Reason as Evidence for God

I recently recommended Doug Wilson's book Persuasions: A Dream of Reason Meeting Unbelief, to someone in our church who was looking for apologetics reading. Unlike most books about the reasonableness of the Christian faith, this one is written as a narrative, reminiscent of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Each chapter follows the main character, Evangelist, who, while on his way to the City, encounters travelers heading in the opposite direction toward the Abyss. Each traveler represents a non-Christian worldview or philosophy of life, and in the course of his exchanges with them, Evangelist both defends the Christian faith and identifies the problems with their alternative perspectives.

After reading the book, my friend shared his reactions via email. Overall, he was impressed by Wilson's argumentation and felt he did a very good job of substantively addressing important issues in relatively little space. My friend did, however, take issue with how Wilson, via Evangelist, addressed an atheist named Mark. My friend said:

With Mark, for the Evangelist to argue that reason, being a product of random forces, cannot be trusted, nor said to produce a "true" or "false" result is, while technically correct, not a very persuasive argument. It's possible that the chemical reactions resulting from random processes that Mark calls reason are really just random processes, but in the end, it doesn't matter in terms of whether the atheist should believe in God.

Since I devoted some time to responding to my friend's criticism, I thought I'd make my effort serve double duty by posting an edited excerpt of my reply below:

The argument from rationality for the existence of God is one that C. S. Lewis popularized in his book Miracles and that contemporary Christian philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga and Victor Reppert (author of C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason and owner of a blog devoted to discussion of the argument) have advanced.

One has to keep in mind that the dispute between the atheist and the theist doesn't consist merely of disagreement about particular facts but is in actuality a clash of worldviews, systems of interpretation that rest on certain presuppositions about the nature of reality, the sources and scope of human knowledge, and ethics. All of these are intertwined and interrelated. What one believes in one area has consequences for another. For example, if I assume that reality consists exclusively of matter and material processes, a necessary consequent is that there are no such things as objectively existing moral truths. Likewise, claims to knowledge of moral absolutes would be inconsistent with the belief in such a universe. What the argument from reason asks is, given our belief that we are able to form true beliefs that correspond to the world outside our minds and that we are able to make reliable inferences and deductions, what kind of universe best accounts for or grounds these phenomena.

In Miracles, Lewis contrasts the naturalist and the supernaturalist. The former, he says, contends that reality is a closed system in which every state of affairs can be explained (at least in principle) in terms of some prior state of natural affairs. He writes (quotations are from the 1978, Collier Books paperback edition):

What the Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the thing you can't go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord. Inside that total system every particular event (such as your sitting reading this book) happens because some other event has happened; in the long run, because the Total Event is happening (6).

Lewis maintains that all that is necessary in order to demonstrate that naturalism is false is to identify something that operates independently of the system.

If Naturalism is to be accepted we have a right to demand that every single thing should be such that we see, in general, how it could be explained in terms of the Total System. If any one thing exists which is of such a kind that we see in advance the impossibility of ever giving it that kind of explanation, then Naturalism would be in ruins (12).

He then sets out to demonstrate how reason fits the bill as one phenomenon that cannot be accounted for in completely naturalistic terms and is therefore evidence that nature is not all that exists.

Lewis starts by stating that the possibility of knowledge and science depends on the validity of reasoning. When we use words like "therefore," "must be" and "since" with respect to beliefs of which we are certain, we are only correct to the extent that our beliefs actually correspond to what is the case outside our minds. "But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them -- if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work -- then we can have no knowledge" (14). He quotes J. B. S. Haldane: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms" (15).

Lewis proceeds by stating that in a sentence such as "Grandfather is ill today because he ate lobster yesterday," the word "because" indicates a cause and effect relation. Eating the lobster had the effect of Grandfather being ill. In a sentence such as "Grandfather must be ill today because he hasn't got up yet" (and we know that he has characteristically been an early riser), "because" does not indicate cause and effect (not rising early isn't what caused Grandpa's sickness). Rather, "because" here indicates the reason for our belief that Grandpa isn't feeling well.

Lewis notes that this relation is what logicians call Ground and Consequent. According to a purely naturalistic or materialistic (in the philosophical sense) scheme, all our beliefs are simply physical events that are the effects of prior physical (and non-rational) causes. And, as Lewis points out, "a train of thought loses all rational credentials as soon as it can be shown to be wholly the result of non-rational causes" (26).

