Anderson’s Anti-Epistemological Argument Against Naturalism

Recently Christian apologist James Anderson recently published An Epistemological Argument Against Naturalism. Readers are encouraged to take a look for themselves.

There is much that I could provide in response to what Anderson presents there, but along with some comments about Anderson’s overall approach to the matter, I’m going to confine my present objections to two primary areas. In my estimate, the objections I will present below are sufficient to refute this argument beyond recovery. (Mind you, in doing so, I am not attempting to defend “Naturalism” as a worldview, for no version of Naturalism that I have looked at addresses the fundamental philosophical needs which Objectivism addresses.)

If, after reading through what I have to say here, readers still have further questions on Anderson’s argument, feel free to post a comment. Reader feedback is always welcome.

"What are the odds..?"

In the comments section of my previous entry, a frequent visitor to this blog named Robert shared some excerpts from encounters he had with religious apologists trying to push their mysticism. As is often the case, the apologist insisted on certain conditions which he as a non-believer needed to satisfy in order just to participate in an exchange, such as the alleged need to “provide a 'valid' explanation as to exactly HOW the genetic code created 'itself' WITHOUT the advantage of 'intelligent' thought'.” I can only suppose from statements Robert has made in numerous comments on my blog, that he does not in fact hold to the view that “the genetic code created itself,” either with or “WITHOUT the advantage of ‘intelligent’ thought.”

Frank Turek vs. the Laws of Nature

Recently I saw a brief video on Youtube of Christian apologist Frank Turek interrogating someone who appears to be a student in some kind of public venue, like a seminar or classroom setting. The clip is clearly an excerpt from some longer broadcast, but I have not seen the whole thing. The clip is just under a minute long (what is called a “short” on Youtube) and was apparently deemed worthy enough to publish as a standalone piece of entertainment.

The interaction here exemplifies an all-too common tactic in apologetics: the apologist demands that another person (presumably a non-Christian) present an explanation of something of a general nature about reality, and if the thinker cannot satisfy this demand, the apologist affirms “God” as the correct explanation, and the thinker’s inability to provide an alternative is construed as confirmation of the theistic worldview. On this strategy, a child repeating the affirmation of the existence of a god that he learned from adults in his life would be treated as having supplied an informed explanation. In essence, it is an appeal to ignorance packaged as a seemingly innocent gesture of philosophical inquiry. We must never forget that gods always come in the shape of man’s ignorance. The purpose of apologetics is to mask this ignorance as a recondite form of insight.

Bahnsen's Poof Revisited... Again

Recently this blog entry received a comment from Jeffrey Jay Lowder (yes, this Jeffery Jay Lowder), one of the original founding members of Internet Infidels (his articles there can be accessed here). It does not seem that Lowder is much associated with Internet Infidels any more, but the site did post an interview with him back in early 2022 (see here), which I have not at this time yet read.

Many years ago (I’m thinking 20-plus years at this point!), Internet Infidels was one of my more frequently-visited sites, though I do not visit very often at all any more. I just haven’t been keeping up, I’m afraid! But as I mentioned in my reply to Lowder’s recent comment here on my blog, I do remember enjoying his debate with an apologist named Phil Fernandes (that is with an ‘s’, not a ‘z’; the debate can be seen in its entirety, with the Q&A session, here). That was back in the video-cassette days. In fact, in my first collection of self-owning statements made by Christian apologists, From the Horse's Mouth: Apologists Shooting Themselves in the Foot, I included the following comment which Fernandes makes in that debate, which I take as a confession on his part:

"I just believe that we are very good about lying to ourselves, and only accepting, uh, or interpreting the evidence the way we would like to."

In his comment, Lowder provided a link to a video on Youtube in which he presents a very detailed analysis of Greg Bahnsen’s opening statement in his famous debate with Gordon Stein (PDF transcript can be found here). I watched the video and encourage readers here to check it out for themselves as well.

TAG in Two Steps

It must be tough being a presuppositional apologist, for the quandary which haunts his vocation is never ending. On the one hand, he is under pressure to characterize his god as so fundamental and ever-present that only its existence could serve as man’s supreme epistemological axiom. On the other, given the fact that we have no direct awareness of anything that answers to the descriptions attributed to “God” or “the Lord,” the apologist cannot avoid the need to claim to be in possession of some kind of argument which compellingly establishes the conclusion, “therefore, God exists.”

