CalvinDude's Defense of Christianity's Moral Bankruptcy

Christians who seek to debate with atheists on the topic of morality typically seem most concerned for their opponents’ basis for pronouncing condemnations, as if condemnation as such were a moral end in itself or at least a chief priority. That's the typical focus that most apologists seem to have. But there is also a breed of faith-defender who seems to have no particular focus but to scurry into shadows, shifting from one sub-issue to another, looking for any way to evade the penetrating light of unflinching reason. This latter is the type of apologist who has chosen to respond to a statement I made in the comments section of an article on the Debunking Christianity blog, titled A Question For Calvinists. The response, by one CalvinDude on his own blog, comes right on the heels of my 9 March entry, Rational Morality vs. Presuppositional Apologetics, in which I lay out key fundamental differences between the moral system of rational philosophy and the primitive morality of Christian theism while noting common failings non-believers should watch for in apologetic treatments which focus on moral issues. I take it from his languid comments that CalvinDude has not yet read my blog.

The central issue here is, given that the Christian god does not face the fundamental alternative that man faces, it lacks an objective standard by which to guide its chosen actions. Consequently this can only imply that any actions it might choose to undertake in spite of having no such standard would be arbitrary in nature. This is indeed problematic for the Christian, for if it turns out to be the case that the actions attributed to the Christian god by its worshippers are arbitrary, then the claim that the Christian god is the source of objective moral standards for man is fatally compromised. (It should be noted that there are other ways to establish this conclusion, but CalvinDude manages to hang himself on this one all by himself.) So it should come as no surprise that, when faced with this case, whose outcome has such uncomfortable implications for Christianity in general, and presuppositional apologetics in particular, CalvinDude inadvertently unplugs other holes in his worldview in order to stop the immediate leak, but to no avail.

Let's waste no further time now, and turn to CalvinDude's 'devastating' apologetic.

CalvinDude initiated his comment to me by acknowledging some familiarity with my atheology:

And in case Dawson reads this–yes, I know you claim to come to an objective morality.

I responded with some brief points to clarify this:

Yes, a morality based on facts which obtain independent of anyone’s wishing (i.e., objective), which are discovered and integrated by means of reason (as opposed to faith in invisible magic beings), in the interest of identifying and securing those values which an individual needs in order to live (as opposed to appeasing the imaginary dieties).

Then, in his blog devoted to responding to me, CalvinDude began his reply:

I wonder, though, how you can separate the idea of "indepentent of anyone’s wishing" and "needs in order to live."

It’s not very clear what CalvinDude wants to ask here, for my view holds that man's moral needs are what they are regardless of what one might wish. CalvinDude seems to disagree with this fundamental recognition, for he continues, saying:

These very needs are themselves a product of what the one wishes to have: food, water, shelter, etc.

Apparently CalvinDude is so out of touch with reality that he does not realize the fact that food, water, shelter, etc., do not materialize as the result of wishing, nor does man's need for them. In fact, man was born with these needs, and if he does not satisfy these needs, he will die. And yet, here CalvinDude suggests that they are the product of someone's wishing. On the contrary, man's needs are a result of his biology, and the values that he acquires are a product of his labor, that is, goal-oriented effort. One can wish all he wants, but this will not put food on the table or fill someone's stomach. Nor will wishing cause water to exist in an arid desert, nor will it make a house appear where one was not before. What has happened here is a complete reversal of the subject-object relationship at the most fundamental level of cognition, such that the objects of awareness are mistaken to conform to the wishing subject. This is the essence of metaphysical subjectivism. We will find that CalvinDude’s commitment to subjectivism, inspired by his hope that Christianity is true, is a recurring theme throughout his response to my points.

CalvinDude wrote:

That they are essential to our survival does not mean they are not something we wish for.

This statement is irrelevant for I nowhere deny this. One is free to wish whatever he wants, even that his consciousness survives the death of his body and finds itself in a magic kingdom beyond the grave. But this much is certain: wishing does not make it so.

CalvinDude wrote:

However, this is a minor thing.

And yet already it is a major stumblingblock for him: if one is not able to recognize that objective values are based on facts which obtain independent of an individual’s wishing, I’d say this is quite a problem for him. The failure to recognize the nature of objective values could only be explained in adults on account of the irrational worldview which they hold. A worldview which teaches that man lives in a cartoon universe, where all the objects that exist in that universe (including man himself) and all the actions that take place in that universe are the result of the wishing of some ruling consciousness, would certainly make it difficult for one to make simple recognitions such as this, especially if he took that worldview seriously.

CalvinDude wrote:

Of more interest is the notion that morality is simply to secure "those values which an individaul needs in order to live."

A needed correction here: I was clear in mentioning that morality’s interest is in “identifying and securing those values which an individual needs in order to live.” One will have a very hard time securing adequate values if he does not know what they are or how to identify them. A rational morality satisfies this need. A religious morality does not.

CalvinDude wrote:

By "live" I suppose you mean more than just survive, but to live happily too.

Though I agree that “the maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues” (Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics”), I would also point out a self-evident certainty: happiness is not possible to man unless he is alive to enjoy it. So a man’s basic life needs must be met in order to for him to be able to pursue his choice of happiness. As I point out in my blog Rational Morality vs. Presuppositional Apologetics, morality is a code of values which guides one’s choices and actions. The concept ‘code’ in this case implies a hierarchical relationship amongst one’s values, where some values are ranked as more important and more serious than others. Those values which satisfy the basic preconditions of man’s life would logically hold moral priority over those which are not immediately necessary for satisfying those preconditions.

Whether a given individual is able to live happily of course depends on the particulars of his situation. It may be the case that the individual in question does not have the luxury of pursuing his choice of happiness at a given time in his life, simply because all his effort is focused on pursuing his most basic life values. After traveling in so-called “third world” countries, I do appreciate this. But I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t want to be happy. Perhaps there have been some that I’ve occasioned, but I’d imagine there aren't very many of them. It must also be mentioned that happiness is a profoundly selfish value. After all, when one is happy, who’s the one who is happy if not himself? And when one pursues his choice of happiness, whose happiness does he expect to achieve if not his own?

CalvinDude wrote:

After all, mere survival does not require much morality at all–animals do that just fine without any sense of morality whatsoever.

This is the kind of statement that I’d expect to see from someone who does not understand the relationship between man’s need for values, his ability to use reason as a means of identifying those values and the actions he needs to take in order to achieve and or keep them, and the distinction he enjoys as a human being as opposed to a lower organism which has not achieved capacity for conceptual thought. Indeed, a man alone in the jungle needs morality more than one living in a bustling city, for in the bustling city there are so many sources of ready-made values already available to him, many of which are achieveable with a minimum of effort (that's why so many people choose to live in or near urban areas). But in a jungle, a man would have to prioritize his actions at virtually every moment, especially if the jungle is known to have aggressive predators. Since man does not operate on instinct, but instead must rely on reason, he would not know that he needs values in order to live if he did not have morality. Consequently he would have no rational basis for his choices and actions, and he would soon become a carcass.

CalvinDude wrote:

But if we are instead talking about quality of living, we are left with the problem of establishing what objective values can there be for quality of living?

I agree that this is a major problem for Christians, for pursuit of high quality living for oneself is by definition selfish in nature, and yet the Christian worldview commands the believer to "deny himself" (cf. Mt. 16:24). Which means: He cannot enjoy a quality life without internal conflicts between his chosen goals and his expressed worldview, which of course results in guilt (this is why many Christians glory in their shame so much).

CalvinDude wrote:

Who determines that? Is it simply something I want? If so, how is that not subjective?

Well, in CalvinDude's case, he has already admitted that it is subjective, for above he affirmed the view that needs are a product of someone’s wishing, just as Christianity teaches that the universe is a product of wishing.

According to an objective morality, however, an individual is able to identify what makes his life both possible as well as worth living, since objective morality provides him with a code of values which guides his choices and actions. Since these values are based on facts which obtain independent of his wishing (specifically his biological needs, which will not change no matter what he wishes for), the rational man's morality is not subjective, for it is not suspended on the lie that he can fake reality, cheat nature, or have his cake and eat it, too.

CalvinDude had asked:

But I simply ask: why can’t God be selfish in how He creates His morality?

And I responded:

The concept ‘selfish’ - if properly formed - necessarily implies that it would have something to gain and a need to gain it.

CalvinDude quipped:

I’m not so certain about that.

But of course, certainty is not possible on the basis of a theistic worldview. Also, there is the nagging problem, endemic to any form of Christianity, that the biblical worldview lacks an understanding of concepts and the process by which they are formed. As I pointed out, my position is based on the proper formation of the concept 'selfish'. However, if we attempt to rest our conclusions on faulty concepts, then virtually anything can be argued, but nothing would be proven, since our conclusions are no better than the premises which support them, and our premises are no better than the concepts we use to inform them.

CalvinDude continued:

Rather than a ‘need’ to gain something, I would argue that it is merely a want to gain something.

Which comes back to CalvinDude's commitment to metaphysical subjectivism, a worldview in which wanting is its own standard, as opposed to desires which are regulated according to a hierarchy of values based on relevant facts (again, the individual’s biological needs) and a social theory established on the premise of individual rights (another element of rational philosophy which Christianity rejects; see the statements that I quote in this comment).

CalvinDude wrote:

Thus, acting selfishly is based off desires, not needs (although the two are not always contrary, they often can be).

Again, CalvinDude offers us wanting as its own standard. Keep this point in mind as we go through the rest of CalvinDude’s post.

I had written:

But it would be incoherent to apply this concept [selfishness] to the Christian god given the characteristics believers attribute to it. Since the Christian god is said to be immortal, eternal, unchanging and indestructible, it would not face the fundamental alternative that man faces (namely life vs. death) and thus would have no need to act in order to exist (as man does). Applying concepts of morality to a being so described simply results in a jumble of stolen concepts, for their genetic basis is denied in the properties attributed to the being.

CalvinDude responded:

My question wasn’t based on the Christian God (but instead on the charicature of the ‘God’ John claimed was the God of Calvinism–one who is arbitrarily ‘evil’, etc.).

I must interject at this point that it is not clear to me what a Christian might mean by the term ‘evil’, unless of course it simply indicates the opposite of what the Christian god wishes. This of course is just another expression of religion's deep subjectivism. However, on an objective conception of morality, "that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; that which negates, opposes or destroys it is the evil.” (Rand, “The Objectivist Ethics”) And indeed, according to Christianity, its god is destroying men’s lives on a daily basis, both in the church and out on the streets. So on an objective conception of morality, the Christian god, were it real, would be rightly condemned as evil if it behaved the way Christians say it does (especially since its actions are said to be chosen).

CalvinDude wrote:

That said, I still don’t see the linkage between acting "selfishly" (or to use a less-loaded term, in ‘self-interest’) and morality such you can claim "Applying concepts of morality to a being so describe simply results in a jumble of stolen concepts."

The “linkage” is the concept ‘value’, which is by nature necessarily selfish (since value is something one acts to achieve and or keep for himself, for his benefit, or for the benefit of those whom he values for selfish reasons, etc.) and its objective basis: man’s biological needs. (Theists are not likely to see these points without difficulty, for religious morality, which theists want to take seriously, conceives of morality in terms of duties rather than values.) Man acts selfishly because his existence depends on it. If man were to act consistently unselfishly – i.e., renouncing, abandoning or even taking his values for granted when they are in fact not possible without his rationally directed effort – he would not be able to live. He would quickly become a vegetable and rot, unless of course someone else chose to intervene, at which point he would become a parasite. Thus to apply the term ‘selfishness’ to a being which has no objective needs commits the fallacy of the stolen concept for selfish action, as I pointed out, necessarily implies the need as well as the choice to act selfishly. The concept has a biological basis, and yet CalvinDude wants to apply it to a non-biological being. Since this need could not be present in a being which has the attributes ascribed by Christians to their god, what would determine whether its actions are selfish or not? Blank out.

Now, to the extent that the Christian might say his god’s actions are motivated by self-interest, it could only be irrational self-interest, for, as we have seen, wanting supplies its own standard for the Christian god, and as such wanting governs its choices supremely, without the temper of objective constraints (after all, what could possibly constrain an omnipotent god?), without the concern for meeting objective needs (for it needs nothing), and without concern for deleterious effects that might arise as a consequence of its actions (for nothing can harm it). In this sense the Christian god is the apotheosis of a bull in a China shop when it comes to morality, for it could not care less about human values.

CalvinDude wrote:

In other words, it is not at all clear that you have established how acting in self-interest is equivalent to morality, so until you can demonstrate the two are equivalent there is no jumble of stolen concepts.

True, this probably was not clear in the short space of my comment, but then again it was not one of the points that I intended to elaborate on in that comment. Allow me this occasion to tie up the loose ends.

One reason why CalvinDude is unclear on this point is because he does not have the same conception of morality as I do. Indeed, I’ve not seen this term in the bible, and I typically do not find Christians offering a clear and informed definition of the term ‘morality’. Indeed, where does CalvinDude present a definition of this term in his posting? I did not see one. Hopefully he can do better than something like "knowing right from wrong," for on such definitions even dictators who "know right from wrong" could be considered 'moral' in spite of their choice to do evil things to those whom he rules.