The argument from reason sets before us two sets of presuppositions and asks which set provides the necessary preconditions for what we all take for granted, namely the validity of reason and our ability to form true beliefs about the extra-mental world. On one hand there is the belief that mind and rationality emerged from non-rational material processes in which case our beliefs are not the results of processes of reasoning but are thrust upon us by our biology. On the other hand is the theistic presupposition that rationality has always existed and is ultimately behind life. The atheist rejects belief in the existence of God in the name of rationality and science. However, he or she holds to a worldview in terms of which rationality, logic, and knowledge are unintelligible. In his review of atheist Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion, noted Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga offers a condensed version of the argument:

From a theistic point of view, we'd expect that our cognitive faculties would be (for the most part, and given certain qualifications and caveats) reliable. God has created us in his image, and an important part of our image bearing is our resembling him in being able to form true beliefs and achieve knowledge. But from a naturalist point of view the thought that our cognitive faculties are reliable (produce a preponderance of true beliefs) would be at best a naïve hope. The naturalist can be reasonably sure that the neurophysiology underlying belief formation is adaptive, but nothing follows about the truth of the beliefs depending on that neurophysiology. In fact he'd have to hold that it is unlikely, given unguided evolution, that our cognitive faculties are reliable. It's as likely, given unguided evolution, that we live in a sort of dream world as that we actually know something about ourselves and our world.

If this is so, the naturalist has a defeater for the natural assumption that his cognitive faculties are reliable—a reason for rejecting that belief, for no longer holding it. (Example of a defeater: suppose someone once told me that you were born in Michigan and I believed her; but now I ask you, and you tell me you were born in Brazil. That gives me a defeater for my belief that you were born in Michigan.) And if he has a defeater for that belief, he also has a defeater for any belief that is a product of his cognitive faculties. But of course that would be all of his beliefs—including naturalism itself. So the naturalist has a defeater for naturalism; naturalism, therefore, is self-defeating and cannot be rationally believed.

The argument from reason is what is formally known as a reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity) argument that seeks to demonstrate the absurdity of a position when taken to its logical ends. It's somewhat of an involved argument but I think it's actually quite sound regardless of whether or not a particular person is persuaded by it.

A Recent Discovery

Philosopher Victor Reppert, whose book, C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, I referred to two posts ago, has a blog appropriately called dangerous idea. (HT: The Stuff of Life)

Demons Coming to a Theater Near You

Christianity Today reports:

Ralph Winter—producer of the X-Men and Fantastic Four films—is a well-known Christian in Hollywood, and Walden Media has scored one of the biggest box office hits in recent years with their adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, by beloved Christian author C. S. Lewis.
Now these two forces are joining for another Lewis adaptation—this time, his cherished spiritual warfare novel, The Screwtape Letters. Variety reports that Winter will produce the adaptation in association with Walden Media.

The adaptation—described as a "midbudget," mostly live-action film—is slated for release some time in 2008. The novel, first published in 1942, is written as a series of letters between two demons, the elder Screwtape and his young nephew, Wormwood, with the seasoned demon offering his young protégé advice on undermining Christian faith and spreading wickedness.

Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham—who supervised the production of Wardrobe—will be producing alongside Winter.

I first read about this at Gene Veith's blog and, like him, wonder how well the book can be adapted to film. Based on what Walden did with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I have no doubt that there will be some spectacular visual effects. But the Narnia tale is a narrative whereas The Screwtape Letters is considerably different.

In order for it to work, I think the film will have to have a lot of narration - perhaps Screwtape giving dictation while images depict young Wormwood carrying out his uncle's instructions. Part of the intrigue of the novel is that what Lewis describes is all going on in the unseen realm as we carry on our daily routines. How can a movie capture this and still hold an audience's attention? Will this be an instance of the medium obscuring the message? I hope not.

Awfully Good

"God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger--according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way."     - C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Sermon, the Pitch, and the Cashbox

12/7/05 - updated with related posts below

I confess. I've been counting down the days until the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Friday evening I'll be joining a large group from my church to view the film. While at the theater I'll try to put all the marketing hype surrounding the production out of my mind so as not to ruin my enjoyment. As David Wayne notes in his musing about the promotional fervor, "Just as Aslan is on the move in Narnia, so the servants of Mammon are on the move in our world seeking to make us evangelicals their servants." Like David, I too thought back to Tim Challies' question of just how crassly the church is being used to market the new Narnia film as I've witnessed all the hype.