These two horns which the apologist must somehow balance are mutually exclusive. An axiom identifies a fundamental fact which is perceptually self-evident. We do not need to prove that which is perceptually self-evident, while the purpose of an argument is not to establish the truth of facts which we directly perceive, but to make explicit the inferential steps leading from a truth which is perceptually self-evident to a truth which is not self-evident. It is always in the convoluted tangle of the apologist’s attempt to outline such an inferential sequence that the apologist’s argumentative efforts break down. But just by assembling an argument in the first place, the apologist is tacitly conceding the fact that his god-belief in fact does not have the fundamental status he claims it has.

The purpose of presuppositionalism as an apologetic method seems to be to play these two mutually exclusive horns while pretending that there is no dissonance between them at all.

On the Kalam Cosmological Argument

A fellow by the name of Jason who frequently posts thoughtful comments on this blog under the moniker Jason mc, recently had a friendly discussion with a Christian apologist named Arul Velusamy. A video of this discussion is publicly available on YouTube here:

The Argument for God from the Universe | LiveStream Discussion with an Atheist | Arul Velusamy

The discussion was primarily occupied with Arul’s presentation and defense of the so-called “Kalam Cosmological Argument.” (For those interested, there is in fact an entire page on the Kalam cosmological argument on Wikipedia.) Unfortunately, as with other theistic arguments, I still find that I have no alternative but to imagine the god whose existence is said to be proven by this argument. Beyond this, however, the argument suffers from numerous other deficiencies.

Jason’s discussion with Arul is rather long, with Arul doing the lion’s share of the talking. At nearly three and a half hours, I have not listened to its entirety, but hopefully at some point I will. That said, I have listened to at least half of it and I’m confident this, along with an examination of the visual aids, is more than enough to get the gist of what is being argued.

Why Do Apologists Raise the Problem of Induction in Debate?

A visitor to my blog posting under the moniker Rageforthemachine (hereafter just Rage) recently left the following comment on my entry Same Old Song and Dance: Anderson on Induction… again:

I've never understood what presupps think they have over everyone else when it comes it inductive justification. Are they saying "because I have seen a thousand white swans I know all swans are white" which is false; or are they saying "because I have seen a thousand white swans I know the next one might be white or it might not" which of course renders inductive knowledge just as insure as they claim everyone else's is.

It's a good question, and I think that however it can be answered ties in closely with what motivates apologists who raise certain topics as a focal point for debate. Discerning other people’s motives often involves speculation and conjecture, but if we’re careful, we might just find a certain pattern of tells which suggest and confirm certain desired end goals. The key part of Rage’s question is stated upfront: apologists do in fact seem to think they have something “over everyone else when it comes to inductive justification,” otherwise I doubt they’d be so eager to raise such questions in the first place. Curiously, however, I’ve never found any evidence of such advantage on behalf of Christianity in the pages of the bible.

TAG and the Appeal to Magic

Proponents of the “transcendental argument for the existence of God,” or TAG, are well-known for repeating charges that non-Christians cannot “account for” some phenomenon or other of fundamental philosophical importance (e.g., truth, certainty, the laws of logic, induction, moral norms, etc.) simply because their worldview rejects Christian theism. On occasion some effort is made in the attempt to support the negative aspects of such charges, often with little more than pat slogans, such as that one cannot “ground” unchanging laws of logic in an ever-changing universe of constant flux, that rationality cannot arise out of the irrationality of chance-based evolution, and the like. Non-Christian worldviews are philosophically deficient because of reasons, so the Christian worldview prevails, almost as if by default.

The Specter of Antithesis

Presuppositional apologists often frame the conflict between their “worldview” and all other worldviews in terms of a fundamental antithesis between Christianity on the one hand, and “unbelieving thought” on the other. The intention behind this notion of “antithesis” seems to be the self-serving portrayal of Christianity as the lone champion of truth contending against every other conceivable worldview as if they were mutually exclusive. This is certainly one of the take-aways of the biblical narrative, which is explicitly tribal in character.

However, in philosophical terms, Christianity is in fact just one among many forms of mysticism. Presuppositionalism’s claim to exclusivity actually underscores a profound lack of philosophical awareness on the part of its defenders. The apologist’s job is to give what is in essence a tribalistic feature of his religion the air of philosophical respectability. I’ll leave it to readers to judge how successful they are at this.

Presuppositionalism and Induction: The Humean Condition

In my previous post, I raised the concern over the very real specter of the problem of induction falling prey to the fallacy of the stolen concept. The problem of induction is not postured as a single blade of grass one innocuously passes over unknowingly as he goes about his business, but rather as a massive jungle blocking one’s path entirely.

