept this burden of proof—if he already knows that the fellow is a schizophrenic who reverts to believing that Christian bloggers are really internet-capable AIs whenever he’s off his meds? If not, why should a Christian act differently when he knows from Scripture that atheists are self-deceiving fools who deny the existence of God because of their sin?

The skeptic’s false humility

The last point I’d like to make is as regards Damian’s assertion that if we refuse to honestly put our beliefs to the test then we ought to show a little more humility when telling others what we ‘know’ to be true. As I’ve already suggested above, this is a perfectly silly attitude to knowledge—its implication being that a belief which is not tested cannot constitute knowledge in any proper sense.

Even ignoring his obvious imposition of a scientific method of knowledge-acquisition onto religious or philosophical matters, where it doesn’t belong, is this reasonable? Does Damian need to verify my existence, for example, before he can say that he knows I’m not an artificial intelligence? Is this the way he really operates in terms of making knowledge claims? Or take another example: say he sees an acquaintance, Roger, at the supermarket. He doesn’t speak to Roger for whatever reason, and no one else at the supermarket knows him, so Damian is the only one to recognize him. Say Roger is arrested the next day on some charge. Damian thinks Roger can’t be guilty, because he saw him at the supermarket at the time the crime was committed. Is Damian really going to say that he does not know Roger was there, since he did not (and no longer can) test that belief? Is it reasonable for me to get up before the jury when he is testifying in Roger’s defense, and say that he ought to show a little more humility when telling them that he ‘knows’ Roger is innocent? Or imagine the situation is reversed, and Damian ‘knows’ Roger is guilty on a similar basis. Is this sort of stringent view of things really sensible? How would it cash out in the real world?

Maybe Damian means to confine this constraint on knowledge to religious claims. This seems arbitrary, but it doesn’t get him anything in any case, since Christian beliefs enjoy far better attestation than the trivial amount of support in the example above. In fact, Christians have excellent grounds for saying that they know certain things—so why should they shuffle and slink and pretend false humility, as if they really aren’t certain when they are? A Christian grounds his beliefs in God’s word—does he then need to interrogate these beliefs, or find ways to test them, in order for them to constitute knowledge? Of course not. The plain fact that they are God’s own testimony is all the justification required. Thus, rather than being commendable, this “humility” of which Damian speaks is despicable. Imagine a Christian who knows the gospel witnessing to someone as follows:

I don’t presume to say I know this, but, well, I believe you’re under God’s wrath and liable to judgment if you don’t repent and trust in the work of Jesus. And…well, I don’t know that Jesus really existed…but I’m sure you should believe anyway!

This is certainly an ignoble way of witnessing. If we, in fact, have good reasons for believing the gospel—if we indeed know the gospel to be true—and then do not urgently entreat others to heed it, attempting to persuade them of its truth as well, we aren’t being “humble”. We are being cads. It doesn’t matter if we have tested our knowledge, or if we can defend it against attack. Speaking for myself, I can—but some Christians can’t for whatever reason. That doesn’t invalidate what they know. Christians don’t accept Damian’s views on epistemology, and neither should they.

So let’s not throw around the “dogmatism” charge too hastily. I am proud to be a dogmatic Christian, and I consider my dogmatism an intellectual virtue. Saying that I am dogmatic is essentially the same as saying that I am a presuppositionalist in my Christian philosophy—a position which I’ve defended on many occasions. If Damian or other atheists would like to dogmatically oppose that, let them start by showing that it even makes sense to do so.

Related posts:

1. NY Times twists on horns of secular free will dilemma

Every now and again, some atheist will claim that Christianity is falsified by Occam’s Razor. Occam’s Razor is the principle of parsimony, which states that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. Basically, the Razor claims that the simplest explanation is the best. The argument forwarded by atheists is generally along the lines either that (i) God is unnecessary to explain the world as we know it, and therefore is unlikely to exist; or, more strongly, that (ii) since God is infinitely complex, the Christian explanation of reality is thus infinitely more complex than a non-theistic one, and so should be rejected by default. (This second argument I find more interesting—it’s what got me thinking about Occam’s Razor to begin with, after Steve Zarbi posited it following our debate.)