When I read at Reformation 21 that according to the Philadelphia Inquirer Walt Disney Pictures is sponsoring a promotional sermon contest whose winner will be given $1,000, I was shocked. I couldn't believe that Disney would go so far as to sponsor a contest designed to get pastors to give verbal trailers from the pulpit. It just didn't seem like good business sense. Such an offensive move could alienate members of the very audience Disney is banking on to make the film a success.

After a little searching I found what at first appeared to clear Disney of such crass publicity seeking. The "Narnia Sermon Sweepstakes" is sponsored by SermonCentral.com which claims to be the world's largest sermon research site. In addition to $1,000, the grand prize winner will receive a trip for two to London and Oxford, England to walk where Lewis walked and worshiped. All a pastor has to do to enter the competition is submit a qualifying Narnia-related sermon transcript or outline. Apparently it's not necessary that the sermon actually have been preached but the odds are good that if a pastor has expended the time and effort to compose such a message, it will get preached. And those entries that are eventually posted on SermonCentral's site will probably be preached in some form or another from numerous pulpits. The Inquirer claims that Disney is using hired agencies to promote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in churches. Among them is Outreach Media Inc. which, according to the article, hosts the sermon contest. At first, I thought this was an error having read at SermonCentral.com that it was sponsoring the contest. However, when I visited SermonCentral's page for potential advertisers, I learned that it is an arm of Outreach Media and thus it appears that the sermon contest is indeed another Disney marketing strategy.


Outreach Media Inc. affirms Christian orthodoxy and states its vision as follows: "To create a network of churches and ministries working together to love and serve people with the goal of inviting every person in America to a local Bible believing church and, ultimately, into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ." I'm sure there are sincere believers at Outreach who are eager to promote the Narnia film because they are persuaded that it has the potential to turn minds toward contemplation of the gospel. However, given their being in Disney's employ, the decision to run a sermon sweepstakes is a matter of very poor judgment. It may lead some to conclude that the folks at Outreach have succumbed to the craving for Turkish Delight.


RELATED:

Christianity Today asks, "Did Disney Pay for Your Sermon?" and likewise questions "the propriety of offering financial incentives for pastors to preach on a commercial product, even if it is Narnia."

Paul C. at Theospeak.net has a few questions of his own: "What's next, pastors wearing suits emblazoned with sponsor's logos like a NASCAR driver? Maybe cash strapped churches could sell commercial breaks during services to help raise funds?"

My Friend Jerry

"Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

The friendship Lewis wrote of is the salve to the loneliness Blamires described in The Christian Mind (see the quote in the banner above). Like many of you, I’ve experienced the painful solitariness of not having someone to talk with who shared the doubts, thoughts, cares, and aspirations that stirred within. I also know the joyous relief of encountering people who, upon hearing my heart, asked, “You too?” Jerry Foote is one of those traveling companions for whom and to whom I’m deeply grateful.

Jerry supervised my pastoral internship when I was a seminarian. When it was done, I had the pleasure and privilege of serving with him on the pastoral staff of the church I’ve served for almost 13 years. By his words and example, I learned a lot about what it means to be a shepherd of God’s people. I remember frequently asking myself, “Why didn’t I think to do that?” when he humbly served others in unglamorous but loving ways. I also recall with fondness, conversations about theology, literature, evangelical fads, and bad puns (Jerry’s, not mine). Because I so appreciated his friendship, I was very sad when, a few years ago, he moved away to serve as the senior pastor of a church in Iowa.

Jerry’s familiarity with the Old Testament and ability to trace themes through the Bible are impressive. He helps people see that the Bible isn’t an assortment of unrelated texts but a unified record of God’s redeeming activity. Despite emphatic professions to believe in biblical inspiration and authority, Christians frequently adopt interpretive practices that contradict this affirmation. Whenever we disregard literary considerations, such as context, we fail to treat the biblical texts as authoritative. This has always been of great concern to Jerry.