But that’s what gives away the game. The problem of induction offers the conclusion that our generalizations are unreliable, and yet we are to accept that conclusion as reliably applicable to all generalizing. It is as though one stated, “All generalizations are unreliable, and my generalizations prove that!” And yet, theists who deploy the problem of induction as an apologetic device apparently do not see how it falls on its own sword.

Presuppositionalism and Induction: Exhuming Hume

When apologists raise the problem of induction in their encounters with non-Christians, they apparently expect non-Christians to be freshly familiar with both David Hume and also his argument undermining the reliability of induction. Or at least, to be familiar with the conclusion of an argument which brings the reliability of induction into serious doubt. Either that, or they’re raising the problem of induction in the hopes that their non-Christian sparring partners are not at all versed on matters relating to Hume’s skeptical argument and thus will be easily ensnared by the apologist’s waiting trap.

The former expectation does not seem very realistic. Albeit anecdotally, in my experience, most people I’ve surveyed over the years (many of them very intelligent and well educated individuals) have little or no familiarity with David Hume, let alone with any particular argument he championed. Even among those who took an introductory philosophy course back in junior college, few seem to remember much of anything about Hume.

The latter expectation, or rather hope, strikes me as rather devious and scheming. The problem of induction neatly lends itself as a ready gateway to a god-of-the-gaps style apologetic.

Presuppositionalism and Induction: Apologists Courting Hume

As I mentioned in my previous entry, presuppositionalists routinely take Hume’s skeptical conclusion on the reliability of induction for granted, acting as though Hume’s position must be “answered” on Hume’s own terms. 

 Let’s survey a few poignant examples of this. 

Presuppositionalism and Induction

Presuppositionalists who raise the problem of induction as a debating point in their encounters with non-theists, typically point to the uniformity of nature as the key issue to unlocking and solving the problem. After all, say the presuppositionalists, if nature were not uniform, then we’d have no basis for supposing that the future will resemble the past, which would throw induction under the bus.

In fact, the uniformity of nature is only one of several key issues, and, I’d argue, not the critical one. Even if nature is uniform, this alone would not explain how we know it’s uniform, nor would it explain what the human mind does when drawing inductive generalizations. Indeed, the Objectivist view is that nature is uniform regardless of what anyone thinks, believes, knows, prefers, hopes, etc. It’s something we discover, but this is only the beginning, not the end of explaining induction. After all, if nature is uniform, it’s not uniform only in my experience, but also in my cat’s experience. However, my cat will never draw the general conclusion that touching hot stovetops will result in a painful burn. But I can. Surely there’s more to the issue than merely “here’s why the assumption that nature is uniform is justified.”

WSIBC: Presup Enters Rehab

Christian apologist James Anderson closes out the fourth chapter of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC) with a section titled “Does God Really Need To be Proven?” – a provocative question indeed given that he devoted the chapter up to this point to laying out his six cases for theism. And it almost seems to be a trick question of sorts, given the way it is phrased: even if one believes that there’s a god, how could one suppose it has any needs at all, let alone a “need to be proven”? I thought one of the advantage of being a god was that it has no needs to begin with. Thus it seems the section is starting out with a hint as to how Anderson is going to answer his own question by the way he heads it.

Of course, the non-existent has no needs, but man’s mind does have needs. Nothing will ensure that a “worldview” will in fact address and satisfy those needs, but it is the task of philosophy to identify and understand those needs and point to rational solutions. 

WSIBC: "God and Science"

I shall now take up the sixth and final case which James Anderson presents in the fourth chapter of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC), which is found under the subheading “God and Science.” As this would have the reader suppose, here Anderson attempts to secure the conclusion that science as such implies, or rather “presupposes,” the existence of what Christians throughout history have called “God.” If it could be shown that science were not possible unless the god of Abraham and Moses were real, that would be rather noteworthy, or earthshaking as believers would prefer.

If readers have been following along, one might expect at this point to find more god-talk than science in Anderson’s string of paragraphs. That would be due at least in part to the fact that the previous five cases have not survived scrutiny well at all, which is regrettable given that Anderson’s book enjoys a spot on Steve Hays’ list of Required reading for atheists. Incidentally, Hays’ list also includes William Lane Craig, Edward Feser and Craig Keener, and even plugs the ontological argument as well as Anderson’s own “Argument for God from Logic.”

But I digress. 