It intrigues me that atheists use this as a foundation for “disproving” Christianity. Several obvious problems suggest themselves:

Question-begging

Firstly, how does (i) not beg the question against the Christian? If, in fact, the Christian is correct in asserting that God is not just necessary to explain reality, but is a necessary precondition for reality, then (i) is obviously false and doesn’t constitute an argument at all. Since the Christian has plenty of good arguments of his own which seek to prove his position, these should be evaluated on their own merits rather than dismissed on the dubious basis of parsimony.

Less obviously, (ii) also begs the question. Even if the Christian explanation is infinitely more complex by merit of entertaining an infinitely complex being, perhaps it is the case that, in this particular instance, such a being is a requirement of any rigorous and adequate explanation of reality. The atheist needs to make an argument which shows this is not the case, rather than merely asserting it.

Furthermore, what does the atheist mean by “infinitely complex being”, in reference to God? The term “infinite” is used very freely with relation to God, but is generally a qualitative term rather than a quantitative one. That is, when we say that God is “infinite”, we tend to be referring to some superlative characteristic of his, rather than to any actual number of things which inhere in him. So the atheist needs to clarify and argue for his view that God is infinitely complex.

On top of this, even if that argument is successful, he has still not shown that an infinitely complex God entails an infinitely complex explanation. In what sense is the quantitative infinity of God being imputed to the Christian’s explanation of reality? Again, clarification and argument, rather than mere assertion, are required to prove the point.

Complexity is better than simplicity

Secondly, and along similar lines to the question-begging problem, it is self-evidently the case that we can have such a thing as an explanation which is too simple, but not necessarily an explanation which is too complex. Imagine, for example, a detective trying to find an explanation for the death of a man who died from blunt trauma in a factory. It’s obvious to us that an explanation which includes a murderer is more complex than an explanation which doesn’t. According to Occam’s Razor, the detective should favor any explanation which does not needlessly multiply entities. If the death can be explained by an unfortunate mechanical accident, then there isn’t any reason to postulate a murderer. A murderer becomes a needless entity, and so the detective assumes that it was indeed an accident. That’s fair.

However, two obvious things need to be noted: firstly, an explanation which fails to include a necessary entity is too simple, and therefore is necessarily false. Imagine the dead man was 90 years old and had a heart condition. Ordinarily, natural causes would be the simplest and most likely cause of death. But there is evidence of blunt trauma; so if the detective posits a natural heart attack as the explanation for the man’s death, his explanation is obviously too simple—and thus must be wrong. A blunt object is a necessary entity in the explanation.

Secondly, and on the other hand, a murderer could have killed the man in such a way as to make the death appear accidental. So the fact that the explanation without a murderer is more simple does not guarantee its truth; and the fact that the explanation with a murderer is more complex does not guarantee its falsehood. In fact, we can imagine a fantastic and highly unlikely explanation for the man’s death, involving any number of entities that the detective would never think of, which was nonetheless true.

So an over-simple theory must be wrong, but an “over”-complex theory might be right. There are plenty of good arguments to show that a non-theistic explanation of reality is over-simple in such a way that it must be false. I hope to discuss more of these in the Philosophy section of Thinking Matters Talk as time goes on.

Occam’s Razor has no grounds in a non-theistic worldview

The last and most convincingly troublesome problem for the atheist is that Occam’s Razor itself, on which his objection is based, really has no grounds whatsoever in a non-theistic worldview. The atheist wants to say that we should not multiply entities needlessly. A Christian may well agree with him, because he knows from revelation (both special and general) that God typically does not act in a needlessly complicated way. He has designed the universe to act consistently, and in a way which is fairly straightforward, even in its complexity. He has also designed our senses and intellects in such a way that we can apprehend the way the world works, and discover things about it. Most importantly, he has built into us certain expectations about the world, such that our intuitions generally match up to reality. Thus we have grounds for affirming Occam’s Razor.