I received an email from Jerry a few days ago notifying me that he has taken up blogging. This is welcome news because I’m one of many who have encouraged him to write (though I had books, not blogs, in mind). Jerry’s blog is called Read with Open Eyes and is devoted to commonly misinterpreted and misapplied passages of Scripture. In his blog's banner Jerry says:

Many things we think the Bible teaches aren't really there. We need to read the Bible with our eyes open. That is, pay attention to what is actually written, even if it overrules things we have always believed. It is the Bible (not our concepts about the Bible, or sermons we have heard, or songs that we learned) that is God's revelation to us.

I'm looking forward to profiting again from Jerry's insights and hope you'll avail yourself of them as well. As you do, you may even find yourself thinking, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."

An Atheist's Problem with the Problem of Evil

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too - for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The following online exchange began with Mark (not his real name) claiming that even if the Genesis account were true, it would have been wrong for God to penalize Adam for eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil since prior to that time he would have had no moral understanding.

*****************

KP: You realize your objection is based on certain ethical assumptions which are also at odds with your atheistic faith. You're reasoning that one shouldn't be blamed for what he doesn't know is wrong. But as an atheist, what is the foundation for your making such moral claims?

Mark: Adam had the intelligence of an infant or maybe an animal until he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, no? How is he to be blamed for disobeying God? He was simply not capable of differing right from wrong yet. And my raising this objection is not a problem when we're discussing the internal consistency of the Christian story. Then the ethical norms in question are the Christian ones

KP: It doesn't follow that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant that prior to that Adam had no knowledge of what is right. If you pay attention to the context and the literary cues, it's clear that eating from the tree was tantamount to Adam and Eve deciding for themselves what was good and evil as opposed to submitting to God. This is why, for example, the formula "And God saw that it was good..." is repeated in the first chapter and then in Chapter 3 the transgression is preceded by the words "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food...." Prior to this God alone saw what was good but the nature of the transgression was that man autonomously determined what was good for himself. That's the nature of sin.

[Many thanks to John Sailhamer, a former professor, for alerting me to this. In his The Pentateuch as Narrative, he notes: "Thus the temptation is not presented as a general rebellion from God's authority. Rather, it is portrayed as a quest for wisdom and "the good" apart from God's provision."]

Mark: Why does God impose it as a law that his creation should obey him like a dictator?

KP: Do you find that morally objectionable? And if so, on what basis?

Mark: KP, yes very much so. God creates us without asking our permission then plays dictator on us. He has no right to do that

KP: No right? What moral authority are you basing that judgment on? If all that exists are matter, motion, time, and chance, then there are no objective moral rules are there?

Mark: God's own moral norms. Oppression is not good

KP: You assume that God's law binds him in exactly the same manner that it does humans but this is not in keeping with biblical teaching. For example, God commands us not to steal but how is it possible for God to steal when all that he has made belongs to him?

Mark: OK, stealing example is nice but it doesn't fit to the problem of oppression.

KP: Biblically speaking it is not oppressive for God to demand obedience of those created for his purposes. So again, no internal contradiction. You just find it oppressive because you don't like it but that's hardly an argument against it.

Mark: That's true I don't like it. It sounds like oppression to me and I think it is. He is going to burn half human kind in hell. If that is not oppression then what is?

KP: What's wrong with oppression of any kind? Let's not just limit it to the question of God. If evolution is true, as you have said it is, then isn't oppression natural and amoral? Survival of the fittest, you know.

Mark: Oppression is wrong because you violate another person's rights.

KP: What is a right? Is it a physical entity? Is a right capable of being scientifically verified? When you refer to these things called "rights" how exactly do they cohere with a materialistic philosophy?

Mark: Rights are something that exist within a state

KP: Oh, so rights are conferred by the state?

Mark: Yes.

KP: Are you pro-choice?

Mark: Yes.

KP: If the state were to pass anti-abortion laws, would you still argue that a woman has the right to choose?

Mark: Uhm, yes.

KP: But if rights are conferred by the state, then women wouldn't have that right, would they? So you'd be arguing that women have a right that is not granted by the state.

Mark: OK, you have a point.

KP: So you don't really believe that all rights are conferred by the government, do you?

Mark: I guess not.

KP: You really believe that people have inherent rights. Would that be fair?

Mark: We have to believe that.

