Month: July 2021

No Mere Assertion: The Transcendental Argument for the Christian Worldview (and, Therefore, for the Existence of God)

Have I merely been asserting, gratuitously, the Christian worldview, thereby inviting equally gratuitous denial? When I asked a friend for his opinion of the previous post, “Explanation Unexplained,” he replied:

If there is a weakness in your argument, I’d say that it doesn’t distinguish between ontology and epistemology. That is, suppose the Christian worldview, as you expound it, is correct. Suppose someone fails to accept this worldview. Why should this person accept the view that his refusal is a suppression of a view he really knows to be true, even if in fact this is the case? If the reply is that competing worldviews do not explain how truth and knowledge are possible, then perhaps a counter would be that the Christian worldview does not explain this either, but rather asserts its own exclusive rationality.

I will try to remedy this appearance of weakness by asking about the origin of the rational exigency (demand for reasons) behind the criticism. Where does that come from?

The Diagnosis

The answer to my friend’s question is that although the unbeliever may be psychologically unlikely to admits that he’s suppressing the truth, he must live with the logical consequences of the suppression I diagnose on the warrant of Romans 1:18-20 (ESV).

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress (κατεχόντων, katechonton, “hold down”) the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

The one who fails to accept this diagnosis is, according to the Apostle Paul, self-deceived. Despite that condition, however, the rejecter relies on principles of intelligible predication that he cannot account for (again, the laws of logic, the regularity of nature, and moral absolutes).

Unless something explains their mutual comportment, however, every utterance floats in a void, a cosmic theater of the absurd, rendering all predications (including “Christian theism is false” and “The Bible is not the word of God”) meaningless.

Continue reading “No Mere Assertion: The Transcendental Argument for the Christian Worldview (and, Therefore, for the Existence of God)”

Explanation Unexplained

Does David Ramsay Steele’s Atheism Explained: From Folly to Philosophy confirm aspects of the Square of Religious Opposition discussed in a previous post? [1] In this one I’ll defend an affirmative answer.

This square is an aid to thinking about worldviews according to the epistemic authority they presuppose (if not acknowledge) and what it governs, that is, their principles of transcendence and imminence, unity and diversity.

The Square of Religious Opposition

Christian

Non-Christian

Transcendence:

1.   Absoluteness

2.   Control

3.   Universals

4.   Unity

5.   Law

Quadrant II:

God’s Has Revealed Himself Concretely in His Word and Works

(Christian “rationalism”)

 

Quadrant I:

The Human Mind Can Know Everything—Reality Is Exhaustively Cognizable

(Antitheistic rationalism)

 
Immanence:

1.   Relativity

2.   Freedom

3.   Particulars

4.   Diversity

5.   Randomness

Quadrant III:

God Is the Sovereign Creator

(Christian “irrationalism” — which makes human reasoning possible)

Quadrant IV:

The Human Mind Is Limited—Nobody Can Know for Sure

(Antitheistic irrationalism)

Each of Steele’s many arguments calls for an apologetic response from a specialist.[2] The table of contents lists many topics and rhetorical tacks.[3] None of them holds up, however, if nothing is holding Steele up. And nothing does.

To show this, I’ve chosen one section of Steele’s book, “God Must Be Subject to Natural Law.” In those few lines he gives the game away, the game being the sport he believes he’s making of Christian theism. But first a few matters by way of background.

According to Steele, either one believes in the God of the Bible (hereafter “God”) or one doesn’t. He happens not to, and so he declares himself an atheist. Thinking no reason for believing is sound, he ends his book by speculating about sociological and psychological causes for the persistence of the allegedly groundless belief. Thus, “atheism explained.” I will not survey his survey.

It is, in any case, incomplete. Steele claims to have started his explanatory enterprise by eliminating “extreme positions”[4] before considering less radical ones. He never, however, deals with arguably the most extreme of them all, namely, that human knowledge of God is innate and requires no justification. The very condition of justification is in need of none. If there is a debate, it is over identifying that condition.

Human beings can unethically suppress that innate knowledge, however, and profess atheism, which is what Steele does. The biblical worldview holds that every human being capable of forming beliefs (a) knows that God exists and (b) is responsible for that knowledge (John 1:19, Romans 1:18). [5]  His or her profession of atheism is irrelevant to this issue as is the profession of theism.

Steele writes from within an undeclared worldview, one that rules out the Bible’s in advance. That’s unfortunate, for it’s the only one that makes possible the critique and theoretical justification he’s engaged in. It’s the only one revealed by perfect intelligence (Psalm 147:5, אֵ֣ין  מִסְפָּֽר׃, ayin mispar). In the same world cognitive norms comport with absolute moral values, numbers, logical laws, natural regularity, and interpersonal communication and many other otherwise incommensurable realities. They cohere in the Biblical worldview at the center of which is a sovereign creator-God. I can show that they cannot cohere in Steele’s. Continue reading “Explanation Unexplained”