But an atheist has no such grounds. In a non-rational universe, whether mechanistic or probabilistic, what possible reason could he have for asserting that simpler explanations are better? Why should they be? As a rule of thumb, at least fifty percent of the time we should expect the more complex explanations to true. There isn’t any physical law of parsimony such that the universe must operate in such a way that simpler explanations are better, is there? So on what basis does the atheist assert Occam’s Razor at all?

He could say that, historically, the simpler explanations have been true. And maybe this is so. But then why does he think that this will continue to be the case? After all, we know very little of the universe, and we haven’t been around very long in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps our history is an aberration, and in fact it is a general rule that the likelihood of an explanation being true tends to rise with its complexity. How can he know this isn’t the case?

In truth, he affirms Occam’s Razor because his God-given intuitions suggest very strongly to him that it’s true. Unfortunately, because his intuitions are indeed God-given, he is most certainly misapplying them in using them as a basis for objecting to God’s existence.

Related posts:

1. NY Times twists on horns of secular free will dilemma

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.

Related posts:

1. NY Times twists on horns of secular free will dilemma

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.

But the sad thing is what this does to our children. When children are denied access to science, to an understanding of reality, that is immoral. Its a form of child abuse. We should think of this when we hear news of creationists attempts to introduce their material into New Zealand’s school science classes (see Culture wars come to New Zealand). And what about those children who are educated in ‘faith school’? Or those home educated? What guarantee is there that they are not being denied access to a good education in science?

This sort of rhetoric is pretty common from New Atheists, but I didn’t really expect it from Ken. He’s usually more fair-minded. It’s hard to believe that someone who claims the rational high ground can casually throw out the accusation of child abuse. But perhaps this just shows how easily “freethinkers” are influenced by, and indoctrinated in New Atheist dogma. In any case, I want to respond carefully, thoughtfully, and in some detail to this “child abuse” charge. I think that when it’s calmly and carefully examined, it reflects extremely poorly on the people who make it.

Defining the charges

According to Ken, “when children are denied access to science, to an understanding of reality, that is immoral. Its [sic] a form of child abuse.” I infer the following four premises from his statement:

1. Having a right understanding of science is a necessary condition for having a right understanding of reality.
2. Not teaching children a right understanding of reality is immoral.
3. Therefore, not teaching children a right understanding of science is immoral.
4. The kind of immorality involved is in the category of child abuse.

I don’t think any of these premises are unfairly stated. Indeed, I’ve been very conservative. In particular, premise (i) is quite weakly worded considering that Ken not only relates “science” to “an understanding of reality”, but—implicitly—to an exclusively correct understanding. I think it could very justly be reworded: “having a right understanding of science is a sufficient condition for having a right understanding of reality.” But often people state things more strongly than they might necessarily mean, and so I have taken the weaker interpretation here.

Responding to the charges

Each of these premises bear comment. I really will try to be brief, but if you want to get to the meat of the issue, skip right on down to item (iv).

i. Having a right understanding of science is a necessary condition for having a right understanding of reality

This premise raises an obvious question: which understanding of science is necessary for understanding reality? As scientists are so fond of pointing out, science is an ever-changing discipline. Theories which are accepted today are thrown out tomorrow and replaced with new ones which are thrown out in turn the next day. So off the bat, how can this premise be true? More problematically, though, as any good scientist will readily admit, science is always wrong. Einstein, for example, is famously quoted as saying about reality, “We know nothing about it at all. Our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children [...] We shall know a little more than we do now. But the real nature of things—that we shall never know, never.”1

Given this, the most that can reasonably be claimed about science is that understanding it is necessary for understanding the latest scientific theories about reality; which is really saying nothing at all. It doesn’t speak to the success of science in actually understanding reality; nor to the importance of this in education.

