Third Round
Pastor Stephen Feinstein
Hello all,
Russell Glasser wrote his response against my last one. Go
to the following link to read his response.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/2012/07/16/reply-to-stephen-feinstein-round-two/
Please read his response before reading my response to him.
As I said in my last post, I disabled your ability to comment because I want
this to be a one-on-one debate rather than a free-for-all where everyone gives
their two cents. When Russell and I agree that the debate is done, the comments
will be enabled thus allowing people to comment on it. I may even continue
posts for Christians as a post-debate discussion. As a side note, whenever I
quote Russell in a regular paragraph, I italicize the quotation. If I place a
statement in quotation marks but it is NOT italicized, it is NOT a quote from
Russell, but instead is a hypothetical quote that I am inserting into the
argument. Such quotes come from past experiences debating unbelievers and
reading much literature on the subject. With that said, I can begin.
Russell, I must say that I am disappointed in your response
for a number of reasons. First, it feels like you either did not read or
perhaps did not understand much of what I wrote. I thought I was pretty clear.
Russell, I agreed to your starting assumptions with one revision, namely that
the existence of the laws of logic needed to be added to your list of starting
assumptions. I agreed that the world is real, that we learn from sense
experience, etc., but I added that we need deduction in order to make sense out
these things as we relate classes with categories. This is what I was getting
at with the “extremely elementary
concepts” of logic. I used it as a mere illustration to show how we relate
classes and categories in order to demonstrate in a VERY simple way why it is
not good enough to say we learn primarily through sense experience alone. So
your condescending remark about me spending many paragraphs on something
trivial was unwarranted and unnecessary.
With that said, you are doing exactly what I feared you
would do. Like so many other atheists, you are putting forth smoke and mirrors
to try to get out of the trap that your position puts you in. You assume the
world is real. Excellent! It is real. You assume that we learn from sense
experience. Great! We do learn from sense experience. Yet, you have failed to
ask if these very things could exist in an atheistic universe where the
governing principle is random chance. Can we move from elementary logic to
higher levels of transcendental logic if you insist on ducking the issue of
presuppositions?
I find it entirely ironic that you accuse me of circular
reasoning, when you reason as follows: 1) The world is real. How do I know?
Well, I assume it is real. 2) We learn through sense experience. How do I know?
Well, through sense experience of course! 3) Logic is valid. How do I know?
Well, through logic of course. Russell,
any good student of logic knows that all logic at its core is guilty of
circular reasoning. What we are looking
for is who is guilty of narrow circularity. At the end of the day, it isn’t the
Christian position. You accused me of “trying to inject
the irrelevant and unnecessary assumption”
that God is the necessary precondition of intelligibility and you asserted that I
am the only one trying inject such a thing. I often wonder if you apply your
own standards to yourself. You are tacitly injecting the notion that a
random-chance universe can account for intelligibility. Rather than
acknowledging this, you are putting up smoke and mirrors claiming that you have
no burden of proof, but instead you get to happily assume your assumptions with
narrow circularity, and if I am going to debate you, I then have to play by
your rules and assume that these agreed assumptions exist without any
preconditions. I am sorry, but that is poor logic and it creates a dishonest
debate.
Russell, there is no point playing games over
these issues, so please answer me honestly. Do you or don’t you have
assumptions that depend on presuppositions? And if your presuppositions can be
shown to be impossible, then does not your entire position come tumbling down?
The answer is yes, whether you like it or not. I think the reason atheists try
to avoid these types of questions is because they are put in a difficult
position to justify any argument they advance. In the case of your
response to me, you made many loaded comments that were nothing more than a
distraction from the questions above. Apparently you have come across some sort
of attempt at a presuppositional argument in the past, but I must say that your
“magical tiara” example proves that you have not understood the nature of the
Christian presuppositional argument. A magical tiara is not a precondition of
any of our assumptions, but God, as defined biblically, is the total precondition
of each of our assumptions. Knowing in advance that I would be required to make
that case, I defined my terms in my opening statement.