I will again repeat the definition of ‘morality’ that I have in mind: Morality is a code of values which guides one’s choices and actions. Notice how this concept is focused on the individual and the determinative role it grants to his values in regulating his choices and actions. Perhaps CalvinDude does not govern his own choices and actions according to a code of values, but I do, and I do so because I need to in order to live. Values are selfish in nature, and so is goal-oriented action, since the goal one pursues is of his own choosing and for his own benefit.

CalvinDude wrote:

Furthermore, it is not at all demonstrated that self-interest is only that which applies to life or death issues. This, again, would result in a morality that is nothing more or less than what lions do in the jungle.

While it is true that jungle animals do act on behalf of their lives (this fact only confirms that basis of moral and teleological concepts is biological rather than "supernatural" in nature), jungle animals do so on the basis of instinct rather than rationality (i.e., a chosen and informed commitment to reason). In distinction to jungle animals, man is capable of long-term goal-oriented planning, self-assessment, observance of other individuals’ rights, a conscious pursuit of his own life as an end itself, mutually consentual trading of values with others, etc. What makes this possible to man is his rational faculty: his ability to identify what he perceives by means of concepts and to integrate those concepts by means of general principles which he can apply in specific contexts. Reason is man’s primary means of living, for without his reason he would be at the mercy of the elements and natural predators. Since man’s life is not guaranteed to him, he has no choice about his need to act, if he chooses to live. How is action taken on behalf of preserving one’s own life not done in self-interest? When a bushman hunts for food when he is hungry, or a businessman goes to work everyday to generate a paycheck so that he can put food on the table to feed his hungry belly and keep a roof over his fragile body, who is the primary beneficiary of his actions, if not himself? In this way rational morality is universal to all men, for all men are biological and must live according to their nature's constraints.

CalvinDude wrote:

What if, instead of self-interest being related to life or death, God was interested in His own glory?

At this point, it’s clear that the Christian is essentially just trying to play games, having offered nothing of value in terms of moral principles so far and seeking chiefly to deny what has been presented by his non-believing opponent simply for the sake of not losing face to the atheist whom he loathes so much. Take for instance the proposal that CalvinDude offers here: instead of basing its choices and actions on the need to act in the face of a fundamental alternative, he wants us to entertain the notion that his “God was interested in His own glory.” "What if" is the only vehicle of insight that CalvinDude seems to possess. Of course, his suggestion misses the point: the very concept ‘interest’ ultimately presupposes a fundamental alternative of a serious and dire nature. Interest in what as opposed to what, and why? If one did not face such an alternative, what would generate and sustain his interest? Since the Christian god is said to be immortal, eternal and indestructible, it would make no difference to its existence whether it chose to pursue glory, renounce it, or remain utterly indifferent to it. Given its alleged immutable perpetuity, its so-called 'glory' (whatever that is supposed to mean) would be irrelevant.

But CalvinDude's proposal assumes, apparently at this point for the sake of not appearing to concede a point to an atheist on an issue pertaining to morality, that a fundamental alternative of the sort that man faces is not necessary for a being to be interested in anything particular. CalvinDude does not explain how this could be the case, and nothing he says indicates that he has a good grasp of the concepts involved here. In fact, it appears that he throws this proposal out only because it’s been shown that an objective standard does not and cannot apply to his god, given the attributes Christianity supplies it with. In other words, it’s bluff time for the Christian. In fact, what alternative does he have at this point? His own religious conception of morality does not premise its prescriptions on the concept of values; Jesus, for instance, nowhere presented a theory of values in any of the sermons attributed to him in the gospels, and the ‘moral’ teachings in other New Testament books nowhere link morality to man’s need for values. Indeed, one could read through the entire bible and never learn that a morality fit for man consists of a code of values. At best, values are taken completely for granted by religious morality (while rational morality is concerned primarily with the achievement and preservation of values, religious morality is primarily concerned with their surrender), which only indicates that it is at best a morally bankrupt worldview that offers man nothing that he can use in the task of living his life.

Assuming that his god can have its superlative attributes and act on behalf of pursuing some vague, indefinite interest for no specified reason (cf. having your cake and eating it, too), CalvinDude exhibits his anxiety to satisfy a standard without having one:

Thus, He acted in such a way as to increase His glory for His own purposes. This would still most certainly qualify as a “selfish” motive, for it is for Himself that He acts the way He does. Certainly, there is no issue of “life or death” involved–but that is just an arbitrary meaning that you’ve placed on the concept of selfishness relating to morality. It is not itself objectively known.

For one thing, this assumes that the Christian god’s glory could be increased in the first place, otherwise we’d have the Christian affirming futile effort on the part of his god. But to suppose that its glory could be increased would constitute an acknowledgement that its glory has not always been maximal, and also that its glory quotient is subject to change. What tutored Christian would go along with this? Also, it remains to be explained why the Christian god would act in order to increase its glory (assuming this is even coherent to begin with, which is granting much!). After all, since nothing can harm this god, there’d be no resulting difficulty if it failed to pursue the end of increasing its own glory. Again, for it to act selfishly it would have to act in a way which brings itself added benefit or preserves itself in the face of potential or certain harm. But the very notions of added benefit and potential or certain harm in such a context are incoherent given the attributes ascribed to the Christian god. It would not need to eat (like man does), it would not need to have a source of clean water (like man does), it would not need to shield itself from the hot sun of summer or the icy frosts of winter (like man does), it would not need to put forth effort to exist (like man does), it would not need to avoid walking through fire (like man does), it would not need to avoid poisonous substances (like man does), it would not need to avoid diseased animals (like man does), it would not need to avoid falling from high places (as man does), it would not need an oxygen tank in space (like man does), etc. The differences are virtually endless, thus bringing a lethal dose of doubt to the notion that the one was "created in the image" of the other. And notice all of man’s selfish pursuits are in keeping with his needs as a biological organism: he pursues food, water and shelter, because his life requires them. He avoids hungry lions, crocodiles and packs of wolves because his life requires him to. It is his nature – his biological nature – which serves as the ultimate standard for his choices and actions, a nature which is constant so long as he is alive, a nature whose needs do not causelessly change, so that he needs food one year but gypsum dust the next.

CalvinDude, however, sees otherwise. He thinks this “issue of ‘life or death’ involved” throughout my morality’s principles is “just an arbitrary meaning that [I have] placed on the concept of selfishness relating to morality.” Given his commitment to a devotional program, he has a lot of personal investment in his religious affirmations to protect, a state of affairs which ironically confirms in his mind that choices and actions need have nothing to do with the requirements of life (after all, these are a product of someone's wishing, according to what he told us above). And yet, if CalvinDude were to examine his own daily chosen actions, and be willing to acknowledge those actions which he chooses to take on behalf of his life’s needs and weigh them against those which meet no life needs, which do you suppose hold a practical priority in his schedule of tasks? Since for CalvinDude this concern for life or death is so arbitrary (and Christians say I'm wrong for pointing out that their worldview is opposed to man?), and moral action has nothing to do with biological needs, why not simply stop eating, drinking, bathing, going to the bathroom, huddling under a blanket on a cold night, wearing boots into the snow, brushing his teeth, taking vitamin pills, earning a paycheck, driving a car, buying groceries, paying for internet service, turning on a light, getting out of bed? Why does CalvinDude not simply spend his day in idle devotion to his god, acting on the premise that he is willing to give up this life ("deny himself") for a “better life” in the magic kingdom beyond the grave? Of course, this kind of behavior is what would be consistent with the anti-reality, anti-reason and anti-man philosophy of the bible. But there will be some reason (one which he will say he does not choose for himself) to go on like the rest of us biological organisms, acting in a manner that is virtually indistinguishable in the general nature of his choices and actions from the rest of us.

I had written:

In fact, since the Christian god has no needs (need implies deficiency, and the Christian god is said to be “self-sufficient” and thus could not be said to have any needs), it would have no use for a set of principles which enables it to discover and identify any values (since it wouldn’t need them in order to exist), which means: it wouldn’t have any use for morality as such to begin with.

CalvinDude responded:

To an extent you are correct. God’s morality is not based on what He “needs” to do. It is, properly speaking, simply God’s nature. God does as God is. The way He acts is because of the way He is. Thus, He doesn’t have a “use” for morality–He simply is and the way that He is is what determines His morality.

CalvinDude’s statement here, while conceding that I am at least correct “to an extent,” more importantly shows that his position is unequipped to deal with the is-ought distinction, an issue which presuppositionalists love to introduce into their debates with non-believers. (As the almighty Paul Manata himself puts it, "just because humans do exist does not mean that they ought to exist. This is the is/ought fallacy (i.e., is does not imply ought).") CalvinDude can learn more about the so-called 'is-ought' problem here. Suffice it to say, the statement which CalvinDude makes here, if it were made by an atheist in a debate with a Christian apologist, would be hoisted on high and held up as the final self-refutation of the individual making it.

CalvinDude:

Naturally, what God does is not the same as what we do. Our morality is not based on our nature, but instead based on what God decrees for us to do.

It is an understatement to say that “what God does is not the same as what we do,” for man is constrained by objective facts which do not conform to his wishing, while according to Christianity, facts are a creation of the Christian god’s wishing and can be revised at its arbitrary discretion. In terms of rational philosophy, where man must operate on primacy of existence (since the objects of his awareness do not conform to his consciousness), the Christian god is an expression of the primacy of consciousness (i.e., it allegedly possesses a consciousness which both creates and controls the objects which exist). Where man must act in the interest of his needs which are not satisfied automatically nor guaranteed by invisible magic beings, the Christian god has no needs and can do whatever it wants, assuming that it could even want in the first place (which the Christian has not established).

But it does not follow from this or any other point which CalvinDude has attempted to raise, that man’s “morality is not based on our nature, but [is] instead based on what God decrees for us to do.” This is simply a confession of faith, not a recognition of objective fact. On the contrary, man has no choice about acting within the constraints of his nature and on the basis of his biological needs, a point that we’ve seen substantiated repeatedly just in this exchange. Essentially, “what God decrees for us to do” is utterly irrelevant to man, for regardless of what it “decrees” man to do, man still must live by his own moral judgments (faith in ancient legends will not replace this), regardless of who disapproves.

Regarding the Christian god, given what believers have attributed to it, I pointed out:

It would have no need to act whatsoever, so whatever action it is said to take would be utterly arbitrary, i.e., for no rational purpose whatsoever.

CalvinDude responded:

That does not follow. If God does something because He wants to do it, it is not arbitrary. He has His purpose. Whether we understand His purpose or not is completely irrelevant to the point. If He has a purpose, whether He discloses it to us or not, then His actions are not arbitrary.

This is another example of how theists ignore the genetic basis of the concepts they try to employ in their religious defenses. Chosen action that is purposive is by definition goal-oriented. Objective goals are identified on the basis of facts (i.e., states of affairs which obtain independent of one’s awareness, intentions, preferences, etc.) relevant to one’s needs (e.g., man’s biological needs). If an entity had no needs, then what could possibly ground its choices and actions? CalvinDude has not proposed a credible alternative.

Consider a rock: what needs can one say it has? To consider the question, ask: What would happen if the rock does nothing? Will it “die”? No, it will not die because it is not alive in the first place. So we can be pretty sure that it has no biological needs, since it is not biological. Does it have mineral needs? How would one argue that it does have mineral needs? What are those mineral needs, and how are they satisfied? Does the rock act in order to satisfy these alleged needs? No, rocks do not have a means of acting on their own, nor do they need to. So rocks apparently have neither needs nor the ability to act on their own. Would CalvinDude ignore this context and say that rocks still act because they have a purpose? Given what he says about his god, there seems to be nothing to prevent him from saying this about rocks since he apparently thinks it is perfectly legitimate to say that something acts with purpose even if he cannot identify what that purpose is. But it won’t do simply to assert that a rock has a purpose of its own, especially if a context vital to the concept ‘purpose’ is absent. Similarly, it will not do merely to assert that the Christian god has a purpose given that its purported nature is missing the fundamentals which give the concept ‘purpose’ its meaning and validity. Indeed, to say that something acts in the interest of achieving a chosen goal can only mean that the acting something is conscious and that there’s a reason why it would choose to act. But even if we suppose that a non-biological being could be conscious, what reason would an immortal, indestructible and perfect conscious being have to pursue a goal? Since pursuit of a goal logically implies a lack or deficiency of some sort (such as a man’s pursuit of food indicates the need to fill his stomach; he would not need to do this if his stomach were always automatically full), the claim that the Christian god is capable of pursuing a goal essentially denies the attributes ascribed to the Christian god by Christian theology. Thus we have a stolen concept. Consequently, to say that its choices and actions are not arbitrary because they are purposive, is to beg the question of Christian theology.

CalvinDude wrote:

Furthermore, even you would not go so far as to say that any action that is done without “need” is arbitrary. Do you need to watch TV at night? No, but you want to. Is that arbitrary? No, because you gain some pleasure from it. Certainly you could play video games instead. But you decide not to do that. Your choice is not arbitrary as to which one you pick because it’s based on what you want to do.