And this being the case, premise (i) is manifestly untrue; and even any scientist worth his salt would rightly scoff at it. If reality is to be understood—actually understood—then science is not the tool to use. So this premise must, at the very least, be amended to say that a right understanding of science is a necessary condition for having an approximate understanding of reality. Even then, however, it must be pointed out that science is not, by any means, a sufficient condition for having an approximate understanding of reality—not if “reality” is taken to mean “everything which exists”. After all, if non-physical souls actually do exist, or if God exists, what can science say about these things? Nothing at all. And if science can say nothing at all about the matter of souls, or God, and if souls and God do exist, then science alone cannot by any means furnish us with even an approximate understanding of reality. A scientist would have to beg the question to make that claim.

ii. Not teaching children a right understanding of reality is immoral

Under a Christian worldview this charge could be defended—at least to a degree. The defense would look something like this:

1. Understanding the gospel is a necessary condition for rightly understanding reality (because a right understanding of reality requires an understanding of God and our relationship to him).
2. We are commanded to preach the gospel to everyone (Matthew 28:19–20), and especially to our children (Deuteronomy 6:7).
3. It is immoral (ie, it is sin) to transgress the commands of God.
4. Therefore, it is immoral to not preach the gospel to our children.
5. Therefore, by implication, it is immoral to not teach our children (or any children for whom we are responsible) a right understanding of reality insomuch as that understanding is conveyed in the gospel.

Thus, from a Christian perspective, I am compelled to agree with (ii) to the extent that theological knowledge must be taught to children. Perhaps a case could be made that scientific knowledge must be taught also, but I can’t think how; so I leave it as an exercise for you, the reader.

But Ken is speaking atheistically, not as a Christian. And what grounds does an atheist have to say that something (anything) is immoral? What grounds does he have to say, in particular, that not teaching children an understanding of reality is immoral? Not that I don’t agree with him, but how can he justify his belief here, under an atheistic worldview? He can’t just assert that it’s immoral—he has to be able to show that he has grounds for his assertion. It must be congruent with the rest of what he believes. That’s a burden of proof that he has yet to take up, and without which his accusation is just so much hot air.

iii. Therefore, not teaching children a right understanding of science is immoral

I’ve largely dealt with this conclusion by exposing the complete lack of justification for the premises which lead to it. But notice what a strong, very broad claim it is. Anyone who doesn’t teach their children science (whether in person or by way of schooling) is a child abuser. That is no doubt easy for Ken to say, living in an affluent first world nation where education is taken for granted. But does he think it applies everywhere in the world? If not, why not? And does he think it applies through all of history? If not, why not?

Notice also that a Christian—even a Christian who is himself a scientist—cannot teach his children science in such a way that secular theories are undermined, because secular theories are a priori assumed to be right, and Christian theories (which contradict these) are wrong. So under Ken’s view, Russell Humphreys could not teach his children both big bang and white hole cosmology,2 and conclude that the white hole model must be closer to the truth. That would be so extremely immoral that it is best characterized as child abuse. To actually hold to anything other than a purely secular scientific view of the world, and to pass this on to your children, is child abuse. Since it’s absurd to think that any parent would teach his children that which he believes to be false, it follows that Ken must either think that non-materialists should never be allowed to have children; or at the very least that they should never be allowed to actually parent their children. That is how extreme the logical conclusion of Ken’s view is. Far more extreme than any kind of Christian fundamentalism. Manifestly, in the minds of people like Ken science is no less a fundamentalist religion than any other.

But even if a “right” understanding of science is taught to children, how much is enough? At what point of education have we satisfied our alleged moral obligation to teach science? Most children in New Zealand only learn science up until the age of about fifteen—and what they learn is hardly systematic or comprehensive. Are we, as a country, being grossly immoral by not teaching science better? Are we, as a nation, abusing our children? Should we be enforcing mandatory science education to a university level? And after that, what sort of moral obligation is passed on to children when they become old enough to learn for themselves? Are they acting unethically if they don’t continue to maintain their knowledge of new scientific theories? Are they abusing themselves? If my daughter has no interest in science and never learns anything about it after the age of fifteen, is some kind of immorality going on?

Lastly, is this ethical rule only applicable to science? What about music or math? Art or languages? Is it immoral to not teach those? If not, why not? If so, then all the same questions above apply.

iv. The kind of immorality involved is in the category of child abuse

This is really the crux of the matter. Let me expand on it a bit so that it’s quite clear what is being claimed.