With that said, I will get into some specific
arguments against your position. I told you in my first post that atheism has
four big problems. These problems are related to the necessary preconditions of
intelligibility. I will deal with at least one of them in this response. Among
the most important of these problems is inductive inference. In laymen’s terms,
this refers to the uniformity of nature. In both of your responses to me, you
generally agreed that world is real, and we learn through senses. These two
assumptions definitely fit within the framework of inductive inference.
Against atheism, I will label this as the
problem of causality. All science rests upon the precondition of the uniformity
of nature. Inductive inference takes something that we
experienced in the past and then projects it into the future. If you step on a
nail and it causes pain today, you assume the same thing would happen at
anytime in the future if you stepped on it again. Don’t you agree? Thus, the
way things were in the past in terms of causal relationships will also be
present in the future. All real science depends on this being true. If we could
not project into the future what we have learned from the past, then scientific
experiments would be a waste of time. If the laws of nature changed every day,
then everything you learned via experiment today would be irrelevant tomorrow.
Well, obviously the world is as such that nature’s laws do not arbitrarily change
like that because the world is uniform. This is why I said it is not good
enough for me to “assume that the world is
real and that I learn from sense experience,” but instead
I want to ask myself (and you) what is the necessary precondition for such.
After all, the world is real and we do learn from senses. Well, fine. I’m glad
we can agree on that. So, given that this is true, what transcendental
precondition must also be true in order for this basic life assumption to be
true? Well, for starters, it’s the uniformity of nature or inductive inference.
If you are serious about this debate, then you should agree with
everything that was stated in the previous paragraph. I will soon explain why
this is a problem for you. First, let me speak hypothetically. If I were in a
lecture hall, and you and your community were my students, and I grabbed the
dry erase marker and asked you what would happen if I dropped it, what would
you say? You would predict it would fall due to the acceleration due to
gravity. What if I made it more difficult by forbidding you from generalizing
the outcome based on past personal experiences with similar objects? In other
words, I am removing the assumption of the uniformity of nature from the test.
You are not allowed to assume. In such a case, what could you honestly predict
as an outcome? If you were a good philosopher, you would say that you do not
know what will happen because you have never experienced this type of thing in
this particular room with this particular marker. Well, let’s say I drop it,
and it hits the ground. I pick it back up and ask you to predict what will
happen the next time I drop it. Most would predict the same thing would happen.
Is this justified? If I pushed the issue, I could say that since we have not experienced
the future, we still cannot know what will happen. There is no guarantee the
future will respond like the past unless nature is uniform.
I would expect you as an atheist to argue that since
the experiment is performed under the same conditions, you can expect the same
result. Good. By making that point, you have assumed (though not proved the
uniformity of nature). Russell, I want you to assume the uniformity of nature.
This is especially true since in your first response you stated, “I personally do
lean towards materialism, humanism, and a scientific approach to learning about
the world.”
So here is my question to you.
Can you, the materialistic atheist, from your own
worldview/presuppositions assume the uniformity of nature to be true? Russell, you
cannot dismiss this question as being irrelevant. It is totally relevant. Your
fundamental assumption is that the universe is governed by random chance. How
in the world can randomness account for uniformity? They are antonyms! Science
depends on predication, reliability of the senses, reliability of the mind, etc.,
and all of these things depend on the material universe operating with
predictable, uniform, and unchanging laws. Yet, true randomness by its very definition
would forbid predictability; it would disallow uniformity. Yet you would ask
people to believe that a universe governed by random chance is at the same time
completely uniform and predictable. If the universe were truly random, then no
two things should happen in a predictable manner. Yet, the fact that the
universe is uniform and predictable (an assumption we both agreed upon) means
that the universe CANNOT be random.
What are you going to say against this? Will you use the example of
sand dunes like you did when Ray called into your show? Are you really going to
say that uniform predictable processes that compile sand into dunes somehow
proves randomness? That would cause you to contradict yourself in the same
sentence. By the way, I did not miss your point on the dunes. Your point was
that they appear beautiful and designed, but they occurred through natural
processes. I don’t want you to miss my point. Those natural processes are not
random, but they are uniform and predictable. Therefore, in a universe governed
by random chance, you could never truly explain how dunes are made, since no
predictable uniform natural processes would exist. The very fact that you can
explain dunes to me disproves your fundamental presupposition of a universe
that is governed by random chance.