WSIBC: "God and Reason"

We come now to the fourth section of the fourth chapter of James Anderson’s book Why Should I Believe Christianity? which is subtitled “God and Reason.” Here he presents his case for the view that reason is best explained by Christian theism.

Anderson opens this section as follows:

Critics of religion often pride themselves on their rationality, and they like to cast the debate in terms of reason versus faith. Atheists stand on reason, we’re told, while religious folks have to fall back on faith. Richard Dawkins, for example, pejoratively refers to religious believers as ‘faith-heads’ while presiding over the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. (p. 115)

It’s true that disagreements between religionists and rational thinkers often touch on the conflict between reason and faith, and this is a serious issue. I see it as a good thing that Anderson at least acknowledges that it is an issue. However, I found that the word ‘faith’ appears only three times in this entire section, and those three instances are confined to just this first paragraph. The statement here reads as though Anderson disagrees with the view that reason and faith are in conflict with each other, but he does not actually expand on this in the proceeding section. I’d think that, if he suspects that critics of religion are mistaken in concluding that faith and reason are at odds with each other, this section would be a great place to put that supposed myth to rest once and for all. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens here. Rather he drops the topic of faith just as in “God and Existence” he dropped Heidegger’s “The Question.” Seems to be a pattern here. 

WSIBC: "God and Morality"

In the section titled “God and Morality” of the fourth chapter of Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC), James Anderson offers what he calls “an extension of the previous [argument]” (WSIBC, p. 110), namely the case he calls “God and Values” (which I have examined here). Since I understand values to be a moral category, I could see why one would think there’s some overlap here. You think?

Anderson holds that “the most important value judgments we make in life are moral judgments,” adding that “we make decisions based on moral values, and we make moral judgments about other people’s decisions and actions” (pp. 110-111). 

WSIBC: “God and Existence” – Part 2: Contingency Desperation

In my previous entry I began exploring the first of six cases which Christian apologist James Anderson presents in defense of theism in the fourth chapter of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC). We see in that entry that Anderson opens his first case by repeating “the Question” which Martin Heidegger raised in the 1950s, namely “Why does anything exist at all?” (p. 102). In that entry I cited reasons for dismissing this question as irrational (most importantly, because it invites the fallacy of the stolen concept).

I ended my initial exploration of Anderson’s case by leaving open the possibility that, even if one acknowledges the fallaciousness of “the Question,” Anderson’s case may still have merits. So in this entry I will continue my examination of Anderson’s first case to see if in fact it provides any good reasons for believing that a god exists.

WSIBC: “God and Existence” – Part 1: “The Question”

In chapter 4 of his book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC), author James Anderson presents his reasons for believing that a god exists. Over the next few installments in my examination of Anderson’s book, I will focus on each of the sections of this chapter. Anderson heads the six sections of chapter 4, subtitled “God is There,” which runs from pages 93 to 138, with the following headings:

“God and Existence”(pp. 102-106)  

“God and Values” (pp. 106-110)  

“God and Morality” (pp. 110-115)  

“God and Reason” (pp. 115-119)  

“God and Mind” (pp. 119-125)  

“God and Science” (pp. 126-135)

Anderson closes out the chapter with a discussion regarding whether or not arguments are needed in the first place for believing that a god exists – and given that the vast majority of believers accept their theism on psycho-emotional grounds as opposed to rational grounds, there should be no surprise when Anderson concludes that arguments in fact are not needed (now he tells us!). A number of issues come to the surface in that section, so that will have to wait for a later entry on this blog. For now, I want to explore the first case which Anderson outlines in his book’s fourth chapter. After reviewing the six preceding sections of the chapter, one might suppose that he should have just skipped them entirely. 

Preliminary Worldview Considerations before Anderson’s WSIBC

In my previous entry, I announced my recent purchase of James Anderson’s book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC) – which as of this writing has a rank of 133 in the category Presbyterian Christianity, so get your copy while supplies last – and my intention to explore the case he presents in that book for, well, believing Christianity.

Also in my previous entry I provided a list of 25 worldview-oriented questions that I would keep by my side as I read through Anderson’s book, to see if finally I can get some answers on some pressing issues that apologists before him seem reluctant to address.

In the present entry I want to provide a few high-level observations before diving into the first chapter of Anderson’s book, and really all the chapters which follow. I expect that the following points, which are by no means exhaustive, will come in handy when examining any case for theism in particular and any endorsement of mysticism (of which Christianity is a category) in general.