Child abuse is emotional, physical, or sexual harm caused by maltreatment or neglect of a child.3 It is a serious crime. It is wrong—not merely in the sense that speeding on public roads is wrong, or stealing from work. Those are wrong, but not in the sense of being “evil” or “wicked” as people generally use those terms. You don’t go to jail for those sorts of crimes. But child abuse actually is evil. People who abuse children are considered sick; depraved. They go to jail for it.

So Ken is saying that when I teach my daughter at the age of, say, seven years that (a) the Bible is the infallible word of God; (b) that the soundest exegetical understanding of the book of Genesis is as historical narrative; and (c) that orthodox (secular) scientific theories of origins (including cosmological and biological theories) must therefore be mistaken—that I am actually abusing her in a wicked, criminal way, and that I ought to be incarcerated. It is as if I did not feed her and let her become emaciated. It’s as if I let her broken leg turn septic instead of taking her to a doctor. It’s as if I continually shouted obscenities at her, telling her that she’s ugly and fat and hateful and that I can’t stand the sight of her. It’s like me beating her with a hose, or perhaps raping her every now and again. That’s what child abuse is, after all: emotional, physical, or sexual maltreatment or neglect. So teaching my daughter that the Bible is the word of God, and that secular theories which contradict it must therefore be wrong, is in the same category as doing these things to her.

How can I respond to this? Instinctively, with a manly left hook. Failing that, I can only ask: Ken, are you truly that deeply lost in the pit of your self-made religion, worshiping science, that you cannot see the total idiocy of such an accusation? I’m not in favor of teaching children rubbish either. But I’m not going to stand up and say that atheists are child-abusers because they teach their kids nonsense like that there’s no immaterial soul. Or even that they are child abusers for teaching their children utter tripe, such as that Christian homeschoolers are all child abusers. That would just be stupid. It would be, in fact, slander. They’d be rightly not a little ticked off if some religious nutjob accused them of abusing their kids by teaching them what they believe to be true. So why do I need to stand here meekly while some non-religious nutjob accuses me of the same thing?

This is the sort of rhetoric typical of the New Atheists. It is deeply, deeply hypocritical. It is big on vitriol and emotion, but tiny on rational thought. It’s a sadly ironic accusation. Christians are supposed to be the close-minded, unreasoning bigots—but we aren’t the ones saying this sort of thing. We don’t just teach our children that science is sometimes wrong; we have reasons for teaching them this. For believing that the Bible is the word of God. If you doubt it, just look through some of the posts on this blog. Read my book. Read other Christian apologists or philosophers. Read Plantinga or Lewis or Aquinas. Are we also abusing our children when we teach them the arguments made by these great thinkers? What about when we teach them the arguments made by (let’s not mince words) morons like Dawkins and Dennett, and set them homeschool assignments in Year 7 to refute their jejune reasoning? You don’t have to agree with what we say, but what happened to that central sentiment of the Enlightenment: defending our right to say it? You’re turning into the very thing you claim to hate: extremists who believe that anyone who disagrees with you is not only wrong, not only irrational, not only dangerous, but criminal.

You’re turning into the medieval Catholic Church. Stop it before there’s another inquisition.

1. Cited from Gordon Clark, Philosophy of Science and Belief in God (Trinity Foundation: 1996); pp viii–ix.
2. Russell Humphreys, Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe (USA: Master Books, 1994).
3. See answers.com, ‘child abuse’ (http://www.answers.com/child%20abuse) for various definitions along these lines from a number of encyclopedias.

Having now looked in a little detail at being and identity, and argued that, for a Christian, these terms must be at least potentially non-univocal, I think we’re in a good position to examine Steve’s argument.

IV. The formal argument against the Trinity

The quote below has been slightly corrected for grammar and readability—

[...] The Trinity is a logical contradiction. This is a mereological (part/whole) ontological error. Let’s look at this formally:

1. D is defined as { A , B , C } (God defined as {Father, Son, Holy Spirit})
2. ( A = D ) AND ( B = D ) AND ( C = D ) (God wholly present as Father and wholly present as Son and wholly present as Holy Spirit)
3. A = B = C = D (from (2), because “=” is a transitive relation)
4. D := { A , A , A } (from (1) and (3))
5. D := { B , B , B } (from (1) and (3))
6. D := { C , C , C } (from (1) and (3))
7. D := [ D , D , D ] (from (1) and (3))
8. D := { { A , B , C } , { A , B , C } , { A , B , C } } (from (7) and (1))

Conclusion 1: statements (4)–(8) contradict statements (1) and (2).