To me, it seems clear why atheists put the smoke and mirrors up. It
seems obvious why they try to steer clear of transcendental reasoning. In my
first two posts I tried to get you to agree that we need to test our
assumptions, but via your two responses, I could not get you to agree to
talk about these issues. I believe your reluctance is due to the fact that you
cannot answer these types of questions. All you can say is, “The world is real,
let’s start from there, and since I’m starting from there I don’t need to
presuppose your God.” Do you really expect me to fall into that trap? No. The
world is real and it is uniform, so let us figure out what has to be true in
order for it to be uniform. Let’s take your presupposition of random chance
mixed with 14 billion years of time, and see if it accounts for uniformity, predication,
causality, etc. It can’t because by the very definition of random, we can’t
have a real world that is predictable. So you either A) have to assume the
universe isn’t random, or B) you have to admit that your position is
irrational, but you are committed to it anyway.
I don’t have this problem Russell. The following is an excerpt from a
book that I have written on this subject. I hope to publish it soon:
The Christian can
justifiably go to the science lab since he/she knows there is a sovereign personal
God who governs this universe, controls it, and has made it regular so that we
could learn about it through projecting past experience into the future, and
therefore have dominion over the world. The Christian can understand why we can
govern certain chemical reactions, build automobiles and airplanes, and launch
rockets into space because the Christian worldview can make sense out of
projecting from the past what will work in the future. But why would the
atheist go to the science lab? In a random universe of chance, why expect
regularity or uniformity? In an uncertain material cosmos, why anticipate
predication is possible since ultimately the dice can roll the other way at any
time? This is a destructive criticism against atheism. The science they claim
to believe in would not even be possible if their worldview were true. They
have no right to rely on inductive inference or to expect causality, and
therefore they have no basis for doing science. Biology, Physics, Astronomy,
Psychology, Mathematics, and even Grammar are all destroyed without inductive
inference. The Christian worldview makes complete sense out of inductive
inference.
This is quite different than believing in a magical tiara. We have a
material universe that is orderly and uniform, and all things ever observed
work through the process of non-random causation. This is pretty simple stuff. Do
you really think it is rational to believe that from nothing, the material
universe began (or from some mysterious compressed dot of matter), and through
continued randomness has provided uniformity, even when everything is still
supposed to be random? The entire idea is totally inconsistent.
Everything in the universe has a cause. They are all contingent. They
are caused and sustained by other objects that they have no control over. This
is true of all physical things that have ever been observed. Yet, you (if I
understand your position) believe it is rational to think the universe itself
(something that is entirely physical) is uncaused and unsustained. What do you
base this on Russell? Observation? No, that would be impossible. What else?
Other atheists said so? Well, that isn’t too academic, so I will give you the
benefit of the doubt on that one. So what is it then? What do you base your
presuppositions on? I believe that you base it on nothing else other than your
mere opinion.
In philosophical terms, you are guilty of arbitrariness. Arbitrariness
is to believe something without any justification whatsoever. Well, you have
never observed something come from nothing, so to assume the entire universe
happened this way is to be guilty of arbitrariness. Furthermore, you believe
that random materialism accounts for your assumption that world is real and
that sense experience is reliable, but once again have you ever observed
absolute randomness create anything that is orderly and predictable? No.
Furthermore, by definition such a thing could not happen, otherwise it would
not be truly random (hence the sand dune example). This is why I believe you
wanted me to simply start with your assumptions, and not ask you to justify them.
I agree with your assumptions, but I am the only one here who can account for them.
A magical tiara is not sovereign or intelligent. Nor is it personal.
Furthermore, it is not a unity of plurality. In the universe we see persons and
non-persons (e.g. a tree). We have seen persons come from other persons, but we
have never seen persons come from non-persons. Given that we are in a universe
that is governed by causality rather than randomness, what are we to assume
based on our observations and abilities of deduction? Persons came from non-persons?
Life came from non-life, etc.? Given that these things have not been observed
even under the great conditions of the earth as it is now, would it not be
arbitrary to assume that it happened in such a way?
