1. Given the fact that Calvinism violates my conception of what it is for God to be good, I ought to accept it only if it can be established biblically beyond a reasonable doubt.
2. Probably, Calvinism cannot be established biblically beyond a reasonable doubt.
3. Therefore, probably, I should not accept Calvinism.
…It is easy to think of these notions (Heaven and Hell) in geographic terms–that they are places, one where God is and one where God isn’t. Such conceptualization will be avoided here given the serious problems with geographic conceptions. …What makes heaven heavenly is the experience of the union with God it involves, not golden streets and the like. … (Moreover, it is incoherent to describe God as omnipresent and yet hold that hell is a place where God isn’t. What’s lacking in hell is, rather, the blessing and beauty of a joyful union with God for all eternity. The language of heaven and hell must be understood as relational, not geographic.) So the language of heaven and hell should be thought of in terms of some ultimate good…
What do you think of this?
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents — the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy — are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.
(“Answers to Questions on Christianity”)
I’m referring to consciousness arguments from Naturalism.
Moreland: “According to evolutionary theory, before consciousness appeared, the universe contained nothing but matter and energy. The naturalistic story of the cosmos’ evolution involves the rearrangement of the atomic parts of this matter into increasingly more complex structures according to natural law. Matter is brute mechanical, physical stuff. Consciousness, however, is immaterial and nonphysical. Physical reactions do not seem capable of generating consciousness. Some say the physical reactions that occur in the brain are capable of producing consciousness, yet brains seem too similar to other parts of the body (both brains and bodies are collections of cells totally describable in physical terms). How can like causes produce radically different effects? Though evolutionary theory can handle the appearance of the physical brain, the appearance of the nonphysical mind is utterly unpredictable and inexplicable. Thus the emergence of minds and consciousness seems to be a case of getting something from nothing.”
Now one may insist that brain and mental states are identical, but it’s at this point we can argue that insofar as there are mental states (like necessary truths) inexplicable at the physical we have good grounds for rejecting naturalism. More, the Moreland quotation appeals mainly to our common sense intuitions about reality. For how is it that adding unconscious parts to other unconscious parts (ad infinitum) brings rise to our conscious experience? This seems ridiculous which is why Chalmers calls it “The Hard Problem.” It’s essentially a creation from nothing account where one distinct set of properties brings about a completely different set of properties.
Plantinga describes: According to current science, electrons and quarks are simple. Let’s suppose they really are simple (they don’t have any parts). One also thinks that things like quarks and electrons don’t think. They have interesting properties but thinking is not among them. Leibniz would say that if a simple thing like an electron or quark can’t think, then neither will things made up of electrons and quarks be able to think by virtue of the interaction of their parts. So let’s say quarks make up protons, a proton won’t be able to think by virtue of the activity of the quarks that make it up; nor an atom by virtue of the activity of the electrons and protons that make it up; nor a molecule by virtue of the activity of the atoms that make it up and so on. (Rugged transcript from Plantinga’s, “Against Materialism” lecture)
Yet there are those who pretend as if consciousness is not a mystery and at the same time their arguments (if one pays attention) turn out to be bald assertions (parts just think)! If consciousness was explained, I wouldn’t mind so much the naturalistic expectation for all to follow suit.
It’s unwise to suggest that because God is sovereign He is therefore the direct cause of every single event in life. God is not the author of evil! In terms of sovereignty, God prior to creation, saw it fit to actualize this possible world. He could have created a different world, one with different people and consequences but He saw it good to create the one we know. There are better ways to discuss sovereignty than to attribute all events to God. Sovereignty is not synonymous with causation.
“In Hebrew thought they have this extraordinarily strong sense of divine sovereignty in which everything that happens in a sense can be attributed to God. But they don’t see this as antithetical or exclusive of human freedom by any means. A beautiful illustration of this is the story of Saul’s suicide in 2 Samuel and Chronicles. In Samuel it describes Saul as he sees the Philistines about to take him and so in order to avoid capture by the Philistines Saul falls on his own sword and commits suicide. In the Chronicles account we have the same story with Saul committing suicide but the Chronicler adds this commentary, “thus the Lord slew Saul” (1 Chronicles 10:14).”