So, 1 and 2 lead to contradictions—which means that tri-unity is logically impossible. In statement (8), the elements of the sets included in D are defined again as { A , B , C }, in which the “A”s, “B”s, “C”s are again said to be equal to D and thus defined as { A , B , C }—it’s an infinite regress.

Mereology

Steve prefaces this argument with the explanation that the Trinity is “a mereological (part/whole) ontological error”. I don’t know much at all about mereology, except that it’s a theory in mathematics and ontology which describes parts and their relationships to wholes. It replaces talk of “sets” of objects with talk of “sums” of objects, where the objects themselves are no more than the various things which make up wholes. I also know that mereology is not necessarily accepted by those who study these things; so from the start it seems like a suspect basis for formulating an argument against the Trinity. Even if the argument is valid, this might just prove that mereology does not comport with reality, as opposed to proving that the Trinity does not.

Furthermore, if mereology is about describing parts and wholes, and if it describes wholes as the sum of various parts, then from the outset there is likely to be a problem. God is not comprised of parts. Specifically, as I discussed in the previous article, the persons of God are not parts of God; they are fully God. So there appears to at least be a natural antipathy between mereology and Christian ontology; and potentially a significant disconnect. The way that mereology models reality may well be incapable of modeling trinitarian ontology. Trying to do so will result in contradictions and errors within the mereological framework. But that’s no reason to assume that trinitarianism is faulty; quite the opposite. Given that we’re under no compulsion to accept mereology in the first place, since it is just one man-made theory of ontology; and given that we’re under every compulsion to accept God’s own testimony about his being, any argument against that testimony which relies on the man-made theory is—well, rather weak to say the least.

Thus, given how mereology models reality (as I understand it) I think there is good reason to reject Steve’s argument without even looking at it. Still, I’m going to look at it anyway.

Premise (1)

D is defined as { A , B , C } (God defined as {Father, Son, Holy Spirit})

As I start considering this, I find myself wondering exactly what it means. For all its formality, this premise is very ambiguous. (This is a problem, because the rest of the argument hangs on it.) It’s hard to be sure exactly what is meant here, or how sound it is theologically. In what way is God defined as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Judging from what little I know of mereology, I assume that A, B, and C are meant to be parts of the whole, D. But this immediately runs into problems because the Father, Son, and Spirit are not parts of God. God is not a whole comprised of three person-parts. Rather, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. As I said just above, mereology appears to be ill-equipped to describe this.

Further, what is the context of this definition? Other things define God aside from the Father, Son, and Spirit. It’s obviously an ontological definition (that is, it is defining God’s being)—but even ontologically speaking there are other things than the persons of the Trinity which can be said to define God. There is knowledge, for example. There is spirit.

That said, I take it that Steve is couching the argument in the context of persons—so, whatever else defines God, the one essence, God (D) is defined as three persons (A, B, C). To be fair to Steve, he probably thought this was obvious—but I found the ambiguity here, and in the rest of the premises, made it very difficult to accurately interpret the argument.

Premise (2)

( A = D ) AND ( B = D ) AND ( C = D ) (God wholly present as Father AND wholly present as Son AND wholly present as Holy Spirit)

Unfortunately, this premise is as ambiguous as the first. What does the equals sign represent here? Generally, “=” indicates actual equality—that is, identity, such as in 1 = 1 or 2 = ( 1 + 1 ). If so, A = D would be describing equality or sameness of being. The English translation of the notation seems to bear this out, although it’s frustratingly unclear as well. The term “wholly present as” is presumably supposed to mean “shares fully in being”; so the Father shares fully in being God, as do the Son and the Spirit. So it seems that what this premise is saying is that the Father is wholly God, the Son is wholly God, and the Spirit is wholly God; meaning that they are all of the same being. This is true under trinitarian theology, so let me continue—