The God of the Bible is the ultimate original person. We are all
derivative persons caused by other persons, but due to the causal chain, there
has to be a personality that is original from which all other personalities are
derived. Once again, we are talking about necessary preconditions here. It is
awful arbitrary to assume no original person when we are in a world with
billions of persons that are derivative.
I am not sure how familiar you are with Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological
Argument. By the way, the basic junior college dismissal of it doesn’t count.
Have you studied the 10-step argument as outlined in Summa Theologica I, Question 2, Article 3? Just for the
purpose of classical education, I recommend it. Although I reject the semi-pelagian
presuppositions of the classical argumentation for the existence of God,
Aquinas actually gets somewhere good between the 5th and 6th
step. He previously demonstrated, philosophically speaking, that only two types
of beings can exist: necessary and contingent. Contingent beings are caused,
sustained, and determined by factors outside of themselves, and thus when we
look around at all things in the universe, they are contingent since they fit
into those parameters. A necessary being, then, could not be contingent and
therefore would be uncaused, unsustained, and undetermined by anything else
outside of itself. This means that the universe cannot be the necessary being
since it caused, sustained, and determined. If you try to ascribe this to
randomness, you are going to lose that point in a moment.
And now comes the point. Unless there is a necessary being, there
cannot be contingent beings, for nothing contingent causes itself, not even the
first contingent beings. After all, by definition they are caused by something
outside of themselves. Looking around the universe we MUST conclude that
contingent beings actually exist. After all, this present debate is a battle
between two contingent beings. Contingent beings exist, therefore a necessary
being exists. Once again, this is transcendental logic. The necessary
precondition of contingent beings is a single necessary being. If you studied
the argument further, it shows how by definition there cannot be more than one
necessary being, but I will save any explanation of this for you if you should
so choose to push the issue.
The point in all of this is that our very personhood is contingent upon
the necessary person. The necessary person then cannot be part of the physical
universe since the physical universe is contingent. This is why I said in my
first post that God is distinct from creation. God is affected by none of the
same temporal limitations that we are bound by. He is uncaused, timeless,
unsustained, and undetermined. So the foolish argument of, “If God made us,
then who made God,” is a terribly ridiculous argument since it tries to reduce
God to a contingent being, thus missing the point of the entire argument. Transcendental
logic demonstrates that a necessary being is just that, necessary! Thus, the
precondition of a uniform universe of nearly innumerable contingencies is the
singular transcendent necessary being, who sovereignly controls the entire
universe and purposefully causes and sustains predictability (Genesis 8:22).
Furthermore, the fact that God is a Trinity is relevant too. This
universe of many contingent objects is made of a plurality of atoms. In fact, the
field of philosophy has struggled with the “one and many problem” for
centuries. Is all reality one, or is it many? If all is one, then plurality is
the illusion. I don’t truly exist, you don’t truly exist, but instead, only one
thing exists (whether it is matter or something else). Yet, if all is many (plurality),
then unity is the illusion, and instead the universe is nothing more than a
whole bunch different objects completely unrelated to each other thus rendering
all meaning as meaningless. Yet, if the universe is both one and many, then it
is a unity of plurality. So I am one united person comprised of a plurality of
atoms; the social world is one system comprised of plurality of people; the
solar system is one system containing a star and plurality of planets; the
galaxy is one galaxy containing a plurality of solar systems; and the universe
is one universe made up of a plurality of galaxies. It seems clear that the way
we think and live as intelligent sentient beings is under the assumption of
both one and many. And yet the entire one and many arrangement of the universe
is still contingent, and therefore it is caused, sustained, and determined. The
transcendental precondition of all of this is a necessary being who is the foundation
of one and many, or the foundation of a unity of plurality. Only the Christian
position speaks of the God who is One God that is comprised of three persons.
He is the original unity of plurality, just as He is the original person. We
are all derivative unities of plurality and derivative persons. If you really
think a magical tiara somehow is just as valid of an argument for the
transcendental preconditions of the universe, then truly logic and reason is
lost on you. Truly, you have traded rationality for absurdity.
This is why I insisted that logic be added to our assumptions, because
through logic I just showed how the Christian God is not an arbitrary
precondition, but instead is the only transcendental precondition that works to
justify and account for the things that DO in fact exist. The uniformity of
nature was just one of those things.