It is true that I do seek various pleasures in life (though watching TV is typically not one of them). But contrary to where CalvinDude wants to go with this fact, my choice to pursue pleasures is completely consistent with the morality I have presented, since pleasure is a supreme value to my life (and it has already been established that I need values). Pleasure is a value because it gives me an incentive to continue living and improving my life. In fact, the ability to enjoy pleasure without contradiction (note Rand’s definition of ‘happiness’ as “a state of non - contradictory joy - a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction,” Atlas Shrugged) is the end goal of rational morality. My choice of pleasure and happiness is not arbitrary because it is in keeping with the hierarchy of my values, which are based on objective facts and chosen rationally. If I did not have a hierarchy of values to guide my choices, or if I were incapable of valuing anything to begin with (as would be the case with an immortal, indestructible, non-biological being), then I would have no moral basis for my choices and actions. Thus, they would be arbitrary by definition. And that is the believer’s burden to bear when he worships his god: it cannot value, and thus it cannot govern its choices by reference to a code of values.

CalvinDude wrote:

Wants do not equal needs, and it is the want that determines whether something is arbitrary or not.

It is true that “wants do not equal needs,” nor do choices always equal what we want. For instance, it may be the case that I want to be CEO of my own company. In pursuing that goal, however, there will be a lot of things that I will have to choose to do that I would probably not want to do, such as putting my house down as collateral for a large bank loan, taking courses on management (which are very boring to me), spending less time with my wife, analyzing budget reports, meeting with dry, uninteresting business executives, etc., none of which I really want to do, but which I would have to do if I am going to achieve my goal.

Since we act on our choices as opposed to many of our wants (I wanted to sleep in this morning, but I chose to come to work in spite of wanting otherwise), and since our choices are generally determined by our values (I value my job over the extra hour or two of sleep I'd get if I chose to sleep in instead of going to work), objective moral evaluation focuses primarily on one’s actual choices and actions as an expression of or insight into one’s overall code of values, rather than on merely what one might have wanted to do at the time as an expression of ideals he might hold (for not only do people frequently choose to act in spite of what they want, many of our wants are unrealistic and thus unachievable to begin with given our natural constraints, constraints that the Christian deity is said not to have). This is not to say that comparing and contrasting one’s choices and actions with what he might have preferred to do is futile, but it is not the primary topic of evaluation. If a being cannot value, however, then it could have no code of values by which to govern its choices and actions. If it is asserted that this being still wants to act, then we must ask what standard will serve in place of a code of values to guide its choices and actions? CalvinDude does not explain this in relation to his god, which would have no basis for valuing anything if it existed, but insists that his god’s choices and actions are not arbitrary. So we just have a denial, which tells us about CalvinDude, not about rational morality.

I had written:

It would have no need to pursue any goals, so its actions could not be seriously goal-oriented, just a source of self-entertainment as it tries to allay the boredom of an eternal misery (an angry god that does not change is eternally angry).

CalvinDude responded:

Are you saying self-entertainment is morally wrong?

No, I’m not saying this, so long as the choice of activity does not contradict one's own code of values or violate someone else’s right to exist, a right belonging to human individuals that I am happy to observe and honor. But there is a key point to keep in mind, a point which I made above, which is: pleasure is a value because it provides man with an incentive to continue living and improving his life. This is neither possible nor necessary to a being which cannot value and which has no choice about its existence, such as the Christian god. Unlike the Christian god, man faces a fundamental alternative between life and death, and thus he does have a choice about his existence: he has the choice to take those actions necessary for his life, or to ignore his biological needs and rot away. This is something man has that the Christian god doesn’t have, given its stated attributes. Since the Christian god has no choice in the matter of its existence (its alleged immortality and eternality are inherent in its nature, not a product of its choices and actions), any pursuit of self-entertainment for the purpose of allaying inevitable boredom throughout eternity, an eternity of goal-less existence, would be futile. Being omniscient, it would know that its efforts to allay its boredom would be futile, thus simply compounding its misery. It is no wonder why believers would want to say that their god seeks to quench its miserableness in self-glorification, but even this would be futile. For what glory is there in inescapable misery?

I had written:

To occupy itself, it created a cartoon universe whose inhabitants are its puppets, and eventually it will tire of this and destroy it in one of its fits of irrational, needless anger.

CalvinDude responded:

You present that as if it would be wrong for God to do that. How so?

On Christianity’s notions of morality, one would have to say that there’s nothing wrong with whatever its god chooses to do, for its wanting is its own standard of good, as CalvinDude himself made clear above when he stated that "God does as God is," meaning what his god allegedly does is the defining standard of what it should do (and people like Saddam Hussein are simply following the commandment in Mt. 5:49 which says "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect").

But here's a question which Christians should consider: According to Christianity, what would be an example of its god doing something wrong? Since on the Christian view ‘is’ = ‘ought’ as we saw above, whatever the Christian god purportedly does (description) is taken as indication of what it should do (prescription), such that there is no distinction between what it allegedly does do and what it ought to do. Consequently any example presented by a believer of his god doing something "wrong" can easily be shown to be an example of it doing "right," since "right" is synonymous with whatever it is said to do, regardless of motivations or outcomes with respect to man's values (for they would only be irrelevant to the God of Indifference). And since Christian morality is not premised on objective values, but on supernatural whims (the agency by which the universe was created in the first place), it explicitly teaches that everything its god does is by stipulation “good” and “right,” even though if men did those same things they would be rightly condemned as vicious. In other words, the "standard" which the Christian wants to reserve for his god (and call "moral") is simply discarded when it comes to evaluating man’s choices and actions. In the case of man, the things that he actually does, do not serve as the standard for determining what he should do. (Apologist Evan May attempts to make this point against atheism, even though CalvinDude has shown that this is a problem for Christianity.) Rather, on the Christian view this standard is set by the wishes of the ruling consciousness, that is: by the will of the supreme subject, which means: a subjective standard (which rational individuals recognize as no standard at all).

CalvinDude:

Based on your idea of morality?

Based on my morality, however, a morality informed by objective values and which applies reason to the human task of living life, I have an objective standard of moral judgment by which I can evaluate actions chosen by anyone, real or imagined. Those actions which are proper to the life of a rational being are the good, and those which work against his life are the evil. The chips fall where they may, and this really bothers Christian apologists, even though they cannot escape the same standard when their own values are at stake.

Suppose Saddam Hussein were still loose and enjoying the power he had as the dictator of Iraq, and he got a hold of CalvinDude’s mother for purposes of his (Saddam’s) self-entertainment at CalvinDude’s mother’s expense. CalvinDude finds in his mail delivery one day a video of his mother being tortured in one of Saddam’s torture chambers. How does CalvinDude react when he watches this? Does he suppose that Saddam’s wanting is its own standard, as he thinks it is in the case of his god, and thus say it’s 'right' and 'good' that Saddam tortures his mother? Perhaps, but I highly doubt it. If CalvinDude rejects Jesus’ condition for discipleship given in passages like Luke 14:26, and instead of hating his mother he actually (perhaps secretly) values her, he will condemn Saddam’s actions, and probably want to identify some course of action to intervene on behalf of his values.

Now the Christian might say that it is right and legitimate to condemn such actions when they are performed by other human agents, but when they are performed by the Christian god those same actions are above reproach. (Christians are good at elaborating on their stolen concepts as they invent ways to rationalize their pernicious doctrines and special pleading, such as "finite human beings cannot enjoy the freedoms of an infinite sovereign God"). In other words, the choices and actions per se and their relationship to human life do not matter, it’s a question of who is doing the choosing and acting that counts. Thus Christian morality is not about the what of moral action at all (so rational principles do not apply), but about the who of moral agency, which of course results a long chain of special pleading, some of which we have already seen explicitly endorsed (such as the Christian god's wanting is its own standard). But when someone values another human being, does it really matter who is doing the torturing? Does the who in such a case outweigh concern for the what of the action that is taking place? Does it really matter to CalvinDude if his mother is being tormented in Saddam's prison rather than in the Christian god's hell? Perhaps the Christian needs to do some moral soul-searching here, and determine what he values more: his god’s unrestrainable whims, or his mother’s welfare and safety? The Christian will have to face such questions for himself. Whether he is honest to the facts is up to him.

CalvinDude:

As for me, God certainly has no “need” for goals–but that does not mean He doesn’t want certain things.

Wanting something necessarily implies a lack or deficiency of that something. One does not want what he already has, just as “hope that is seen is not hope” (Romans 8:24). The Christian might say that he has things that he wants in order to assert a counter-example to what I am saying. But this would verge on ignoring the difference between wanting to acquire something and wanting to keep something that is already acquired; it would also ignore the role that choices make in this context. In the case of the Christian god, what could it possibly want to acquire that it does not already have? And in the case of the things that it already has, whether by acquisition or inherency, what could possibly take it away from the Christian god? Since its attributes belong to it by its very nature, it has no choice in the matter to begin with. And since according to Christian doctrine no state of affairs obtains without the Christian god’s authority, any “wants” it might be said to have would have to be arbitrary, for it could only already have what it wants, and nothing apart from the Christian god could change this.

CalvinDude:

And again, it is the issue of want that determines whether something is arbitrary or not. Flipping a coin and deciding off that is arbitrary. Doing something because you want to isn’t.

It is interesting to find a Christian apologist admit that "whether something is arbitrary or not" is determined by wants rather than logic. Regardless, it is true merely having the desire to do something is not sufficient to determine whether or not one’s choices and actions are arbitrary. Desires do not arise in a vacuum; they arise in the context of antecedent conditions which entail an absence of what is desired. Moreover, our choices and actions are context-bound; that is, we make our choices and actions according to the context of our values. Our desires do not come out of nowhere and have no relation to our values. For instance, since I value my life and its welfare, I have no desire to fry like the fish my wife cooked for dinner last Sunday evening. This is because frying like a fish in a frying pan would first cause excruciating pain and then death, given my biological nature. But it would make no difference for the Christian god, whether it fries or not, or whether I fry or not. Utter and inescapable indifference is the only attitude possible to such a being, and arbitrary action is its only option.

An action that is arbitrary would be one which bears no relation to one’s hierarchy of values. For instance, sprinkling sand in your child’s breakfast cereal, walking into the middle of a busy freeway, wandering into an active volcano without protective gear, stepping out of a submarine at 1400 feet below sea level without scuba equipment, entering the lion exhibit at the local zoo before feeding time, wrestling a pilot for the controls of an airliner while in flight without knowing how to fly, driving a motorcycle into a crowded supermarket, trimming your toenails with a blow torch, etc. Since it is allegedly indestructible, the Christian god could do any of these things without being harmed, since nothing can harm it. Since it cannot value, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t do these things, just as there is no reason why it should do them. Thus its actions, since it has no hierarchy of values to serve as their guide, would be arbitrary to the uttermost. Whatever "standard" it has for governing its actions, it is not a standard that man can use.

CalvinDude had asked:

Suppose that God did create us with the sole intention of torturing us all forever and ever. God has that power–so how is that morally wrong?

I answered:

On the Christian’s premises, there’s nothing wrong with this, since according to Christianity we are the property of its god (just as a dictator thinks of the people he rules), and it can do with its property what it wills (even if it uses human agents to carry out its will).

CalvinDude now responds:

Except, of course, that God’s nature is not such that He would do something with the sole purpose of torturing us.

Not only does this statement make the illicit assumption that the Christian god can do something with any purpose whatsoever (an assumption which was pronounced DOA above), it sidesteps the fact that one can make any claim he wants about imaginary beings, since imagination and fantasy rather than reason and facts are the final arbiter.

CalvinDude:

In fact, God’s sole purpose for anything is His glorification.

As we saw above, this would be an utterly futile purpose, given the Christian god’s stated attributes. As an allegedly perfect being, its glory quotient would already be at maximum, and thus it would be incoherent to say that its glory can increase as the result of its actions. The Christian god in this sense is the eternal would-be narcissist eternally drowning in its own miserableness (since an angry deity which cannot change will be eternally angry, and a narcissistic being without a body to enjoy its desire for narcissistic pleasures will be eternally frustrated).

CalvinDude continued with this dead-end dodge:

He is glorified both in our salvation and in proper judgement of those who are not saved.

Which simply means that its choice of glorification is arbitrary as well, for it is the Christian god’s own whims, rather than its application of objective moral standards, which determines who is “saved” and who is not. If salvation were possible to man on the basis of objective moral standards, then there would be a standard whose identity could be discovered and known to man (for knowledge of objective moral standards is possible to man), and thus he would know what he needed to do in order to meet those standards and qualify for its rewards. But Christian salvation is something one cannot earn (remember that Christianity is all about pursuing the unearned), just as condemnation is also not something one earns (for Christianity typically teaches that even infants can be condemned, and this could not be due to some infraction on their part which "earns" them their condemnation). At any rate, the bible makes it pretty clear that it is not up to man, but up to the Christian god, who gets to go to heaven and who gets to go to hell. To make this issue a source of the Christian god’s glorification is to heinously enshrine an arbitrary circularity; again, want is its own standard. We know that this would have to be arbitrary because the determination of who is saved and who is condemned bears no relation to a hierarchy of values (for the Christian god, as has been shown, could have no such thing as a hierarchy of values), and whether any particular individual is saved or condemned would make no difference to the Christian god, since it cannot know either loss or gain.

CalvinDude:

Thus, my hypothetical question is ultimately not about the Christian God at all.