Premise (3)

3. A = B = C = D (from (2), because ‘=’ is a transitive relation)

Here the argument runs aground. It tries to leverage the transitive relationship of identity, which I mentioned in part 3 of this series, to show that, because for instance A = D and C = D, therefore A = C. (In other words, the Father is the same as the Spirit.) If this were the case, it would actually be quite sufficient to disprove trinitarianism, because it would prove modalism instead. The fact that you can then substitute A for C because A = C, and get a statement like D = { A, A, A }, and so invoke an infinite regress, is really just gravy. Premises (4) onward rely on premise (3) to make their case, but all that’s actually needed to disprove the Trinity is premise (3) itself.

There is a major difficulty with this premise, though: it assumes a univocal theory of being. It assumes that the statement “A = D” is completely unambiguous and describes only one possible relationship. We, as Christians, have good reasons for holding to a non-univocal theory of being, and so we have good reasons for denying that the equals sign represents an exclusive relationship. In fact, since this argument is very much similar to the modalist argument I showed previously, it makes no traction against a Christian who holds to the thesis that being—at least as it relates to God—is not univocal in the way we normally assume.

Therefore, in a sense, Steve’s argument is being made against a strawman. I have no reason to accept premise (3) as is because, under my view, it is an incomplete or non-exclusive identity statement. “A = B = C = D” is not a sufficiently complete statement of identity to avoid committing a category error. That is, “A = B”, for example, implies that A actually is B in such a way that it cannot also be not-B. It assumes that there exists only one category of being; whereas I deny this. To properly represent Trinitarianism, premise (3) should be expanded as follows:

1. A = B = C = D where “=” represents sameness of essence.
2. A ¬ B ¬ C ¬ D where “¬” represents sameness of persons.

The potential for confusion here is exacerbated by the fact that D actually represents one of the senses of God’s being (essence), while A, B, and C all represent another sense of being (person). So inserting D into premise (b) above is very confusing, because D is not a person of God at all. This is just a byproduct of trying to use univocal language to describe non-univocal being: you confuse yourself.

Again, let me reiterate that a non-Christian has no reason to accept NUB as a thesis. He has no reason to believe that being is or can be non-univocal, and so he will most likely accuse me of arbitrariness in “inventing” an answer. Bear in mind, though, that it only seems arbitrary if one presupposes that God does not exist and has not testified to his nature through Scripture. If he does exist and has so testified, my defense is not arbitrary at all, and constitutes a sufficient defeater to the objection of self-contradiction—at least inasmuch as that objection must be leveled as an internal critique of Christian doctrine.

In other words, if you presuppose that Christianity is false, this defense is worthless. But since you’ve already presupposed that Christianity is false, your objection to the Trinity on grounds of contradiction is worthless as well, since it’s no more than question begging. If, on the other hand, you presuppose for the sake of argument that Christianity is true, so as to show that, even on its own grounds it contradicts itself, then the NUB thesis defeats this claim. If Christianity is true, then its entire epistemic framework provides fully adequate grounds for believing that (i) God is three and one; and (ii) that our epistemic situation is such that (i) is largely incomprehensible to us.

The other premises

Since the conclusion of Steve’s argument rests on its first three premises, and specifically on the transitive relationship of identity which establishes premise (3), there isn’t any need to examine it further. If NUB defuses premise (3) by showing that it’s equivocal and commits an implicit category error, then the argument fails as an internal critique of Christianity. And, as an external critique, it succeeds only by begging the question against the Christian, and is therefore fallacious. In either case, it is defeated.

This article has been heavily revised as of July 4, 2008, in response to a detailed critique from Mike, which can be viewed in the comment stream.

I’ve now talked about contradictions; argued that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be self-contradictory; acknowledged that Christians must concede at least the appearance of self-contradiction in it nonetheless; and then provided some reasons to explain why this contradiction might appear, and how it might be resolved. I’ve almost said enough to take on a critical examination of Steve’s formal argument. First, though, there is one vital issue which I must draw out of my previous post, which will significantly alter how we, as Christians, see that argument from the get-go.