In my second response to you, I gave the following thesis: “The Biblical God must exist, because if
He does not exist, then we can know nothing at all. Or let me put it this way.
Christianity must be true because without it we lose all intelligibility.”
Applying this to the uniformity of nature then, you should agree that if the
uniformity of nature were not true, then we could not know anything at all. All
intelligibility would disappear! Knowledge (intelligibility) would be
impossible since the random universe would constantly change. Well, I think I made a strong logical
argument based on transcendental logic that the Biblical God is the necessary
precondition of the uniformity of nature, which in turn is one of the necessary
preconditions of intelligibility. This is simple logic, it is easy to follow,
and you will not be able to casually dismiss it without looking ridiculous to
the thousands that are now reading this. One thing is for sure. Your random
materialism, if it were true, would render the uniformity of nature impossible,
and therefore destroy intelligibility. Thus, with this one argument, I did
exactly what I said I was going to do in that thesis. And truly, I am just
getting started.
Of course, I don’t want this debate to go on forever. I want
to move on to my other points, for this was just the first of many
preconditions that materialism destroys. But I have already written a lot just on
this one point. So I am going to take some wild guesses at what you might try
to fire back with, and deal with them right here and now.
You might try to recover from the problem of induction by
saying the future “probably” will be like the past, since at all times in the
past it always happened this way. “So we atheists do not need your God to have
relative certainty that the marker will fall to the ground in the future.”
Well, I would not allow that one to slip by me so easily. The atheist would be smuggling
back into the argument the very thing he is trying to prove. If you said the
future would probably be like the past, you are assuming past information.
Well, if you did not assume the future would be like the past, then all
probabilities from the past would be wasted information since they could tell
us nothing about the future, unless the uniformity of nature is true. It does
not matter how many times something occurred in the past if nature is not
uniform. However, since nature is uniform, we can project past experiences into
the future. So either way, this typical atheist attempt to squeeze out of this problem
still presupposes the uniformity of nature; something a random universe could
never account for. Any and every argument you can give will ultimately have to
assume the uniformity of nature is true. Thus you have to assume the principle
to prove the principle, which in logic is the fallacy of begging the question,
or narrow circular reasoning.
So yes, you do need my God to have relative certainty that
the marker will fall to the ground in the future. Of course, I doubt you would ever admit this because as Romans 1:18-19 says, you in “unrighteousness suppress the truth, for what can be known about God is
plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” The text goes on to say
that it is obvious in creation that God is the creator. In this post, I have
shown that something as simple, yet necessary, as the uniformity of nature
transcendentally depends on the God of the Bible. You have to depend on my worldview to even be
able to do science in the first place. It doesn’t mean you have to believe in
my worldview. It is perfectly possible for someone to be convinced that air
does not exist, and yet at the same time breathe it in to form the very words
of their argument to claim that air doesn’t exist. I see the atheist being in a
similar position – an utterly irrational position. You may still object and
claim that the Christian worldview is not necessary since everyone presupposes
or knows of the uniformity of nature without it. In other words, you arrived at
your assumption without reading the Bible, and so the Christian worldview is
not necessary. However, this would be the fallacy of irrelevant thesis. The
fact that everyone knows of the uniformity of nature is irrelevant to the
question of “why” is there uniformity and “how” humans know about it.
What is your escape? Will you take the arbitrary route of
the atheist Gordon Stein in his debate against the Christian Greg Bahnsen?
Stein was so bewildered by the nature of this argument, that in an attempt to
save face he asserted that the inherent properties of matter caused it to
behave in a uniform way. What kind of answer is that? How does Stein know what
the inherent properties of matter are, and even if he did, how does that allow
for randomness to account for uniformity? In effect, all he did was use
academic language to say, “That’s just the way it is.” What if I said, “The
inherent properties of creation cause matter to behave in a uniform way?” Would
the atheist accept that? No! By the way, I have not done that here. Instead, I
argued that the absolute person, that is distinct from creation, who is sovereign
and triune created the universe and sustains it in a uniform way, and I
logically showed how He is the necessary precondition of the uniformity of
nature.