And so there is a sense that both Saul and God are responsible for the suicide - Saul more directly of course. Part of this Jewish manner seems to be an understanding of God’s directive will (a will in which he is the effective cause of an event) and a permissive will (a will in which he permits the acts of his creation).
There are countless Jewish examples of this in scripture. We might remember the Joseph story where he acknowledges both the will of men and God. And I quote, “”As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Gen 50:20). I don’t think we want to interpret a Jewish understanding of sovereignty in such a way as to obliterate human free agency thereby relieving men from responsibility. The Jews didn’t, why should we? Joseph seemed to understand that it was his brothers who sold him into slavery but that God used it for a greater purpose.
I think one of the most common problems I have run into with Christian apologetics has been that of talking to people of different worldviews. There are two main worldviews that are incompatible with Christianity, and I have approached many times. The first, a worldview typically found among scientists is that of naturalism. Here briefly, I want to present an argument against naturalism and then offer advice to any students of science of how one can have a philosophical worldview which is both consistent with science and theism (or at least Christianity).
This argument will be based mostly on an argument presented by C.S. Lewis in the first 5 chapters of his book Miracles. Perhaps the best way to approach such a difficult topic is to define one’s terms. There are two main kinds of naturalism, one of which I think is necessary in order that science can function, and the second which is philosophical and applies far beyond scientific study. The first is called “methodological naturalism” or “scientific naturalism”, and it, in short, is the practical assumption in science that God is not going to intervene in creation and that things happen by purely natural means. Often, scientists and philosophers try to step beyond this and into philosophical or ontological naturalism which is the view I will be discussing here. Naturalism, as I’ll be talking about it, is the belief that only nature exists: that no God nor anything like Him exists. This argument (being an argument for dualism as well) would also apply to theists who deny an immaterial mind and hold a materialist view of humans (often in Christianity the mind is considered a function of the soul, and so would be immaterial, in naturalism the mind would be a function of the brain).
My presentation may differ from Lewis’s in some respects, and I recommend that anyone who finds this argument intriguing read his book or a book by Victor Reppert entitled, C.S. Lewis’ Dangerous Idea. Hopefully if I stray from Lewis it won’t be to the detriment of the argument.
The argument, simply put, goes something like this:
There are two ways to answer the question, “Why do you believe that?” The first is that one believes due to a physical process or neural event occurring in the brain, and would be a physical description. The second would be a rational answer which appeals to logical principles. The best way to bring this distinction forward is probably by way of example.
Let us pretend that four year old Sally thinks her favorite doll was moved by her brother. If one were to ask Sally why she thinks this she could answer in two different ways. First, she could say, “Well, I underwent a neural process where neurons in my brain fired and atoms moved in the grey matter of my brain resulting in my conviction that he had moved my doll”, or she could answer in the manner we would hope a four year old would answer, “Well, I saw him come in here earlier and when I got back my doll was missing. He’s the only one who went into my room, so he must have moved it.”
Now, upon reflection, one will notice that there is something which separates these two answers: while the first appeals to physical descriptions (in and of itself not bad), the second appeals to logical principles. We will call the first kind of answer, “causal relations” in that it answers the question”why?” by means of causal descriptions and we will call the second “ground-consequent relations” in which “grounds” are the reason for belief and “consequent” represent the conclusion. In this circumstance “grounds” would be the brother entering Sally’s room, his being the only one to enter Sally’s room, and the fact that the doll has come up missing. The “consequent” will be the conclusion that he took the doll.
Any good answer must account for ground-consequent relations. For example, let us examine a simple argument based on a basic form of reasoning called modus ponens.
A basic modus ponens argument would go like this:
1. If one is human, then one is a mortal.
2. Bill is a human.
3. Therefore, Bill is a mortal.
Now, this argument is obviously valid. We can easily see that if the first two statements are true, then the third must also be true. This is also an example of ground-consequent relations in which the grounds imply the consequent (that one’s being human implies one is mortal). And any argument must enable conclusions to be based on one’s recognition that the conclusion logically follows from the premises. This poses no problem for the Christian theist as she believes that one is a rational being endowed by God with a certain amount of rationality. But, how does this relate to a naturalist worldview? Does this present any problems?