Perhaps now CalvinDude will realize that his question was in fact about the Christian god all along.

CalvinDude:

Instead, it is about how you can determine whether such a God as that would be good or evil. I maintain that you cannot answer that question since “good” and “evil” are meaningless in your worldview.

CalvinDude’s assumption that I cannot answer his question (“how [can you] determine whether such a God as that would be good or evil”?), is based on his assumption that the concepts ‘good’ and ‘evil’ “are meaningless in [my] worldview.” Has he established this latter assumption by informed argument? Not at all. And in fact, he could only assume this in ignorance of my worldview’s teachings on the matter, and what’s ironic is that it is his own Christian worldview which suffers this very fatal deficiency (for the bible nowhere presents definitions for these terms), and as we have seen there is no objective standard by which the Christian is willing to morally judge his god’s attributed choices and actions. As for how my worldview conceives of good and evil, I already spoke to this above, so I shall not repeat it again here.

I pointed out the following:

In this sense, it would actually be inconsistent for Christian believers themselves to be opposed to murder, for any murder that takes place would be “ordained” by their god, which could only mean that any action taken to prevent that murder from taking place would be an action opposed to the Christian god’s will.

CalvinDude responded:

This is absurd, though.

Gloriosky, I think he’s beginning to see the light!

CalvinDude:

That we recognize something happens according to the will of God does not in any manner mitigate against the responsibility of those involved in the action.

And when something is said to happen “according to the will of God,” who or what is the responsible party? Certainly not the victims of this god’s destructive actions, and certainly not those who are manipulated like puppets in carrying out that will, for they have no choice in the matter. CalvinDude's "standard" of justice here is analogous to a cartoonist condemning one of his cartoon's characters for killing another cartoon character. For the Christian god to blame human agents who carry out its will (in any contest of wills between man and the Christian god, whose will prevails?), simply indicates that this god is not man enough to take responsibility for its own choices and actions.

CalvinDude wrote:

And on the face of it, it is most certainly not illogical to hold to this:

1. Those who murder are guilty and ought to be punished.”

2. God ordains that John murder Bill.

3. John is guilty of murder and ought to be punished.

Of course, this scenario (which I deal with below), does not address the issue that I raised above, which is that “it would actually be inconsistent for Christian believers themselves to be opposed to murder,” for if man’s actions (whether for life or against life) are “ordained” (that is, chosen) by the Christian god, then taking a stand against murder would be indistinguishable from taking a stand against the Christian god’s ordained “plan.” The only logical orientation open for the Calvinist, given his doctrinal formulations, is one of complete concordance with whatever ends up happening, for whatever ends up happening is all part of "God's plan" and, as we saw above, ‘is’ = ‘ought’ which can only mean: seeking to change any given state of affairs is equivalent to supposing one’s own ideals are somehow superior to the Christian god’s, and seeking to prevent some anticipated action is equivalent to opposing “God’s plan.” It is no surprise that Christian morality contains the commandment “resist not evil” (Mt. 5:39), for any act of resisting evil would be an act of opposing the Christian god’s will.

But given what Calvinism teaches, namely that man’s own actions are chosen, not by man himself, but ahead of time by the Christian god, the following scenario is more in line with its teachings:

1. Those whom the Christian god chooses to commit murder are guilty by proxy and ought to be punished as scapegoats.

2. The Christian god chooses that John murder Bill.

3. John is guilty by proxy and ought to be punished as a scapegoat.

Of course, this does not get the Calvinist out of the bind. For if his god has “ordained” that John murder Bill, and John in fact fulfills the Calvinist’s god’s will that he do this, then why would it want John punished? Here John is being punished for obedience to the Christian god’s will rather than disobedience. As I have pointed out before, man is always the loser when it comes to primitive worldviews. I’m glad that our courts do not follow this primitive model which simply makes a mockery of justice.

Besides, the Christian's pre-occupation with moral responsibility turns out to be nothing but an elaborate red herring after all, for I John 1:9 promises the believer that he can get away with murder: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So on the one hand Christianity wants to say that its god calls all the shots, pre-ordaining men's choices for them; then when it compels men to murder each other, it holds them responsible (as if they murdered on their own volition); then they are forgiven just for the asking, so it's all moot in the end.

So to recap the elements which make up this monstrosity of incoherence and double-talk, we have:

1. Obeying the Christian god's will is the believer's moral ideal

2. The bible nowhere says that murder is "wrong"

3. By virtue of its omnipotence and sovereignty, whatever the Christian god fore-ordains as an expression of its divine will must come to pass; no human being has any say in the matter so any choices he is said to have are irrelevant and ineffectual

4. If the Christian god wills that John kill Bill, then John is obeying the Christian god's will when he actually kills Bill, thus achieving the believer's moral ideal

5. Acting to prevent John from killing Bill is acting in defiance of the Christian god's will (for by virtue of its fore-ordaining John to kill Bill, the Christian god wants John to kill Bill, and for the Christian god wanting is its own standard)

6. Talk of John's moral responsibility is a sham since John has no choice in the matter

7. Talk regarding right vs. wrong is moot anyway since in the end the believer can be forgiven of any responsibility he is said to have in such matters just for the asking, which means he can get away with murder.

And presuppositionalists say we "borrow" from Christian morality when we recognize that some action is evil? Nope, couldn't fool us!

CalvinDude wrote:

God’s ordination of these events does not alter the responsibility of the actors involved.

If the actions which the actors are performing are not actions which they chose to take on their own uncoerced volition, but were in effect compelled by the irresistible force of an invisible magic being whose wishes prevail over reality (cf. metaphysical subjectivism), then saying that those actors are responsible for the actions in question would only be possible if we drop the context. In this way, we have yet another stolen concept when Calvinism says that men are responsible for the evil actions its god ordains them to perform, for the concept 'responsibility' is being asserted while denying its genetic roots (namely action freely chosen on one's own uncoerced volition). Again, we have in the Calvinist god a deity which is not man enough to take responsibility for its own choices and actions.

CalvinDude wrote:

Whether you agree or disagree with this is, at this point, irrelevant. It is only a matter of simple logic here.

It is never logical to assert concepts apart from the contexts which inform their meaning, just as it is not logical to insist that a conclusion borne on fallacy is soundly established. But it is curious that CalvinDude thinks that whether or not I agree is so important that he thought to indicate that it is irrelevant. In fact, to say that a person's agreement or disagreement in a given matter is irrelevant is evidence of borrowing from my worldview, for such a statement could only have merit on the basis of the primacy of existence principle, which is the recognition that states of affairs obtain independent of conscious activity (such as agreeing or disagreeing). Thus CalvinDude finds that he needs to abandon his own worldview's metaphysics in order to defend it, which instances an insuperable tension between his worldview and his apologetic strategies.

CalvinDude:

After all, God ordained that Christ should die for our sins, yet He still held those who did it responsible.

And this we are told is “logical.” Only in the interminable labyrinth of mystical delusions could one even have the hope that such a farce is “logical.”

CalvinDude wrote:

Again, unless you can show some transcendent morality that that violates you have no reason to complain about it occuring.

To whom am I expected to “show” this? To someone who is steeped in the delusions of his religious commitments? To someone who has presupposed that whatever his imaginary being does is ‘good’ on the basis of wanting as its own standard? Indeed, what “transcendent morality” has the Christian offered? While the primitive notion of supernaturalism is likely built into the idea 'transcendental' already, it’s not at all clear how the Christian would define the term 'morality' let alone explain why man needs it.

I had written:

(Good thing most Christians aren’t so consistent with the implications of their worldview!) Recall that Jesus said “resist not evil.” An irrational worldview which seeks to enable evildoers would need injunctions of this sort. Besides, the bible nowhere says that killling is “wrong.” It simply gives the context-deficient prohibition “thou shalt not kill,” which is not at all the same thing. If this worldview suits you, well, that’s not my problem.

CalvinDude responded:

Well, first I would point out that “thou shalt not kill” is a poorly translated KJV text. It ought to read “thou shalt not murder” as murder is different from killing (and, by the way, the term in Hebrew also implies causing the death of another person through carelessness, not just active plotting to kill someone). In any case, the Bible did not stop with only the Ten Commandments. There are several other places which clarify what constitutes murder and what does not. But aside from that, the rest of your statements are unproven assertions.

Whether or not the KJV text is a poor translation matters little to me, and it certainly is not my problem (since I do not guide my choices and actions by its contents). But I do wonder how those who are invested in one translation as opposed to another would be able to sanitize their preferences of the modern sensitivities that they take for granted when deciding what is a poor and what is an accurate translation (alleged implications included). What’s noteworthy here is that nothing CalvinDude states serves to controvert my point that the bible nowhere says that killing is “wrong.” Indeed, I don’t think Christian believers themselves think that killing (or murdering, if CalvinDude prefers) is wrong. As the example of CalvinDude’s mother being tortured by Saddam Hussein above indicates, it all depends on who is doing the killing or murdering, not the action itself. But nowhere does the bible say that murder is wrong. It just prohibits it, but this is not sufficient to tell us whether it is right or wrong. It could very well be the case that, if a particular Christian happens to think that murdering another human being is wrong, he is borrowing from my values-based moral worldview rather than actually holding consistently to his values-rejecting worldview.

CalvinDude had written:

As it is, any time any of you argue that God is immoral for doing something you are arguing for an objective standard of morality that transcends not only all of mankind but the divine too.

To which I responded:

That is not problematic for my position since moral evaluation applies to all actions which are *chosen* by a sentient being. If the actions attributed to your god in the story book are actions which it is said to have chosen to take, then they are open to moral scrutiny.

CalvinDude replied, saying:

And yes, they are the actions that God has chosen to do. And they are open to moral scrutiny insofar as morality is properly defined.

According to my worldview, morality is properly defined as a code of values which guides man’s choices and actions. I don’t know what the Christian thinks is a proper definition of morality, or where he would find it (I do not find this term in any of my bibles). Does the Christian view of morality take into account the human need for values? If so, why don’t the speeches attributed by the gospels to Jesus ever make this clear? And why is the surrender of values to a being that could have no use for them so important throughout the bible? Indeed, we must ask: Do Christians really have a good grasp of what morality actually is?

CalvinDude wrote:

However, there are still many questions regarding your position of rational self-interest that remain to be answered in regards to how they relate to God.

If CalvinDude has questions, rest assured, I will have answers. But what he should notice is how obvious it is that he senses the tight, logical cohesion of the objective morality that I have defined, and it is because he recognizes that it is indeed the only rational form of morality conceivable to man that he wants to reconcile it to his god-belief. But the two will never meet, and an attempt to bring them together can only compel him to compromise one or both, which is what we have seen.

by Dawson Bethrick

Rational Morality vs. Presuppositional Apologetics

It has become fashionable among contemporary Christian apologists to assert the charge that atheists "borrow" their morality from the Christian worldview. And while some atheists may in fact have done this (notable examples such as Marx, Lenin and Stalin come to mind), I have already weighed in on this matter, showing how my morality does not even come close to being guilty of this charge. That being said, the persistent fetish of the typical Christian apologist is to claim that non-Christians have no basis for morality, and because of this non-belief in their god is vilified as an evil force from which men should abstain. Examples of infamous dictators who happened to be atheists are often cited as evidence, and without deeper knowledge of the philosophical premises driving their terror, the association between atheism and atrocity may appear inevitable to the superficial thinker. In order to encourage this one-dimensional viewpoint, elaborate critiques of the writings of high-profile atheist writers, such as R. Dawkins, P. Kurtz, D. Barker et al., are proudly published by defenders of the faith who seem only too pleased with themselves, gloating over their quashing of yet another outcropping of anti-religious rebellion.

What is common to these critiques authored by Christians, however, is their surprising inclination to take key points for granted, leaving them indefinite, unexamined, at best approximate and uninformative. The very term 'morality', for instance, is tossed around as if both authors and their intended readers automatically had the same understanding of its meaning in mind. Just as the definition of the crucial term 'universe' is neglected in most expositions of the cosmological argument, the definition of 'morality' tends to remain unstated in apologetic treatments. In fact, one gets the impression that the term 'morality' is used more for emotional or psychological effect than for its philosophical importance to man, for man is essentially a secondary concern when it comes to religious morality. This leads to another common oversight: apologists treat morality as if it were important, but they tend not to indicate why it is important, or to whom. It is usually implied that morality serves a purpose, but exactly what that purpose might be is typically not explained very clearly. To make things even murkier, Christian debaters more often than not tend to jump beyond the moral needs of the individual and headlong into the fray of often silly or exaggerated dilemmas involving two or more individuals, often in emergency situations, effectively slighting morality as such.

When atheists encounter Christian apologists (especially those inclined to rely on presuppositional tactics) and the darts start flying from mystic predators as they try to assume control of this discussion on their terms from the outset, a few basic questions should be considered by both sides before weighing in on complicated (or even deliberately contrived) scenarios. For instance:

What is the definition of 'morality'?
Does man need morality?
If yes, why?
What is the purpose of morality?