Nature’s contingent uniformity depends upon it being
designed this way by the necessary being. And just to note, Hume’s critiques against the teleological (i.e. design) argument is irrelevant here since I have cut to the
chase and am talking about “ultimate reality,” rather than contingent reality (e.g. watches and landscapes).
The whole contingent universe is grounded in some sort of ultimate reality. You
believe that the ultimate reality is impersonal random chance. Well, it is
impossible for that to be the necessary precondition of uniformity. Yet, the
Biblical God as the ultimate reality totally and certainly accounts for the
uniformity of nature since He is the ground of the entire contingent creation and designed it in a uniform way.
As I wrap this up, I will address one thing that often comes
up. Once the atheist is boxed in by the problem of causality, they often
say something like, “Well, the majority of great scientists are atheists. If
Christianity is true and necessary for science to even exist, why don’t these
scientists realize this?” Here is the simple answer. These materialistic
atheists are not really good or consistent materialistic atheists. They say one
thing with their mouths, but they believe an entirely different thing with
their hearts. They say there is no God and that the universe is random, but in
their hearts they believe in regularity and are not worried that a safe
experiment yesterday will all of sudden blow up in their face today. If they
really believed their worldview, they should be very worried since there is no
way to know what would happen in a random-chance based future. Atheists cannot
function without the uniformity of nature, but the truth of it actually
contradicts their worldview, thus demonstrating their position to be hopelessly
inconsistent.
I would like to conclude here by responding to your
conclusion. You asked me to offer some suppositions that we can both agree to.
I did in my last response, but since you apparently missed them, I will repeat
them here: 1) The world is real; 2) We learn from our sense experiences; 3) We
learn from logic; 4) Reasonable standards are necessary; and 5) Bald assertion
proves nothing. I made that clear then. I am asking you now to truly deal with the issues. Each of these assumptions has necessary preconditions.
These need to be addressed in a non-arbitrary manner. They need to be applied
to sound logic (a reasonable standard). It truly seems like you blew past some
important statements in my response, which causes me to wonder if you really are
seeking to have a discussion in good faith.
Here are a few more suppositions that you should honestly
agree to: 1) You and I are not neutral and we do not interpret evidence
neutrally (otherwise you would not have said God has never been observed for I
believe the evidence greatly shows that He has); 2) Epistemology is extremely
relevant in addressing our positions and assumptions; and 3) If you really
believe it is better not to believe something is true without good reasons then
you need to also apply that standard to your own brand of atheism. To be
honest, I don’t see me as losing anything in this debate so far. I believe in
each post I have interacted with your comments much better than you interacted
with mine. Furthermore, in my last response I refused to allow you to box me
into any traps where I surrender the philosophical nature of this argument.
In my last response I said that I was going to say, “Let’s
start by assuming the Bible is true and let’s start by assuming atheism is
true.” Well, I did this very thing in this present response concerning the
necessary precondition of intelligibility for inductive inference. Assuming
materialistic atheism was true and the universe was random, we could not have
inductive inference. Assuming the Bible is true, we could and should have
inductive inference. Furthermore, going beyond just the uniformity of nature, I
spoke on contingent beings/objects and how in the atheistic universe we run
into more transcendental problems. Yet, in the Biblical universe, we have the
only philosophically proper necessary being who accounts for all contingent
beings and objects. Finally, I brought up the one and many problem. In a random
universe there is no unity of plurality, but instead everything would be unrelated
to each other, disconnected, and in constant chaotic change. In the Christian
universe, the God who is the original unity of plurality is the logical ground
of the same derivative versions within the universe. I applied this to the
attribute of personhood as well. So in each case of transcendental reasoning, I
assumed both of our worldviews, and yet yours is absolutely hopeless when it
comes to accounting for anything that we see and observe in the universe. So now
I have given you the real argument you asked for.
If you simply brush this off and say it is not a real
argument, then fine. It shows me that you are not serious in this debate. It
shows me that when atheists don’t get to set the rules in a way that is
entirely in their favor, then they don’t want to play the game. It shows me
that they don’t care that the very ability for them to offer arguments and
evidence depends on the very preconditions that their presuppositions deny. It
shows me that by virtue of you showing up to this debate, I have already won.
With much respect, I await your reply.
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