Well, upon reflection, it does. In naturalism, a human being is a material object. The mind is a function of the brain, and the brain is governed by the laws of physics. But if mental processes are governed by physical laws, what place to logical principles have in my belief formation? For instance, if the naturalist were to make the above argument, she would expect me to believe it based on the fact that it’s obviously true. But how can she? Since, in naturalism, my beliefs are determined by physical particles moving according to the laws of physics, how can my recognition of a logical principle change the motion of those particles? In reality, my brain matter would have no more choice in what beliefs to form than water would have to run uphill, so how is it that if one believed Bill is immortal, they can then cause their brain matter to move in a manner based on a logical recognition and not physical laws so as to draw a different conclusion? How can the immaterial cause of “recognition” create a change in the motion of material particles?
In naturalism it appears this cannot happen. The motions of atoms in one’s brain would be determined by laws and any talk of changing their paths by means of something non-physical (such as logical laws) seems nonsense. Thus, in naturalism we reach the ultimate difficulty that reason itself cannot be accounted for. And if reason itself cannot be accounted for, then neither can it’s convictions. Thus, so long as naturalism relies on reason to be accepted, it is a self-refuting worldview. By accepting arguments in favor of it, one has accepted that no argument is sound. But, if one argues that no argument is sound, they have put themselves in an awful predicament. If one were to succeed in proving that no argument is sound, they will have proven that their own argument fails. If they do not succeed in proving that no argument is sound, then there will be no reason to think that no argument is sound. By succeeding they refute themselves, by failing they never establish their claim.
In the end, I find naturalism to be self-refuting insofar as it is based on reason. I, therefore, present the view of Christian theism, in which man’s mind is immaterial and not subject to natural laws, but can recognize logical and mathematical truths, while the brain may still be governed, as a physical entity, by the laws of nature.
There seems to be a popular dilemma in and out the church today concerning God, omniscience, and human freedom. The confusion called Theological Fatalism is the idea that if God knows the future then the future from necessity is fatally fixed—if God foreknows A, then A will necessarily occur! The subtlety here is that our actions now are causally inert and irrelevant to what actually obtains in the future. This is because God’s knowledge is evidently a powerful force! I’ll argue (with the help of William Lane Craig) that theological fatalism is muddleheaded and that free creatures explain the knowledge God indeed has.
Fatalism goes as follows: 1) necessarily, if God foreknows X, then X will happen. 2) God foreknows X. 3) Therefore, X will necessarily happen. But the argument so formulated, is logically fallacious. What follow from 1 & 2 is not 3, but 3’ (Therefore, X will happen). The fatalist confusedly carries the necessity of the premises to the conclusion. It would be like reasoning: 1) necessarily, if Jones is a bachelor, Jones is unmarried. 2) Jones is a bachelor. 3) Therefore, Jones is necessarily unmarried. Does the necessity of the premises follow through the conclusion? Well, clearly not, for Jones could certainly marry if he so desired. All that follows is 3′) Therefore, Jones is unmarried.
Many people also confuse certainty with necessity. God can be absolutely certain (implied by His foreknowledge) that Jones is a bachelor, however, it does not follow that Jones is necessarily a bachelor—unless however there exists an argument from omniscience and determinism that causally connects God’s knowledge to human action—the argument doesn’t exist! “Certainty is an epistemic property of persons; necessity is a modal property of propositions. The proposition that Jones is a bachelor is contingently true, meaning it could be false. A necessarily true proposition could never fail to be true in any circumstance. An example would be a mathematical proposition like 2 + 2 = 4. It is necessarily true.”
It is true however that “whatever will be, will be,” but in what sense is this true? “Whatever will be, will be” is not a statement of necessity to which Gods knowledge causally determines human actions. Blogger, Epistemonkey explains the difference between logical and temporal priority. “Temporal priority refers to the order of events that occur in time. It is true that God possesses all knowledge temporally prior to even the creation of the universe, including all our actions. However, our choices are logically prior to God’s knowledge of them. Logical priority means one serves to explain the other. Here, our choosing A over B explains why God foreknew us choosing A. We do not choose A because God foreknew it. Rather, if we had chosen B, then God would have always foreknown we would choose B.