These questions are straightforward enough not to cause too much controversy by simply asking them. The controversy will likely come when both sides start addressing them. If it is the case that the Christian's general conception of morality is fundamentally different from the atheist's conception of morality, this contrast should be brought out into the open at the very beginning of the exchange. After all, even Van Til asked: "Is not the important thing that Christian meanings be contrasted with non-Christian meanings?" (1) Given that the non-believer's moral views may significantly differ from the Christian's dogma, I wonder how well prepared Christians will be for such questions, because the issues these questions raise do not seem to figure very prominently in their treatments and critiques involving morality. In fact, no explicit definition of the concept 'morality' even seems to be given in the bible; I can't even find this term in any of my bibles, let alone a definition. It appears to be completely alien to its design.

Now, since I am proposing these questions to facilitate painfully needed clarification on these matters, here is how I would answer them on behalf of my worldview:

Definition of 'morality': Morality is a code of values which guides an individual's choices and actions.

Man's need for morality: Yes, man does need morality, and he does so because he faces a fundamental alternative (life vs. death), and to live he needs values which he can use in order to sustain his life. Since those values are not automatically provided, he needs a code of values to identify what values he needs and the actions he must take in order to achieve and/or protect them.

The purpose of morality: The purpose of morality is to teach an individual how to live and enjoy his life.

Of course, it is expected - even hoped - that these answers will generate a variety of questions, perhaps even outright friction given their certainty. (Christians hate it when non-believers are certain about things.) But one thing is for certain: I did not get these answers from the bible.

What should be noticed right off, however, is the crucial role that this conception of morality grants to values. A value is something one acts to achieve and or protect. An important point to note about rational values is that they are selfish in nature: they are chosen by an individual according to his own needs, his own judgments, his own code of values. People share the same basic values on the most general level, such as food, water, clothing, shelter, health and well-being, companionship, security, personal fulfillment, options, etc. We know that a person values these things when he puts forth effort to achieve them. Since 'rational' here means committed to reason as one's only means of knowledge and his own guide to action, a rational morality applies reason to man's task of living his life, and takes into account the fact that man's actions are chosen and goal-oriented. Given these points, the picture is now in sharper focus, and it is quite the contrary to what is often assumed by theists: since faith in magic beings will not repeal the fundamental alternative which man faces or quench his need for values, religious belief is essentially irrelevant to morality.

Morality addresses the question "What should I do, and why?" Theists are correct in recognizing that not all species of morality are equal. In addition to those posed above, general, over-arching questions are useful in sorting the fit from the unfit when it comes to determining which morality is proper to man. For instance, should I live in fear of an invisible magic being which disapproves of my existence (even though it is said to have created me in the first place)? Or, should I live in happiness and enjoy my life, even if others disapprove? The former is the basic ideal of religion, and the latter is the norm for rational human life. If one wants to spend his life in the futility of trying to please something that does not exist, the religious model is recommended. However, if one wants to enjoy his life, pursuing those goals of his own choosing, then the rational model of morality is recommended.

The morality that I have defined here is fit for man because it offers him a hierarchical ordering of his values which enables him to guide his choices and actions according to his chosen priorities: basic life needs will of course come first if he wants to live (his first moral choice); after these are satisfied, he can pursue other goals which make his life worth living (his choice of happiness). Man needs such a guide because, as a biological organism, he faces a constant fundamental alternative: life vs. death. That is, man needs a clear understanding of his values in order to live, and he needs a code by which he can govern his judgments in a changing and sometimes hostile environment. Unlike an immortal and indestructible being which can know no threat and for which no hostile environment exists, man has no choice about the fact that he must act in order to live. If man does not act, or if he takes the wrong actions, he will die. Additionally, man must choose to act. Man's actions are goal-oriented and he is able to choose which goals he will pursue. Rational morality enables him to thus manage the choices and actions which make his life possible. Given his nature and and the nature of his needs, man requires a morality which is wholly able to integrate these basic facts, facts which are common to all men, facts which no man can evade. These facts are not the outcome of a consensus; no matter how many people can be assembled and persuaded to agree otherwise, man will still face a fundamental alternative, and he will still need to act in order to live. Nor are they subject to commandments or wishes, for no matter how strongly one might deny them or hope they go away, they will nevertheless continue to obtain. Consistent with the primacy of existence principle that provides the firm basis of a rational, this-worldly philosophy, these facts are the metaphysical conditions which man must deal with if he is to exist.

For religion, however, morality begins with a set of mystical presuppositions, rooted in the primacy of consciousness, which are accepted on faith and asserted in place of the facts which should be taken into account if a morality fit for man is sought (which, considering religion's lethal track record, is a big "if"). Where the rational view of morality is based on man's need for values whose characteristics are ultimately determined by reference to his nature as a biological organism, religion views morality as a code of duties which man is to perform regardless of his needs or understanding, for the sake of a being which could not benefit from the performance of those duties in the first place, for it could have no needs to satisfy to begin with. A man has needs, but an invincible deity does not. Where rational morality views man as the primary beneficiary of his own actions (cf. rational self-interest), religious morality views man as the means to someone else's ends, specifically the pleasure of an invisible magic being which, accordingly, would be unaffected if man were annihilated (cf. mystical self-denial). And where rational morality is premised on man's nature as a biological organism whose needs must be met by means of chosen actions, religious morality is premised on the character of a supernatural, immortal and indestructible being which has no needs, either the need for values or the need to act in order to exist. (As described, for instance, the Christian god could feasibly sit on its hands in absolute idleness for all eternity, and, being unchangeable, it would still be the Christian god forever.) And while religious morality does recognize, at least on an implicit level, that man has a need to act, his actions are to be motivated by fear of divine threats rather than the reward of earthly values. This is simply a consequence of the types of goals each moral model upholds for man: for religion, the goal is to appease an angry god which cannot change, while for the rational man the goal is personal happiness and a life of fulfillment and enjoyment. Already we see profound differences which define the nature of the debate between religious morality and a morality fit for man's life on earth, confirming the fact that the presuppositionalist's charge that atheists necessarily "borrow" from Christianity's morality is bogus to the hilt.

Typically, however, apologists do not want to acknowledge these fundamental differences when framing the terms of the debate, for they do not play into their strategy. On the contrary, theists tend to focus more on situational ethics, that is, on hypothetical anecdotes involving more than one individual, especially when one of the individuals involved has for unspecified reasons the desire to harm someone else. Ironically, the answer to such scenarios is precisely what religion rejects, namely the fact that man has a right to exist for his own sake, a core teaching of rational philosophy which is the basis of the concept of political rights. But the theist then pretends to be concerned to find the proper morality which will effectively inhibit the harmful behavior and thus appears to have in mind the best interest of the individual in particular and society in general. If, however, he had the best interest of society in mind, why then is the theist so willing to neglect the moral needs of the individual, needs which are defined, not by social relationships (which are prone to frequent change), but primarily by his nature as a biological organism (which does not change)?

Christian apologists like to say that man's capacity for morality stems from his being "created in the image of God." But as we have seen, it is precisely what is not god-like about man which determines his morality and his need for it. The differences between the Christian god, as it is described by its self-appointed earthly representatives, and the human being, could not be more striking. As described, the Christian god, for instance, could not be said to be biological, and could not be said to face the fundamental alternative that man faces. Indeed, given the imaginative attributes that theists use to describe their god, it could have no needs whatsoever.

Consider the following points of contrast (2):

The Christian god is said to be immortal, eternal, invincible and indestructible. Thus it could not need to take specific actions or acquire anything in order to exist and remain what it supposedly is. But man is neither immortal, eternal, invincible nor indestructible, and thus he needs to take specific actions and acquire specific kinds of things (values) in order to live.

The Christian god is said to be both omniscient and infallible, and thus it has no need to discover and validate its knowledge, including any moral knowledge it is said to possess. But man is neither omniscient nor infallible, and because of this he needs a set of principles that he can apply in identifying those values his life needs.

The Christian god is said to be omnipotent, able to wish the universe into existence and conform objects to its every whim. Thus even if it could be said that something could possibly threaten the Christian god, it could wish it out of existence, or command it to become what it is not, turning A into non-A at will. Man, however, is not omnipotent, which means he cannot wish his values into existence, nor can he wish away those things which can pose a threat to his life. He must put forth effort to achieve and protect the values his life requires.

Thus premising morality on the nature of such a being puts man at a severe disadvantage from the very beginning, since his needs could at best only be a secondary matter of concern, and only then in the shadow of compulsions to obey contextless commandments which he is to follow whether he understands them or not.

These points and distinctions serve as the key pretext to keep in mind when it comes to considering the superficial arguments non-believers can expect to encounter in presuppositional apologetics. Many atheists, however, having not succeeded in fully shrugging the mind-crippling effects of their former religious lives, remain confused about morality and its purpose for man as a result of the anti-intellectual influence of Christianity. Unfortunately, many non-believers have a difficult time recovering from their acceptance of unearned guilt which the religious view of man requires of him. Although such individuals may often intend to provide an improved view of morality, many have bought into the fallacies and deficiencies of religious morality unwittingly. For them, as for theists, morality is primarily concerned with social behavior; right and wrong are defined, not in terms of values chosen by the individual on the basis of objective needs determined by his nature (which he did not choose), but on false premises and non-essential outcomes whose causation remains unspecified and whose impact is often confined to mere emotions.

Even worse, many atheists have adopted what is nothing more than a secularized version of religious morality, essentially viewing man as a means to some end beyond himself (as did Marx, Lenin and Stalin), such as to serve "the common good," to preserve the species, to save whales, spotted owls, yellow-spotted toads and forests, to provide for everyone else's children, etc. The common ground between such secular versions of morality and religious morality is the call for self-sacrifice on the behalf of someone else's interests (or non-interests, as the case may be). Both models, either implicitly or explicitly, hold that man is innately guilty, depraved and repugnant by his very nature, and thus he should not be free to choose his own goals, govern his own judgments, or seek his own form of happiness. Such choices are to be made either by the State or by the priesthood, gangs of Atillas or cliques of witch doctors, each pretending to possess a knowledge to which the "common man" has no firsthand access. The starting point for such models of morality entails the rejection of the view that man is an end in himself and that he has the right to exist for his own sake.

Because secularized versions of religious morality are just as weak and open to criticism as is religious morality proper, they serve as 'easy pickins' for Christian apologists, who like to presume that non-Christian philosophies can offer nothing better. After all, an authoritarian morality requires an omnipotent authority, and the actual power of a state could never match the powers concocted in the religionist's imagination. The preferred tactic in this case is to subject defenders of these secular models to a barrage of questions and scenarios which are supposed to be taken as serious examples which a morality is supposed to resolve. Given this formula, pettiness and exaggeration quickly replace focus on relevant facts and integration of rational principles. Of course, since the religious model of morality thrives on blurring man's need for values and for principles which he can use reliably in identifying the values he needs and the actions he needs to take in order to achieve and protect them, secular variations of religious morality tend to do the same, thus effectively handing the debate to apologists tutored on techniques of deception, wordplay, and entrapment as means of propping up a grandiose bluff.

All these points should be considered the next time a presuppositionalist wants to pick a fight over moral questions.

by Dawson Bethrick

Notes:

(1) Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 3rd ed., p. 23n.1.

(2) See also my blog Is Man "Created in the Image of God"?

Will the Real TAG Please Stand Up?

Paul Manata, favorite son of amateur presuppositionalist tiddlywinks, tells me that I am wrong for concluding that TAG relies at least in part on an appeal to ignorance, even though I cited actual examples which strongly support this appraisal. To the contrary, Paul told me that he had already dealt with this contention in his exchanges with Dr. Zachary Moore, who independently drew the same conclusion that TAG may in fact rely on a veiled argument from ignorance. I reviewed Paul’s messages in that exchange, hoping to find the argument that he says is innocent of relying on ignorance in some way so that I could review it and thus confirm his contention that it is in fact innocent of this error. Unfortunately, I was not able to determine exactly what argument Paul had in mind, for he can’t seem to make up his mind on what exactly TAG is saying.

I went through his responses to Dr. Moore in search of any statements which Paul might have intended to encapsulate TAG, and in my estimation the following seem to come closest to what he believes TAG is trying to argue:

1. "we are saying something more like, because you ARE NOT ignorant of X, that shows you presuppose that God exists."
2. "The argument is that if your worldview were true, [logic] would not exist."
3. "The argument is that laws of logic are inconsistent with your worldview."
4. "E’ is only possible in the a Christian worldview, CW, therefore, using E’ is to assume the truth of CW."
5. "The claim of TAG is that you cannot explain or account for ANYTHING."
6. "My argument is that the Christian worldview is true because it is transcendentall necessary for the possibility of knowledge."
7. "I argue that the character of logic is incompatible with the character of matter, therefore the cannot exist because immaterialk entities do not exist, and never will, given *what you say*."
8. "I'm saying, for the upmteenth time, that the *reason* you can't account for logic is because it wouldn't exist given your worldview."
9. "I'm saying something about the character of matter and the character of LoL. If matter is all there is, then logic does not exist (except as convention, or linguistic constructs, but then you have the conventionalists problems)."

I suppose that Paul’s few typos are the result of lapses from "thinking God’s thoughts after Him" indicating that salvation is a work in progress, while the rest of his statements is to be accepted as "next to gospel." But clearing past these mistakes, it's not clear from Paul's statements what he considers to be TAG, for he presents several different statements which can be taken as conclusions. And with the exception of perhaps two of them (namely 4 and 7), it's not clear what their premises or the structure of their inference might be. Without seeing exactly what TAG looks like according to Paul's view, it cannot be confirmed that TAG does not rely at least in part on an appeal to ignorance.