III. How the ambiguity of being affects the law of identity

In part 2, I mentioned that God does not have parts: the Father is not a part of God; the Son is not a part of God; the Spirit is not a part of God. They are all fully God. They all share fully in God’s attributes. That is, each person of the Trinity is the same being as God. I then went on to suggest that it is reasonable to assume that there is an unspoken equivocation in our understanding of being. God is one being in one sense; three in another—but we don’t understand what it means to draw a distinction between ways of being. Nonetheless, it follows by good and necessary consequence from Scripture that “being” is not a univocal term; it does not (necessarily) have only a single, unambiguous referent. When applied to God, at least, it seems to refer to more than one thing, even though we don’t understand exactly what. When we subject the doctrine of the Trinity to logical analysis, we find that it forces us to formulate a doctrine of being which gives a consistent account of it: the principle of Non-Univocal Being. (Following in Anderson’s slightly droll footsteps, I dub this “NUB”.)

NUB appears central to Christian metaphysics, and affects it in a larger and fairly significant way, because it has ramifications for the law of identity.

The law of identity is one of the three major logical axioms. Simply put, it is the notion that an entity is the same as itself: A is A. By corollary, an entity is not the same as some other entity: A is not B. If an entity was the same as some other entity, then it would be one and the same with that entity: A is B. The reason this is important is because, if we make this identity statement fully explicit, we find that it is saying that

A is the same as B with respect to its being

This is an unproblematically clear statement on the face of it. For a non-Christian it’s probably always unproblematically clear. However, for a Christian committed the thesis of non-univocal being, it is not necessarily clear, despite appearances. For example, if “A” is the Father and “B” is the Son, this statement is both true and false, because it contains an unarticulated equivocation. It is true in one sense for the term “being”, and false in another.

This has obvious ramifications for a certain category of arguments about the nature of God—a category which includes Steve’s argument in part 4 of this series, and similar ones employed by various would-be Christians in support of their Christological heresies. These arguments leverage a key feature of identity, which is transitivity: If A is the same as B, and B is the same as C, then by transitive relationship A is the same as C. This is important because we can draw the following kinds of inferences:

1. The Father is the same as God.
2. The Son is the same as God.
3. Therefore, the Father is the same as the Son.

This is a heresy called Sabellianism or modalism, and is similar to the way in which Steve appeals to transitivity in his argument. However, because it relies on a univocal understanding of being, a Christian has no reason to accept it. If Christianity entails a non-univocal theory of being, he can see clearly that the argument only appears to go through because it equivocates.

Now, let me be clear. I am not suggesting that a non-Christian must accept, on his own terms, that this argument equivocates. He is by no means committed to a thesis such as NUB. He has no reason to be, because he does not presuppose that the Bible’s testimony regarding the nature of God is in any way authentic. What I am saying here is that a Christian may reject the conclusion of this argument because, on his own grounds, the testimony of Scripture gives him good reason to believe that the argument commits some kind of non-obvious error. Because the charge of self-contradiction is an internal critique of the Trinity, the Christian may bring all of his own religion’s resources to bear in refuting that charge. Since NUB is at least one way in which the apparent self-contradiction of the Trinity can be resolved, a Christian has every right to argue that the conclusion of the above argument is false, which is merely apparently contradictory as a result of an unarticulated equivocation. In fact, a Christian need not even be committed to NUB at all in order to use it as a means of showing that in principle these sorts of arguments fail to conclusively prove self-contradiction. Even if NUB is not true, it constitutes a defeater to the argument; just as the greater-good defense constitutes a defeater to the problem of evil, even if it isn’t true.

In other words, as an internal critique of Christian theology, the above sorts of arguments fail. I will show how Steve’s argument in particular fails in the final part of this series. This, alone, does not constitute any kind of reason for a non-believer to accept the doctrine of the Trinity. He can argue against it on other grounds. But NUB is sufficient to show that, on Christian grounds, the charge of internal incoherency is invalid. Having now said this, I think I’m at the perfect point to tackle Steve’s formal argument.

Continued in ‘Square circles and the Trinity, part 4: Steve’s argument’ »