In short, God’s knowledge stands in no causal relationship with the world.
Thus it really matters what we do!
Ray Bradley has attempted to undermine the Judeo Christian claim to the existence of objective moral values with the following: “What does objectivity mean with respect to morality? Surely it means unchanging and yet the God of the Old Testament is so very different from the God of the New Testament. The injunctions in the Old Testament (the commands of God) are different from those in the New Testament. And in both cases, many of them are morally obnoxious.” Frequent apologetics.com contributor, Soundsurfr, seems to agree: Sounds like (the bible is culturally relativistic)—this culture has this set of morals and that culture has that set of morals. But don’t the basics apply to all cultures in all times? I’m thinking of: no murder, no lying, no stealing, no slavery? With this, Bradley and Soundsurfr hope to show an inconsistency with God and Objective Moral Values, but I think that these attempts miserably fail.
First, with respect to the assertion that God’s moral commands are “morally obnoxious,” let me quickly point out that in the absence of God and the default position, Nihilism, it’s hard to take serious anyone who would have me to believe that some value is morally obnoxious. I have yet to see a natural account of ethics that isn’t question begging. Bradley would need to explain what “good is” using natural or physicalistic terms and this is precisely where he’ll get stuck in the mud. Victor Reppert reminds us: “Physical facts do not logically entail mental facts, just as physical facts do not logically entail moral facts. Getting an “about” from an “is” is just as impossible as getting an “ought” from an “is”, and for much the same reason.” Dostoevsky rightly observed that “If God doesn’t exist, everything is permissible.” Even Michael Ruse a noted agnostic philosopher of science explains: “the position of the modern evolutionist is that morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory.”
Second, to say there are objective moral values is not to say that nominal rules (lying for instance) necessarily apply in every single situation. Rather, to say there are objective moral values is simply to say that given a specified set of circumstances there is always a matter of fact to what is right and what is wrong. In this way, the moral objectivists’ only commitment is to ‘rightness’ and its privation ‘wrongness’ (the “right” is necessary, universal, and immutable; the “nominal rule” is contingent and situational). This is why there is no problem for God to deal with His people one way in the Old Covenant and progressively different in the new. Does this mean we are relativising the scriptures? Not at all! So long as we understand there is a matter of fact to what is right and what is wrong, the relativism accusation is undercut and defeated. But how about something so simple as “thou shall not lie?” Shouldn’t this nominal rule apply in every single circumstance? I don’t think so. If we read about Rahab we see she is commended when she lies to save a life (see Joshua 2 and her commendation in James 2:25). Likewise, doesn’t our conscience (Rom 2) tell us that lying to save Jewish folk from angry Nazi’s is the right thing to do? There are a few examples of this in scripture where the implication seems to be that God takes the context of actions, the character doing the act, and the motive behind the act into consideration.
Go to Amazon.com for Paul Copan and “When God goes to Starbucks” — Baker Books
Relativists reject the position that objective moral values (rightness and wrongness) are real life features of reality. Instead, they are content to assert that the “good” and “what I prefer” are one in the same thing. This maneuver is an attempt on the part of the relativist to reduce objective moral values to amoral preference claims. But does this maneuver work?
Blogger Lewis Moore gives us two reasons to think preferences are different than morals:
1. People feel obligated to perform moral actions, but not preferences.
In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis makes the distinction between moral obligation and instinct. I think the same distinction could be made between preferences and morals. No one feels obligated to eat cookie dough instead of vanilla ice cream, but everyone feels obligated to keep promises, remain faithful to their spouses and so on. So we obviously feel something about moral statements that we do not feel about preferences.
2. “What I prefer” and the “good” are not interchangeable.
Lewis Moore explains: If “good” and “what I prefer” are the same thing, then they can be used interchangeably. However, I can always ask, “Is it good that I prefer this to that?” and I am obviously not asking, “Is it preferable to me that I prefer this to that?” Likewise, if I say, “what I prefer is good” I am obviously not saying, “What I prefer is what I prefer.”
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