For the most part, however, Paul's arguments seem to be concerned with materialism in particular; specifically he seems concerned to prove that materialism and logic are incompatible. And while this ambition has its own share of problems, even if it were successful, it would not prove the reality of the Christian god, which is what I understand to be the goal of TAG. After all, the acronym TAG is short for "transcendental argument for the existence of God," is it not? However, the supposition that logic and materialism are incompatible with one another in no way necessitates the existence of any invisible magic beings, unless of course that supposition is inserted by theistic prejudices. But if that is the case, then the supposed tension between logic and materialism could not itself be used to validate those theistic prejudices as this would beg the question.

So already it seems that Paul has introduced some confusion into the fray, for the argument that he wants to say is innocent of the charge of reliance on ignorance does not appear to be TAG proper. And this is what he seems to overlook throughout his messages to Dr. Moore: that while TAG is concerned (or at least supposed to be concerned) with proving the existence of the Christian god, atheism is not incompatible with the view that logic is not material. Occasionally one finds an astute Christian believer who is willing to concede this, such as when Greg Welty admits that

materialism is not 'the consistent testimony of the modern atheist.' Many atheists believe that something more than concrete, material objects exist, and present plenty of arguments for that view. Acting as if they're all materialists makes us look, well, a bit outdated. Sort of like never progressing beyond Hume in our understanding of 'the inductive problem'. (Re: On b) and possibly not-a)

In trying to defend the thesis that TAG is innocent of appealing to ignorance, Paul was concerned to present a conception of TAG which goes out of its way to avoid the argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. Consider the first condensation that Paul offers of his version of TAG:

we are saying something like, because you ARE NOT ignorant of X, that shows you presuppose that God exists.

And at first blush, if we take this as a summary of TAG, it in fact appears to avoid any appeal to ignorance. But of course, we should not expect a celebrated apologetic method to openly declare its conclusions on the basis of stark naked ignorance. If apologists are to be credited for anything, they are to be credited for their ingenuity in camouflaging their devices such that their questionable nature is not readily detected. Indeed, as I indicated in my prior blog on this topic, an arguer may in fact not realize that he is actually drawing his conclusion on the basis of his own ignorance of some relevant point or fact. We are all capable of this, whether theist or non, since we all start out ignorant in the first place. Here Paul is deliberately going out of his way to portray TAG (his conception of it, that is) as though it can expressly escape the charge of argumentum ad ignorantiam. But if we drill down into the premises and their supporting arguments that would be offered in support of this conclusion, what guarantee does Paul provide that his argument will not at some point be found resting on the mere lack of firsthand familiarity with contrary positions? Perhaps a look at other statements of his will enlighten us.

Again trying to summarize his conception of TAG, Paul wrote:

The argument is that if your worldview is true, [logic] would not exist.

Closely related to this was the next statement:

The argument is that the laws of logic are inconsistent with your worldview.

Naturally, neither of these "arguments" conclude that any god (let alone specifically the Christian god) exists, and simply seems to be a repetition of his case against materialism as such. Of course, the conclusion that a god exists does not follow as a result of proving that materialism is an invalid worldview. In regard to Paul's argument against materialism, however, it is unclear how he proves that logic is not composed of some material which lacks many of the perceptible characteristics of other things that are composed of matter. I do not state this as an advocate of such a view, but simply as a query on the security of his case since he seems to think whether or not logic is material or otherwise is important and his argument's ambition is apparently to rule out the view that logic is material in any way. For instance, he may say that it is self-evident that logic is not material in the way that rocks, fruit trees, dollar bills and stapling guns are material, but this would not rule out the view that logic is material in the sense of sound wave, magnetic field or electrical current. Indeed, it seems that the concern to conclude that the laws of logic are "immaterial entities" is already off track since this assumes that logic is composed of entities, and this would need to be argued for.

The fourth key statement from Paul actually takes the form of an argument. He wrote:

E’ is only possible in the Christian worldview, CW, therefore, using E’ is to assume the truth of CW.

This apparently is the structure of Paul's conception of TAG (I note that it is quite different from Butler's formalized version of TAG), but was proffered not in the interest of defending TAG per se. Paul emphasized this in a string of statements typed out in all caps. "The point of the above," writes Paul, "was to show that TAG is not an argument from ignorance." Of course, without seeing how the conclusion is supported by its premises, and, more importantly, what can be offered in the interest of justifying those premises, we have an incomplete picture of just how the inference represented in such an argument is thought to be supported. If, for instance, at any point in the substantiation of such arguments we find premises like "the atheist cannot accout for" some function of cognition, a course of interrogation which is distinctively characteristic of presuppositional apologetics, such affirmations may in fact represent an open invitation to argue from ignorance, specifically the apologist's ignorance of how an individual atheist may in fact answer such challenges. Presuppositional apologists exhibit the tendency to take the wide-sweeping generalizations of their theorists - like Van Til, Bahnsen and Frame - at their word, particularly those generalizations which supposedly put a capper on the potency of non-believing philosophies. Apparently apologists are supposed to rest their faith on the assumption that Bahnsen et al. have "done their homework" so comprehensively that they can vicariously conclude what they have claimed, thus effectively enabling defenders of Christianity to "think Bahnsen's thoughts after Him."

In the case of this version of TAG, E' is presumably supposed to represent some non-material something, with the name 'logic' slapped on it, and because it is said to be other than material, it "is only possible in the a Christian worldview." [sic] This is the same tired, outworn assertion that logic can only make sense on specifically Christian presuppositions - as if logic required a basis in metaphysical subjectivism and a universe analogous to a cartoon, as if logic were only possible in a reality in which the objects of consciousness conform to the intentions of consciousness. At least for the sake of entertainment, it is assertions such as this that achingly beg for support, and only then - once the apologist presents what he takes to be sufficient justification of such assertions - will we have something to examine for the purpose of determining whether or not presuppositionalists can make their case without relying at some point on their own ignorance of rival positions. As Paul has set up his conception of TAG, its whole strategy seems to assume that there are only two contenders to be considered: materialism (conceived as necessarily cancelling out logic) and Reformed Christianity (asserted to be the only worldview that can "account for" logic). Thus the deck is stacked, but not very cleverly. In fact, it is hard to see how one could assert such a dichotomy on any basis other than ignorance to begin with, and at this point we might question whether the apologist is truly concerned for the stability of logic, or for the welfare of his mystical precommitments.

Furthermore, by saying that logic "is only possible in the a Christian worldview" [sic], Paul is saying that logic is not possible in any worldview other than the Christian worldview (specifically, as he conceives of it, since there is such a wide assortment of Christian worldviews). In order to substantiate such a claim, the apologist seems to have three alternatives at his disposal:

1. Prove a negative (how and where does he do this, and what basis does he assume?)
2. Argue from ignorance (which proves only delusion or desperation, not intended conclusions)
3. Deliberately build the notion of the Christian god into one's conception of logic (which would strap the apologist into the ready room of circular argument).

Perhaps Paul has a different option in mind, though it is unclear what that might be.

Moving along, Paul attempted to summarize his conception of TAG again:

The claim of TAG is that you cannot explain or account for ANYTHING.

Well, if TAG's claim is that I "cannot explain or account for ANYTHING," then clearly TAG is false. There are many things I can explain, such as how to decline adjectives and conjugate verbs in Russian, resolve French sixth chords by primary function, market heavy and intermediate marine fuel oils in domestic and international ports, import foodstuffs into the US from Asian nations, add new print-on-demand items to online ordering inventories, etc. I can also explain why the versions of TAG that I have examined tend to rely at least in part on argumentum ad ignorantiam. There was a time in my life when I could not explain any of these things, but as I learned these processes firsthand (i.e., by thinking with my own mind, not by pretending to think someone else's thoughts), I can now teach others to do the same. I had thought that TAG claimed that the Christian god would need to exist in order for me to do these things, but now Paul has corrected me: TAG argues that I cannot do these things at all (apparently he thinks that the Christian god creates incompetent beings in its own image).

As Paul's TAG continues to change shape, he offers yet another version of it:

My argument is that the Christian worldview is true because it is transcendentall necessary for the possibility of knowledge. [sic]

Now, this is quite different from the argument that I "cannot explain or account for ANYTHING." It must be evolving as he tries to address new criticisms. Of course, what Paul presents here is not an argument, but an assertion - "that the Christian worldview is true because it is transcendentall necessary for the possibility of knowledge." To make this case, the apologist would at the very minimum need to show that knowledge can be possible on the subjective basis and in the cartoon universe of Christian theism. But we already know that knowledge requires an objective basis in a universe which is not analogous to a cartoon, both of which are incompatible with and disaffirmed by Christianity's metaphysics. Furthermore, one wonders how apologists could claim authority for Christianity in particular in the area of knowledge when their bible has no native theory of concepts. This is crucial since concepts are the building block of knowledge, and our conclusions and evaluations are no more valid than our concepts. Presuppositionalists seem frightfully unaware of this.

Paul's argument changes yet again. His argument now proceeds as follows:

I argue that the character of logic is incompatible with the character of matter, therefore the cannot exist because immaterialk entities do not exist, and never will, given *what you say*. [sic]

It is completely unclear what Paul might mean by his statement that "the character of logic is incompatible with the character of matter." Similar could be said about oil and water as well as heat and plastics. But these things exist nonetheless, and I see no reason why a materialist would not agree. Is Paul saying that logical principles do not apply when matter is involved? Well, when is matter not involved when we usefully apply logical principles? For instance, I would say it is logical to open the car door if you want to get out of the car (notice the application of logic to goal-oriented action). Certainly the car is made of matter. Is Paul saying that this would be a misapplication of logic? How then does he get out of a car? So, at best, Paul needs to make his argument clearer than it is so far, in spite of the constant revision to which he subjects it. While he's at it, it would be beneficial if he could tell us why he might think the laws of logic are "entities."

Paul's next two attempts to clarify his argument reiterate his contention that logic is incompatible with materialism and thus I will consider them together:

I'm saying, for the umpteenth time, that the *reason* you can't account for logic is because it wouldn't exist given your worldview... I'm saying something about the character of matter and the character of LoL. If matter is all there is, then logic does not exist (except as convention, or linguistic constructs, but then you have the conventionalists problems).

Notice how presuppositionalism has taught Paul to presume for himself the ability to speak on behalf of his opponent. He says that "logic… wouldn't exist given your worldview." It may be the case, however, that Dr. Moore's understanding of logic differs from Paul's understanding of logic in some relevantly significant way such that the incompatibility that concerns Paul does not really exist in Dr. Moore's worldview. What is ironic is that, in spite of the standard presuppositionalist worries about being able to provide an "account," Paul does not seem to have taken this possibility into account. Again, he seems to be merely regurgitating Bahnsen's thoughts after him.

Furthermore, it seems that Paul has assumed a false dichotomy, namely that either a) logic is set of divine or supernatural "entities" (in the sense that they "reflect" his god's nature and/or thoughts and thus necessarily imply the existence of his god), or b) logic is conventional, relative, non-absolute, non-existent or ultimately meaningless. Such bifurcation itself is something we would expect to see if someone did not have a conceptual understanding of logical principles, and thus seems to be borne on the clipped wings of ignorance. It is not unlike what some primitive human beings might have thought in regard to thunderstorms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other momentous natural threats which they did not understand. The god of lightning bolts has apparently given up its throne in deference to the god of the law of identity. And yet, when we investigate both the cause of lightning and the axiomatic basis of the law of identity, we find no gods whatsoever.

In conclusion, we have seen many broad generalizations, resolute assertions and shuffling of conclusions, but we have seen no guarantee that TAG is not a veiled argument from ignorance.

by Dawson Bethrick

In the beginning...

This sort of says it all -

In the beginning...

Presuppositionalism and the Argument from Ignorance

On whether or not the presuppositionalist "transcendental argument for the existence of God" (TAG) qualifies as a variation of the argument from design, Zachary Moore made the following comment:

I always thought it was just an argument from ignorance.

After examining numerous apologetic sources pontificating on TAG and presuppositionalism, I am inclined to agree fully with Zachary's statement here. Of course, presuppositionalists will resist and protest this recognition, but the evidence to support it is wide-ranging and substantial, and it's quite easy to spot in the presuppositional strategy integral to deploying TAG.

First, let's get a good understanding of what the fallacy known as argument from ignorance really is. In support of his assessment, Zachary offered the following description of what constitutes an argument from ignorance:

The argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or argument by lack of imagination, is a logical fallacy asserting that if something is currently unexplained then it did not (or could not) happen, or that if evidence of something has not been proven to their satisfaction, then it cannot exist. (1)

Technically known as argumentum ad ignorantiam, an argument from ignorance essentially consists of resting a conclusion on the arguer's own lack of knowledge of or familiarity with some key point of central concern to the topic under consideration. The argument from ignorance can thus be reduced to the following formula:

I don't know how X could be the case, therefore it follows that X cannot be the case.