KP: But this poses another problem for your atheistic philosophy. For, given your view of things, there are no such things as rights. There is only the natural world but no transcendent origin of rights. So again I ask you, what do you mean when you refer to rights and how do they cohere in an atheistic framework?

Mark: You are right there. We have to accept rights without asking of an account of their origin.

KP: No, I don't. You do. So, you live as though such things as intrinsic rights exist even though you know they have no rational basis. Another dissonance that leads me to reject atheism.

Mark: There must be another way other than accepting theism

KP: Wishful thinking. Why MUST there be another way?

Mark: Because theism just doesn't make sense

KP: So far it has made a whole lot more sense than atheism. It has provided the necessary presuppositions for such things as ethics, science, rationality, etc.

Mark: I think if theism were true atheism wouldn't exist at all because theism's truth would be obvious to all

KP: Again, you overlook the effects of a little word called sin.

(At this point, someone else asked Mark if he felt the same way about atheism. In other words, if atheism was so obvious, why would there be theists.)

Mark: No, atheism's truth is not that obvious

KP: But you said it was obvious that there is no God. That's how this conversation started. You said it was obvious that god-belief was made up.

Mark: When you consider the problem of evil and the biblical stories that sound like myths, then yes.

KP: Now you say atheism isn't that obvious? We've dealt with the problem of evil and you've conceded that there is no necessary logical inconsistency.

Mark: Right

KP: The pendulum is swinging. Atheism is obvious and not obvious at the same time.

Mark: But still some things don't sound right to me. A good God wouldn't let innocent people suffer even if the Fall happened. God would forgive that sin of Adam's. What was God doing before he created the universe anyway? I can't imagine a God sitting in eternity without doing anything then suddenly deciding to create a universe to play with.

KP: Some of the most ardent atheistic philosophers have acknowledged that the so-called logical problem of evil is no longer a problem with the addition of another proposition: "God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil he allows." Now, unless you can demonstrate that God has no such morally sufficient reason, then your objections are pointless.

KP: Is your inability to conceive of something evidence that it is not or cannot be true?

Mark: OK, then I step back on the problem of evil.

KP: Good move

The Resurrection: Real but not Historical

Something happened that first Easter morning that was powerful enough to embolden Jesus' band of followers and lead them to change the weekly day of worship from the Jewish Sabbath to the first day of the week. But whatever it was, it wasn't Jesus being raised from the dead. In fact, the resurrection doesn't have anything at all to do with Jesus' body. That's the position Bishop John Shelby Spong sought to defend against evangelical apologist, Dr. William Lane Craig in The Great Resurrection Debate , an event broadcast live last night by the Church Communication Network.

According to Spong, who described himself as not being a "biblical literalist," it's not possible to be a Christian and deny the "reality of the resurrection." But, says Spong, this reality should not be understood as a physical return from death. What appear to be historical narratives are more properly understood as symbolism employed by Jesus' followers to convey their powerful and ineffable "God experience." A God-experience, says Spong, must be put into human words and our language is not big enough to envelop that inbreaking of eternity.

Granted, our language is not capable of capturing God's totality. But that's not to say that language is incapable of communicating any truths about God. As Francis Schaeffer noted, God has not given us exhaustive truth, but He has given us true (though partial) Truth.

Once I heard Bishop Spong's take on the inadequacy of language to describe God, I patiently waited for him to refute himself by ascribing some attributes to God. I wasn't disappointed. In his closing statements, just a few moments after saying "I cannot tell you who God is or what God is," the bishop proceeded to affirm that God is the source of love and the ground of all being.

It was evident to me that what really motivates Spong is the desire to make the Bible and Christianity plausible to the modern mind. This means adopting a hermeneutic that takes all references to miraculous events as poetic symbolism. If we fail to open the Scriptures to scholarship (by which Bishop Spong means the naturalistic rationalism assumed by the so-called biblical scholars of the Jesus Seminar of which he is a member) we will end up twisting twenty-first century minds into first century pretzels. 


As I watched and listened to the exchange, the words of C. S. Lewis in the first chapter of Miracles, kept coming to mind:

...the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our sense, something seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. And our sense are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

Another Lewis quote, this one from"Learning in War-Time," is likewise appropriate. "Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." Those interested in learning how to answer the bad philosophy of the Jesus Seminar will find this article by Dr. Craig of interest.