As such, the argument from ignorance can be considered to be a form of non sequitur, i.e., an argument in which the conclusion does not follow from the premises offered in support of it. Of course, in actual conversation or debate, instances of this fallacy are typically not so bald-faced. In fact, the arguer himself may not even be aware that he is resting his conclusion on gaping holes in his summary knowledge. On the contrary, arguments resting their conclusion on the arguer's own ignorance of relevant matters usually tend to bury the arguer's ignorance under a mass of verbiage which conveniently disguises the fallacy such that the arguer himself may not readily detect his own error. Discovering and recognizing the error becomes all the more unlikely if the arguer is emotionally committed to the conclusion which his ignorance is supposed to validate.

It is clear to me that TAG and its customary defense strategy make use of an argument from ignorance in the hopes of securing the claim that Christianity is true. And this is not at all difficult to spot. Generally speaking, whenever the presuppositionalist says something along the lines of "you cannot account for [fill in the blank]," he's essentially just telling us that he simply does not know how the person addressed in such charges might "account for" such phenomena. And despite his announcement of his own ignorance of such matters in such an explicit manner, presuppositional apologists routinely regurgitate the same pattern throughout their defense of god-belief. Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen, who can be credited with popularizing this very approach to apologetics, used precisely this very tactic in his opening statement when he debated atheist Dr. Gordon Stein. Bahnsen simply asserted that

The atheist world-view cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes. In that sense, the atheist world-view cannot account for our debate tonight. (2)

An examination of Bahnsen's opening statement does not prove fruitful in discovering just how the apologist might go about proving this negative claim, and yet presuppositionalists typically mimick Bahnsen's approach as if it had actual substance (often referred to as "thrust"). If the apologist has an actual proof that "the atheist world-view cannot account for" said phenomena, why doesn't he offer it? Such questions are frequently asked, but they remain unanswered. In spite of this, apologists persist in using this very same tactic, even though it only serves in telling the world that they are simply unfamiliar with what any particular atheist's views are on the topic at hand.

That the assertion of inability on the part of atheists to "account for" various aspects of cognition and experience is integral to TAG, is clear from statements such as the following:

TAG says that the atheist can't account for logic. (3)

Another apologist followed up this remark, saying:

I don't just think you can't 'account' for just logic and a some other things. The claim of TAG is that you cannot explain or account for ANYTHING. (4)

The apologists' dependence on their own ignorance here is not only uncontained, but brazen and belligerent. And this much is clear: Since TAG is supposed to be an argument proving the existence of the Christian god, and central to this argument is the charge that non-Christians (perhaps atheists especially) are unable to provide an "account for" various things (or "ANYTHING"), one can certainly be forgiven for supposing that TAG is supposed to derive the Christian god's existence from the non-Christian's alleged inability to satisfy such challenges. For it appears that the apologist is essentially arguing as follows:

Premise 1: If the non-Christian cannot "account for" the "laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes," then the Christian god exists (or: the Christian worldview is true).

Premise 2: The non-Christian cannot "account for" the "laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes."

Conclusion: Therefore, the Christian god exists (or: the Christian worldview is true).

And while this appears to be the basic procedure in defending TAG, the apologist tends not to approach the matter as a topic of inquiry in which a comprehensive survey is conducted to review proposed "accounts" for the various phenomena in question in order to assure us that those proposed accounts are in fact flawed or somehow insufficient to the task. On the contrary, the apologetic method consists of simply stipulating this to be the case, as if the apologist's own say so were sufficient to seal the case. But in spite of the obvious reliance on his own sustained and indulged ignorance, the apologist fails to show exactly how the existence of an invisible magic being follows from someone's inability to develop a thesis on induction or some other mental process. So the non sequitur at the core of the apologist's argument from ignorance is clearly observed.

Presuppositionalists themselves demonstrate that they need to rely on argument from ignorance (or, should we say, assertion from ignorance) when critiquing rival religious beliefs. For instance, when certain "truths" were asserted on the basis of what were called "the messages of phil," one presuppositionalist attempted to criticize this position with the following:

We could do a transcendental analysis of the "messages of phil." But all you have done is make a blanket statement that the messages of phil are divine. Nothing has not been stated or worked out as a worldview.

Aside from the hapless use of a double negative, the apologist, who is clearly speaking out of ignorance, nowhere shows that the worldview associated with "the message of phil" has not been "worked out." For all he knows, there could be a 30-volume codex that defines and develops such a worldview from its fundamentals on up.

Now, after examining my reasons for agreeing with Zachary on this point, I asked myself the following question:

Is my conclusion that presuppositional apologetics bases its conclusions on the arguer's own ignorance of rival positions, itself based on my own ignorance of the presuppositionalist method and the evidences it recruits in deploying its defensive strategy?

I don't think it is. And here's why: As I mentioned above, I have examined numerous defenses presented by presuppositionalists, both in published works either in print or posted on the internet (cf. Van Til, Bahnsen, Frame, Pratt, Butler, Jones, Wilson, et al.), as well as in firsthand encounters with scores of apologists attempting to use this method of defense. In virtually all cases, the approaches employed share a similar basic strategy: the non-believer cannot "account for" some aspect or feature of cognition or experience, presumably because only an appeal to the believer's god can satisfactorily accomplish such a task and the non-believer by definition rejects or disavows the existence of the believer's god. But in each case, the feature or aspect of cognition or experience which the non-believer is said to be unable to "account for," can in fact only be addressed and understood if one has a good understanding of how the mind forms concepts and integrates them into larger conceptual structures. But this element is completely lacking from every deployment of presuppositional apologetics that I have examined, many of which I learned about because Christian debaters cited them as a supporting resource. (5) Not only do presuppositional apologists seem utterly ignorant of the importance of a good theory of concepts to such considerations, the worldview which they seek to defend - Christian theism - does not seem to have a native theory of concepts. (Apologists have been unable to show where in the bible one might find any information about concepts.)

Take for instance James Anderson's Secular Responses to the Problem of Induction, a paper intended to support the presuppositionalist position that non-Christian philosophy must confess defeat when it comes to providing a rational justification for induction. I give Anderson credit for at least trying to support this charge without simply stipulating it to be the case, for he does survey at least a few secular treatments of the supposed problem. But absent from his survey is any consideration of the Objectivist response to Hume's problem of induction. Granted, it may not be well known in some academic circles, but it does in fact exist (David Kelley summarizes his response to Hume in "Universals and Induction"). This can only indicate that Anderson's survey is incomplete and that the conclusion that "there presently exists no satisfactory solution to the problem of induction from a secular perspective" (6) is premature, in fact unwarranted. Indeed, his conclusion in fact rests on a gap in his knowledge of available treatments of induction. And I know that he was not familiar with the distinctive approach to induction that Objectivism provides when he wrote his paper based on his reaction to a statement I had made in our correspondence.

Specifically, I had written:

I must say, however, I'm always surprised, when reading a paper that attempts to deal with induction, that there is no discussion of concepts, the nature of their forming, or their relationship to inductive generalization, as if these issues did not matter.

In response to this, Anderson replied:

Well, it's not immediately obvious to me how the nature of concept formation bears either on the description of the problem of induction or on the development of cogent solutions. Perhaps you can elaborate.

This statement, especially coming from an apologist who has emphasized the "atheists can't account for induction" version of TAG so heavily, simply suggests to me that presuppositionalists do not approach induction as a conceptual matter. This tells me that they're ignorant of how induction is an extension of conceptual integration, which can only lead me to the conclusion that their apologetic ploy concerning this issue is based ultimately on their own ignorance of at least some opposing positions.

So unless presuppositionalists can do better than what they have done to date, the charge that TAG relies - at least in part - on an argument from ignorance, appears to be amply justified.

by Dawson Bethrick

Notes:

(1) Quoting this online source.

(2) The Great Debate

(3) TAG as Teleological Argument

(4) Ibid.

(5) For instance, section 7.4 "The Transcendental Nature of Presuppositional Argument," in Bahnsen's Van Til's Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, pp. 496-529.

(6) Secular Responses to the Problem of Induction

Dear Sal

Recently an individual who goes by the moniker Sal_et_Lucis, apparently a Christian, kindly stopped by my blog and posted a brief comment in which he asked me a question. In this blog entry, I will attempt to provide him with a comprehensive answer.

Sal asked: "Just how much of Van Til and Bahnsen have you actually sat down and read?"

My first reaction to this question was to wonder how much of either author one needs to read before he's allowed to have an opinion on something either one of them has written. My next reaction was to wonder how much those who ask me such questions have read my own writings. And though I think these are relevant questions, I doubt I'll get much of an answer to either in return.

Nevertheless, in response to Sal's question, I must admit that I have read quite a bit of both Van Til and Bahnsen, focusing primarily on their apologetic works. For example, VT's The Defense of the Faith, Christian Apologetics, various articles available on the net such as "Why I Believe in God," etc.; Bahnsen's Always Ready, Van Til's Analysis: Readings & Analysis (which contains lengthy quotations from many of Van Til's publications), and numerous articles available on the net, not to mention the writings of other presuppositionalists such as John Frame, Richard Pratt, James Anderson, David Byron, Greg Welty, Michael Warren, Massimo Lorenzini, Matt Slick, etc., etc. I have found much of these writings tiresomely repetitive (there seems to be no end to the list of woes that they attribute to non-belief in their invisible magic beings), and yet I've taken it upon myself to wade through their tortured prose in the hopes of finding anything that resembles an argument for their god-belief.

Now, I'm not so naïve as to suppose that, even if I have read everything written by these and other authors, that this would eliminate all detractors who would want to charge me with not reading enough. I have found that the easy-chair routine of dismissing Christianity's critics by saying they don't understand or haven't read enough is overused by self-styled apologists, many of whom consider their defense of the faith a kind of "ministry" commissioned by their god. I want to believe that the fact that so few apologists attempt to answer my challenges is explained by the possibility that they're simply not aware of my blog; and I would prefer not to think that presuppositional apologists, with all the fire-power they claim to have in their "transcendental arguments," are choosing to shy away from my criticisms. Then again, I don't find that the criticisms I present in my blog and on my personal page can be found elsewhere that I know of, so it may simply be the case that those apologists who are aware of my writings currently have no answer to my challenges, or that they would prefer to simply dismiss me as someone who hasn't read enough (such as one Jeff Downs tends to do on occasion). That's fine with me, as I know the word is getting out.

But since Sal has inquired, I am always willing to read more Van Til, Bahnsen, et al., for I know there is much literature on the topic of presuppositionalism which I have yet to digest. I would be very eager, for instance, to find any passage in either Van Til or Bahnsen where they deal with the issue of metaphysical primacy. I take this to be the make-all/break-all issue in all philosophy, since it is inescapable to all cognition. And even though Van Til, Bahnsen et al. pay ample lipservice to "the necessary preconditions of intelligibility," this issue never seems to come up in their writings. I find this astounding. I have my own suppositions for why this is the case, but I'd like to know what Sal and other Christians might think on this. I'm inclined to suppose they will want to rescue Van Til by saying the issue of metaphysical primacy is unimportant, or they may say Van Til addresses it and yet will not provide any citations or quotes to support this.

And while we're on it, where do either Van Til or Bahnsen spec out a theory of concepts? Indeed, to what source would the Christian go for an understanding of concepts? The bible doesn't provide such a theory (and yet we're told over and over that "only the Christian worldview provides the necessary preconditions for the intelligibility of human experience"), so to find a theory of concepts, it seems that believers would have to either invent their own theory as they go or consult some extra-biblical source which does provide such a theory (thus putting the believer at risk of succumbing to "the wisdom of the world"). My suspicion is that Christianity has no native theory of concepts. I've asked believers who say I'm wrong on this to come forward and show me where the bible presents its own theory of concepts, but none have done this (many retort by saying that the bible is not a philosophical lexicon, but this only confirms my suspicion). And even though a good theory of concepts will go a long way in correcting a large number of presuppositionalism's mistakes and in answering most of presuppositionalism's characterizations of and challenges to "non-believing worldviews," it is precisely a theory of concepts which they seem to lack.

Ever anxious to find some way to turn a philosophical issue into an apologetic debating point, Van Til gives us some indication of his understanding of concepts in the following passage:

We seem to get our unity by generalizing, by abstracting from the particulars in order to include them into larger unities. If we keep up this process of generalizing till we exclude all particulars, granted they can all be excluded, have we then not stripped these particulars of their particularity? Have we then obtained anything but an abstract universal?" (The Defense of the Faith, 3rd ed., p. 26.)

If summaries like this are at all any indication of the presuppositionalist understanding of concepts (James Anderson, in his paper If Knowledge, Then God, cites pp. 23-28 of Van Til's The Defense of the Faith as "the most direct discussion of the problem [of the one and the many]" in Van Til's writings), then non-believers needn't worry whatsoever about what this camp has to say. Van Til errs by supposing that the process of abstraction involves "excluding particulars," when in fact this is not at all the case. The process of abstraction involves, among other operations, the omission of specific measurements precisely so that particulars can be included in the scope of reference subsumed by a concept. My suspicion is not only that Van Til did not understand this, but also that such facts would not be very welcome news to someone like Van Til for they do not avail themselves to the conclusions he hoped to draw, namely that "the problem of the one and the many" requires a supernatural solution (cf. the "concrete universal" which Van Til equated with the Christian trinity).

Sal listed three options to explain his impression of my understanding:

"You either are a poor reader, have a short term memory, or you haven't read them at all."

I can name two more possibilities which Sal overlooks. One is that I have misunderstood these authors. Consider the following admission which one presuppositionalist found necessary to make in order to highlight Bahnsen's contributions to presuppositionalism:

One of the major obstacles in the way of promoting presuppositionalism has been Van Til's own writing style. Friends and critics alike have expressed chagrin at his 'torturous English', his redundant and unclear style, his penchant for sloganeering, and his disorganization of themes. Though he considered these criticisms overstated, Bahnsen likewise recognized these shortcomings in Van Til. (Michael Butler, "The Transcendental Argument for God's Existence," ed. S. M. Schlissel, The Standard Bearer: A Festschift for Greg L. Bahnsen, p. 70.)

Even those who are sympathetic to Van Til's program have complained about the warbling mentor's muddled handling of the issues central to his primary thesis. And while many would point to Bahnsen one of the prime movers in clarifying Van Til's apologetic, he often turns out to be little more than a cheerleader who is content to cloak those same issues in similar vague jargon and "penchant for sloganeering." So if I have misunderstood Van Til, some apologists have already provided a good explanation for this.

The other possibility which Sal overlooks is that I have read and understood these authors, and that my detractors simply want to dismiss my writings out of hand by tarnishing their source (i.e., me). This of course only serves to attack me personally, and allows my criticisms to go unchallenged. This means that, if my understanding and criticism of these authors are in error, we will not learn of my faults from these detractors. Indeed, it's not unusual for my detractors to do a "drive-by comment," saying I don't understand, I've misrepresented, or that I'm simply dishonest, and yet provide no substantiation whatsoever to these charges when my own writings are right there, available for examination.

There are numerous examples in my writings where I examine and interact with the authors Sal mentions which provide opportunity for my detractors to cite when casting their character slurs against me. One such example is Bahnsen's opening statement in his debate with Gordon Stein. To my utter amazement, many Christians seem to think Bahnsen's performance in this debate was somehow impressive. For instance, John Frame recently wrote that "it was evident as the debate progressed that the audience became convinced that Bahsnen won the debate," and that "Bahnsen's transcendental argument was carefully put together and eloquently stated." I wonder if he attended the same debate whose transcript I read and examined. I've made my interaction with Bahnsen's opening statement available to my detractors for quite a while now, and even though many of them have, as Frame characterizes Stein, "huffed and puffled and sputtered away" in defiance of my conclusion that Bahnsen offered a poof rather than a proof, none have come forward to piece together an actual argument which validly infers the existence of the Christian or any other god from anything Bahnsen claims in his opening statement. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I've missed something, but unless one of Bahnsen's defenders takes the time to point it out to me, I'll rest with my analysis.

So, to address Sal's question, the answer is yes, I have read these authors, and no, I don't think I'm a poor reader. But, I will also answer by saying again that I am always willing to read more, and if my detractors want to specify a passage in either Van Til's, Bahnsen's or someone else's writings which is supposed to present the knock-down, drag-'em-out argument that presuppositionalists think they have, I'm certainly willing to examine it.

by Dawson Bethrick

With Minds of Children

I have often asked Christian apologists if they expect non-believers to accept their god-belief claims on their say so, as if their voice carried the cosmic authority they attribute to the god they enshrine in their imagination. I ask this question because religious believers who set out to defend their beliefs from the threat of non-belief offer precious little in clearly explaining why they believe what they claim to believe, and why others should believe what they claim. In my experience apologists typically seem to think this not a serious question, for few have offered a sincere answer. In encounters with apologists, even if their claims are given the attention they apparently think they deserve, questions about why they should be believed or why one should think they are true are either ignored or ridiculed, or effort is made to discredit the character of those who posed them in the first place. Such behavior simply indicates that those who would defend the religious view of the world have little or no confidence in any answers they might provide in response to questions posed about their beliefs and the claim that those beliefs are true.

But this no doubt does not put a stop to apologists seeking to rationalize their mystical beliefs (often by vilifying alternative positions) even while evading questions that sometimes strike at the very core of those beliefs or the motivation to carry on the pretense that they are true. And what is it that they are saying is true? Stories of magical personae and events, tales of conscious beings existing beyond our perception and beyond our ability to discover and know rationally, claims of an invisible magic being which created the universe by wishing it into existence and which "controls whatsoever comes to pass" (1), etc. All this strikes a reasonable thinker as legends and tales which are no more true than Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz.

Some apologists are quite open about the fact that it requires the mind of a child to take such stories seriously and accept them as truth. This is quite refreshing in fact, since it serves to confirm a basic point that I have observed in religious believers who on the whole otherwise seem at least somewhat intelligent. And that point is that god-belief will take its root best when the believer, like a naïve child, is philosophically defenseless against the false premises which lurk under theism's pre-packaged exterior of anecdotes, pretended authority, fake promises of vindication and the like. It is, in the case of Christianity for instance, the absurd and nonsensical which distinguish its teachings from other worldviews most dramatically, insisting that adults lower their minds to the level of a 6-year-old, prone to trusting persons in postions of authority and intellectually unable to recognize any abuse of that trust. It is the recognition of religion's predatory defrauding of the human mind and spirit that prompted Rand to point out to us that "faith in the supernatural always begins with faith in the superiority of others," that "A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter with the minds of others." (2)

Various passages in the bible make it clear that one must have the mind of a child rather than an adult to qualify as an approved believer. For instance, consider the following:

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3-4)

"Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." (Mark 10:15)

Presuppositional apologist John Frame tells us that

Scripture never rebukes childlike faith; indeed, Jesus makes such faith a model to be followed by adults (Luke 18:16). One who requires proof may be doing it out of ungodly arrogance, or he may thereby be admitting that he has not lived in a godly environment and has taken counsel from fools. God’s norm for us is that we live and raise our children in such a way that proof will be unnecessary. (3)

Luke 18:16, which Frame cites above, says:

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God."

Christianity needs the believer to lower his mind to the level of a child because it can only survive by exploiting his ignorance, and exploiting an individual's ignorance will be more difficult if that individual thinks as an honest adult, is intellectually informed, does not indiscriminately give his trust to just anyone or automatically presume that other minds are superior to his. Apologists recognize that the only way to goad adult thinkers into renouncing their adult minds is by coaxing them into questioning their certainty. It is for this reason that the deployment of many apologetic schemes are so unpersuasive: not only do they fail to draw on objectively verifiable facts which can be examined impartially by all viewers, they also fail to apply concepts in a self-consciously meaningful and consistent manner (which can work against a child's mind, but many adults tend to sense that their leg is being pulled).

For instance, when apologists say things like "[t]he ground of rationality must be the living and triune God" (4), it is entirely unclear what they might be trying to say since the term 'rationality' is not a Christian concept. And we know that 'rationality' is not a Christian concept because a) it is not a biblical concept, and b) the very basis of the concept of rationality, which is the primacy of existence principle, is wholly antithetical to the fundamental metaphysical orientation underpinning Christianity (which is the primacy of consciousness view of reality). Moreover, apologists tend to use such terms while ignoring the need to clarify any working definitions they may assume in the context of their claims and characterizations.

In the interest of undermining the non-believer's certainty (which is rightly perceived as an obstacle that must be removed for there to be any hope of vindicating Christianity from criticism), a favorite tactic of Christian apologists is to barrage a non-believer with numerous questions, questions which they apparently picked up in an introduction to philosophy course or from some apologetics primer. The immediate aim is to uncover some area of ignorance on the non-believer’s part while the underlying strategy is to focus on any hint of ignorance on virtually any issue and exaggerate its proportions by driving a wedge of uncertainty deep into its core. This uncertainty is then used to manipulate the non-believer into doubting the efficacy of his mind and the truth of his verdicts, and Christianity - like a bully who takes pleasure in kicking a guy when he's down - waits in the wings to fill the void.

This tactic can be seen in action in these illustrative examples of questions posed by Christian apologists:

"how does the atheist account for non-material logical laws?" (5)

"Now, how does the atheistic worldview account for morality? ...how can one account
for laws of logic? How can the atheist account for any abstract, universal law?" (6)

"assuming that non-theism were true, on what basis could we assume the validity of the inductive principle (or, in simple terms, the continual uniformity of nature)?" (7)

Such questions are supposed by apologists to have no "cogent" answer on the basis of "the atheist worldview," an expression which implies a uniformity in the thinking of atheists which does not exist.

Statements from apologists repeating the affirmation that "the atheist worldview" or non-believers in general "cannot account for" some feature of cognition read like indistinct widgets rolling off an assembly line, as if those making the affirmations were as robotic as the machines manufacturing the widgets. The uniformity of mindlessly repeated utterances indicates uniform mindlessness on the part of those who make them. Some choice examples include the following:

The atheist world view is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist world view cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes. In that sense the atheist world view cannot account for our debate tonight. (8)

The atheistic world view is inadequate… [it] cannot adequately explain the existence of the world… is unable to provide the necessary preconditions to account for the laws of science, the universal laws of logic — and, of course, absolute moral standards… cannot account for the meaningful realities of life. (9)

The atheistic worldview is irrational and cannot provide an adequate basis for intelligible experience. An atheistic world is ultimately random, disorderly, transitory, and volatile. It is therefore incapable of providing the necessary preconditions to account for the laws of science and the universal laws of logic. In short, it cannot account for the meaningful realities people encounter in life. (10)

On an unbelieving basis, however, there is no particular reason to believe that there are laws that actually describe facts. Who is to know that reality is regular at all? If the world is ultimately the result of chance (or ‘ultimate matter’, which is the same thing), surely it is equally likely that the world will become random or chaotic; and if our senses and reason seem to be telling us differently, why should we believe that in a world of chaos they would be telling us the truth? And if chance is king, where do laws come from? They do not exist in the objective world, because that world is the result of chance, not the product of a designer who gives it a structure of regularity. (11)

In the atheist worldview, rationality and ethics are the anomalies that require explanation. In the Christian worldview, irrationalism and evil are the anomalies. At the very least, atheism, not Christianity, has the up-hill battle in explaining how the existence of human rationality makes sense in their worldview. But the atheist’s ultimate explanation for anything can be only one thing, the irrational. Therefore, in terms of the atheist worldview there can never really be a rational explanation for anything." (12)

The anti-theist worldview can not account for the uniformity of nature on which to base the scientific process. (13)

The non-Christian's presuppositions cannot account for any area of human experience. (14)

The essence of the presuppositional strategy is to lampoon non-belief as such, typically by charging it with crippling intellectual disabilities through a variety of vilifying caricatures, presumptuous generalizations and uncharitable translations of certain positions affirmed by certain individuals, thereby making Christian god-belief somehow seem superior, more empowering, more philosophically informed. This tactic and other trademark elements of typical apologetic maneuvers suggest that apologists are really hoping that non-believers respond to their line of interrogation by throwing up their arms and saying "I donno, must be God did it!" After all, apologists give us nothing to suppose that this is not what they did themselves when it came to the task of using their minds.

In such a way, this interrogative style of apologetics is intended to get the heat off the believer and his task of providing reasons for believing what he claims while trying to undermine the non-believer's confidence in reason and his own mind (ironically characterized as a fault-ridden faculty which was allegedly created by a perfect creator). Since the apologist likely knows deep down that his god-belief claims have no rational defense, his concern is to hide them behind a blanket of challenges posed to those who have not surrendered their minds in similar fashion, not because their philosophical orientation is truly faulty, but because they are perceived to be a threat. All the while, the apologist seems completely oblivious to the need to provide a reason for believing the claims he apparently wants us to accept.

This whole approach to apologetics smacks of the behavior of an incorrigible child hoping to entrap adults in his midst whom he resents for being right. Children are not only often overly trusting, suggestible, imprudently credulous and intellectually vulnerable, they are also often prone to lacking self-restraint, social crudeness, and depth of intellect. And it is common knowledge that a child who is reluctant to grow up is sometimes given to petty nitpicking, emotional outbursts, temper tantrums. Non-believers who are willing to engage Christian apologists should not be surprised that such tendencies may show in their opponents since, as we saw above, this childishness is actually encouraged by the Christian worldview. As Van Til confessed unabashedly,

My whole point [is] that there is perfect harmony between my belief as a child and my belief as a man… My unity is that of a child who walks with its father through the woods. (15)

And of course, this is because Van Til never grew up. Which just underscores the $64,000.00 question:

Why be born again when you can just grow up?

by Dawson Bethrick

References:

(1) Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, p. 160.
(2) Atlas Shrugged
(3) John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 66.
(4) Douglas Wilson, Second Rebuttal to Theodore Drange
(5) Michael Butler, TAG vs. TANG

(6) Dennis Nenadov, The Existence of the Triune God

(7) Sycamore, Reply to An Atheists perspective of God

(8) Greg Bahnsen, Opening Statement

(9) Hank Hanegraaff, Is Atheism Logical?

(10) Rolaant McKenzie, Why Christianity?

(11) John Frame, Cornelius Van Til: An Analysis of His Thought, p. 77.

(12) Mike Warren, Christian Civilization Is the Only Civilization

(13) Justin S. Holcomb, Knowledge Falsely So-Called: The Theological Case Against Scientific Realism

(14) Harry Callahan, Opening Statement

(15) Van Til, Why I Believe in God